Do Atheists hope there is no God?
Hi, I am a theist and I have a question for atheists. I hope this does not cause too much turmoil. Do atheists actively not want God to exist? I am aware that many atheists come to their conclusion because they believe God is impossible and other reasons. However, is there ever an element of not wanting God to exists? I hope this makes sense.
Comments (453)
I think it’s often both. Atheists think that there is no good reasons to think god exists but many also recognise how awful it would be if god actually did exist, especially if various horrifying content of the bible were true as well.
Google Christopher Hitchens on the celestial dictatorship. He explains the answer you are looking for quite well.
No.
Quoting Georgios Bakalis
I am atheists because I don’t believe in any subterfuge. I don’t think the world is predetermined by a powerful entity or divinity which somehow rules what is going on in earth.
Also, complex situations in our lives as “good or bad actions” “justice” “poverty” “wars” should be consider as it is not trying to look at answers from a subterfuge again and over again...
So, I just don’t believe but my intention is not wanting it or avoiding it the belief itself.
Don’t you ever get tired of contributing useless negations? You are neither helpful nor entertaining so just save it.
I have a question about your question; are you implying that wanting God to exist makes it somehow more likely that God exists?
If it's a God not linked to any religion, who won't help with any of our earthly problems and won't give us an afterlife, then it is indifferent to me whether or not such a God exists.
I see. So your faith is not an expression of wanting God to exist?
Not necessarily. The point here is not searching subterfuges at all. It is just the act of living a life but without the hope of something extraordinary. When someone dies it doesn’t come to my mind if he or she goes to hell or haven. The human just dies. This what I apply in the the other complexity as destiny or values, etc...
Atheist - Someone who does not think that God exists
God - That which atheists do not think exist
Exist - That which atheists do not think God exhibits
But seriously, I will try to give it a go.
God - A transcendent deity who created the universe and involves itself in the universe (still a very ambiguous term, sorry)
Exist - something that could have an a effect on everything else that exists
Atheist - Someone who does not believe that God exists
There’s still many many problems with these definitions, but I am intrigued to see what you do with them.
This definition is circular
Or: It isn't merely an idea in the mind, but also something outside the mind. But maybe those are circular definitions in disguise, I'm not sure.
At any rate, I feel inclined to accept Wittgenstein's notion of definitions, according to which the meaning of a word is its use in a particular language game.
So if you could give an example to see how you would use that term, that would be helpful.
Quoting Georgios Bakalis
Very well, but that only raises another question about your question; particularly given that in general, children are indoctrinated with the idea of God from infancy, before they have the ability to make rational judgements. Why do you claim rational conviction for yourself - yet suggest atheists act from a desire for a Godless universe?
Non sequitor. Just because I don’t believe in any of them doesn’t mean I need to have the same attitude towards their existence. I can not believe in them yet want some to exist and others not.
Yes. I do not want god to exist because the thought of a celestial dictator and abject slavery is terrifying.
I wonder how many atheists ever get to a clear conception to what it is that doesn't exist. I'm the son of Roman Catholic parents, and the god concept just never stuck. I certainly couldn't tell you what it is that I don't believe in, since everything I can think of is apparently a caricature that the theists around me don't believe in either (e.g. the guy in the sky). I assume from their behaviour that there's something they believe in, and they have some way so that that, whatever it is, makes sense in their minds. Something like that never developed for me, so I'm an atheist.
Or in other words, going by that definition, the definition of God is "whatever it is that theists believe in". And while I'm mostly living around Christians, I extend that to Odin, Zeus, Quetzalcoatl, or Amaterasu. Being an atheist for me is primarily social: what they believe in I don't. Actively not wanting God to exist would mean I'd have to have a far clearer idea of what the concept means to you than I do.
Theists seem to have a hard time imagining a lack of belief, presumably because it's a really important concept to them. It seems to be even harder, though, to imagine that I don't get what all the fuss about. Basically, I don't have the motivation to figure out what it is I don't believe in. Whatever it is, me not understanding it hasn't kept me from having a working world view. If theists want to re-assure themselves that this means that I believe in God after all, I just don't know - well, they can. They just shouldn't conclude from this that I should go to church, because they'll end up disappointed (and through no fault of mine, I think).
An real-life example: my parents love me, and when I'm down, they've suggested (rarely) that I try talk to a priest. God helps them, so He should help me, too, right? Well, when I'm down is not the time for me to wrestle with concepts that are meaningless to me. I'd rather think about what's important, or not think at all if I find myself going down the brooding spiral. When the chips are down, the god concept is an unwelcome distraction. I only ponder God when I (a) deal with people who believe, and (b) have the mental capacity to spare.
Basically, I don't have to deal with the concept of "God", unless I have to deal with theists bringing Him up. (And those theists are usually Christians. People don't usually ask me whether I believe in Zeus, Odin, Amaterasu, or Quetzalcoatl.)
"God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue God exists is to deny Him. It is as atheistic to affirm God as it is to deny Him. God is being-itself, not a being." ~Paul Tillich, theologian-philosopher
Atheists hold many different views - it is not a consistent system and doesn't intend to be. You need to open this up. Which God are you referring to?
Theists are also atheists when it comes to other religion's Gods. Does the Christian hope that Allah does not exist - or Waheguru or Ahura Mazda? You bet. The literal God of the Bible's Old Testament is like a Mafia boss and a moral black hole who condones slavery and genocide - who would want this?
What about the various Gods found in all the versions of Christianity? There is not one Jehovah or Jesus. The God of a Catholic liberation theology activist will be utterly unrecognizable to the God of a Southern Baptist. There's a presupposition held that people within a single religious tradition are worshipping the same god. I don't think this is accurate.
Atheism generally holds that there is no good reason to accept the proposition that a god exists. I personally don't think the idea of a God as described by theism makes enough coherent sense to be thought of as more than a human construct.
My local parish priest says the same thing - God does not exist, that lowly status belongs only to things of the world. God as Tillich's the 'ground of being' fades from my mind the more I consider it.
Much of that is true in my case, if I really want to be honest about it. But my atheism comes mainly by finding the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church pukey. And I resented my own father, big time. He was a huge asshole. And he quoted me the Bible to convince me of things, and they were ridiculously transparently wrong. Or else if not wrong, then irrelevant and pukey.
So... much of my atheism comes form a turn-off from a doctrine that makes me throw up.
Atheism is only an appendix to my rejecting the Roman Catholic beliefs.
But I hate now the Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism as strongly as I hate all the stupid little Christian religions, and the big ones, too.
I am an atheist MAINLY because those who argue against atheism subscribe to some form of a religion or another, and by association I defend what they try to prove wrong.
It’d be great if there was even a very knowledge, very powerful, very good being, since then much less bad would happen. The latter is at least something that someday could exist: we could make and/or become such a being ourselves, or someone somewhere else could and then we could benefit from it too.
It would also be nice if what we think is reality isn’t actually the whole of reality and there exists some being beyond it who for some reason can’t make everything in here perfect for everyone (to explaining why it’s not) but can eventually rescue everyone from here (even those who’ve already died) and put them somewhere that it can make perfect for all of us. But now we’re into really far-fetched wishful thinking, basically hoping that we are in some aliens’ simulation and that very specific circumstances in our favor pertain in the aliens’ world.
Things either exist, or they don't. There is no in-between, or existence-outside-of-existence. This is the precise sort of incredibly stupid doctrine that religious people believe (if they do) which happens only because they are able to reject the application of their own brains.
I refuse to believe the unbelievable-- and that right away cancels the valid belief base of any religion.
This, actually, can be due to the fact also, that theists are a somewhat incapable bunch. They can't create a supernatural image that fits in the natural world. This may not be god's ineptitude... it screams of the theist's pitiful inability to create a believable god.
Because, I believe that we must differentiate the god of possible existence, and the god of religious descriptions. The god of possible existence shows nothing of itself to us, so to speak of its actual qualities and abilities is futile, it is pure guess work. The god described by religions has clearly impossible qualities, and its own qualities and abilities are mutually exclusive.
I'm more generous about some theists. I think there is a very interesting school of theists that include people like Tillich and David Bentley Hart, who are very learned and deep thinkers about philosophy and being. In the end, if people believe in some form of a deity - as long as they are not changing laws to suit their worldview and they play nice with others - I don't care too much. For me it is mainly about the impact of their beliefs on others - I realize this is not an exact science.
Ya know......when we were growing up, one of the constant admonitions of our teachers was, “CHECK YOUR SPELLING!!”. Nowadays, given all these aids that effectively dumb us down, we would be well-advised to check our spellchecker. Which just goes to show....the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The mono-theist believes in none of them, except just one. There is just as much evidence for one as there is for all the rest - none. The atheist is just being consistent.
