are you an atheist?

That's part of the rationale but not necessarily the motivation to explore rationale that keeps his theism in a category totally separate from naturalism.

The widely accepted interpretations are anthropomorphic so I'm assuming he started with that version.

that's not how i was raised or taught to believe in god, which he alludes to here:

Yet religious anthropomorphism coexists with a sense that, while hardly universal even in my religious community, goes deep: in thinking about God, about what he is, about how he works in our world, we are over our heads.

cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology#In_the_Jewish_tradition

Could you define for me what exactly god's relationship with existing is here?

However, he had no views about their metaphysical status; he was highly skeptical about philosophers’ inquiries into such things. He had trouble, or so I imagine, understanding what was at stake in the question of whether the concept of existence had application to such abstractions. Feynman had no worries about whether he was really thinking about numbers. But “existence” was another thing.

It is this distinction between participation and theorizing that seems to me relevant to religious life.

Freud argued persuasively, I think, for the psychological explicability of the religious impulse, and for the psychological needs to which the impulse is responsive. I’m sure something like that is right but, contrary to Freud’s thinking, it doesn’t threaten my own outlook or even the more usual supernaturalism. God’s reality or existence is compatible with the putative needs.

I'm not sure why he's going to the rescue of supernaturalism here. It's an issue of parsimony, not compatability. If Freud's explanation for the psychological impulse is right, and there are no other independent reasons for belief in a supernatural God, then Occam's Razor kicks in.

His own position is so anodyne that he shouldn't be too surprised if atheists go after supernaturalists instead. He's saying that he has a powerful experience of God, without ontological commitments. No reason to doubt that.

I read that as a redefining into such vague terms that you're either attributing the term to a inner voice you've created for yourself and/or some other abstraction.

So vague in fact that I have a lot of trouble accepting that it isn't working backwards.

"Moses said to God, 'Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, "The God of your fathers has sent me to you," and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I AM THAT I AM" — Exodus 3:13-14

I don't understand what that means.

Should be understood as: I AM THAT (which) I AM. But then, names are extremely arbitrary by nature and God would know that I'm pretty sure.

ah, "people who don't believe in the only correct manner of believing are real stupid-head meanies", vol. 243

So what's the deal w religious ppl who don't follow any of the tenets of their chosen faith bt still get annoyed abt atheism and so on, I don't get them

[seinfeldbass-slap.wav]

"any of the tenets" "chosen" "get annoyed" etc

sorry, forgot i'd given up arguing with easily-confused literalists for Lent

Should be easy to explain it to me too, then

What's the deal with theists always arguing as deists.

So what's the deal w religious ppl who don't follow any of the tenets of their chosen faith bt still get annoyed abt atheism and so on, I don't get them

It's annoying when atheists (or anyone) discount their personal faith because it doesn't fit into the atheist's pre-conceived nothing of "faith-having framework". Hence the goal post talk. You would think atheists wouldn't care about goal posts but often they do.

pre-conceived notion

Also "It's too vague, it isn't real spirituality, etc". These are examples of 'atheists' forcing their faith, whether they believe it or not.

Truth is most religions have had a mystical component for a lot longer than the mainstream counterparts that atheists tend to box religious people into.

i dont even have a god

have you looked where you last saw it?

what's the deal w religious ppl who don't follow any of the tenets of their chosen faith

You seem to speak as if people choose a faith as if they were consumers who buy a car and then refuse to follow the maintenance schedule to maintain their warranty. The tenets of a church are simply attempts to catch lightning in a jar. A living faith will always embrace that which gives it vitality, and the rise of new heterodoxies is at the heart of every church history. Ever heard of evolution?

So it's not moving goal posts to fit your own personal definition of god/spirits/mystical components around the naturalist aspects you choose to accept?

xps

i'm confused about how you're using the idiom "moving goal posts"

pushing the definition of the supernatural into the unknowns as you see fit

I guess god/supernatural-of-the-gaps makes more sense right now.

xp

The goalpost metaphor implies that the object or idea associated with the 'goalpost' should never be moved because all parties in the game have already accepted their present position as being vital to the rules of the game. It is most often used when, in the middle of a debate, one party changes a position previously defined to one which is more advantageous, to prevent the opponent who was attacking that position from 'scoring' a debating point.

I don't see where that metaphor has any application to o. nate's link or any person's personal redefinition of their faith in ways not entirely endorsed by some external religious authority. Neither the orthodoxy nor the heterodoxy were undertaken with the idea that some atheist was about to score a point off them. The atheist's opposition to their enterprise most likely never crossed their minds.

yeah, most of this kind of theology was developed in medieval era long before apologetics of modernity were required

In reference to that original article I was describing the inner conflict of subscribing to naturalism and concluding there is no supernatural beings and rather than dismissing your faith you totally redefine the god as you see fit.

