God reveals Himself by concealing Himself. As in, God reveals

>>1808799
Can I have a bit of whatever you're having?

>>1808805
He who has ears to hear and all that

>>1808826
I'd need more than ears to decipher that spiel.

>>1808799
pure exegesis brah. tell´em

That's fucking stupid. While absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, absence of evidence certainly isn't evidence of presence. This kind of reasoning is what you get when you don't subject your ideas to actual intellectual scrutiny. An idea needs to have some room to be wrong to be worth considering, if you've got something that's just proven more right (in your own head) by everything that proves it wrong, you've got yourself a mental disorder.

>>1808847
You don't understand what I'm saying and getting bogged down in culturally/socially conditioned ideas of God.

>>1808805
the name is grace

>>1808866
As far as I can grasp it, you seem to have this idea that god is everything that world isn't, but I fundamentally disagree with it, since I think the most fitting thing to be considered god would be the universe and all within it (what with being self-caused, containing all things at all times, and defying causality at its most fundamental components).

>>1808872
Yes, that is the immanent God, the transcendent God is that which "allows" this self-causation.

>>1808902
The transcendent God sounds like the Tao.

>>1808872
God is the author, not the story/fictional world he creates.

>>1808799
>God reveals Himself by concealing Himself

If you're referring to the monotheistic religion (particularly Christianity and Judaism) then you would be incorrect on this matter. YHWH reveals himself with a body also his presence is also revealed in a body form, as an angel, as a holy spirit and as his full glory. His full glory was so powerful that any human who sees his face will be killed cause of the power. Instead his presence protects Moses on Mt Sinai and praises his glory.

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>>1808799
>"""God"""

>>1808917
Exactly, God reveals Himself to Moses by concealing Himself in the burning bush. God does not reveal Himself in reality (full glory), but reveals Himself through through the inexplicable givenness of reality (the miraculousness of the burning bush)

>>1808914
Very astute, though there's more to it in my view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO21ze8Up34

>>1808935
Wrong passage his full glory was revealed

Exodus 33:12–34:9 (ESV)

Moses’ Intercession
12Moses said to the LORD, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ 13Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” 14And he said, “My PRESENCE will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”
17And the LORD said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” 18Moses said, “Please show me your GLORY.” 19And he said, “I will make all my GOODNESS pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20But,” he said, “you cannot see my FACE, for man shall not see me and live.” 21And the LORD said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, 22and while my GLORY passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my FACE shall not be seen.”

>>1808968

continue

Moses Makes New Tablets
34The LORD said to Moses, “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. 2Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. 3No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain.” 4So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. 5The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. 6The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” 8And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. 9And he said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”

>>1808916
And where, pray tell, is your God to be seen?

>>1808968
>>1808972

Well, right, for the spiritually elect God can be unconcealed, but first He is concealed.

>>1808799
>Muh
>God
>Of
>Abraham

I posit that since everyone's definition of God is different, the notion of God is inherently subjective and/or meaningless. I know what my interpretation of God is, and I don't believe in it.

>>1809041
God is all these personal conceptions of God (because He is responsible for each person constituted in such-and-such way to have their own individual idea of God), and none of them.

>>1809041
What God is is so much greater than all of us. We all experience it in the way we need to experience it as defined by our limited perception.

All viewpoints that look upwards toward the light are valid. Look at nature. No two things are exactly the same. God loves individuality. It is written in its works.

>>1808799
>God reveals Himself by concealing Himself
wew laddy

magic goblins that slip autism syrup into OP's food every night reveal themselves by concealing themselves

>>1809057
He is a contradiction then.
>>1809063
The fact that God can "love" something just makes me think the concept of it is horseshit.

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>>1808799
"gods" are a man-made fabrication. Period.

The entire concept of "gods" is just stupid.

>>1809090
God is not subordinate to rational principles.

>>1809102
>let have a discussion
>ok but logic doesn't apply to me and I am therefore always correct
This is the equivalent of playing superheros and giving yourself the power to have all the powers

>>1809102
If God doesn't have to make sense logically then I can safely discard the notion.

