George, it was Socrates who said - out with the Gods and in with the Good.

Philosophers do say that what Socrates meant was that the Good we find within ourselves through meditation and commonsense, can be the true God. Proven by the fact that we will be filled with humility rather than pride.

Pericles,

I know that an axiom is a self-evident proposition. I’m not challenging the dictionary, I’m challenging you.

You have said that the proposition “experience precedes knowledge” is an axiom. But, it is not an axiom just because you say it is.

We both accept that an axiom is a self-evident proposition.

We don’t both accept that your proposition about knowledge and experience is self-evident. You are recommending it as an axiom. I’m not buying. The dictionary will not assist you.

You believe that it’s an axiom. Believing that, you wonder why everyone doesn’t agree, and you accuse them of insincerity or irrationality – “wordplay is your substitute for argument”, you say to me – just because they don’t agree.

You end up saying: “It just is, goodthief, it just is”.

I say: “God just is, pericles, God just is”.

We have each made a leap of faith towards a proposition or a phenomenon, which “just is”. The difference is, I admit it, while you’re ducking and weaving for all you’re worth. I’m astonished at the energy with which you avoid admitting that you have chosen to believe that your experience/knowledge proposition is an axiom.

I assume it's because you don't have any awareness of having chosen it, would that be right? It seems so compelling that you have no say in it. That's how many of us speak of our faith in God - like something we didn't really choose at all, a fact that impressed itself on us compellingly.

BTW, you asked about how I "cope" with the image of God thing:- what's that about?

Pax,

bushbred,
I agree with Socrates, if for no other reasons then because the gods he was referring to were very different from the concept of God that evolved in the 2400 years since his death.

And I almost agree with you, because Christianity too, has an understanding of God dwelling both within and without ourselves. See for instance my previous quote from St. Augustine, where you could replace Truth by Goodness (or Beauty). Christians see the God dwelling in ourselves, or rather His projection, as Grace. Some schools of Hinduism seem to have a clearer separation between Atman (insider) and Brahman (outsider) but here my understanding might be too naive.

Nowadays you do not have to become a mystic or esoteric to see the strict boundaries between a God existing independently of ourselves and a God dwelling within ourselves blurred: 20th century made the strict separation between subject and object questionable even in physics (c. f. the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics phenomena). So it is a question of emphasis, preference or tradition, rather than mutually exclusive alternatives, which manifestation of the one God you see as the “true God”, as long as you do not see Him reduced to your personal experience of His projection, Truth reduced to hallucinations, and Goodness to just a meaningless byproduct of man’s biological evolution.

Boaz,
You certainly know the Koran better than I, but what do you suggest as the alternative to what TR and I were saying? You cannot kill the billion of Muslims, neither can you convert them all to Christianity (nowadays only very naive Christians want that) or to atheism (as some naive secularists, at least here in Germany, seem to want it).

During WWII many bad things were done in the name of Germans (and more than often by them). And look were they are now: the 80 millions were not eradicated in 1945, neither were they turned into Anglo-Saxons or what. Whatever was the help from the outside - and it was something that today they acknowledge and are grateful for - they remained German, drawing on the positive side of their national heritage. I know, with religious identity it is more complicated than with ethnic or national identity, but still, I repeat my question: What would you suggest we do with the billion Muslims (not just with the criminals among them), as an alternative to what the majority of contributors here suggest?

goodthief, let's try to bring light into this discussion as well as heat

A really good challenge to an axiom would be to describe a situation where it cannot hold true.

Let your imagination soar, and see whether you can do this, why not?

You will inevitably conclude that the statement "experience is the only source of knowledge" is axiomatic. There can be no circumstance in which it does not hold true. You cannot know something, unless it has been experienced. Or put the other way around if something has not been experienced, nobody knows about it.

Imagine, for example, our ancestors living in caves (unless of course you are a creationist, in which case no argument will have any impact) and picture what they know - their knowledge. Then give some thought to what part of their knowledge could not be derived from their experience of the world they live in.

Draw any picture you like, with or without God in it, and explain what part of that is not derived from experience.

As I said before, empiricism can contain Christianity, but the reverse is not true - which is presumably why you spend so much time attacking it.

>>We have each made a leap of faith towards a proposition or a phenomenon, which “just is”. The difference is, I admit it, while you’re ducking and weaving for all you’re worth<<

There's no ducking and weaving, I'm simply trying to hold you accountable for your views.

If you examine your argument carefully, you would not able ascribe any particular meaning to any word at all, unless you first believe that it has a meaning. As I said before, this puts you firmly in the company of Derrida and co.

But more obviously, by your definition there cannot actually be a thing called an axiom, because you demand that belief precede it. Test that one while you are about it - try to imagine an axiom that actually meets the dictionary definition, and yours.

So, whom to believe, you or the dictionary?

Delhi 1857: Extracts from William Dalrymple

From a Sepoy rebel leader; The English want to overthrow all religions - thus Hindus and Muslims should unite in their slaughter…...

According to Dalrymple, there is much about imperial adventures in India at the time, and the massive insurgency it provoked, which is uneasily familiar with us today. The end of the 18th century revealed a new group of London conservatives out to make Britain the sole global power.

The British policy soon developed an evangelical flavor. The new right, wished to impose not only British laws but also Western values on India. The country would be not only ruled but redeemed.
The British then progressed to removing not only threatening Indian rulers, to annexing even the most pliant provinces.

Thus the rebellion began, and although the great majority of the Sepoys were Hindus, there are a great many echoes of the Islamic insurgencies the US fights today in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Delhi a flag of the Jihad was raised in the principal mosque, and many of the resistance fighters described themselves as Mujihadeen or Jihadees. There was even a regiment of suicide Ghazis who vowed to fight until death.

Events reached a climax on September 14, 1857, when British forces attacked the besieged Delhi. They massacred not only all the Sepoys and Jihadis, but also the ordinary citizens of the Mughal metropolis. Delhi, a sophisticated city of half a million souls, was left an empty ruin.

What the British proved was simply how to multiply the hatreds already built against them, similar to what the US and Israel are learning today. In older terms, meaning you cannot make peace at the point of a bayonet: that nothing so radicalizes a people against you, or as today, nothing has undermined the moderate aspects of Islam, as British and American intrusion into todays' Middle East.

Sadly, Israel is so very much caught up in this also, the fanatical obsession of the US religious right purporting of a spiritual sign that now forever on America is Israel’s Guarantor of the Jewish
Promised Land.