Post-theism

[Johnny Kerosene]

I thought this was kind of interesting, and was wondering if anyone knew more about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-theism


Post-theism is a variant of nontheism that proposes to have not so much rejected theism as rendered it obsolete, that God belongs to a stage of human development now past. Within nontheism, post-theism can be contrasted with antitheism. The term appears in Christian liberal theology and Postchristianity.
Frank Hugh Foster in a 1918 lecture announced that modern culture had arrived at a "post-theistic stage" in which humanity has taken possession of the powers of agency and creativity that had formerly been projected upon God. Post-theism thus recognizes the point made by criticism of atheism that atheism may lead to moral defect[citation needed], but at the same time asserts that the only reason for theism is the prevention of such defects, and that once nontheistic morality has reached maturity, theism has fulfilled its function and may be discarded.
Denys Turner argues that Karl Marx did not choose atheism over theism, but rejected the binary "Feuerbachian" choice altogether, a position which by being post-theistic is at the same time necessarily post-atheistic.
Related ideas include Friedrich Nietzsche's pronouncement that "God is dead", and less pessimistically, the transtheism of Paul Tillich or Pema Chödrön.

[¿Que?]

Do we really need to add "post" to everything? I mean, there's already post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-communism, post-feminism, post-colonialism, blah.

I think we should be working towards a post-postism.

[Octavian]

Post-theism seems like it's in the same vain as utilitarianism, common sense.

[Blackburn]

I think we should be working towards a post-postism.

Stop living in the past. Post-Post-Post-Postism is the wave of the future! :laugh:

[hatzel]

It makes sense. The issue being that atheism rejects any deity whilst still basing itself on the possibility of said deity's/-ies' existence. That is to say, they both have the deity/-ies as their starting point. I admit that a rabbi might be a bit of a biased source, but still:


In every person, even secular, there is an unknown spark that demands unification with the Creator. When it awakens, it sometimes awakens one to know the Creator, or deny Him, which is the same. In other words, denying G-d comes also from that spark, for without it, one would have no feelings about G-d whatsoever. Instead people would live without any thoughts of the Creator, good or bad.

Some non-theists (including, I feel, post-theists) take a remarkably similar position. The question of whether or not there is a deity is, for such people, totally irrelevant, and they would not see themselves as 'atheists,' inasmuch as atheism, by necessity, begins with the concept of one or more deities, and the denial of said deity/-ies is secondary. Post-theism, as far as I can see, is part of an attempt to progress beyond the deistic concept, to avoid the necessity to acknowledge and then deny. Acknowledging the concept, yet denying its existence. Hence the position attributed to Marx in the section quoted by the OP, whereby one can avoid acknowledging or denying the deity/-ies in terms of both concept and existence.

[scarletghoul]

Do we really need to add "post" to everything? I mean, there's already post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-communism, post-feminism, post-colonialism, blah.

I think we should be working towards a post-postism.
Everything that's finite has a post-itself-ism. As long as we're gonna divide the universe into finite things we might as well look at the posts that accompany them and look at their posts and so on.. In fact I don't think you can understand something without looking at what comes after it (as you yourself demonstrate with your term "post-postism", which is no doubt a noble ambition)

[ComradeMan]

Do we really need to add "post" to everything? I mean, there's already post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-communism, post-feminism, post-colonialism, blah.

I think we should be working towards a post-postism.

I laughed so much I spilt coffee on my desk with that post- I was thinking exactly the same thing.

The trouble with all this "post" stuff, is then RETRO becomes fashionable!

So I am going to retro-postism with this.

[Black Sheep]

I laughed so much I spilt coffee on my desk with that post- I was thinking exactly the same thing.

Same here! :lol:

[hatzel]

People used to send letters through the postal system. And then there was e-mail. Welcome to the post-post era! :lol:

[Revolution starts with U]

Up all night working on that one, Rabbi? :lol:

[hatzel]

Up all night working on that one, Rabbi? :lol:

Nah, I got to bed around 2-2:30 :rolleyes:

[ZeroNowhere]

Everything that's finite has a post-itself-ism. As long as we're gonna divide the universe into finite things we might as well look at the posts that accompany them and look at their posts and so on.. In fact I don't think you can understand something without looking at what comes after it (as you yourself demonstrate with your term "post-postism", which is no doubt a noble ambition)Post-dialectics, then?