>>1809097
Look at what I wrote, and look at what you wrote, and try and tell me what you wrote is even within a light year of the level of discussion I'm trying to encourage with this thread.

>>1809105
I'm not interested in proving anything. If you want play that game: a God that must answer to the principle of contradiction is not properly God. Period.

>>1809113
There is nothing anyone can write that will shake your ridiculous notion that "gods" exist, because you're a fucking moron....

That, or you, and people like you, have a genetic predisposition to believe in stupid shit that the rest of us don't.

>>1809090
I believe that God set the world in motion, then rested to allow our own free will to determine the outcome. It is both its greatest gift to us and the source of all our suffering.

I believe that God loves us, too. God loves us like a parent who lets its child go out into the world and make its own mistakes in order to learn and grow.

>>1809118
I agree. A God that makes sense isn't a God.

>>1809113
You wrote an eloquent post about nonsense, he wrote a trite post rejecting it. You could have a similarly eloquent and well-reasoned discussion about Star Trek canon, and it could be dismissed just as easily.

>>1809118
You can't claim something and refuse to back it up on the basis that you don't have to. Things are magically true just because you want them to be true.

>>1809126
You're free to believe these things, just know that you have no rational basis.

>>1809126
>I believe that God set the world in motion
If he did so with an omniscient understanding of his creation, there can be no 'stepping back." The fact that he created a universe as one specific way as opposed to another would already determine everything about you, me, our brain chemistry and environment acting together to make desicions, etc.

>>1809133
It's not nonsense. If you can't grasp what I'm saying, it's a you problem. I'm not saying you're a retard since we have to be literally on the event horizon of language to communicate this stuff, but I assure you it isn't nonsense.

>>1809134
If you understood the OP you would not be trying to argue with me in this way. Granted, I'm assuming familiarity with a lot of material, but I think if you're reasonably well-read the OP should make a decent bit of sense, enough sense to dispel the notion I'm just putting forward another formal proof for God.

>>1809136
You're limiting all the universe and all of existence to the perspective of part of the human mind.

But if your truth is found only in logic and the scientific method, then that is your truth. I won't question or judge it. As I said, God's love of individuals is evident in its works.

>>1809155
If someone can't grasp what you're saying you have to also wonder whether it's you at fault for either not communicating well or having incoherent ideas. Acting snobbish like you are now is not helping you.

>>1809159
I'm not. I'm saying you have no basis for thinking what you do other than it's what you want to believe.

>>1809165

The measure of truth isn't how many people comprehend it

I've found these ideas echoed in too many works to count. Gonna have to hedge my bets with the philosophers and mystics vs. some shitposter on 4chan, bro.

>>1809176
I didn't say it was. I was saying that if someone doesn't understand your message, you can't necessarily blame the listener. Those philosophers and Mystics in all likelihood have had criticism laid against them other than "4chan shitposters".

>>1809146
I see where you're coming from, but that school of thought rejects the notion of free will. God gave us meaning, purpose, and the ability to pursue both. He also gave us free will to govern our own lives. Writ large, that answers a lot of the more difficult questions.

"Why do bad things happen to good people?" It's because God gave us this world and refuses to correct our mistakes that build unjust societies. Taking control of us to force us to build a just world defeats our purpose.

>>1809183
>gave gave gave
Can you prove God has volition?

>>1809182
Yes, I can, when we're speaking of the ineffable ground of reality. It's OK if you don't get it, in fact I don't get it 100% either, but don't attack me for being "incoherent" when it's obvious from the tone of someone's posts and the reddit argument they're trying to level at me that, frankly, they're just not able to get it, and that's that.

>>1809192
>Yes, I can, when we're speaking of the ineffable ground of reality
No, you can't. Stop being snobbish. I didn't say you were incoherent, I said that you can't blame the listener without self evaluation first. I know you won't consider self reflection, but it was worth a try.

>>1809167
If you assume that the limit of consciousness in all existence is what the logical aspect of the human brain can experience, then you are technically correct.

If any part of the brain or any other aspect of consciousness is able to learn in other ways, then the scientific method is limited and shouldn't be applied to fields beyond its purview.

I don't pretend to have the answers. I pursue truth as I perceive it as an individual. I also don't judge others in their individual pursuit of truth.

