Ok, I'll give this a shot, but short-and-sweet is beautiful, and you've got an extensive response there, my friend!
Sorry, I do tend to babble on, don't I?
As you said somewhere in your response: absence of evidence is not absence of fact, and here, you give the possibilities of the absence of G/god, or a presence that you may not personally care for. I'm not sure, then, why the Atheist feels the need to "go the extra step" by saying they don't believe in God at all, or a god. The truth is, you don't and can't know...so I'm not sure why a more truthful statement would be that you are simply an agnostic?
It's 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence', but I see what you mean
And an atheist is not 'going the extra step' by saying they don't believe in God, that's what being an atheist
is. An atheist is defined by not believing in God or gods.
However, it is quite a bigger step to say that God does not exist. Some feel justified to say that by pointing out that the more God is accurately described, the more we can see contradictions. I prefer to avoid that, as people will shift goals, twist words, etc etc etc, so it's just not worth the effort, it does little to help you have good conversations with others, and more often than not creates anger.
Again, while your last sentence allows for the possibility of G/god's existence, the rest of what you say here is your assessment of the personality of this deity. Ignoring the obvious irony of your discussion about a thing that you believe doesn't exist in the first place, consider this:
Well, Sauron doesn't need to exist for me to see he is evil, nor does the non-existence of characters prevent me from discussing their morality and personality
. In a way, Santa lives in the minds of everyone who once believed in him, although we all know Santa does not really exist. Does that make Santa any less real?
As you read the God of the Old Testament, think of your own self.
Somewhere else in your thread, you wrestled with the complication of the idea of helping someone who is suffering, but then questioned the virtue of doing that if that suffering person ended up being evil, and acting out.
If they in fact did turn out to be evil, I might guess that you would then be unwilling to help save them, etc.?
For me, this line of reasoning helps me understand the God of the Old Testament. In the end, his actions are sometimes loving / amazing / heroic, and other times, very hard to understand, and hard to accept.
They are very hard to accept indeed. So far I have not seen anything that has changed my position on the cruel, unjust, and frankly sociopathic things God has done in the Bible. However I will change my mind if I understand why those things had to be done.
Isn't this just like all humanity around you and me? Don't we also see those same modes?
If you say you love your fellow man, is God really all that different, with regard to your above objections?
If I'm honest with myself, I can see all of God's character, as revealed in the Old Testamant -- even the ones I may want to take issue with -- as being very similar to my own feelings / emotions / actions, etc.
And that indeed does raise a very interesting discussion. Was is man that was made in God's image, or was it God that was made in our image?
If we look at the evolution of beliefs, from simple tribes with spirits, to more complex systems and rituals as towns developed, to full-fledged priesthoods sustaining a pantheon of gods present everywhere in nature, to gods less and less present as we discover they aren't really there, slowly pushing gods more and more in the realms of the immaterial...
Easily falsifiable beliefs cease to be attractive to people. We know that the Greek Mythology is not true partly because there's nothing on top of Mount Olympus. Yet the gods resided there because man couldn't reach the top. As we progress, there was nowhere left on earth for gods to exist.
And think of this, if you want a brain teaser: what if God actually needed Jesus to reconcile himself to himself (as weird as that may sound), as much as we needed Jesus to reconcile us to ourselves, as well as God at the same time? What if Jesus was a needed and necessary grace that God needed for Himself, as much as for us? I know you don't believe in "God" in the first place...but leave that alone for a second, and consider this.
In that case, that God wouldn't be omniscient nor omnibenevolent, as described in the Bible. I have no problems with that though, it is yours for not following your religion's theology, but barring that, it would still mean the God of the ancient testament was less than kind, and still is today.
Also, that completely muddles the Trinity thing too
I'm sorry if this offends, but if you're a reasonable man, you have to call b.s. on yourself here. Of course you have faith, you just apparently don't have the kind of faith that believes that a deity exists. But faith? You have it in yourself, your logic, your abilities, the universe, science, reasoning, and you say you have faith in believing that both you and your fellow man are "good" (whatever that means).
That is actually a tremendous amount of faith, given all the various things we don't and can't know in life.
True, I should have corrected that to 'I don't have blind faith', nor do I have 'religious faith'. As to the faith towards myself, I know what I can do and what I cannot do, to an extent. I do not need faith in my logic and reasoning, because I know that without them I can go nowhere. I have no choice but to trust them, and they have always rewarded my trust. I do not need faith in them.
