Jon, list:
Jon wrote: "With that in mind, a unique aspect of Christianity is its startling
affirmation that God Himself entered into Actuality--"
I don't think that the concept of 'god entering into actuality' is unique to
Christianity. It's basic to many ancient beliefs [loosely term as 'pagan']
about the gods. Zeus, for instance, had quite a few mortal children. Mortals
born of gods [and that includes virgin births] are found in these Greek-Roman
tales and other religions {Hinduism, Buddhism]
I'd therefore suggest that this shows the influence of the Greek and Roman
religions on Christianity - whereas, to my knowledge, one doesn't find such
influence in Judaism. And, in my view, Islam is a 7th century economic reaction
to the settling of pastoral nomadic grazing lands by the Roman-Byzantine
empire...but that's another story.
I think that the transition from animism, polytheism etc to monotheism is
something worthy of study - and of course - there is a lot of work in this area.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Jon Alan Schmidt
To: Gary Richmond ; [email protected]
Cc: Peirce-L
Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2016 4:22 PM
Subject: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Metaphysics and Nothing (was Peirce's Cosmology)
Gary, Helmut, List:
I think that questions of religion come after the kinds of cosmological
questions that we have been addressing lately. Once we establish the necessity
of God's Reality for the existence of our universe, we can then start inquiring
about the details. As Peirce wrote in "A Neglected Argument" ...
CSP: The hypothesis of God is a peculiar one, in that it supposes an
infinitely incomprehensible object, although every hypothesis, as such,
supposes its object to be truly conceived in the hypothesis. This leaves the
hypothesis but one way of understanding itself; namely, as vague yet as true so
far as it is definite, and as continually tending to define itself more and
more, and without limit (CP 6.466, EP 2:439)
Peirce saw humanity's primary role in God's ongoing creative activity as
learning more and more about both God and God's creations--i.e., the contents
of the three Universes of Experience--thus contributing to the summum bonum,
which is the development of Reason (CP 1.615, EP 2:255; 1903). However, since
God is infinite, it will take us all of eternity to get to know Him.
With that in mind, a unique aspect of Christianity is its startling
affirmation that God Himself entered into Actuality--into our existing
universe--in the person of Jesus. His claim to divinity thus offers us a
significantly more definite concept of God for our consideration; and if he
truly rose from the dead, as his followers have been asserting for nearly 2,000
years, then that claim has been decisively validated.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 2:48 PM, Gary Richmond <[email protected]>
wrote:
Helmut, List,
Thanks for this, Helmut. When I was studying comparative and inter-religion
for about a decade a couple of decades ago, I found the distinction 'esoteric'
vs 'exoteric' of help, for example, in such a discussion as we're having. Your
pointing to what some scholars refer to as the esoteric dimension of religion
(Sufism in Islam, Kabbala in Judaism, Meister Eckhard and certain other mystics
in Christianity, Zen in Buddhism, etc.) would seem to reflect that distinction.
And I believe that you are also quite right to point to the religious
practices of probably many people who want something other than a 'vague'
concept of God to, as for example, you mentioned, to pray to, namely, a more
personal God. There are places where Peirce suggests as much, while in the N.A.
and the early cosmological discussions, e.g., that in RLT (1898), it seems to
me that he has a somewhat different, at least quasi-scientific--but certainly,
logical--goal in mind.
In any event, religious tolerance (which in my thinking includes tolerance
of agnosticism and atheism) is for me a desideratum, one often lacking in
especially our public discourse.
But these are just a few idle thoughts thrown off quickly as I am currently
dealing with some personal matters which need my full attention. I'll want to
think further on these matters over the next few days, but will probably have
little time to respond online.
Best,
Gary R
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690
On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 3:04 PM, Helmut Raulien <[email protected]> wrote:
Gary, list,
I see the necessity for leaving the God-concept vague. On the other hand,
people use "God" for somebody to pray to, for religion in the sense of
reconnection with something spiritual and all-encompassing. So they have to
visualize God as non-vague to get a feeling of connection, I think. So one who
wishes to pray has to decide, which of the many varieties of God Clark wrote
about to imagine, eg. impassive or passionate. I guess the solution of this
dilemma may be to have the confidence, that seeming contradictions between the
varieties will be "aufgehoben" in a Hegelian dialectic sense (raised,
abolished) along with further inquiries to come. This means two things: It is
ok to temporally have a non-vague God-concept, and second the dogma, that a
religion must be non-exclusive, but open and tolerant to other religions. On
the other hand there may be religions which are not based on synechism and
agapism. But I guess, that the mystic parts of quite all religions are based on
universal concepts that resemble agapism and synechism, eg. Sufism, Kabbala,
Meister Eckhard, other than the prophetic parts of eg. Islam, Judaism,
Christianity. So maybe the dogma has to be modified: Openness and tolerance
towards other religions, except you should never trust a prophet, not of the
other religions, and neither of yours.
Best,
Helmut
29. Oktober 2016 um 01:31 Uhr
"Gary Richmond" <[email protected]>
Clark, list,
Clark wrote:
The more I think on it the more my own view is that Peirce’s process
approach to epistemology offers the best solution. Our beliefs are not
volitional. All we can do is inquire. If we really inquire carefully and still
believe, well that seems a good basis from which to believe (or disbelieve)
The N.A. is, as I see it, an invitation to inquire in just this sense,
while Peirce strongly suggests that such an inquiry will tend to lead to belief
and not its opposite.