>>1809186
>Can you prove God has volition?
You're asking the wrong question, brother. You frame questions to trap what you see as your opponents, rather than asking questions to reveal truth or to find common ground.

To answer your question, no. I can't prove God's mind because I cannot conceive of God's mind. It is something that is beyond my limited capacity.

>>1809224
I'm asking you questions not to trap you but to justify your underlying assumptions. Since you can't prove God has a mind, it seems you have an unjustified presupposition.

>>1809199
Right, the onus for self reflection lies with me, not the snobby redditor.

I will try again: God is found in the reaction against the darkness of being (death, illness, decay). Man's existential condition, defined as it is by suffering and finitude, is pregnant with its own negation. As in, all the horrible shit in life suggests, intimates, a reality that is not so immersed in suffering. This reality is God. So, God conceals Himself in matter, so that He might be revealed in man's overcoming of matter. Or, in other words, there can be no transcendence without that which is transcended.

>>1809186
>>1809206
I can prove God has volition. God is the prime mover, therefor nothing can cause him to act, including his own nature. Therefor, God's actions must stem from God and God alone.

>>1809246
can't wait till someone humeposts tf outta this d00d

>>1809243
It'll help if you want to prove how "not snobby" you are, to not label anyone who challenges you as a "redditor" while attaching some shitty tu quoque.
>>1809246
Being a prime mover doesn't necessitate that the mover had a mind.

>>1809183
You didn't actually refute what I said, aside from asserting that we have free will. You have to find a way to actually harmonize "free will" with God both creating people and having perfect foreknowlege of their actions, and choosing to create them one way instead of the other.

>>1809234
Unjustified presupposion is faith. It's the foundation of seeking something greater than ourselves.

>>1808869
I heard that's cheap shit

>>1809262
Nice one bud, I try to be more clear and you ignore it. All I'm seeing from your side is finger wagging, no attempted engagement with the ideas. It's not snobbishness if it's justified you pleb.

>>1809271
>snobs don't think they're justified in being snobbish

>>1809243
>Man's existential condition, defined as it is by suffering and finitude, is pregnant with its own negation. As in, all the horrible shit in life suggests, intimates, a reality that is not so immersed in suffering.
Suggesting it ought to exist is not the same as proving that it does. The universe doesn't owe anyone happiness despite human despair.

>>1809274
Would you call Aristotle exasperated with a smug pleb a snob? Learn to read and understand words you goober. Reddit arguments and meme arrows. this board is fucking trash

>>1809264
Maybe God is omniscient and has knowledge of what we will all do, or maybe God gave up perfect knowledge to give us free will.

For God so loved the world that he gave us the Logos. Whoever believes in It shall not perish but shall enjoy everlasting life.

>>1809280
You're not Aristotle.

>>1809280
>smug pleb
If he called people who disagreed with him smug plebs I think I would feel pretty justified in calling him a bit snobbish.

>>1809284
Anthropocentric nonsense.

>>1809276
Wow, an actual argument I have to think about. Congratulations.

Okay, good point, my idea is this: God is not a magical being off somewhere, but the struggle FOR God, the idea OF God. Because suffering and the subjectivities that find suffering repugnant are both sourced in the same reality, both darkness and the light have equal "existential weight", both are real and originate from some unknowable ground, and so that which makes it possible for such a thing as God to be conceivable necessarily exceeds and eternally struggles against that which makes suffering possible.

>>1809284
>gave up omniscience
How so? Of he had omniscience for even an instant, he would already have knowledge of his creative process. He would either have to have never been omniscient in the first place.

>>1809287
I don't care if you disagree, I care how you disagree, waltzing in here and trying to drop the bomb of "heh... gods are manmade fabrications heh..." is pleb shit, through and through

>>1809295
Every species may be gifted free will when it reaches a certain level. A cold, procedural view of the development of life ignores nature's obvious preference for individuality.

>>1809299
Free will would be an x factor that changes outcomes. You're presupposing that existing outside of time precludes the possibility of change.

>>1809308
Life centric nonsense.