I do not need faith in science either, because I know the way science works. I do not need faith in the universe, because I know the universe doesn't care one bit who I am or whether I exist or not. The universe will continue existing with or without me. Why should the universe try to deceive me, and that I need faith in it to see through deception?
As for the fellow man, yes, there I do agree. I assume as a given that people are good, intelligent, benevolent, etc, until proof of the contrary. That I suppose is faith in mankind, although I've been told it can also be called being naive
So, as someone who does not believe in God, where do you believe this inherent/inbread creativity that you had even as a child, came from? Was this too, something derived from an amoeba or primate? If so, how does science explain that, even if science could provide the physical evidence of the elusive "missing link"? How does science/logic, etc., explain what I might refer to as the "soul" or "spirit" of mankind? This "creativity", as a great example.
Whoever or whatever made you, had to have been extremely creative, indeed. You should be thanking the Good Lord for that! ;-)
If the good Lord came and took credit for that, showing me exactly what he had done and how, yes I would thank him. However, I will not thank him and let him take the credit for something he may have nothing to do with. Look at monkeys, birds, dolphins, elephants. They too have incredible intelligence and creativity. Mankind is not alone on the planet.
As for science, it has provided dozens if not hundreds of missing links. It's just that some people refuse to accept it. Most scientists don't really care and go on doing science anyways. What science tells us is that we managed to survive through the creation of tools. Those most able to create tools to offset our really poor performances were able to survive best. Man cannot hunt without tools. Man cannot survive the winter without clothes, and cannot make clothes without tools, etc etc etc. 'Necessity is the mother of invention' as they say, and boy did we have a necessity for tools! That drive to create is programmed in us through evolution.
You can't imagine how humorous that sounds, and the mid-day comic relief that I get from reading that. Unfortunately, the tragedy that underlies the humor quickly outstrips any positive repreive I get from it. Bummer.
You should post that on your profile.
I did not mean removing God from the every day lives of everyone on the planet (although I personally wonder if anyone would notice if God ever left, assuming He was there), what I meant is that there is no place for God in mathematical, physical and chemical equations, he doesn't seem to affect biology either. God doesn't screw around with science's findings for some reason. Every single piece of technology we have, that has been developed through scientific understanding of the world around us, works perfectly without the aid of God. That is what I meant.
Hey bro, you are your own master, apparently. You'll believe things if they fit throught he filter of your brain, even though it's invisible from, oh, about a mile up in the sky.
You mentioned the arrogance of those who consider themselves to be "God's selected people", and I can't say I disagree with you there...but are you aware of the arrogance involved in your logic above, if not naivety?
To reveal more of my view of Atheist's / Atheism: I consider it to be an extremely uncreative and narrow-minded world view. I truly feel sorry for those who have put themselves in such an incredibly tight box, and on their own accords. To me, it's actually quite sad.
I understand what made you post this, and it's my fault, I should have expanded more. Everyone has a filter in their brain, and when something too enormous comes along, disbelief rears its head. (You won the Olympics? I don't believe you!) That disbelief can be dispelled by evidence. (The person shows you a gold medal and videos, track record, etc) The trick is to keep a good balance. If you disbelieve nothing, you will be very gullible. If you disbelieve everything, going to extreme lengths to discredit evidence (videos and photos are forgeries, golden medal is a fake), that will lead you nowhere also.
What I meant was that religion doesn't open a back-door to bypass my disbelief filter. I process every claim through the same filter, whether religious or not. Simply saying 'God told me to tell you to...' or 'the Bible says' raises a flag for me. Unless vindicated by a secondary source, I will have a very hard time accepting this.
However I'm not more disbelieving towards religion than any other things. I agree there are many beautiful things in religion too. Unfortunately, to allow the good to come in, I have to take the whole package, the good with the bad, and I cannot let myself do that. Perhaps one day something will change my mind.
Why? What guides you, in this? Why care? Perhaps it's backhandedly selfish, in an Ayn Rand sort of way?
I never heard of her, and after reading up a bit on Wikipedia, I disagree with her. Evolutionary population simulations have shown that populations of selfish individuals are weaker than populations of altruistic individuals. This explains very well why we as a species all feel compassion, empathy, love, etc, across the globe. In short, we are programmed to be altruistic to some measure, but this programming is on top of the older, more integrated selfish survival instincts. This creates conflicts within a person's interests towards himself and the group. A person needs to find the right balance between being selfish enough not to starve, and altruistic enough to participate and strengthen society as a whole.