I would love for a just and good god to exist, I don't actively want there to be no god, I just interpret reality as good as it can be interpreted. But what I would want or what I think would be nice to exist has nothing to do with it really. As an atheist, you take reality for what it is, no more no less. Why give credit or blame to something that there's no proof of existence when we can arrive at conclusions much more rational and close to the truth by actually analyzing reality around us? It's not only nicer to actually know something, it's also more practical for human needs and wants.
So, I don't really want there to be or not to be a god, the question is really phrased wrong since it assumes there is a binary way of living with either wanting there to be or not to be. The third option is to not even think about it like that, just accept reality around as it is, in itself. There's no lack of beauty or lack of explanations for horrific things by ignoring the idea of a god. Reality and the universe is enough as it is.
By the way, there's a part of me that, paradoxically, hopes that god does exist. It would make a world of a difference to many people who put all their faith in his benevolence. Paradoxes, I love paradoxes - they're uncomfortable to hold in the mind but there's something about them which at this moment I can't quite put my finger on.
Atheists (and I may be resting this fallaciously) are individuals solely identified by a non-belief in God; whether they find God heartwarming or authoritarian, is immaterial to whether they are atheistic.
Anti-theists, on the contrary, are fervently averse to theistic ideas (eg. Christopher Hitchens). Antitheism almost invariably subsumes atheism, whilst atheism may not have an additive perspective on theological belief.
I'm definitely an antitheist but without the frothy animus or angst.
1. Childhood indoctrination with religion, and
2. Disenchantment from childhood indoctrination with religion.
Having passed through both of those phases; first, theism, secondly, atheism, I've arrived at last at the rational position. Epistemic agnosticism. I find it helps to focus on what I can, reasonably know.
Would need to?
Why?
Who or what are theists that atheists would need to justify themselves to them?
Other than that, I'm an atheist, and I have one desire in reference to God: Would the right God please stand up?!
Yeah, in this case it was my phone's autocomplete pulling the rug out from under me. So many times, I start typing a word, it gives me an autocomplete option, and then apparently while I'm reaching to press that word, it switches it with a different word.
Of course. Political concerns are often what encourage atheists to be evasive of religious ideals, in combination with their irreligious personalities - they're an additive element, as opposed to a characteristic one.
I'd be interested to know which Biblical or other religious texts validate this claim.
Quoting 180 Proof
This is true, but nevertheless Tillich, as a theologian, clearly believed that God is real. So here, he's making a claim about the difference between 'what is real' and 'what exists'.
The conception of 'God' as any kind of super-director, intelligent designer, or cosmic potentate, which is how he's most often depicted by current atheism, is a 'straw god' argument, comprising an attack on what David Bentley Hart describes as the God of 'monopolytheism'.
Nagel acknowledges that whilst he finds these ideas congenial, they are 'quite out of keeping with present fashion' - because, he says, they suggest a deep 'inward sympathy' between reason itself and the natural order. He goes on to say:
The full text can be found here.
Self-deification, or gnosis? That heresy, I'm afraid, leads to "The Dark Side". :eyes:
Quoting Wayfarer
So this is not the theistic "conception of God" in e.g. Abrahamic religions?
And target of "current atheism"? Reacquaint yourself, Wayf, with the 3rd century BCE Riddle of Epicurus:
I'm not appealing to religious texts at all. I'm not saying "some religion claims that their god ensures nothing bad ever happens". That would be a short-lived religions, making such an obviously false claim that anybody who has any less than perfect day (i.e. everybody all the time) could validate.
I'm not even saying that any religious texts explicitly claim that their god is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. Some might, but I don't know for sure, and I'm not depending on that.
But in philosophy of religion, it is commonly claimed that capital-G God is has all of those omni-properties.
And if there was something with all those omni-properties, that would logically entail that nothing bad would ever happen. No religious-textual support required.
No, it’s not, although I don’t expect to be able to wade through the impenetrable barriers of your professed anti-theism so as to demonstrate why.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Right. So in your perfect world, ruled by aforesaid perfect deity, there would no birth, death, or illness, right? Because all of those entail suffering, and according to this model, no suffering could exist, so nobody could ever be born, right?
I’ve been contemplating the idea that the monotheist ‘One’, the source of the God idea, was understood by the Mediterranean cultures in which the belief appeared in similar terms to the various pantheistic gods that were to be displaced - Baal, Zeus, Jupiter, and the remaining members of the pantheon.
I actually do believe in the subject of monotheist religion - I’m not atheist - but at the same time I think that this being, whatever or whoever, is depicted as ‘a God’ in the polytheist sense, and is very much like Jupiter, which means ‘sky-father’ (from the Indo-European root Dyaus Pitar.)
So, in my view, many believers accept, and many atheists reject, something very much like Jupiter, a deity of ancient Middle-Eastern provenance. I have relatives who earnestly pray to ‘Jehovah’, and I’m sure that’s what they envisage (even though ‘Jupiter’ and ‘Jehovah’ spring from completely divergent linguistic and cultural roots.)
But I don’t think that’s what classical theism really believes (and, neither do I). If anything it’s a concession to the popular imagination, although regrettably the biblical tropes of tares, sheep, fields, and blood sacrifice mean nothing in post-industrial culture so to that extent, Christianity has lost its hold on the popular imagination. (No kidding!) But in light of that, I don’t simply reject ‘religion’ as a ‘bronze age mythology’. Behind those ancient ruins .... and so on.
The question I would put to the Epiucureans is that, Socrates was accused of atheism, but he denied it. He didn’t profess any belief in the Athenian pantheon - that was one of the causes of his condemnation - but he also said he wasn’t atheist. Of course, it is legendarily difficult to pin down what he did believe in, but he denied being atheist. So is that complaint of the Epicureans directed at whatever deity Socrates did believe in?
Only Socrates knows. (IIRC it's a daimon, not a theos ... and, therefore, not an epicurean concern.)
As Pascal noted: this suggests "the god of philosophy" and not "the God of Abraham"; it's the latter (deity type) that ancient as well as modern "atheism" concerns itself. No one, to my knowledge, has ever lived, sacrificed, sworn, persecuted, killed or died in the name of "the god of philosophy", but only, maybe, to suppress it (e.g. Socrates' "deity"?)
Be interesting to see how that hypothesis might be falsified.
Quoting Wayfarer
An interesting point. I've asked this question a couple of times in the forum and never got a satisfactory answer.
What's the difference between "exist" and "real"?
What this query is meant to probe is the materialistic bias that the word "exist" has - to be perceived is to exist and vice versa but this fits the definition of the material too - to be perceived is to be material and vice versa. Basically, exist = material/physical the way the words "exist" and "material" are defined.
The issue popped up in a discussion about god. A member claimed that god exists but is immaterial to which I pointed out that such is impossible because exist is just another way of saying material. If that's how this game is played then, yes, Wayfarer, you're right in that there's a...difference between 'what is real' and 'what exists'
Always interesting Wayfarer. I'm not sure arguments matter all that much on either side of the God/atheism divide. I suspect it's usually a case of a post hoc shoe shuffle. I'm inclined to think (and I forget where I heard this quip) that having a propensity towards atheism or god/mysticism is more of an innate preference, like sexual orientation. You can't choose what you believe in.
I can't incorporate the Tillich conception any more than the sky-father variations. The ineffable and the insufferable just don't move me, although Tillich is more fun. In the end I'm quite pleased for people to enjoy a contemplative life as long as they don't harm others. This is much less likely to be the case when the theist literalists dominate the agora.
Nagel may be partly right. The problem with the more famous atheists and their acolytes is that they are in locked into a form of internecine conflict that greatly reduces/limits the scope of their thinking. War makes monsters of everyone.
Belief comes from fear and is the most destructive thing. One must be free of fear and of belief. Belief divides people, makes them hard, makes them hate each other and cultivate war. J Krishnamurti
Metaphysical question par excellence. The very first question i asked on the grandfather of this forum was about the reality of number - whether the real numbers exist. I concluded they don't, but that they're real nonetheless (which at the time I felt was a profound observation. And the very first, and by far the best, response was from @180 Proof - although we've never agreed on anything much since.)
Anyway, to rewind - it is almost universally presumed that 'what is' and 'what exists' are synonymous expressions. To say something exists is to say that it is. But, I aver, look at the etymology of 'exist'. The word comprises two particles - 'ex-', outside of, or apart from; and 'ist', to stand or to be. So to 'exist' is 'to be apart', to be this as distinct from that. Enlarging on 180's reference to Paul Tillich:
Think about this another way - what is 'this moment'? Does it exist? Well, actually, no, because by the time you've read and thought about it, then you're in another moment. So what about that moment? Well, no, because..... (For some reason, the image of Mercury, quicksilver, comes to mind here.)
So, reality itself doesn't exist - it's the background against which from all particular existents (us included) come from and return to. Reality is the living now, whereas 'what exists' is what can be described, analysed, captured by instruments. That is very much how the mystics describe it (e.g. Eckhart Tolle, Power of Now, but an eternal theme.)
