As I mentioned in another thread, how do you reconcile an Aztec god that wants the fresh beating hearts of virgins torn from their chests and the Abrahamic god that say thou shall not kill?
Is a theist's testimony obligatory for others?
- Thread starter wynn
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As I mentioned in another thread, how do you reconcile an Aztec god that wants the fresh beating hearts of virgins torn from their chests and the Abrahamic god that say thou shall not kill?
I would not kill. (haven't yet) (does a squirrel count?)
Not even to save your family?
Not even if it's ravening horde of them intent on eating you.
The agnostic position demands it.
I, too, consider this to be a possibility.
The downside is that it is too general, too abstract, to the point that it is useless, as that way, anything could pass for "being a theistic/religious/spiritual/transcendental experience," thus making the distinction between the theistic/religious/spiritual/transcendental and the non-theistic/non-religious/non-spiritual/non-transcendental obsolete.
Surely the category of the theistic/religious/spiritual/transcendental should serve some purpose.
If you were living in the Aztec culture, you might think sacrificing young women would be perfectly acceptable, even necessary. And according to you, that's just another face of god, right?
you are trying to get me to justify a concept i do not believe in,
I have no authority to tell you what is justified in Gods eyes.
I can only posit weak guesses as to how God would justify it.
would i accept that behavior in my community?..no..i would do everything that i could to prevent such an act,If i could not prevent that act in my community,I would look for another community that believed the same as I.
Failing that I would find someone to complain about the current state of the world with..
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
I asked: "Why must we accept all those teachings as equally and totally true?"
If a set of religious propositions are logically inconsistent, then it's going to create difficulties if we try to assign all of them the same truth value. (It might be less problematic to say that they are all false than to say that they are all true.)
But the thing is, agnosticism doesn't really require that we do that. Just because an agnostic doesn't claim to possess the answers doesn't imply that all religious ideas possess the same truth value.
One possibility that can't be excluded a-priori is that some transcendental reality does exist, and that some of our human religious ideas really are closer to that reality than others.
If a set of religious propositions are logically inconsistent, then it's going to create difficulties if we try to assign all of them the same truth value. (It might be less problematic to say that they are all false than to say that they are all true.)
But the thing is, agnosticism doesn't really require that we do that. Just because an agnostic doesn't claim to possess the answers doesn't imply that all religious ideas possess the same truth value.
One possibility that can't be excluded a-priori is that some transcendental reality does exist, and that some of our human religious ideas really are closer to that reality than others.
kx000
Valued Senior Member
Yea, basically God exist, and the whole do unto others thing. Thats all you really need to understand.
To evaluate a set of religious propositions as being logically inconsistent (or consistent) requires that we understand them properly. To have such proper understanding would essentially require that one be an authoritative member of said religion.
For example, take the propositions "God walks" and "God doesn't walk." On the surface, they seem inconsistent, but religions sometimes provide direct rebuttals to that.
There are also more complex explanations - namely, that the Lord has many energies and incarnations and does different things in/with them.
(This is, of course, only my conjecture. I'm not a member of any religion, so I can't say whether my understanding on this matter is correct or not. But I am familiar enough with some materials to have some ideas on how to treat apparent contradictions in religious propositions.)
However, because an agnostic doesn't claim to possess the answers, he must consider that all religious ideas might possess the same truth value.
Sure, but an agnostic does not know which are which.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
I was responding to Rav's remark that said, "Yeah, everyone's just reaching out and touching a different part of the 'spiritual elephant', right? Wrong. You can't reconcile things this way as long as there are teachings that explicitly state that you can't reconcile things this way, which there are."
If all of those "teachings" are stated in private languages unique to a particular religion, incommensurable with one another and incomprehensible to those outside the religion in question, then Rav's situation would seem to be impossible. The 'spiritual elephant' argument, which I kind of like and was trying to defend, would still be consistent with the various religions all loudly denying the validity of their rivals.
We could just decide that none of these religions can possibly understand or evaluate its rivals' claims. Contradictions simply couldn't occur between different religions' assertions because there would be no inter-religious stability of reference or meaning.
Personally, I think that kind of theory is way too strong. But it is consistent with some hermeneutical trends in so-called 'continental' philosophy, I guess. (I don't pay a lot of attention to that brand of philosophy.) Thomas Kuhn tried to import this kind of thinking into the philosophy of science with his 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions', which argued for the incommensurability of 'paradigms'.
But it sounded like you were willing to accept that alternate testimonies of god were also evidence of god, even testimonies that differed radically from your own.
One problem with religions is that they often use language that most people are familiar with - but they use it in meanings and combinations that most people are probably not familiar with.
So it can easily seem that we understand a religious proposition - and simultaneously not ...
Mental and semantic holism comes to the same conclusion.
Why do you think this theory is too strong?
What viable alternative is there?