Sorry it probably wasn't the right description.

i'm suggesting that this definition isn't new, but very old - and that it happens to also be compatible for contemporary thinkers who subscribe to naturalism

i'm an atheist mostly but that's probably you're best proof of god, like that would be so fucking me, i die all smug like "death is the end welcome dark void"....them i wake up to st. peter and he's all like "howya doin' chief?" and i'm like #FM(after)L and like "listen man i was more agnostic than atheist i swear!" and he's like "let's go to instant replay"

The position is that "god is supernatural" first, then the idea that the supernatural does not exist is presented and the god concept is redefined to be safe from that problem if naturalism is accepted. So that internal debate has some goal post moving?

So Pascal convinced you to go agnostic?

http://books.google.com/books?id=M0lfQWZL7EUC&pg=PT27&lpg=PT27&dq=%22nothing+unreal+exists%22+kiri-kin&source=bl&ots=kXQPP6XmrH&sig=DtM3Mw35dbCp0n2p5WrbiEfKYeQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kfs6U_GFIYa6yQH5noHgDA&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=%22nothing%20unreal%20exists%22%20kiri-kin&f=false

also A+++ for naming your book, "Star Trek and Philosophy: The Wrath of Kant"

evan, do u think that pantheism is also moving goalposts?

It's all context I guess depending on the starting point.

The starting point in any discussion of an idea is whenever both parties to the discussion agree on what they are talking about.

I interpreted Mordy's question to me as "is pantheism similarly the result of internal goal post moving in your opinion?"

there's an interesting moment in Descartes' Meditations (i think it's that one) where he's talking about the difference between actuality and possibility. he claims that possibility is "nothing" (again, going off memory here) and that actuality is the only thing that is, or at least the only meaningful thing.

i think this is a rather important claim in terms of understanding modernity: it's to make a distinction and then claim that only one side of that distinction (actual/possible) has real meaning. but of course even a glance at the history of philosophy or science shows that the category of possibility doesn't vanish because the system that modernity is trying to construct (a "closed" or reversible system) is never finished: it's open, irreversible, developing in ways not always predictable.

even under modernity's own terms, this seems to suggest that "actuality" as a concept only has coherence or meaning when it's part of a two-sided distinction, but that always leaves the possibility of choosing the "other" side. i'd argue that this is what happens in an act of "faith"--choosing the unseen, the pure possible, as opposed to the actual. but this choice doesn't reveal the possible itself because choosing it then leads to its "actualization." the possible always remains on the "other" side, paradoxically revealing the contingency, the intrinsic otherness, of "this" side. that's what a "religious experience" means to me. it's a premonition of form free of content.

i should add that while im sympathetic to defenses of religious belief that lean on some kind of subjective phenomenology or "inner experience" i'm also trying to say something different. this is partly because i think those defenses use a similar concept of the subject which already failed to ground a scientific modernity ("man as immediate and unproblematized evidence," to use foucault's description, or the illusion of the "objective observer") but also because i'd argue that what constitutes religious experience is precisely that which, paradoxically, isn't seen, felt, experienced--what remains hidden in those sensations produced by a functioning (or malfunctioning) nervous system.

and for all that, i think the question of god's existence, or even my own sometimes atheism, always remains an open question.

I'm not sure I follow the goal post thing. Evan are you saying that spiritual beliefs/practices that fall outside of a narrow range (defined by who, exactly?) of orthodox norms are invalid and suspect because of their idiosyncrasies? Because that is essentially the basis for religious fundam3nt@lism, and it denies decades of alternative traditions, many of which are folk traditions and cultures created and maintained by people that were oppressed (including systematically hunted down) for that very reason.

Who sets these goal posts? If you say the Vatican or otherwise members at the top of the social-religious hierarchy, then what gives them the authority? As an atheist, the authority of such divinely-organized hierarchies should be especially under suspicion.

It just seems pretty clear to me that people work backwards with their personal god definition. Howard Wettstein for instance seems to be going to great lengths to reshape the idea of god (for himself) that doesn't contradict with his naturalist conclusions.

Scientific consensus especially and the current set of morals shaped by culture are the closest thing to an agreed basis we have. Everyone's personal idea of theology and god seems to be unique and varies from person to person.

Wettstein reshapes the idea of god

From what? What is this primary idea of God that he is reshaping? Who is the authority on this idea of God?

I'm 100% down with spirituality being everyone's individual personal experience, but to say that someone is reshaping it implies that there is an official definition, and if you are an atheist I don't see how you could accept that.