Quoting Tom Storm
True, but there is such a thing as conversion. In my case, I only learned there were atheists when I was about 6, and I still remember that moment. (Not that my family was religious, none of them were churchy.)
Quoting Tom Storm
In addition to that essay of Nagel's that I quoted he has another called Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament. It used to be online. The thing about Nagel, is that he says he's an atheist, which I believe, but he's also a very cool-headed rationalist and a tenured professor. Hence his criticisms of these issues ought to be taken seriously by all sides, although, predictably, the secular intelligentsia has accused him of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. (You know when Lord Martin Rees, the British Astronomer General, was given the Templeton Prize, that Richard Dawkins described him as 'a Quisling'?)
Quoting Wayfarer Wonderful. Except how can you gain support for it?
Looks likeTillich has started from an assumption which is hypothetical, and furthermore, unneeded. He then extrapolates from his own fantasy. Then it grows and grows, all his fantasies piled up on other of his fantasies, until it fills a book which then he publishes and big grown-ups clap their hands in joy when they read it. These adults forget the fundamental: All Tillich expounds is a finely worked out series of linked fantasies, all speculative, all ungrounded, all totally void of any evidence, therefore it should be treated as void of merit, not as a great mental work of a philosophical genius.
Quoting Tom Storm
Arguments don't matter much to all those who are committed to one side or the other, but for proselytizing reasons they do matter. Atheists proselytize as strongly as theists of any religion. This is so because we are tribal, and our tribal identity is strongest on the level of belief of the big questions of life. "If god is with us, who can be against us?" The atheist question is not as much right on the target: "Since god does not exist, it can't be on anyone's side." It just does not have the same ring to it.
But what atheism does, and where religions fail big time, is that atheism gives strength to the SELF. The atheist does not rely on victory, or success, on the help of some supernatural agency; of a strong big brother who kicks the opposing gang's ass. If a licking is achieved, then all the glory can be owned by the self, and in case of defeat, the failure is the responsibility of the self. It is HUGELY gratifying and liberating. "It is I who has done this, and I alone. No, no, I ain't no dingleberry on some deity's hairy anus."
Maybe we could say that the latter is atheism and the former is a-religion. There is also a-political. A-political would include all forms of political/social coercion, not just religion/theology. Politics is essentially a religion. Politics evolved from religion. They are both forms of Big Brother. I'm not just an atheist, but a-political. My "mind is not for rent to any god or government".
But the point of practical spirituality is to 'know by not knowing' (again remeniscent of Socrates) - hence 'the cloud of unknowing'. 'The known must cease for the unknown to be', said Krishnamurti. It is an act, a way of being, an insight - not a belief. Originally the instructions now preserved as 'religion' were instructions how to realise that state of complete and total attention. But now all that remains are the written vestiges, a map we can no longer interpret.
[quote=Karen Armstrong]Religious truth is, therefore, a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we cannot learn it in the abstract; we have to plunge into the pool and acquire the knack by dedicated practice. Religious doctrines are a product of ritual and ethical observance, and make no sense unless they are accompanied by such spiritual exercises as yoga, prayer, liturgy and a consistently compassionate lifestyle. Skilled practice in these disciplines can lead to intimations of the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman or Dao. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd.
But during the modern period, scientific logos became so successful that myth was discredited, the logos of scientific rationalism became the only valid path to truth, and Newton and Descartes claimed it was possible to 'prove' God's existence - something earlier Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians had always vigorously denied. Christians bought into the scientific theology, and some embarked on the doomed venture of turning their faith's mythos into logos.[/quote]
The same can be said about leprechauns and ghosts, but we don't use terms like "transcendent" to describe those things, why?
Quoting Wayfarer
You'd have to know when you're in a state of "unknowing", hence you cannot ever escape a state of knowing, unless you're dead or unconscious.
Don't flatter yourself. ;-)
This – "exist" : "real" :: contingent : necessary :: path : horizon :: being : nonbeing :: situation : event :: nonrandom : random ...
NB: It's almost always forgotten or misunderstood that the vastly greater part of materiality is absence, negation, "void" (in and by which "atoms" swerve swirl & re/combine-into-things) – therefore, that which exists mostly does not, or is ephemeral ... and some existents (e.g. storms, humans, trees) are more ephemeral than others (e.g. stones, oceans, stars ... "gods").
There'd be no death or illness for sure, but it's not logically necessary that birth be painful, so an omnipotent being could make birth painless or even pleasurable, and an omnibenevolent one would want to.
Of course. And de-conversion or apostasy.
Let's see. Quoting 180 Proof
Yes, you make a good point. I was reading again the other day of the atrocious story of the murder and dismemberment of Hypatia of Alexandria at the hands of 'Christian mobs'. That 'mob mentality', no matter what ideology clothes it, is a dreadful thing. And I agree that Christian history has been marked by many such episodes. But as I see it, the fact that religion is misunderstood so as to cause such atrocities is attributable to the ignorance of its followers, and also to the greed of those who get themselves into positions of power because of it.
I am one of those people who doesn't have a problem with the existence of a god, but it is the Biblical explanation of God I have a problem with.
Quoting DingoJones
What would make the existence of a god awful? I mean if we do not use the Bible to describe God, then what is the problem? What if there is a god and it is nothing like a human but is like the universe?
Well it depends on what you mean by “like” the universe.
If you mean god as just another name for universe then maybe not awful but still not good because it encourages magical, wishy washy thinking. Just call it the universe.
What do you mean exactly? A scientific definition of god looks like what?
I am not sure we are using the right vocabulary? Everything that is, is energy. We have a materialistic language to speak of that which exist but it is all also a matter of the state of matter.
Quoting Wikipedia
Well, an easy answer would be logos, the organizing force of the universe, or mathematical organization. It could include strange ideas such as Jose' Arguelles explains in "The Mayan Factor". A galactic beam through which the Earth and Sun have been passing. A strange story that may or may not connect with density waves or beams that sweep through the galaxy and influence the galaxy.
Just kidding. It depends on the person I'm sure. Many atheists were once devoutly religious and due to one or more events or discoveries (typically referred to by them as "growing up" or becoming "in touch with reality" or other phrases that cast negative light) are no longer. There's an incredible amount of filth, absolutely horrific, disgusting and revolting things that would make even a nihilist pacifist want to go out and kill a man happening all around the world right now as you read this. Perhaps even closer than you may think. It doesn't become an unreasonably discouraging argument to just say "look around you and ask yourself, is this what you call the work of a loving God" .. or something like that.
It probably depends more on whether or not that atheist has been a good or bad person. You could be a good person, and hope there's a God despite believing that there isn't. That would be pleasing to find out I'm sure.
Hindu monotheism or polytheism with one major god validate such claims. But since those theisms don't threaten with eternal damnation for making the wrong religious choice, they seem to have little traction in Western philosophy or culture at large.
Quoting Wayfarer
No. The Hindus would say that in that perfect world, people would understand the role of illusion, maya, and so wouldn't suffer, even though there would birth, death, old age, and disease. (But no New Age.)
Quoting Wayfarer
The we can surmise that he was the kind of atheist who genuinely lacks belief in God or gods.
If I ask you whether you are an atheist in regard to Altjira (and I assume that you genuinely lack all belief in this deity, and that without googling it, you wouldn't even know what that word refers to -- apologies in advance if I underestimated your erudition), the question will be unintelligible to you. You can't say you are an atheist in regard to Altjira.
Shall we revisit the Psalms, wade knee-deep in the blood of David's enemies, to see that there is plenty of justification for hostility and violence in the Bible that believers in Jehovah can draw on?
What I sought validation for, was the claim that ‘if God is good, then there could be no suffering’. I call this the ‘hotel manager theodicy’ - the expectation, that if God is the ‘ideal CEO’ the nothing bad ought ever to happen.
"Nothing bad" by whose standards of nothing bad?
Man's or God's?
It just goes to show that those people are judging everything by their own standards.
But the moment one introduces God to the discussion, in order to be consistent, one has to start off with taking for granted that God is omnimax and that God sets all the standards.
The problem of theodicy exists only because people try to explain God on human terms.
David, fictional or not, represents a person, someone who begged and cried to a higher power while he lost everything he knew and perhaps even more. If you experience a hardship or criminal offense toward your person today, or perhaps toward your nation, and you seek justice, you are no different.
"Though his mind is not for rent
Don't put him down as arrogant.
Always hopeful, yet discontent
He knows changes aren't permanent
But change is."
:cool:
Ok, why would we want to call any of those things “god” instead of the names you just used for them? Why not call Logos, “logos”? Also, what you mentioned are a handful of possibilities not scientific definitions for god. That would require a scientific basis for making the connection between those things and god and I don’t see one.
