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[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Comments

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I guess the default idea of religion that I have in my mind (when it's done right) is sort of the hippy, flower-child Jesus version, such that guns would be the opposite of what religion stands for. Maybe that's why I still have some open-mindedness toward religion. What's going on today with religion just seems insane to me.

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Well, ultimately, I'm a rational theist. I believe 1) the existence of the omnipotent being is provable (I will go so far as to alter my original argument by replacing the first and second premises with "the omnipotent being is metaphysically possible"; the third, now second, premise remains the same) and 2) that the existence and nature of universal ethics is directly dependent upon the concept of personhood, not directly upon the concept of the omnipotent being.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Is the omnipotent being necessary in any way?

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

That depends on whether you consider the two premises to be themselves necessary. If you do, then the conclusion is also necessary.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Am I asking something too abstract?

I've read the above and am not even sure what your premises are at this point.

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

I'm referencing a previous LJ post ... but I can elaborate, at least on the current version. The first premise is that the omnipotent being is metaphysically possible; this means that there exists a possible world in which the omnipotent being exists. If you accept S5, then it is possible in all other worlds (it is necessarily possible). The second premise asserts that, necessarily, an actual thing is more powerful than a merely possible things; this requires, interestingly, that the actual world is ontologically unique, sui generis, one of a kind.

If both of these premises are accepted as metaphysically necessarily, then the conclusion, that the omnipotent being exists is also necessarily, as long as one accepts standard logic.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Religion at its core is about social control, always has been. It's authoritarianism with a back-story. Have there been benefits? Yes. But it's always been a mixed bag.

Even Buddhism, which enjoys popularity with otherwise religion-adverse westerners, has aspects I would consider highly negative. Past and present.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

But part of what makes Christianity a little more seductive is that Jesus seemed to be all against social control, in rebellion not only against Rome but even to his own Pharisees, taking us away from rules and emperors. It was all about love. Of course, he said the world was supposed to end soon, and the fact that it didn't kind of ruined everything.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I'd say that the whole deal was hijacked by Paul, who gave us all that great stuff about paying taxes to Caesar, women needing to keep their heads covered and mouths shut, etc.

Otherwise we wouldn't have ended up with a boy's club with the Cardinal of Rome at the head. The hippie commune ends up controlled by authoritarians.