cingolani_c said:
Would it be accurate to assert that you value the emotional health and euphoria that the relationship brought more than anything else?
Introduction to the Religious Life
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Would it be accurate to assert that you value the emotional health and euphoria that the relationship brought more than anything else?
Not exactly. That sounds as if my love for God is based on what I can get from it.
There's one way to tell.. Do some research. (google).
"A related phenomenon is a misinterpretation of a quote to suggest a nonexistent religious belief. Albert Einstein, for example, was frequently cast as a theist because of his quote "God does not play dice." Although he made it clear many times that he did not believe in a personal god, and was using the term only rhetorically, theists have continued to make claims about Einstein's "conversion".
Wiki.
SnakeLord said:
Yes, understood, but he was not an athiest. "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings." - Einstein
He may not of ever believed in a personal God, but he believed in a God nonetheless. That is religion.
this is who einstein was refering to, and he does not help your arguement.QuarkMoon said:
Baruch Spinoza was one of the great philosophers of the age of Rationalism and a major influence thereafter, as on, paradoxically, both of the bitter enemies Arthur Schopenhauer and G.W.F. Hegel. From a Portuguese Jewish family that had fled to the relative tolerance of the Netherlands, one of the most famous things about Spinoza was his expulsion from the Dutch Jewish community. This is often called an "excommunication," though, as I used to have a high school teacher protest, there is really no such thing as "excommunication" in Judaism. Nevertheless, Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish communityand anathematized. Although he is today recognized as one of the greatest Jewish philosophers ever, and the chief Rabbis of Israel have been petitioned to formally lift the curse upon him, this has not happened: Spinoza remains a controversial person in Judaism, for very much the same reasons that led to his expulsion in the first place. Spinoza's God is not the God of Abraham and Isaac, not a personal God at all, and his system provides no reason for the revelatory status of the Bible or the practice of Judaism, or of any religion, for that matter.
Spinoza's alienation from his community is reflected in an alternative version of his name. "Baruch" in Hebrew (bârûkh) means "Blessed"; but Spinoza began using the name "Benedict," which in Latin (Benedictus) would mean "spoken well of" or "praised." This reflects the circumstance that Spinoza, with whom Jews were forbidden to associate, inevitably found friendship with Christians instead. Nor was he unsympathetic with Christianity. However, there never was any chance of Spinoza adhering to Christianity as a religion anymore than Judaism. Spinoza's sympathy for Christianity, like Thomas Jefferson's, was entirely for the moral teachings of Jesus, not for the theology, Christology, or the promise of the means of salvation. Like Jefferson, again, Spinoza was a kind of Unitarian, for whom the purely religious aspects of the religions were nearly meaningless.
http://www.friesian.com/spinoza.htm
Yes, I know who Spinoza is. And I'm not trying to tie Einstein into any of the Jeudeo-Christian-Islam religions. I don't subscribe to those either.
From the same site you(geeser) posted: "The way that Spinoza argues it is that there is only one substance, and then that there is only one individual of that substance. In the tradition of Anselm and Descartes, God is a "Necessary Being," who cannot possibly not exist. Existence is part of his essence, and he cannot be without it. But existence is not the entire essence of God. Instead, the one substance is characterized by an infinite number of attributes. Besides existence, we are only aware of two of these: thought and extension. Thus, where Descartes had seen thought as the unique essence of the substance soul, and extension as the unique essence of the substance matter, Spinoza abolished this dualism, and the paradoxes it generated. Thought and extension are just two, out of an infinite number of, facets of Being. A reductionistic scientism that wants to claim Spinoza as one of its own typically overlooks this aspect of the theory: Spinoza's God thinks, and also is or does many other things that are beyond our reckoning and comprehension. Thus, although Spinoza was condemned by his community for the heresy of saying that God has a body (denying the transcendence of God common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islâm), God is nevertheless much more, indeed infinitely more, than a body."
Spinoza simply wanted a God that we couldn't possibly understand. He believed in one God, a being of "infinite attributes". You all are so defensive of athiesm that you make the grave assumption that I subscribe, or that I claim that Einstein subscribes, to the modern religions of the day. I don't, and Einstein made it clear that he does not. But he did believe in a God, a creator. Read more than a few paragraphs about Spinoza and you will see what his idea of God is.
From the same site you(geeser) posted: "The way that Spinoza argues it is that there is only one substance, and then that there is only one individual of that substance. In the tradition of Anselm and Descartes, God is a "Necessary Being," who cannot possibly not exist. Existence is part of his essence, and he cannot be without it. But existence is not the entire essence of God. Instead, the one substance is characterized by an infinite number of attributes. Besides existence, we are only aware of two of these: thought and extension. Thus, where Descartes had seen thought as the unique essence of the substance soul, and extension as the unique essence of the substance matter, Spinoza abolished this dualism, and the paradoxes it generated. Thought and extension are just two, out of an infinite number of, facets of Being. A reductionistic scientism that wants to claim Spinoza as one of its own typically overlooks this aspect of the theory: Spinoza's God thinks, and also is or does many other things that are beyond our reckoning and comprehension. Thus, although Spinoza was condemned by his community for the heresy of saying that God has a body (denying the transcendence of God common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islâm), God is nevertheless much more, indeed infinitely more, than a body."
Spinoza simply wanted a God that we couldn't possibly understand. He believed in one God, a being of "infinite attributes". You all are so defensive of athiesm that you make the grave assumption that I subscribe, or that I claim that Einstein subscribes, to the modern religions of the day. I don't, and Einstein made it clear that he does not. But he did believe in a God, a creator. Read more than a few paragraphs about Spinoza and you will see what his idea of God is.
cingolani_c said:
How would my interpretation best be corrected?
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cingolani said:
Crunchy Cat said:
Emotional health and euphoria can be valuable, pleasant side effects of a relationship with God.Crunchy Cat said:
but not for the poor sod who, who has eurphoric illusions that are other than a god, he's classed as a lunatic, and doctors try to eradicate that side effect.cingolani_c said:
cingolani_c said:
Hmm... maybe i didn't do a good job with the follow-up question and I'll try again. What in the relationship is valued above all else?
Thanks.
I value the personal, loving quality of the relationship.Crunchy Cat said:
Quite strange really.. If your father was not around but had left a poorly written book saying you can eventually meet him if you behave properly, you'd never refer to it as a "personal, loving relationship". Why is the same acceptable in this instance?
cingolani_c said:
Ahh... one one one and high quality. Got it. Thanks!