Logos means nothing without definition.
What do you mean by scientific bias? I don't think research is supposed to be biased?
What other terms are there? I would love to open up the discussion of God, and I am getting push back.
I don’t see how that would end the conflict of whether god exists or not. Using the term “god” when what you really mean is the universe or mystery of the universe only confuses the matter. How would it end the conflict?
Quoting Athena
“Basis”, not “bias”.
I also get ignored. I say, "there is no discernible evidence of any of god's qualities or attributes. We know nothing about god. All we know is that it is possible for it to exist, but not necessary. So... what basis do those have who claim god is this or god is that. It exists but is not real or is real but it is super-existing. Transcends this and transcends that. These are all fantasies, based on an assumption that god must be this way or that way. Well, god does not give us any indication which way god is, so, again, WHY ARE SOME OF US SO PRESUMPTIOUS AS TO CLAIM KNOWLEDGE OF THE QUALITY OF GOD?
This is the third time I ask this question (paraphrased) and I get ignored deeply, soundly, and unanimously, by those who have made actual claims about god.
I guess the silence I encounter to my question is an answer in a way. A very telling answer.
I don't know the history of the unknown God. You know, the one that is beyond our comprehension? I think He is mentioned the Bible, along with not using His name and not making images so we do not create a false god. Some people have chosen to go against that wisdom.
I totally like the Greek gods whom I see as archetypes and concepts. I believe fantasies can be very powerful and that incantations of the gods/goddesses can be effective. Calling upon Artemis when I was in a dangerous situation in the mountains, helped me calm down enough to make rational decisions and get to safety. That is not magic. Our brains do what we tell them to do, and our bodies take orders from our brain. The god/goddess concepts are patterns we can use to accomplish what we want to accomplish. But this can seem like magic. That is, if we do not know how our brains work praying to God, can seem to prove that God is very real, and arguing that "there is no discernible evidence of any of god's qualities or attributes" is not a believable argument for those who have had their prayers answered.
Thanks for correct me. :lol: I feel like an idiot for that mistake. Maybe I need to check my medication?
About the argument about if god exists or not, I love to argue with Christians who want to believe I do not believe in God, because as soon as I say I do believe in God, that ruins what they believe about me as a non-Christian. When we argue there is no God, we are proving them right. The Bible tells them about non-believers so when they come across a non-believer, they go," ah, ha, the Bible is right. Here is a non-believer". I don't think proving the Bible right is the right way to go.
So I like to shift the argument to what kind of God makes sense? And here is another thing, Coming from Hellenism- logos, not even the gods can violate the laws of nature. The early god stories were more fantasy than reason, but as the Greeks developed reason, they pulled away from the supernatural and concluded even the gods were limited by the laws of nature. Athena marks a turning point from rule by brute force to rule by law, and that law is not imposed by the strongest person but comes about by arguing until there is a consensus on the best reasoning.
Christianity is a religion of miracles, and rewards and punishments are dished out according to the whims of God and it goes with another supernatural being, Satan. I have no idea how Christians figure if bad things happening are the result of God punishing them or Satan? None of that is cause-and-effect thinking. It is not science. For me, that makes the Christian God, an unbelievable god. I rather argue about what is a believable god than if there is or isn't a god. It is about having a fun argument instead of the futility of arguing against a god Christian's experience every day through prayer.
Oh but God gave man free will. He didn't give that to women who must submit to men. However, in Heaven, there is no free will, because our free will does not go with perfection. :lol:
Lol, no problem.
I understand you want to drop the religious mumbo jumbo and think about god in those other terms, but I’ve never understood why some folks keep the term “god”. Why define god so differently that it no longer resembles the religious god at all? Why not just let go of the label and talk about whatever it is you were trying to redefine god to be? (Like love or mystery or the universe...just talk about love, mystery or the universe! Lol)
Really? If we know nothing about any of g/G's other "qualities", how do we then know it's even possible (yet not necessary) for it to exist?
Quoting Athena
Which "God"? I glean from posts above you'd rather avoid discussing whether or not g/G exists, but I don't see how any discussion does not presuppose an existence claim either way (unless by "God" you mean just a referentless, or philosophical, concept and not a 'providential entity' of Abrahamic, Vedic or pantheonic religions).
You are raising the point that existence is a quality or attribute. There is a debate on that. A huge debate. I am on the opinion (feel free to disagree) that existence precedes the ability to have qualities and attributes. Without existence it is impossible to have qualities and attributes. Therefore existence is such a basic quality or attribute, that it can't be a differentiator -- everything in existence has existence, and the qualities and attributes may very well vary. Therefore, since existence is an across-the-board undifferentiated quality or attribute for everything existing, itself existence is not an attribute or quality.
If it entails knowingly allowing children to be sold in to sex slavery where they will sometimes be raped to death, then that is no goodness at all. (If he doesn’t know, or can’t stop it, then that’s an excuse that saves his goodness, but undermines any claims to godliness in the sense people usually mean).
Quoting Wayfarer
You’ve yet to explain on what grounds (other than because someone just said so, which IIRC you also reject) something can be called good or bad other than the enjoyment or suffering, broadly construed, that it brings about. You’ve stated a narrower construal of hedonism and then named things outside that, but then people like me respond “no I mean that kind of stuff too, that’s still a kind of pleasure/pain and I’m not excluding that from relevance when I say only pleasure and pain matter”.
So the problem is that we are mistaken when we say that child sex slavery is bad, and from God’s perspective that’ must be perfectly fine, since he clearly allows it to happen?
Personally I am too damned lazy to actively participate in such activities.
And does it really make any difference to the outcome? It either does or does not exist. I guess it might make as much difference as me actively wanting Santa Claus to exist, but I am not really sure about that.
You’re depicting God as a responsible executive, a commander in chief who 'allows' or 'stands by'. It is an anthropomorphic projection. All of those evils are done by human beings, by people. Presumably if they were conscientious Christians (or Hindus or Buddhists), they would never behave in those ways - which is not to say that Christians don't behave like that, but when they do they're obviously flouting their own laws. All of the terrible evils done in the last century - the holocaust, the atomic bomb, the killing fields, the immense loss of life in war - these were all done by people. And people have free will, they're able to behave however they like. If they were programmed to only do good, they'd be mindless automatons for whom good means nothing.
Quoting Pfhorrest
The religions depict a highest good in terms of 'eternal life' or 'Life', capital-L. Obviously a very difficult thing to grasp, and usually portrayed mythologically or iconographically. But I think that in philosophical terms, it refers to a real state, variously portayed as theosis, beatification, Nirv??a, and in other terms according to the culture in which it appears. Unlike the 'relative' goods and evils which are characteristic of every existence - the opposites of pain and pleasure, gain and loss, sickness and health, and so on - this is said to be a good that has no opposite, an unalloyed good.
And God has no power to stop people from doing these things? Or doesn't know he needs to? Or he just doesn't bother? Which is it?
NB that "stopping them" could very well just be influencing them mentally, shining a light of empathy and foresight and so on into their souls or whatever, so that they can clearly see why to do good. (See below).
Quoting Wayfarer
This has always seemed like a very strange conception of free will to me, a sense of "free will" that basically just means "error-proneness". Nobody purposely sets out to do things that they honestly think they shouldn't. They sometimes purposely set out to do things that they know others think they shouldn't, but they clearly disagree since they intend to do them anyway. They also sometimes do do things they think they shouldn't have, and regret it. But those things are the consequence of either ignorance of good, or weakness of will.
If God existed, I would love for him to make me very smart/wise/insightful/whatever such that I am never in error about what the right thing to do is, and also very steadfast/determined/reliable etc so that I never falter from what I assess to be the right thing to do. I would not consider that to be taking my free will away. Rather, I would consider that to be strengthening my will: making me more clear-headed and able to figure out what to do and to see why to do it, and also making me more resolved to see that through. Eliminating errors in my judgement and weakness in the power of that judgement to guide my action. Keeping the wrong influences from causing me to think something's good when it's not, or to do other than what I think is good.
Even if God isn't some physical object that "exists" but just some kind of mental "being" in the hearts and souls and minds of all mankind or whatever, influencing people's thoughts like that should be exactly the kind of thing he should be best at, and the fact that so many people fuck up so hard so often is just as much evidence that he's either not good at doing that kind of thing, or he doesn't care to. (Or he doesn't know he needs to).
Also, there are ills that are not caused by human choices anyway. I'm sure you're familiar with the term "natural evil". Human choices don't cause all disease and predation and natural disasters etc.
Quoting Wayfarer
An eternal life of unending suffering doesn't sound like a good thing, so presumably this is an eternal life that feels nice in some way, yeah? Still a kind of pleasure, or at least the absence of the pain of mortal life, or at the very least (if it's no more pleasurable of painful than mortal life) an absence of the suffering that comes from fear of death. Still talking about pleasure and pain, enjoyment and suffering.