As Peirce remarks, the meaning of 'God', being a vernacular word, is
necessarily vague. If that word is left vague. then it is possible to inquire
into it such that an argument for the reality (not the existence, as Jon has
repeated emphasized) can be developed. In the N.A. Peirce makes clear that by
"argument" he means "any process of thought reasonably tending to produce a
definite belief" (this opposed to its use in normative logic where it means the
inference from premises to a conclusion: an argumentation).
So, musement, he suggests, can give rise to an hypothesis (and, perhaps
later, a belief) that there is indeed a creator of the three Universes of
Experience, and that one will then be struck by the beauty of this hypothesis,
and by even the practical usefulness of it, especially in guiding ones conduct
in conformity to it, that is, supplying an ideal to ones conduct in life. One
will come to love this purely "hypothetical God" and act lovingly in accordance
with what follows from one's belief (including love of ones brothers and
sisters).
And, further, it is belief in this God-hypothesis which offers
"plausibility" and coherence to the notion of three Universes of Experience,
offering "a thoroughly satisfactory explanation" of it.
Reflections on the God hypothesis following from Peirce's early
evolutionary cosmological thought leads him to, albeit tentative. conclusions
regarding God's purpose: that God has always been and is ever creating the
Universe (perhaps multi-universes as I've suggested in earlier posts). Of
course we have no way of knowing God's knowledge or power (or any specific
characteristic), but we have hints--and more than hints--that God's thought is
creative. But since God's thought is utterly unlike our own, we can only get a
very fragmentary sense of it. Therefore, it is, again, wise to leave the
God-idea vague and to not attribute specific characters to it (like
omniscience, infallibility, all-powerfulness, etc., which characters are, after
all, themselves vague).
So, in brief, because of a synechistic (and agapastic) tendency in
cosmological evolution as Peirce envisions it, in the N.A. he claims that the
God-hypothesis is most worthy of further inquiry. In this essay Peirce seems,
at least to me, to prepare the grounds for an integration, even a unification
of science and religion. What Peirce envisions is a scientific religion which,
on the one hand, deemphasizes religious doctrines, dogmas, and creeds, while on
the other hand, develops the notion that science can be seen as in support of
religion, not necessarily opposed to it in principle. It is my understanding
that all this follows from his principle of fallibilism.
In good part I follow Thomas Knight's thinking in this matter (see his
slim volume, Charles Peirce in The Great American Thinkers Series).
Best,
Gary R
xx
xx
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690
On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 5:19 PM, Clark Goble <[email protected]> wrote:
On Oct 28, 2016, at 2:17 PM, Helmut Raulien <[email protected]> wrote:
Thank you, Clark, for this nutshell summary of God-concepts since the
Greek abstraction.
After I wrote it I worried I’d come off as being patronizing as I know
many here knew all this. I just put it in that form because I think the
unifying of God as ground of being and God as intervening high power needn’t be
unified. So I hope the tone didn’t come off wrong.
So it (your summary) is a basis for getting a feeling, or different
feelings towards the different varieties of "God": Pity? (So alone), Envy?
(No.), Worship? (missing information about better or worse worlds.), Empathy?
(yes, in case of process theology.) Maybe people can choose their belief in
order to have a feeling they like to have, and maybe this is ok, if they
reflect, why they want to feel this or that way, and not have an unreflected
feeling like revenge, superiority, and then construct a God-concept out of
that. I am too confused now to tell which feeling about God I want to have, but
confusion (Tohu Va bohu) is always a good start.
Well I’m not sure I want to get into religion proper from a personalist
perspective here. After all most of us likely have our own views on God (or
whether there is anything like an interventionist God). While I personally have
trouble with many elements of of the Whitehead/Hartshorne process theological
God, it does seem a position that can’t be neglected.
I’ve read some of the works on Peirce’s religion and I confess I’m
really still not sure what he really believed. (Not God as real but not actual
that’s discussed in the NA but the other aspects he brings up at times) Where
I’m most sympathetic to Peirce’s view of religion is that whatever our views,
it seems like inquiry has to proceed empirically in some fashion.
My sense, perhaps completely wrong, is that most people either proceed
to think about God on the basis of religious experience or via a more
traditional kind of rational transcendental argument for metaphysics. The
latter tend to focus on God as being in some sense. The former tend towards
atheism or agnosticism depending upon their experiences (or lack thereof) and
skepticism towards others experiences. A few people believe in a theist type of
God on the basis of experience, but I assume most reason poorly. (That’s not a
knock on religious believers just that most people don’t reason carefully so
it’d follow that most don’t about religion either)
The more I think on it the more my own view is that Peirce’s process
approach to epistemology offers the best solution. Our beliefs are not
volitional. All we can do is inquire. If we really inquire carefully and still
believe, well that seems a good basis from which to believe (or disbelieve)
So to answer your question while maintaining a connection to Peirce, I
suspect the answer ends up being a question about what experiences we are
analyzing.
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