>>1809325
>it privileges subjectivity so it's wrong

go have a party with some rocks somewhere

>>1809331
Can you prove life is an inherently special substance on an extra-universal level?

>>1809296
>real and originate from some unknowable ground
It's not unknowable. "Suffering" exists because animals with subjective experience can identify sub-optimal conditions. Sub-optimal conditions for life exist because resources are limited, and resources are limited because exploitation cannot be matched perfectly to supply. We would not speak of a starved magma chamber as "suffering" because it has no subjective experience including intentional self-or-clan preservation, but essentially the same rules are at play.
>and so that which makes it possible for such a thing as God to be conceivable necessarily exceeds and eternally struggles against that which makes suffering possible.
They come from the same place: a mind that can characterize the events occurring around it, either accurately and inaccurately. This does not imply any metaphysical reality. Ideas may or may not approximate reality, but the mere fact that they exist is rarely evidence that some approximation is accurate.

>>1809308
>nature's obvious preference for individuality
If it's obvious, substantiate it.

>>1809336
That it's the very ground of your even being able to denigrate it?

>>1809342
So I should think it is just because I'm life?

>>1809320
It doesn't matter if God exists outside of time, because his creation does not. Which means that a time before the creation existed must have occurred, if we accept the concept of a timeless God and a created universe. And if there was even a moment of omniscient thought, it would be known that, for example, the placement of person X with a tendency towards high aggression as defined by their brain chemistry in situation Y with high tensions would lead to some specific outcome Z. You cannot just say "free will" as a get out of jail free card.

>>1809341
>If it's obvious, substantiate it.
Every plant that grows in a field is unique. Every star in the sky is unique. Every person is unique.

Look around you and see creation for what it is, a celebration of the uniqueness of the individual. Individuality is perhaps God's greatest gift to all of us.

>>1809341
No, it's not reducible to a struggle for resources, as the rate of mentally illness in prosperous countries will attest.

The psychologt of suffering doesn't matter, the fact of suffering is indisputable. Of course a magma chamber isn't suffering, there is no self to experience it, but in life there is, and life has declared a unanimous no to suffering.

And that mind did not will itself into being but arose from a universe that it made it possible for such a thing as a "mind" to exist.

I literally said God is not a being, but the idea of God. God is the struggle for how things should be for the living, feeling mind.

>>1809358
You start from the assumption that spacetime is a static thing. If you can see outside of time, then the outcome already happened. That's not true if creation is a living, breathing thing. We affect it by our exercise of free will.

>>1809366
>God is the struggle for how things should be for the living, feeling mind.
This is such horseshit. God just so happens to be intrinsically tied to humanity instead of things that lack minds like plants. Gee it's almost as if we made God up.

>>1809351
Why the fuck wouldn't you privilege yourself as a living being in a dead universe? It's okay man, the pebbles on the ground aren't gonna get offended. What is this obsession with revering the objective? Do you have some transcendental metric that might measure how "special" life is in the big picture? The sample size of life-producing universes is one.

>>1809380
>Why the fuck wouldn't you privilege yourself as a living being in a dead universe?
More like, why would my bias as a living being inform my philosophy?

>>1809378
Life is movement. All organisms pursue their own good and seek to avoid suffering. For most animals/plants, that good is synonymous with their survival, for humans it's synonymous with a place, a being, whatever, that erases evil from the world, even if it isn't conceptualized in such grand terms. God is the face to this universal yearning.

>>1809388
Evidence that we made it up. We made God pertinent to things that matter to us, like life and intentional movement.

>>1809385
No life, no philosophy. To be alive is to be biased, get over it.

>>1809398
Okay you're clearly not getting what I'm saying. Have a nice day.

>>1809399
No, I prefer my philosophy to not be stained by biases.

>>1809405
Hahahahaha, I don't think you know what philosophy is champ. An unbiased philosophy is silence.

>>1809403
No I do. The fact that God is so intrinsically tied to life specifically, even though life is just this random substance out in the universe, tells me all I need to know.

>>1809407
Perhaps unfounded presuppositions that comes from bias better gets my point across.