Quoting Wayfarer
Would not the deprivation of it be its opposite? Just as sickness is the deprivation of health, etc.
God is not the kind of super-person you imagine. I understand how that kind of image is imparted by religion, but I think it comes from a misinterpretation of the meaning of the ‘personal’ nature of God.
From the Christian doctrinal perspective, God is always telling humans not to kill, steal, commit evil and so on. That is what ‘conscience’ is. The fact that there are those whose consciences are stunted - like psychopaths - or who choose to disregard it’s urgings, again doesn’t mean there is no such attribute as conscience. Humans are free to disregard it. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
Quoting Pfhorrest
It might work if you actually believed it rather than simply making a rhetorical gesture. Religious people go through a lot to try and realise that state of grace.
Of course there are natural evils, earthquakes, tsunamis, diseases, pestilence. Again, to think of God as a celestial controller unleashing catastrophes on the poor dolts on earth is a rather pagan conception, but then, Christianity has its pagan aspects (like the blessing of the fleet or the ritual praying for rain - these go back to ancient society.) From my perspective, the point about natural evils is that they’re an inevitable aspect of material or physical existence. To be born at all is to be subject to a whole host of hazards and threats. Goes with the territory. The Buddha would say, well, you chose this life, because of your craving for experience, so wise up and work out what keeps driving you to being born over and over.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Regarding ‘deprivation’ - one of the philosophical doctrines of evil is ‘evil as privation of the good’. It is associated with Augustine. The idea is that evil has no actual being, in the same way that shadows are simply the occlusion of light, and cavities the absence of matter. In Augustine’s philosophy, evil is the absence or privation of the good, if we were to see the true good, then we would realise that evil has no inherent reality.
In a wider context, there is a pan-religious understanding that coming to know [the first principle/ground of being] is itself the source of release from suffering. The aspirant, by realising their identity with the Supreme, thereby is released from all fear of death and suffering. That is a universal theme in religions, although each of them express it in their own cultural idioms.
No, the problem is that you're taking up a problem that is not yours to begin with.
If you don't believe in God, then the presumed, claimed, or factual actions, qualities etc. of God are none of your business and none of your concern.
Like I said:
The moment one introduces God to the discussion, in order to be consistent, one has to start off with taking for granted that God is omnimax and that God sets all the standards.
The problem of theodicy exists only because people try to explain God on human terms.
And again:
[i]The problem is that you're taking up a problem that is not yours to begin with.
If you don't believe in God, then the presumed, claimed, or factual actions, qualities etc. of God are none of your business and none of your concern.[/i]
If you nevertheless stick your nose into things that are none of your business, expect trouble.
IOW, you have knowledge of God? First-hand, certain knowledge of God?
Quoting Athena
Presumably, there are God's terms.
Quoting god must be atheist
And whose problem is that?
Do you believe in God?
Just so as to NOT ignore you - Christians believe that the Bible is the ‘revealed word of God’. What this means is obviously not a simple question. I am not a particularly biblically-oriented person, although I’m also not a ‘scientific materialist’, and the alternatives to materialism seem to be some form of idealism or religious belief. There are not an infinite number of choices. I believe the Bible is in some important sense divinely inspired, but also that it is a mixture of history, witness testimony, confabulation and the work of generations of redactors (biblical editors). So I don’t accept a literalist reading, that the Bible is literally true in all respects, but neither to I believe it’s all confabulation. There are elements of truth, and, I believe, profound truth, in it. After all, both my sons’ marriages included the recitation of Biblical verses, typically from the letters of Paul.
But the point is if you start from the premise that ‘the Bible’ is not the inerrant word of God, but merely a collection of folk-tales and superstition, then of course we know ‘nothing about God’. But from the Christian’s viewpoint, that’s because you’ve already declared that God’s revelation is bogus! You start from the premise that revealed religion is bogus, then say, ‘OK prove that it’s not’. Not possible! If you believe that, good luck and fare thee well, etc. But don’t expect much by way of response, because nothing much can be said about that.
It's fine with me if that's how you want to use the word "God", but in doing so you are conceding that he does not have the omni-properties often attributed to him.
Note that in my first post in this thread that you responded to, I didn't say "evil exists therefore God doesn't exist". I said that, as asked in the OP, whether I as an atheist want God to exist or not depends on what you mean by God, and stated the kind of God that I would like to exist: the kind that would make bad things not happen.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure, and I did already say a post or two ago that if that's the kind of thing that one means by God, I would also like for something like that but even more effective at that to exist. Obviously conscience exists, or is real, however you want to phrase that; if that's the thing you mean by "God", then no atheist will argue that "God" in that sense doesn't exist (or isn't real, whatever); they'll just tell you that that's a needlessly confusing way to refer to conscience.
(NB that I used to consider myself a pantheist, and was adamant while I did so that I didn't believe in anything different about the universe than an atheist does, I just thought that the universe fit the criteria to count as "God". What changed between then and now was only that I decided that that was a needlessly confusing way of referring to the universe... and also that a non-personal universe doesn't actually meet all the usual criteria for "God", because personality is a part of those criteria).
Quoting Wayfarer
I also go through a lot to try to realize that state that I described, and not without any success. So if by "God" all you mean is conscience, then I'm quite "godly" as I aim to be (with some success) quite conscientious.
And circling back to the OP, if all you mean by "God" is conscience, then as I said a post or two ago I would love for "God" to "exist more" than "he" already does: I'd love for it to be easier to discern what is good and easier to follow through on that judgement.
Quoting Wayfarer
Right, that's what I was referring to. Yet darkness is still the opposite of light, even while it is also only an absence of light, no?
Likewise, on my account of hedonic experience:
- an appetite is the deprivation of comfort or contentedness
- pain is the archetypal appetite, or conversely, every appetite is sort of "a kind of pain"
- pleasure is the feeling of an appetite being sated, e.g. of pain being relieved, and
- a "mystical", "religious", or "peak" experience is a kind of intense contentedness, which is consequently quite pleasurable in contrast to the usual pains of life.
Quoting baker
The presumed, claimed, or factual actions, qualities etc. of God are a factor in deciding whether to believe such a God exists. If you say "God is omnimax" (I assume that means at least that he has the traditional omni-properties of power, knowledge, and goodness), it consequently follows from the existence of that God that nothing evil occurs (because if it did, he would know about it, would want to stop it because he's good, and would have the power to do so). Therefore anything that does occur, including child sex slavery, must be not-evil, or else such a God thus defined must not exist.
Well, I think that is up to us.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Darkness doesn’t oppose light, it is its absence.
The meaning of ‘release’ is release from all suffering, from the very possibility. It’s not like riding a wave or getting a hit or having some intensely pleasurable experience although, particularly in California, that is the way it’s often interpreted. :-)
// ps// where ‘california’ is a symbol for ‘modernity’//
You'll find everyone has a version of God that makes sense of the world for them. He can be anything from an all powerful autocrat, to the ground of being, depending on the believer's personality. In the end all we have of god are claims made by people. There isn't sufficient reason to be overly concerned about the logic of any of those claims.
My dear 180: we already agreed, from the looks of it, that existence is not a quality or an attribute.
You somehow mistook the qualifier: "possible" for god, and not for god's existence. You must understand that I said, in unmistakable terms, that it is god's existence is possible, but not necessary. Not a quality of god.
David believed that The Highest Power In The Universe was on his side. This is what makes him different than the ordinary person.
This is a problem for those who want to advocate that god exists for sure. And an even bigger problem for those who want to convince others that their description of god is true, because no description of god exists, to date. God, if exists, shows no qualities or attributes of himself. Those who proclaim they know god's attributes and qualities are merely liars, charlatans, dishonest persons, or at best, mislead persons.
And yet they don't consider it their problem.
You consider it their problem -- and that is your problem.
And whose problem is that?
It is easy to prove that the bible is not god's reveleation. If it were, it would not contain self-contradicting features. And there are plenty in the bible. So... an entity that contradicts its own story of existence, is like the paradox "I always lie".
If god instigated the bible, and it were not common man's fairy tales, then it would not have the contradictions included in it, because somewhere it says "this is the truth", which means there are no contradictions. But there are. So this can't be the truth.
Unless, of course, Christians accept that their god is misleading them on purpose. "this is the truth" while it's not, is a clear admittance of unfair play.
What is a Christian to do? Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.
??
That's a bit of strange religious epistemology ...
Why do you want to "decide whether God exists or not"?
Well, and whose problem is that?
They don't consider it their problem, wherefore the following
is moot.
I only ascribed qualities to god on the provisio if the bible were true. But I don't accept that, I just presented that scenario. None of the funky claims that the bible describes do I make my own. But I show you there in that post, that those who DO make the claims of their bible their own, then they are in for a big surprise, because their acceptance is deceitful by the provisional entity, who deceives them big time.