Why is this? Why in the world would the Atheist prefer a moderate squelching on things dealt with in the 1st ammendment?
Does the Atheist hold herself to the same standard then? "Don't ask / Don't tell"?? ...and why?
My bad, sorry. By private I meant not enforcing religion on others, or using religion as a political force to sway decisions, etc, essentially to restrain religion to a person's moral well-being and happiness.
Also, I am unfamiliar with the American Constitution, and don't know exactly what you mean with the moderate squelching there.
Is this laziness? Is this a statement of acceptance of defeat? Why bother with it? You're a budding scientist, are you not? Doesn't science, inherently, as such questions as this (at least, parts of the scientific practice)?
Ouch, another bad move from me. This mostly stems from me being tired of people saying 'Science will prove God one day, you'll see', people saying 'Look, science can't explain this, therefore God did it!', people saying 'Science will never disprove God', and yet others saying 'God's existence is what allows science, so the fact science exists at all proves God's existence'.
In short, there are so many claims, many of which going in opposite directions, that attempting to answer one will give ammo to another. If the religious community would like a serious scientific scrutiny about the possible existence or non-existence of God, they would need to come together and produce a universal set of standards by which they would all stand. However that is extremely unlikely to happen, and science will never be able to satisfy everyone.
Do you care about your family heritage? Your family story? How their gene's might influence your future health trajectory? When/why/where your mother gave birth to you? How you were brought into the world? What your dad's story was, as it relates to you?
I can't imagine not caring about such things, and I would imagine you also care about such things too.
I don't believe you on this point. I don't believe you believe that either, frankly.
Well, the thing is there is evidence of my family's heritage, physical, historical and genetic evidence. It has been looked at in the past, can be looked up today, and can be looked up tomorrow. Most of the Bible's evidence occurred during one-time miracles that happened a long time in the past. That is why I don't terribly care, because 1) it's not reliable, 2) it's not terribly affecting my life (I'm an open atheist, and I haven't been struck by a bolt of lightning yet) and 3) I am willing to let other people believe what they want.
Also, most of my not caring comes from an intuition, a faith if you will, in the fact that in more than 200 years, not much scientific evidence has been proposed to explain God's existence, while a lot has removed from God's credibility. I doubt that's going to change any time soon.
Ah yes...here we are at the idea of Praise.
Yes, you praise someone or something. As do I. As do we all. Perhaps it is simply yourself? I don't know.
Praise: to express warm approval or admiration of something
I suppose I do praise many things, most of which are human qualities. Intelligence, education, honesty, open-mindedness, kindness, generosity. However, God is not one of them.
In any case, you're saying God (if there is such a thing) is not deserving of your praise? You are judging God, and that is not only your right, that is ultimately what you are mandated to do, whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not.
Choice.
This is your calling. You say you have made yours, on God. Of course. How can you not?
As far as I can tell, to the extent of my knowledge of him, the Judeo-Christian God is incompatible with my system of morals. That may change however, and I am not excluding Jesus either. Like I said, I lie him, but more on that later.
You may not see the irony in this, but even that ability to decide, was given to you by this thing which you say you don't believe in. But believe, or not, you have choice. This was God's creation, and He did not need to do it, but wanted to (apparently).
Unfortunately, I could say that my ability to decide was a curse put on me by Satan, allowing me to make wrong choices to turn me away from God. Or choice could have been given to us by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or the Invisible Pink Unicorn, or any manner of deities. What evidence do you have that God, out of all gods, gave us choice?
If I were Him, I would have done the same. Either out of boredom, or a natural expression of His unbridled and fantastic sense of curiosity and creativity.
Enter, you. Me. Us. Whallah...
Well, if God truly is omniscient, he would know of everything that could possibly happen before it happened. In that way, he would have known Eve would have been tempted before he even made the earth. And omniscience would prevent him from being curious.
Of course, that only applies if God is omniscient, but if he is not, then what are His limits? How can we find them out?