>>1809365
>Every plant that grows in a field is unique
Not necessarily. We find it convenient to separate a "field" into individual plants, because of the way our brains are designed. However, this is not always the case, for example in the case of grasses where each "plant" is actually part of one overall organism. It's a matter of perspective: each star is unique, yes, but every species of particle composing every single one is identical to all the other ones across the entire universe. We should not necessarily assume that the scale which happens to be comprehensible to human minds is the one that is fundamental to the universe.

>>1809366
>mentally illness in prosperous countries will attest
Your example is apt: even in prosperous countries access to mental health is subject to funding for mental health research, which is subject to everything else that is competing for that funding, a resource. The populace's investment in mental health is subject to the amount of mind-hours and therefore compassion availible to be devoted to them specifically, again, a limited resource. The ability to change anything is limited by manhours, etc. Within the context of a person with a mental illness, it is caused either by psychological or neurological factors which again are functions of inadequate care and ultimately non-access to some resource.

>life has declared a unanimous no to suffering.
Yes, because in general suffering is indicative of conditions that are less suitable to the successful propogation of life. It is a signal to the organism that something must change, but often times change is not practical. However, the rejection of suffering is by no means unanimous. Christianity, for example, glorified it (and continued to do so until very recently, what with the whole Mother Teresa thing).

>I literally said God is not a being, but the idea of God
If it's just a convenient cultural metaphor, fine, but it seems a bit strange to assign more meaning to it than that.

>>1809374
>That's not true if creation is a living, breathing thing.
Why? Be specific, without simply asserting the existence of free will without support.

>>1809420
Christians don't glorify suffering in a masochistic sense, they glorify it and iconicize it in the person of Jesus so as to break its power over us and ultimately transcend it. Come on man, you serious?

>>1809380
>Why the fuck wouldn't you privilege yourself as a living being in a dead universe
Because if I want to understand the entire universe and not just other living beings, that bias would be a detriment.

>>1809432
All subjectivity is inherently biased. If you must strain towards objectivity, guess what, you're not objective.

>>1809431
>Come on man, you serious?
Of course, since that means that the rejection is not unanimous, and even a single counterexample in Mother Teresa glorifying the non-transcendent suffering of the lay people casts doubt on any metaphysical primacy you try to assert for it.

>>1809442
Suffering is rejected by its glorification and subsequent overcoming. Are you autistic?

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Evidence for the existence of ANY "god" or "gods", as described by ANY culture throughout recorded history: 0%

Evidence that humans are ignorant, lying, gullible saps that make stupid shit up, and believe in stupid shit: 100%
-Santa Claus, tooth fairy, Easter bunny, tarot cards, fortune telling, astrology, seances, and countless other examples of stupid shit created by people, and believed by people, across the entire spectrum of humanity...."gods" are no different.

>>1809438
I'm aware. But if I would like to paint a picture that is purple, it would help to at least use red and blue, rather than resort to green because purple is impossible. Perfect objectivity is not possible, but that doesn't mean focusing on the purely subjective. The rocks under my feat will not be offended were I to discount them, but I would be. In a sense, this too is subjectivity, but one that better approximates purple.

>>1809448
So in a culturally-mediated way that casts doubt on the metaphysical primacy you are assigning to it.

>>1809458
You are taking "rejecting suffering" too literally. Even the masochist does not actually glorify suffering, because pain becomes his good. The acceptance of suffering, showing off battle wounds, putting yourself through uncomfortable and painful situations, even suicide, is fundamentally a reaction against the reality of suffering

>>1809465
And a sadist who takes delight in the suffering of others is also making suffering into his own good. A kitten who toys with a bleeding mouse like a toy is playing happily, without malice. Punishments make heavy use of suffering, often beyond the practical purpose of acting as a deterrent. And how indifferent are we to the suffering of those outside our immediate experience? You and I are both using technology to communicate. Have we been a factor in a Chinese suicide?

All of these involve a failure to reject suffering completely and unanimously from a metaphysical perspective. The only time it is really and truly "rejected" is when it serves its intended purpose by forcing an organism to change. But like anything else about a mind, there are limits and mis-steps and malfunctions to it that can be minor or severe. It would be a mistake to make any metaphysical assertion based on it.

>>1808799
Nice /x/ tier thread bro.