This may be a bit convoluted for you. So here's the simpler version:
I don't believe the bible; I am saying those who believe it are deceived.
I don't believe that god has attributes that are known to us; but those who accept the attributes ascribed to god in the bible are mislead.
I hope this makes sense to you. If not, I wash my hands, and you please ask someone else to explain it to you.
Same reason I want to decide the truth of any other claim: I want to believe only things that are true, and avoid believing things that are untrue.
That's bold! Is it true?
So far as I can tell, which is the most certain anyone can ever be about anything.
Fantastic! I think you've earned your philosopher badge!
The assertion that X exists is nonsense in the absence of any data. But it is also silly to insist that it is impossible for X to exist, even if there is no data.
After all, by insisting, we claim our knowledge of it. Our knowledge is not absolute. If there is something that we don't know, because we have no data on it, does not exclude its possibility of existence.
Of course it is impossible to prove that things that we don't know exist, and it is silly to name and say their attributes and say "these things exist for sure." But it is also silly to insist that they don't exist and offer up their non-existence as a proven fact.
Ambivalence is silly, denial or assertion is wrong.
"there is a thing I know nothing about, but it exists."
"You are wrong. The thing that you and I know nothing about does not exist."
Which one is sillier?
Strawman. I never claimed or implied "that it is impossible for X to exist". I asked how do you "know that it is possible for X to exist" without knowing anything about X. Well?
(1) I don't know that it is possible for X to exist without knowing anything about X.
The above is the negation of my assertion, (2) "I know that it is possible for X to exist without knowing anything about X. According to you, you deny that (2) is true, at least you question its validity.
With the same reasoning, (3) I also don't know that it is impossible for X to exist without knowing anything about X.
If you deny the statement in the subject and the predicate, that is, you negate both the subject and the predicate of a sentence, then you are not changing the truth value of the sentence. Therefore (3) becomes (4) without changing its truth value.
(4) I know that it is possible for X to exist without knowing anything about X.
So, no matter what we do, we lose. Wicked! I like it. This will go into my favorite quotes collection. Thanks
Nothing could be better than starting the day with such wonderful questions. I love it. :grin: Let us go back to ancient times when no one was sure about what a god is and what a god does. A time when the gods were being created. :lol: We have an overpopulation of people now, and back in the day there was an overpopulation of gods and goddesses. Every time the priest became aware of a new concept they had a new god. Then we turned around and wanted a unifying force. :wink:
An Egyptian pharaoh thought the population of gods was too crowded and had the priest search the archives for the true god. When his grandson came to power he ordered a city to the one and only god be built and that the rest of the gods be forgotten. When this pharaoh and his wife died, his city was dismantled and buried. Some believe the followers of the one god religion fled to what was once Sumer and that they searched Sumers archives for knowledge of the true god and they plagiarized Sumerian stories. This would be the origin of the Hebrews, the Garden of Eden, the flood, and at least 3 other stories.
Athena's position in life was dramatically changed when Athens became a democracy. She could not have held the new position of rule by reason, before Apollo, a god of reason, came into being.
How exciting to question what we believe and to discover new gods or change our stories. :grin: Our technological society is overly concerned with facts. We have forgotten the importance of spirit. I don't mean a supernatural spirit but spirit meaning how we feel about things. To be wonder full as a child and play full about learning is a very different spirit than demanding the facts and proofs. And that is essential to knowing truth. As soon as we think we know god, we know god not. Some say we can study god in nature and others say we must read a book, but neither nature nor a book is god. If we want truth we must talk about this. We must begin with "I do know" and then see what we can find and argue about until we have a consensus on the best reasoning.
Then in comes science with the atom and oh no, the atom isn't the smallest thing, there are protons, neutrons, and electrons. Whoops, there are also quarks and :lol: will they ever stop naming new subatomic particles? As I was reading about the problem of too many gods, science began naming one subatomic particle after another, and I was impressed by how similar both searches of truth have been. We need to lighten up and be more playful.
If there is a problem it is attitude. We are taking ourselves way too seriously.
Well, there are a few more problems like famine and pandemics and wars and global warming, but we are not going to come together and resolve those problems if we don't lighten up and stop thinking that what we want is what God wants for us.
You worded that very well. Yes, and what is philosophy about if it is not about asking the questions that are impossible to answer and attempting to answer them anyway. That is what humans do and hopefully, we enjoy the doing. :grin:
Hehe. I did not think of it that way, but I guess that's what that is.
So... you knew Julius Caesar personally?
And who was Miltiades? I mean, the REAL Miltiades?
Well, Miltiades was certainly good-looking.
His daughter had more wisdom than Pericles and he should have respected her! :rage: Those men's egos got a little out of control and they needed to be taught a lesson. The temple they built for me was flattering but I suspect it was more about their egos than me. I think as the US today, they came to think they could manage just fine without the gods and they needed to be taught without the gods they are nothing. So the plague gave Sparta the victory in war.
Perhaps this thread should address the gods and war? :wink:
Ok, but I’m not asking why someone might use the term “god”. I’m being more specific, I want to know why you, a person who recognises that the term “god” is being used to describe not the usual characteristics of “god” but to describe something else for which we already have a name for yet instead of using that name still insist on calling it “god”.
:chin: Some people believe science can be applied to the god question and some do not. But certainly, we can apply philosophy to the god question.
Now, what boundaries do you think we should set for the god question and why? Or, instead of boundaries, should we expand our understanding of the god question? Does not it begin with a desire to understand all of life? I certainly prefer expanding our understanding of the god question. I absolutely what to avoid the futile argument of if god exists or not because that is so repetitive and boring after several years of the same arguments again and again.
I want new arguments. What is the unified force?
You do realize how immensely impractical this is, do you? I'm sure you do.
I also doubt you practice it consistently. You aren't all that concerned about the truth about the half-life of radioactive isotopes that exist only on Triton or the vaginal system of fleas, are you?
It was a well-crafted sentence with a meaning of deep significance to me. Given any proposition and that's what our weltanschauungs are made of, right?, we have only "three" choices: 1. assert its truth or 2. deny its truth or 3. ambivalence. Your opinion, in brackets, is: assert its truth (wrong!), deny its truth (wrong again!), and ambivalence (how silly!). Thus, for any proposition the actual choices are 1. to be wrong or 2. to be silly. That's a profound insight for the simple reason that these two - the first, failing to discover truth/falsity and the second, spewing silly nonsense - are the stuff of philosophers' nightmares.
Basic logic and critical thinking, haven’t come across a god concept that passes even that simple test let alone a scientific one.
Quoting Athena
Well the right answer is always going to be boring and repetitive, that doesn’t mean we should ignore the right answer and make one up instead.
Also, the “does god exist question” isn’t futile. It’s actually really easy to answer. What might be futile is trying to get someone committed to the idea after a lifetime of indoctrination to listen but even that I dont agree with because people reason their way put of that delusion all the time. I couldn't call it futile for those reasons.
Again, you aren’t really answering my question. You want to talk about understanding all life and what that might mean then great but why call that a god question? Just make it the “life” question... that conversation doesn’t require “god” at all but you keep wanting to put “god” in there. Why?
Quoting Athena
Is there a unified force? How do you know?
True, but it's not quite as bad when you can hang it on some other philosopher.
It is actually frighteningly rare that any one particular philosopher realizes the self-application procedure of this phenomenon.
Socrates did. At least he claimed he had.
“Only things that are true” doesn’t mean “all the things that are true”... but yeah, knowing all the things would be cool too, though of course I have higher priorities in daily life.
And how do they match "how things really are"?
Eisenstein spent his last years seeking the unified force. If he thought that was worth his time it might be worth our time. I gave my answer to why I think it is important to speak of God and I am not going to repeat it. However, I will forfeit all the wins to you and 180 Proof because I stopped having fun and want to drop out.
I’m not trying to win, just asking a question and didn’t see where you really answered it. You avoided directly answering. Also, You don’t find discussing things fun?
Anyway, sure take a good mental note of my name and you can avoid wasting both our time in the future.
It's easy. Some of your priorities are fulfilled to expectation, some are not. The bloke is asking you how your expected priorities compare to the actual actualization of those priorities. Obviously you're alive. But do you eat the foods you want, and do you date the babes you want? do you earn the money you want, do you see the movies you want, do you laugh at the jokes you want? "For want of the price, a tea and a slice, the old man died..."
Eisenstein? :chin: Albert Einstein often made his feelings clear on God.
Here's some examples:
Along similar lines:
However, just to balance things up:
So Einstein accepted the general idea of a 'higher intelligence', and sometimes spoke of Spinoza's God as exempyfying that. Some of his aphorisms were mystical. However he thought religion on the whole belonged to an earlier age of man, and certainly seemd to think of the popular image of the 'heavenly father' was childish. (Although why Einstein's opinions are to be sought on the matter is an open question. At least he wasn't as cranky as Dawkins, even though the first chapter of Dawkin's God Delusion was devoted to him. )
Oh, and one more for good measure:
:up: That resonates with me.
