How Can Theology Really Study the "Nature of God?" An AI answer.

[Aupmanyav]

You don't know what God is, or isn't. And yet here you are pontificating as if you do, dripping with self-righteousness and condescension.
That's not very logical or scientific of you. And in fact, it's very much similar to those who claim they know God and your fate in hell as a disbeliever.
Imagine that!

Do you know what God is or isn't? And yet people here pontificate as if they do, dripping with self-righteousness and condescension.
I am ready to accept existence of God if I come across any evidence for it. I will also accept prophets, sons, messengers, manifestations, mahdis.

 

[PureX]

Do you know what God is or isn't? And yet people here pontificate as if they do, dripping with self-righteousness and condescension.
I am ready to accept existence of God if I come across any evidence for it.

But you've already defined evidece as something that can't be obtained. So your claim to being open minded is being proven false by your own absurd demands.

I will also accept prophets, sons, messengers, manifestations, mahdis.

As what?

 

[Aupmanyav]

As what?

As God-sent and carrying God-message.

 

[SeekerM]

In the strong sense of evidence as connected to knowledge for justified true belief, there is none.

Isn't the experience of humans over millennia evidence for justified true belief or knowledge? The object of the knowledge is a necessary being to account for all contingent being around us. People have called it God and attributed all sorts of characteristics to it, which is what humans do.

 

[Ebionite]

At the end of the day, I don't think it answered my question

It didn't use the language of humanism to frame its response.

 

[Ebionite]

How can humans really study and know anything, period?

According to Heidigger, within the Christain paradigm humans are separate from the divine, so to have meaningful knowledge they would first have to transcend the human condition.

 

[SeekerM]

According to Heidigger, within the Christain paradigm humans are separate from the divine, so to have meaningful knowledge they would first have to transcend the human condition.

Separate? Contingent beings are distinct from the necessary being but "separate"? Aren't human creatures connected to the creator through the human capacities to know and love? Those capacities transcend space and time. I believe the human condition includes a connection to the necessary being. No? Heidegger had an insight about "being" and wanted to re-think the classical view but I don't think he came up with a coherent alternative to Aristotle, did he?

 

[Ebionite]

Separate?

Yes. The human condition is based on error.

Contingent beings are distinct from the necessary being but "separate"?

They're not contingent. The language of humanism originated with Cicero's claim that those outside of the civilization of Rome were subhuman.

Aren't human creatures connected to the creator through the human capacities to know and love?

No. Those capacities are natural, not human. Natural rights and human rights are quite different things.

 

[Windwalker]

Aren't human creatures connected to the creator through the human capacities to know and love? Those capacities transcend space and time.

Aren't non-human creatures which clearly demonstrate the capacity to know, to experience, and to demonstrate love also connected with the Divine as well as humans?

I believe the human condition includes a connection to the necessary being. No?

I believe all of creation includes that connection. Don't you?

 

[SeekerM]

Aren't non-human creatures which clearly demonstrate the capacity to know, to experience, and to demonstrate love also connected with the Divine as well as humans?

I believe all of creation includes that connection. Don't you?

Yes, I do believe with you that all creatures are somehow connected. When I said humans have a connection, I did not mean that other creatures do not. All have a connection but humans have their own kind of connection. I believe with Aristotle that human knowing and loving includes persons with spiritual capacities that transcend sense perception and instinct. The guy I follow on this reasoning is Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), Canadian philosopher and theologian. If I understand him correctly, it makes good sense to me. I don't know how much spiritual capacity animal species have evolved. Humans seem to have evolved those capacities long ago--abstracting and symbolizing language, asking questions. What do you think?

 

[Ebionite]

I believe with Aristotle that human knowing and loving includes persons with spiritual capacities that transcend sense perception and instinct.

The language of humanism arrived after Aristotle's time.

 

[SeekerM]

Of course, but don't you think the Humanists of the 16th Century traced their thinking back to Aristotle? I think of current humanism as a development of 16th Century humanism. Are you referring to a specific school or time?

 

[Abdelkarim]

This is a question I have been asking myself and others for quite a while. Of course, there are books that have been kept, memories passed to the next generations but I don't think that covers all.

 

[Agent Smith]

Is it not constrained to only studying what humans think about God?

Were/are you interested in knowing what nonhumans think of god(s)?

PhD level question as far as I'm concerned. I can hardly speak for animals but aliens, those whose intelligence lies somewhere between human and ? may contemplate creation, which in our case has led to positing a creator alias YHWH.