In leiu of repeating something that was stated very effectively by none other than U2's Bono, in a fairly recent interview: do a Google search on "Bono the poached egg". In this interview, (titled "Grace over Karma") scroll towards the bottom, and read the last couple things that Bono answers, when asked about how farfetched the idea of Jesus being the Son of God is.
His response is far better than mine on this, and you might be getting tired of reading from me by now anyways....
No, I'm not tired of reading from you, I find it very interesting and very stimulating!
I do not know who proposed this, but whoever designed the 'Either Jesus was insane or the son of God' made a very intelligent move. It's a very clever false dichotomy. This is one of those black and white things I was talking about, either one or the other.
First off, we aren't 100% sure Jesus existed, or if he was a recollection of many holy men who lived in the area at the time. Second, the author implies that Jesus did indeed say he was the son of God, which may not be entirely true.
Now this would certainly seem heretical, but apart from the Bible and other Catholic books, there seems to be few historical documents relating Jesus' life. I'm not saying we should doubt because we can, I'm just saying we don't have a lot of other historical documents to validate the Bible, and to rely solely on it would be a mistake.
So in essence, the author of this false dichotomy portrays Jesus as many believers accept him, and as an insane man, which nobody would believe because of all of Jesus' good deeds, if not only because it goes against people's opinions. It reinforces the beliefs of the believers that theirs is the right position while undermining the position of the opponents.
I thought I heard you say you viewed life in a shade of grey, and stayed away from that which is so black and white?
I find this very black and white, naive, bullheaded, incorrect, and youthful. Perhaps you will find life different from this over time. Because it is.
You have needs. A lot of them. You either don't see them now, or won't admit to them.
The idea of self-reliancy is also also quite human.
I admit it does seem black and white, but that is because I have not exposed the reasoning which led me to that position. I didn't say that just because I wanted to. I do not have to rely on deities because I know what I can and cannot do, I have confidence in myself, and confidence enough to admit defeat. I do not need a deity to morally support me. I also do not need a deity to feed me, because I know that if I rely on deities to feed me, I will be hungry very often. I need to do something in order to feed myself, not wait for bread to appear in my plate.
Also, I am solely responsible for all my actions, and all the consequences that will happen because of them, and so are you. Your course of action may be influenced by what others say, by what you feel or how you feel, gut in the end, only you have the control to decide to perform an action or not. I know I depend on others to provide me with many basic needs, I am not trying to say I can do absolutely everything on my own and all alone. I am saying that if I do nothing, nothing will happen. I have the power to change the world around me, and that power brings both consequences and responsibilities. I cannot count on a deity to shrug the responsibilities off my shoulder (I did it for God) or count on a deity to protect me from consequences (for example, that couple who recently went to jail I think for praying over their premature baby and not bringing the baby to the hospital, resulting in the loss of a human life. They did not act, and God did not protect them. They try to say that it was God's will, to put responsibility on Him, but they are the ones who are guilty). I think you see my point now.
Wow...you got me to write a lot! I'll keep it shorter and sweeter (perhaps) going forward.
Well, we can't properly say what we want without writing a lot, and this is a rather deep subject
Short or not, I know I will appreciate whatever you write!
In closing, I believe this notion of Atheism is actually a misnomer. I don't think it actualy exists. I'm not even sure it can exist, since there is no way to prove or disprove God.
Or, for sake of irony, how 'bout I put it this way: I don't believe in Atheists. I don't believe in the term. I don't believe it is what it claims to be: a statement of belief. I believe it is a statement of choice. A choice to reject God. A choice to deny anything that would or could speak, of God. Because, as you and I both seem to agree on, it's not a declaration of something we can say we know.
I think you are mistaken here. Atheism can be a choice, but I never chose never to believe in God. I just never started believing, and I see no reason to start now. Atheism is not about the existence or not of God either, it is about not worshipping him, it is about not believing there is an afterlife, it's about not believing in Satan and Hell and Angels and Paradise.
Also, you do realise that by saying that atheism is the choice to reject God, you have called all the believers in other religions atheists too?
I do not reject anything that would or could speak of God. I simply reject the claim that such sources are enough to prove the existence of a timeless, ageless, omnibenevolent, omnipresent, omniscient, all-powerful entity who created the entire universe. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. As of yet, I have not seen such extraordinary evidence.
So, this false term "Atheism" is simply a choice to willingly blindsight yourself to the idea of God, or to backhandedly and actively reject God.