Quoting baker
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quoting baker
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quoting baker
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quoting baker
So I have things that I have to prioritize above investigating just every little question that piques my curiosity, though it would still be cool to have the answers to all those things if I could; but even in light of not being able to believe all the truths, I still want to believe only truths, among the proposed answers to questions I actually have need or free time to investigate. And since I have the free time to be here talking about believing (or not) in the existence of God, I care to be sure that I only believe things that are true, to which "the presumed, claimed, or factual actions, qualities etc. of God" are relevant.
In light of all that, the last quote above makes no clear sense as a question.
This really isn't rocket sicence. Duh.
Have you never been to church or some such??
There is The Truth, the How Things Really Are. And a particular person either matches/lives up to that Truth, or they don't.
You might think that something is important, but in Reality, it might not be important at all, and your preferences and convictions could be all wrong.
I mean, really. Have you never spoken to any religious person? I'm pointing out religious people because they are especially clear on these matters. For example, you might think that being a vegetarian is important in life, but a Christian might tell you that it is not only not important, but that it is, in fact, wrong, that it is not in line with How Things Really Are (and How Things Really Are is what God commanded -- and God commanded that people must eat meat).
For some kind of an objectivist, you sure have a poor grasp of authoritarian/objectivist discourse.
Even though you yourself use the authoritarian/objectivist style. For example, you say, in true authoritarian/objectivist manner "That question doesn't make any sense" (instead of, e.g. "I don't understand what you mean here"). As if questions objectively make sense or they don't, and you are the arbiter of this sense-making -- but I am not.
Also you’re still not distinguishing objectivism as universalism from objectivism as transcendentalism. Only the latter entails dogmatism.
Oh, you're still living in lalaland.
Well, which God? There are too many to list, outside the Abrahamic tradition. Would I like to believe in the God of the Old Testament? Absolutely not. Nor the New Testament God for that matter. Would it be nice to think we go on to another better life after this one? That's hard. It sounds good, but eternal existence may be too much for us to handle.
It would be nice to speak to some of the great figures of the past... Oh well.
From a logical standpoint, regardless of if god exists or not has no real meaning to our lives.
As such persuing religion has no meaning, but for some it is a reassurance to have an answer to life rather than an understanding of life.
I believe that's a big element in atheism. Atheists are afraid of the thought of there being anything higher than themselves hence they hope there isn't.
It's a sort of religion for people with an overblown opinion of themselves like Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao . They all ended in personality cults. Stalin was compared to the sun, etc.
I don't know why you're always jumping to conclusions. Maybe you should just relax and think about things a bit first.
I was merely highlighting or bringing into sharper focus what was already implied in the question. IMO that ought to be obvious.
People do tend to be reluctant to admit their own fears but that doesn't mean that those fears don't exist. Ask psychologists and they'll tel you.
It's a pretty old argument and I don't think it is any more true than another old argument - that theists believe in God because they are afraid of death. It's curious to me that both sides in the theism debate seems to think the same sorts of things about the opposing viewpoint. That is it is the product of immaturity and a lack of being fully human.
Yeah, when you run out of arguments you start using threats and abusive language. Sounds about right. If you've got a degree in "cognitive psych" then why can't you explain atheists' fear of religion?
Indeed. I hate to say it, but also a lot of atheists some of which are on this board ( hate to call out 180 but if it quacks like a duck ...well you get the idea) get quite emotional about their belief system. The ironic thing is, if an atheist claims that God does not exist, they put themselves in a precarious and untenable position of trying to defend same.
Otherwise, I do find that your point about politics, and some athiest's emotional defensiveness as it were, are consistent with what Einstein said many years ago. As suggested in the book of Ecclesiastes, there's nothing new under the sun here:
"The fanatical atheists, are like [prisoners] who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who--in their grudge against traditional religion as the 'opium of the masses'-- cannot hear the music of the spheres." --Albert Einstein
I think "quite emotional" is an understatement. People like @180 sound like a kettle that is permanently on the boil. But seeing that he's got a "graduate degree in cognitive psych" perhaps he's the right person to explain himself. Or maybe not.
And Einstein was totally correct. I think he had Marx in mind. Marx had a grudge against religion and dubbed it "opium of the masses" because he wanted the masses to feed on his own opium of "historical materialism" and worship at the altar of "class-dictatorship of the proletariat".
It's not the fear of religion per se. Rather it a fear of what religious people do in the name of their religion.
Speaking as a non-religious Jew living in the US, I am very glad that I am living in a place & time where the worst thing likely to happen to me is some social awkwardness. But around the world there are literally millions of people who - given the opportunity - would have no compunction about killing me and my family simply because of the religion of my grandparents.
I have no problem with people being religious. I have seen first hand how it is a source of comfort and how it helps people figure out how to live their lives in difficult situations. But organized religion is responsible for untold suffering throughout history.
Indeed. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that unfortunately, the human condition has it that his emotions get the best of him.
Accordingly, that's yet another irony relative to Maslonian behavior, and the whole of human motivations and phenomena... .
Kind of reminds me of some Proverbs from the OT Wisdom Books in Christianity, in that many of his political narratives are akin to a dissonant trumpet blast :joke:
Quoting Apollodorus
Quoting Apollodorus
Actually, (A) is jumping to conclusions. (C) is just a weird appeal to authority in an attempt to back up (B); it's weird because (B) is more an excuse to believe (A) without evidence than legitimate evidence for (A).
Quoting Apollodorus
It's interesting that you would perceive a challenge to your jumping to the conclusion of (A) as threats and abusive language, especially in light that you offer emotional excuses to back (A) as opposed to legitimate reasons to believe it.
Quoting Apollodorus
Just to point out, (A) has mutated from fear of a higher power to fear of religion.
Regardless, speaking of jumping to conclusions, it's kind of silly asking for an explanation for something that doesn't exist.
Quoting 3017amen
Emotional responses to gaslighting are easy to explain.
I see what you mean and you are perfectly correct. Christians can feel the same in Muslim or Hindu countries.
But I think in a Jewish context it is more likely to be more related to culture or racism, not religion. I don't know if you're familiar with Moses Hess. He wrote:
"The Germans hate less the Jews' religion than they hate their race, they object less to the Jews' particular religion than to their particular noses. Neither religion nor baptism, neither Enlightenment nor Emancipation, will open the gates of social life to the Jews" - Rome and Jerusalem
That was back in 1862 and he was right.
Indeed. I heard through the grapevine that the moderators are considering banning him (180). No matter, it's pretty much a telltale sign that when someone has no other logical arguments, they resort to ad hominem, hence:
"The temptation to belittle others is the trap of a budding intellect, because it gives you the illusion of power and superiority your mind craves. Resist it. It will make you intellectually lazy as you seek "easy marks" to fuel that illusion, [and] a terrible human being to be around, and ultimately, miserable. There is no shame in realizing you have fallen for this trap, only shame on continuing along that path."
Not at all. It wasn't a "conclusion", it was a suggestion that I thought was already implied in the question - as already indicated.
Just because you're labeling something (A), (B), (C), doesn't make your conclusion valid. Anyone can do that.
A suggestion based on what?
Quoting Apollodorus
You've got this backwards. My conclusion is that (A) is lacking proper justification.
You have to give proper justification for A before it can be taken seriously. I don't have to prove you didn't offer such a thing.
I don't think he should be banned. They were trying to ban me by accusing me of being a "Nazi" for making critical observations about the Left. But I do think he's got some serious issues there. It isn't unheard off for those with certain issues to take up the study of psychology. Perhaps in an attempt to self-treat themselves? Maybe he can tell us more himself if he can muster the courage.
I did provide proper justification. My suggestion is implied in the question "Do atheists hope there is no God?"
Why would they hope that? Possibly because they're afraid of a higher power, so fear would be a possible motivation. And you haven't proved that this isn't the case. You're wasting your time.
Or possibly any other reason. I'm out of milk. Possibly it was stolen by a gremlin.
Quoting Apollodorus
Since when does not proving something isn't true justify that the thing is?
You're being asked to provide proper justification, not excuses. You can choose to provide excuses if that's all you have, but you should realize that if this is your choice then you're basically asking people to not take you seriously.
If you can't prove your own statements why would anyone take them seriously?
Exactly.
That isn't always the case. Some atheists may start from a feeling of superiority or, as I said, from fear. Not all atheists are the same.
I agree . In life more often than not we find these things to be self-evident.
In logic, any atheist who posits God does not exist has the precarious an untenable position of defending his/that proposition.
