Best arguments are the arguments that deists have always used, such as Aristotle. Prime mover arguments, cosmological arguments etc.
Which are pretty good.
However, theism itself is indefensible. Even if one accepts the existence of a deity through some philosophical or logical pathway, there's no way to know the deity's will, his mind or his goals, hence theism is completely untenable.
I don't know. I suppose if I had made all this crazy bullshit I'd probably have a vested interest in it.
Deists were harsh critics of religion, and thought God was only an external cause, not something that would be part of every day life. They rejected revelation and used only what could be rationally discovered. They had a real love of science. Science however, gave a pretty good explanation for a lot of the mysteries deists use for evidence of God, so deists became atheists. In practice Deists and Atheists are pretty similar.
As such, this created real polarization where now we just have atheists vs. theists.
It seems redundant to say that a finite individual cannot appreciate the mind and intention of an infinite one, but unfounded to claim that it cannot successfully strive towards that end, especially collectively over periods of time.
cont.
why can one not interpret a theistic reality platonically/ archetypically as a means to develop a conceptual compass for moral behavior reasonably and honestly?
cont.
Your broad stroke dismissal and mischaracterization to me seems both illiterate and propogandic, verging on straight trolling
The problem is that I don't see how human beings could do that without some form of religious revelation or spiritual insight, philosophy itself seems unable to go further than deism, you can't prove that for example christianism is true with hard philosophical arguments so theism seems to be outside what we would really call reason.
Religious revelations are based on faith because none have been proven true and spiritual insight has never provided evidences of being an actual source of knowledge. (Lack of consensus, impossible to rationally or empirically testify it, no even a coherent theory on how actual spiritual insight would works or can be isolated from ordinary magical thinking)
Agreed. Thank you for taking this seriously, makes it worth putting in the effort to respond properly.
I'm not advocating untestable subjective experience as a means to determining the structure of physical reality. I'm referring to the philosophically rigorous practice of using the archetype/ platonic form of the perfect individual as a standard for ethical systems, which is a theistic mindset despite the lack of physical creationism.
cont.
the deistic/ theistic distinction lies at whether or not an ethically perfect individual is interventionist. It doesn't seem obvious either way, there are sophisticated arguments for both. imo you'd have to be freakishly well read and a meditative guru to claim with entire confidence one over the other, and both seem useful anyway.
cont.
It seems to me definitively theistic to base social behavior on an ethical system of the perfect individual. The mere basis of its attributes to explain physical action seems a legitimate form of intervention.
Why have you taken the post I posted the other day and started a thread with it, even with the same picture?
That's fucking creepy dude.
cont.
I feel you are doing yourself a disservice to conflate theism with dogmatically fundamentalist monistic religion.
I liked the post
ok
It's an interresting moral concept but how can we truly infer anything about God or a perfect individual?
And why would being a meditative guru be useful? From what I understand, meditators still base their knowledge on a form of spiritual insight and not really from what philosophy would consider a form of induction or deduction, and HOW meditation is supposed to be source of knowledge is based on spiritual concepts.
Platonism IMO kinda commits the fault of verging into spirituality in some aspects, especially about archetypes that were later reused by neoplatonism (often a fullbown religion) and new-age spiritualities. (Like Jung)
Plato and other ancient philosophers are generally praises for their innovations in formal logic, I don't think modern philosphy really take seriously archetypes, monads, anx that kind of things.
*ok wasn't me, thanks for mentioning it!
how would deists account for the existence of god?
i mean, what makes god exist? where does he come from?
Is that a criticism of the First Cause or specifically of deism? the theistic arguments for God being uncaused are the same.
not specific to deism
there must be some reason god exists, right?
>dude the universe MUST have a creator because.... uh, like why ... why? uuh you wouldn't understand b-brainlet
Even if it's counterintuitive, is it generally accepted in philosophy that the first cause of a causal chain can be uncaused, an eternal universe is technically not impossible too even if that hypothesis is less popular because of religion and the fact our universe seems to indeed have a beginning
that's not what I'm asking though
I'm not talking about an efficient cause or an instigating event or anything like that, but just a metaphysical ground or basis
That's a good question but I don't any philosophee really tried to answer it.
Unless you admit that there is an uncaused first cause then an infinite chain of causation is probably the only other major solution in philosophy and you have the same problem of not having a true basis for why things exist.
deism is just a stepping stone to atheism. The concept of god was so ingrained that total rejection didn't happen until later. Atheism is mainstream now so contrarians are picking up deism.
...or you could think in terms of the actual intellectual merits of all these religious positions instead of that kind of "politics".
...
It's still a stupid reason to dismiss deism.
Atheism and religion don't magically more rational because of the polorization between the two.
We are on Veeky Forums, go to /pol/ if you want to be christian because of politics.
Not him but there doesn't seem to be any intellectual merit in deism, it's just a hangover from theism, which is the point he was making in a hamfisted way to start with.
There is no intellectual merit in a position where you have all the philosophical arguments in favor a a creator god without the unnecessary and irrational faith involved in theistic religions, the same position that unlike atheism doesn't reject these arguments for no real reasons except distancing themselves from religion?
You think that believing Jesus roses from the grave or rejecting anything looking like God for emotional reasons are rational positions?
...
There's no way to know God.....unless God reveals himself.
Which is the case.
There is no god
But there is magic mushrooms
Religion is not philosophy or wholly rational. (there are no possible hard philosophical arguments in favor of the ressurection of Jesus for example)
Faith in things backed by testimonies at best is a central point of all religions, there is nothing wrong with that but you can't claim to be more rational than the dudes whose position is backed by all the philosophical arguments than yours is MINUS a bunch of unrelated beliefs.
And few atheists really have a good reason to reject arguments like the first cause,etc...some do but most start from a dogmatic rejection of any form of creator for emotional reasons.
If you have counterarguments to what I just said then it's fine but don't just say I dogmatically say that I must be right when you are saying "nu nu! deism is worthless!"
Do you have anything to back that up? it's fine if you believe that but you will much more to pass it off as philosophy.