Non-Theists: Reasonable Theism?

[Storm]

Originally Posted by Autodidact

Theists rarely do say that, do they? Rather they tend to say ridiculous things (overheard right here at RF) like, "We know that Jesus died to save us," or "I know that God condemns homosexuality," or "I believe there was a global flood because of my faith." Or they just make assertions, like, "When you die, you'll find out about my God." (which like I said lets me know they're lying, because they have no idea what will happen when I die, and that seems the least likely possibility.) So, to come back to the thread, yes, a reasonable theism would have to be an agnostic theism.

In fact, if I did meet an agnostic theist, who said that faith was just their best attempt to connect the dots and squint, that they acknowledged the unlikelihood of their being right, but were just doing their best, and it looked like God to them, I would find that delightfully reasonable.

Granted, but I thought we were discussing me. God, that sounded narcissistic.

[Autodidact]

And I don't know that I care very much any more whether someone is deliberately dishonest or just awfully careless about what they believe; they're just as unreliable either way. I think we have a moral duty to make our best effort to figure out what is true, not just to state our beliefs accurately.

[Autodidact]

Well, clicked on your link again to try to remember about you so I could talk about you. It's a little hard to understand words I never heard of before. Are they original with you?

1)The divine consciousness
2)The divine seed of mortal consciousness, not seeming (my rhys; our rhys)

Seeming:
Life is a spectrum, the infinitely complex interaction of rhys and divine matter.

So by parsing I get: The infinitely complex interaction of divine consciousness and divine matter.

My first question: What does "divine" mean in this context? What does the adjective "divine" add here, other than flavor? Just for fun, I cut it down to: Life is the interaction between consciousness and matter. O.K. Says who? Is that a definition? A characterization? Does this include viruses? Bacteria? Mold spores?

Next question: How do you know there is such thing as divine consciousness? Again, it's starting to look like there is no consciousness outside of a brain.

matter -> biochemistry -> cells -> organs -> brain -> psyche -> spirit -> rhys.

What are the arrows? Causation? You couldn't use words? Is it a hierarchy? Aren't the last 3 awfully speculative?

If your base belief is that God is ineffable, shouldn't you state that upfront?

Roth (short O.) is the true reality of God. The 3 elements of roth are arn, rhys, and divine matter.

O.K., I'll admit it. I'm ridiculously widely read. I'm addicted to reading, and have read several books a week for over 40 years. I've never heard of any of these words. So it's like reading: Quafoo is the true reality of God. The 3 elements of Quaffoo are fritznort, spelk and divine (whatever that means) matter. [How is divine matter different from ordinary matter?] I mean, c'mon, Storm, it's gibberish. Making up words is kind of cheating, don't you think? It's not like English doesn't already have the largest vocabulary of any known language. It's asking a lot of your readers. And it sounds funny. So at this point I can't grasp what you believe. I have to practically learn esperanto!

God. The divine being which is the roth.

Wait a minute. I'm trying to follow along. I thought "roth" meant "the true reality of God." Now you're saying that God is the true reality of God? ***? Is that meaningful?

How do you even know there is a divine being?


Elders:
Those individual rhys who have fully Become.

Wha? Hold on. Rhys is divine consciousness, right? Now you're saying there are individual Ryses? Rhysi? What, divine consciousness comes in pieces? Your use of words is very hard to follow, especially the new ones. And how does capitalizing a verb in the middle of the sentence help me understand? O.K., I'm editing now, I better stop.

[Storm]

Auto, it was never my intention to hijack this thread with my theology. I'd be happy to discuss it with you in the Any Questions thread, though. Would you be so kind as to move or copy your post there?

[rojse]

I think that there are quite a few theistic beliefs that I find reasonable. I might not agree with their views, but I can respect the person and their viewpoint.

But there are a few viewpoints and ideas that I disagree with.

I find the entire idea of the "personal phone-line to God" to be extremely unreasonable - this person and this person only has the complete idea of what God wants, and what God is like, and needs to tell everyone else about it.

People that try to justify bigoted and intolerant behaviours by selectively citing passages from their relevant religious work. Or not even bothering with that, and saying it's "what God wants". If someone wants to be a bigot, they should not try and excuse themselves by using the religious book as a shield.

Anyone who completely ignores science, history, logic, archaeology, or the like unless it agrees with their views. If someone has legitimate questions regarding some part of science, I can accept that, but if another person attempts to address this ignorance and the response is ignored, I have do not have respect for that. I have no problem with someone being unknowledgeable in certain regards, but continued wilful ignorance is another matter entirely.

Other than those main complaints, I think that theism can be quite reasonable. I even have the pleasure of talking to some of the reasonable theists here on RF.