and of course no mention that the religion of Darwinism had much more influence over the Nazis than Christianity. That fact that destroys much of the god deniers dogmas. Don't let facts detroy your doctrine guys.

Dear david f,

As for Castellio, see also our earlier discussion in http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10725#178210 and the sequel.

Thank you for your perspective (c.f. my previous post about the coexistence of different perspectives) on Nazism and Christianity, that you already presented in the past. Certainly both Nazism/Holocaust and Christianity appeared within the same western (and no other) civilisation, the same as Christianity and Enlightenment, Christianity and scientific/technological progress, etc. I am not a historian but it is sometimes difficult - and indeed dependent on your initial perspective - to decide to what extent there was a correlation, or even causal relation, “a product of”.

As to “why Hitler and the Nazis were so attractive to many Germans”, this is more or less the sad question also German historians and philosophers tried to answer in the, now famous Historikenstreit of the 1980s (c.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historikerstreit).

>>Can God be something like that - an entity which cannot be defined but upon which one bases a logical system?<<

Let me try to better explain my position. You can define a term only by using other terms already defined - or needing to be defined as well - but eventually you will have to use terms that are basic, undefined or even undefinable. In mathematics there are only a few such basic terms, (e.g. sets). A world-view (more precisely the rational frame of a consistent world-view) is a non-formal system, the basic terms are not that free as in the case of Euclid’s axioms you mention. The basic terms have a meaning, are known implicitly by those who use them. This makes them dependent, to a certain degree, on the cultural/historical background of these. Time is one such term everybody “understands”, hence can make (disputable) statements about it without being able to define it. God was another such term in the context of the closed western world of “Christendom” in the past.

ctd

ctd
Today you do not have that implicit consensus, therefore I have suggested (in http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9389&page=0#150883) to start from Sagan’s maxim, which posits that “all there is” (exists) can be investigated by science (including consciousness, again a term hard, if not impossible, to define). If you agree with that, you can call anything you like God and then use scientific methods to determine whether it exists or not as Richard Dawkins does.

If you disagree with that - i.e. lack belief in Sagan’s maxim, to use the form some atheists prefer - as I do, then you have the problem of how to know - represent, model, picture - that “supernatural” reality that cannot be investigated by science. How to know - represent, model, picture - “natural” (i.e. investigated by science) reality is a non-trivial problem of the philosophy of science. So it should not be a surprise that the question of modeling (my favourite term) supernatural reality - where you do not have that more or less direct division between the subjective and objective reality connected through sensual perception (and mathematics) - is even more complicated. Here, instead of different physical theories with their mathematical models, you have different religions that “model” this supernatural reality differently. God is an essential part of that reality that is modeled as a person by the Abrahamic religions.

I admit, I did not answer your question satisfactorily. All that I tried to say was that
(a) it does not make much sense to ask about God if you accept Sagan’s maxim, and
(b) if you do not accept it - e.g. because you have personal reasons for looking for purpose and meaning in your life and the (natural) world around you, but cannot find them within what science can investigate - then, and only then, arises the question of God as an a priori given entity that you can model e.g. as a person.

There are no objectively compelling reasons to choose (b), and if you choose it, to contemplate a personal God as giving purpose and meaning to existence both objective and subjective.

I quick survey of the comments in this threat reveals that the content of the article is used as a peg for the usual battle between believers and unbelievers. Why do we always get into this rut? And why is there so little progress? There have been some highly intelligent posts, George's being an example, but the discussion generally flays around with the usual insulting and sarcastic arguments.

The real issue is not whether God exists as some divine being but whether the Christian story is true i.e. that it reveals an event in the past that even now shines light into our darkness. Does the absorption of violence by Jesus promise the end of endless revenge? God is truth. In Trinitarian theology, and there is no other kind, the truth of the Father is seen in the Son and revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. This is the God that Christians worship and it has nothing to do with most of the discussions that inevitably occur on my articles.

We have to get over the atheist/theist divine. It is irrelevant to a discussion of the truth of God.

Peter Sellick

Peter Sellick wrote: "We have to get over the atheist/theist divine. It is irrelevant to a discussion of the truth of God."

Dear Peter Sellick,

The atheist/theist divine (I assume you mean divide. Interesting slip) is irrelevant to the truth of God? Apparently whether or not there is a God is irrelevant to the truth of God? I don't think there is any truth of God. It is just simply two more unprovable propositions.

Proposition 1. There is a God.

Proposition 2. There is a truth of God.

David,
On the contrary, it is possible to look into the face of Christ and see truth. It is this truth that takes the place of the old supreme being. This is why Christianity has much in common with atheism, the gods of old have been found not to exist. What does exist is the truth revealed in an historical event. That truth is non-foundational, it exists without visible means of support, it does not require the existence of a being, other than the being of Christ to support it. This cuts the ground from atheism and theism and directs the question to the truth that is revealed. Real atheism would dispute that the truth we find in Christ, my example was the promise of the end of violence, is not true. It is not true that we find our lives in the person next to us, it is not true that evil will have the final say, it is not true that an evil act is the end of our moral life.It is not true that if we would have our lives we will lose them. Cancel all these out and more and we have true atheism, the end of talk about god and the end of civilisation as we know it.

This is why Nietzsche was so disturbed by his conclusion that god was dead. Read Craig Thompson's piece in OLO.

Peter