Posted on 04/15/2019 4:38:34 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
“Prayers are great but guns are better.”
Trust in God but keep your powder dry.
L
Amen. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
Because it gives them comfort. "Socialism may have ruined my life - but at least I can still hope for a pleasant afterlife!*"
Regards,
*Instead of taking up arms and fighting for a better here-and-now.
You're saying that weather patterns, climate, earthquakes, etc. aren't caused by (knowable, in part mathematically derivable) fluctuations in solar radiation, the slippage of tectonic plates, etc. - but rather by a supernatural entity?
You know that it's possible to believe in God without resorting to the supposition that he actively intercedes in, e.g., cloud formation, right?
Regards,
Nothing like pure evil to bring out good again
Being able to explain something in part mathematically isn’t the same thing as being able to explain all its causes. The first chapter of Genesis holds that God set up an ordered universe—and that ordering is there for a reason. One reason is to make it habitable—without recognizable order, creatures can’t function. A second is to make it so that man can use his intelligence to cooperate (or opt not to cooperate) in governance. A third reason is to allow man to ponder the order, truth, beauty, and goodness in creation—all of which reflect the creator. All of these points can be elucidated from the opening chapter of Genesis. A fourth point, harder to squeeze from the first chapter but obtainable from the second with greater ease, is for man to exercise his free will, individually and communally, and so better know and serve, and thus reflect God.
That God in some ways orders things, including through these laws, is technically known as providence.
The best of the Ancients, which included many of the Greeks, would recognize the Deist position as metaphysically flawed. It isn’t an either-or proposition. The rules governing the NFL don’t cause themselves, and being able to “know them in part” without recognizing that they are actively caused by a body that could, in theory, change them at any time, but opts not to intervene in a way that we would see as active so that the sport itself is knowable, is to not know the NFL completely.
Belief has been defined in many ways. From a western theological/philosophical perspective (the distinction of theology from philosophy as discipline, coincidentally, happened primarily in Paris around the time Notre Dame was being built), revelation is the key to the definition, as well as the distinction. To understand the definition of belief from this perspective, one needs to grasp certain things.
Philosophy studies what is naturally knowable, while to that theology adds what has been revealed. The revelation, at least in the traditional Christian viewpoint, includes some material that is naturally knowable (these things are termed preambles) and material that is not naturally knowable. (I hold degrees in both fields, but teach in theology).
Deists (as opposed to philosophers) could theoretically be broken down into four camps:
Those that dogmatically hold that God had not revealed himself in creation beyond actively creating and is concerned primarily with seeing the laws play out, and so dogmatically hold that revelation/intervention beyond the laws that we can pursue (primarily mathematically) is not possible, and is deliberately unaware of the particulars of what is going on. This position is philosophically flawed.
Those that hold the above position with the modification that God is aware bust chooses not to be involved. The best of the ancients (by which I primarily mean the best of Greco-Roman thought) would call both these positions atheistic—not that they denied the existence of God, but they denied the need to involve God in one’s life.
Deism, as commonly used, refers primarily to the above two positions, but, for lack of a better term, needs to also be used, with qualification to avoid confusion, for the following two positions (which happen to include, so far as I can tell, my Father’s religious position, as well as what my maternal Grandfather’s religious position was, so I have given them thought).
“Providential agnostics” Those who hold that God orders the universe etc. as described above, and recognize that God is actively aware of what is going on in the universe, and could intervene at times by suspending laws that we mathematically understand for a higher purpose, but are unsure whether or not He actually does so. When something we don’t understand happens, it is not always evident whether the cause is a suspension of laws, or laws we know interacting with natural laws that we as of yet are unaware of, but of which God is aware of and already ordered.
“Revelatory Agnostics” Those who recognize that God could reveal Himself in a more explicit way, beyond man merely using induction and deduction on nature, but are unsure if he has done so. I would include in this position those who believe that he does so to individuals, but are unsure if there is a corporate form of revelation to which we are to adhere.
The later two camps of Deists, I would hold, are philosophically tenable positions. The first two are not philosophically tenable, and have an element of “Clockmaker god” dogmatism tinging them.
It is also possible to be a good philosopher and a bad theologian by backing as revealed something that is not in fact revealed.
I think an important distinction is lost when one confuses “Belief that there is” with “belief in.” The former properly used refers to a position that is philosophically held concerning God’s existence; the later refers to a position that is theologically held, that is, held because one holds that God has revealed it, and given one the ability to receive the revelation.
I would hold that I know that there is a God philosophically, and so I do not technically believe in the existence of God, but I do believe in God’s supernatural revelation. I would also hold that the God of revelation that I understand only in very small part, is the same God who orders and runs the universe, yes in accordance with the natural laws He has laid down—and any “god” that is not this is unworthy of the name.
I should try to get back to sleep, but I will conclude that the distinction between “belief that something is” which technically recognizing that one’s reason for holding a position intellectually is either somewhat unstable, or at least incapable of articulation, and “belief in” which is a dogmatic position, holding with certitude that something is true on the basis that it has been revealed by God and that God knows what he is talking about better than we do, has often been blurred but is an important one to make.
By the way, I “believe in” God from the Catholic position.
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