I believe the reasons Atheists do this, are either out of laziness to want to explore the idea of God, or open themselves up to this, or anger and hatred about who this God may be. I'm sure there are many other reasons too.
Now you said yourself discussing the personality of something whom atheists don't believe exists is ridiculous, imagine getting angry at something which doesn't exist. That would make even less sense! I do not actively reject God, nor am I lazy about exploring the idea of God, if I did I would not be here. I will finish with my own views on God later on
I think it offers the Atheist a convenience and convention of putting the idea of God on permanent hold. I think it's extremely passive, and causes the Atheist to ignore or squash down parts of them which would otherwise be crying out. I think it's self deprecating. I think it's boring.
I hope that helps.
To many who live in very religious states, to be able to find other people who do not believe is both a difficult task and one that provides a lot of relief to the person. Can you imagine living in the Middle East, where every single person you met would be a Muslim, always asking why you didn't seem to be praying enough at Allah, why you didn't seem as devoted to Him as you should be, etc etc etc. Constant pressure, and there are no other Christians around you to share your beliefs with. And these Muslims would at the very least gossip about you, or bully you, openly mock you in public, if they ever knew you were a Christian. Many atheists feel that way, and it wasn't by choice. By all rational means, wouldn't it be MUCH better, much safer, to actually believe in God? But they can't, because belief is not something that can be switched on or off.
I myself feel that religion makes an excellent job of making normal people squash down their feelings, deny parts of themselves and participate in behaviour that goes completely against their own nature. Religion seems to have an unwholesome obsession with sex and with meddling with other people's lives. I have a friend online who nearly committed suicide because he was a trans, and he felt constantly alienated by everyone he knew, every family member, because being transgendered (a woman trapped in a man's body) went against their Mormon faith. To me, a belief in an imaginary friend passed within an inch of ending that person's life. THAT is what infuriates me the most, that people take their religion more seriously than their or than other people's lives.
And if you think it's boring, that's your opinion
No hard feelings. I find many things about religion boring, but hey, everyone is entitled to their opinions.
Now, as I said, this is my own take on religion.
Man always wants to know, to understand. Our brains are made to seek patterns, as patterns can help us find out food or danger, help us survive. When man looked into the savage and careless nature, unpredictable weather, they had no way of understanding it all. So they came up with deities to explain it. These deities made them feel safe, protected.
Fast-forward to the time when towns are being built. Whereas before shamans went with the tribe, and offerings were made to the spirits or gods or whatever depending on the hunt, now they could have a permanent place of worship. They could make others believe that if they gave enough to their gods (through the temple of course) that rain would come, no disease would harm them, etc. That is the bad side, the controlling aspect of religion. The good side is it helped unite people, it helped make a society. Whereas cavemen would bash each others heads with rocks to take whatever they wanted, primitive religions now told them 'If you steal from your neighbour, big man in the sky will punish you'. That element of fear controlled us out of primitive behaviour and into a social behaviour. The places of worship also offered divine rewards for being good, such as afterlife, etc.
Of course, there have been abuses by churches against the people, but that was caused either by greedy people at the head of religious institutes, or of the kind of individuals being raised in that certain theological background produced.
As many different cultures and people started meeting, clashes were inevitable. Stronger religions enabled people to be more faithful, more stronger, have better morale, to believe in a greater cause. Religions that catered mostly to tell people to be good and did nothing to protect them, were wiped out by aggressive religions. Those aggressive religions may have been victim of their own aggressiveness, in that people in that religion started rebelling against the violence. Through this natural selection, religions came along that managed to perfectly balance violence and peace, to be able to convert as many people as possible, to prevent their converts from turning away, and to keep them happy. Religions learned to exploit the gullibility of man to propagate themselves.
All this culminated into a fantastically great social shaping tool that enabled men to create and live in a stable society. If you stop thinking of religions as real and see instead what goals religion seeks to accomplish and how they achieve it, it all makes sense. All the contradictions in the holy books don't matter one bit, because while it may be historically accurate, passed on as legend, the fantastic aspect is not true. All that is left is the cold hard facts.
Was the spread of religion good or bad? Who knows, maybe it was inevitable with the way the primate brain evolved.
Is this theory 100% accurate? I don't think so. But I do think I may not be too far off the mark either.
So, I think I've blathered long enough already
If you wish to discuss specifically my beliefs on religion, we could create a new thread