The most prudent thing an atheist could do is to say nothing. Otherwise, he has essentially endorsed another belief system.
There are other Gods. I don't know. What is better some strange life after this or eternal sleep?
As Mark Twain said:
"I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
Put like that, maybe it's not so bad. Heaven knows there are situations here in life much worse than not being. In any case, fear and pain are for the here and now, not before or after.
I found it to be a non sequitur :joke:
Nothing more true than that. Unfortunately, atheists often try to impose their views on others which is quite strange really, but that's what Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, and many others have done, murdering many millions of innocent people in the process:
“A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists” F Engels, “On Authority”, Almanaco Republicano, 1874
I'm not sure you're following this discussion.
Let's grant that an atheist says something. Let's grant that said atheist cannot defend it. What has that to do with whether this atheist is afraid of the thought of there being anything higher than himself?
If you haven't figured out by now Tim wood is another Einsteinian fanatical atheist :grin:
He gets very defensive about his atheism. Even more emotional than 180 !
We understand that. But it isn't a reason to deny the theoretical possibility that in some cases at least atheism may be motivated by fear of something higher than oneself.
Why can't we all calm down a bit? Otherwise we follow in the footsteps of @180 and we don't get anywhere. Total waste of time.
Personally, I think both sides have some valid points to make. Perhaps one side more than the other. But this should be discussed rationally.
I'm confused, I guess if you are able and can show the fortitude to poke holes in my statement, then more than likely I could be convinced:
In logic, any atheist who posits God does not exist has the precarious an untenable position of defending his/that proposition.
The most prudent thing an atheist could do is to say nothing. Otherwise, he has essentially endorsed another belief system.
Please take your time and careful reply...try to resist the temptation of an emotional response if you will. Thanks.
So, you're saying you're a believer. Believer in what?
The question is "Do atheists hope there is no God?" Are we allowed to find an answer or make suggestions as to what the answer might be? I think we are.
If atheists entertain the hope that there is no God as suggested in the question, what might be the reason for that hope? Could it be fear? I don't see why not.
Maybe some atheists are afraid of having the idea of God in their head/mind. That wouldn't be such an unusual proposition. The atheist wants to have the totality of his mental space to himself, therefore he can't tolerate the idea of God. Could this be the case of @180?
I think you're missing the objection. It is theoretically possible that some atheist somewhere is scared of a being higher than his/her self.
But you have treated at least a variant of this seriously at least once:
Quoting Apollodorus
...that phrasing suggests something quite distinct from "in some cases at least"; it suggests that this is a representative pattern.
But as it stands, you still have yet to offer any justification that this is indeed the case.
Quoting Apollodorus
And this is where you get even more nefarious. Apparently, @180 Proof has a condition; he's got a hidden fear of a being higher than himself he does not himself recognize, that drove him to research cognitive psychology. And the proof for this is that questioning it has not yet been proven, and his reaction to your gaslighting is emotional.
Here's where I stand by the way in my expected burdens. That you might find among 7 billion citizens on the planet a particular atheist who is scared of a higher being? Fairly reasonable, but still need at least one good reason to buy it. That this is a representative pattern of atheists demanding an explanation in cognitive psychology? That smells quite dubious to me. That 180 Proof fits your descriptions? That sounds like an irresponsible fantasy.
I definitely would not want any God dreamt up by men/women to exist. That could only be a horror show.
Why "some atheist somewhere"? Either (1) you accept the possibility or (2) you don't. If you do, then why object to it? And why try to qualify it? Something isn't right there, don't you think?
Yes. I quoted the thing that's not quite right. Here it is again:
Quoting Apollodorus
I quoted it in my first post.
You're pretending to be more reasonable than you evidentially are being.
And you keep replying, over and over and over. And yet, none of your replies justify this level of speculation.
To answer the OP question? How else can we determine whether or not the atheist entertains the hope that there is no God? And why does it bother you so much?
It wasn't me who brought up the issue of "degree in cognitive psych". How does it answer the OP question or anything?
How does it answer anything? Well, that was a response to this:
Quoting Apollodorus
...sounds pretty relevant to me. You speculated about fears people have that they don't admit, and appealed to psychologists. 180 proof has a degree in cognitive psychology.
I read that as a pretty reasonable response.
I don't. Anyone can have a degree in anything. Stating "I have a degree" isn't an argument in this context.
From the statement "I have a degree" it doesn't logically follow that atheists can't have a hope that there is no God or that they can't have a fear of the idea of God.
Is this an attempt at the Chewbacca Defense?
180 Proof's degree in psychology is relevant to this:
Quoting Apollodorus
It doesn't answer the question. And it doesn't justify his objection to my suggestion that some atheists may be motivated by a feeling of fear.
Is he saying that atheists can not be motivated by feelings of hope or fear?
Normally, when you hope for something not to happen, you do so out of fear of it happening. Does a degree in psych disprove that? No, therefore it is irrelevant.
If he had said "I've got a degree in psych therefore I know so and so" it would have been a different matter. But he didn't. And I don't believe he could have done. How can a degree in psych enable anyone to assert that atheists never feel hope or fear???
Quoting Apollodorus
You offered a pretense of a rebuttal to this, but none of it had to do with what's on the table.
Quoting Apollodorus
That's quite a different goal post than this:
Quoting Apollodorus
Quoting Apollodorus
That doesn't quite sound correct to me. What is your reasoning behind it?
Quoting Apollodorus
In the particulars, that's not on the table (see above).
But the question is epistemically backwards. It is not necessary to disprove an unwarranted claim.
There is nothing to be sorry about. You are entitled to your views and others are also entitled to their own views.
In my view, holding a "degree in cognitive psych" has nothing to do with anything.
I disagree with your statement. You haven't proved that a degree in psych makes any difference to anything. And you haven't convinced anyone.
You did try, which is fair enough. But you failed and that is that. What more can I say?
Well, if that's what your "degree in cognitive psych" amounts to, calling everyone else sick, then I'm afraid it only proves my point. So, you needn't bother.
And if by "dialectics" you mean Marxism, I don't need that, thank you very much. Have you tried it on yourself? Perhaps you should. "Physician heal thyself" as they say. That's what you took up psychology for, isn't it?
Wrong. In your view:
Quoting Apollodorus
...psychologists corroborate your story. You're being disingenuous.
It's also mighty suspicious that I've plainly and repetitively stated what's relevant here, and you went to this nonsense about proving your claim wrong; it's almost like you have a blind spot that you were the one appealing to psychologists.
You don't get it, do you? I meant a professional psychologist not someone holding a degree in psychology. As I said, anyone can have a degree in anything. That doesn't mean anything. Marx had a degree in philosophy but that didn't even get him a job. He had to take up journalism instead.
Fer chrissakes! :lol:
Professional psychologists hold degrees in psychology. You were arguing that the degree was irrelevant.
Quoting Apollodorus
No, you're claiming that it doesn't mean anything. But of course it means something. I have a degree in math (minor) and computer science (major); in obtaining these, I have learned about math and computer science beyond the high school level. 180 Proof has a degree in cognitive psychology; that implies analogously that 180 Proof should have learned about those things in attaining his degree.
Yes, anyone can have a degree in anything. But degrees teach you things. That's relevant. But anyone can claim a group of professionals backs up their random internet guy theories. And that doesn't mean they actually do.
You fall in the same epistemic trap over and over and over. You must support the views you advance before they are worthy of being taken seriously. A proper, rational response to a challenge is to give support. You're not doing that. Your response to a challenge is to try to attack the challengers, not support your views.
You've got this whole thing backwards. Your opinions are worthless unless they are supported; a lack of proof of being wrong is not support. This is not about proving you wrong. This is about demonstrating you have something valuable to say in the first place.
And I've yet to see any such demonstration. You're too busy saying what doesn't prove you wrong to bother with reasons to believe you're right.
:rofl: :up:
What's there to be disingenuous about? And what "ad hominems"? I actually defended you when someone said you should be banned. I'm not like you, you know.
As for your "degree in cognitive psych" we can see of what value that is in proving your point.
I haven't noticed anyone "attacking you" at all so I've no idea what you're talking about. As I said, you're wasting your time. Claiming that atheists have no hopes or fears is just irrational. They would need to be a very special kind of people for that to be the case. Even you ought to realize that. But never mind.
Avoid epistemic double standards... whatever burden you think the "other guy" has in proving you wrong had better be a burden you met yourself to make the claim in the first place.
That's the basic idea behind Hitchen's razor: "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."
-----------------
I think the religious have a much bigger investment in having a god not to exist, than to exist.
If god exists, the religious have no choice other than having an afterlife spent either in eternal suffering in Hell, or in eternal suffering in Heaven.
You may be wondering what suffering exists in Heaven. Well, the sameness, the monotoneness of forever. Try humming the same tune for a day, and you'll go insane. Imagine the most complex, complicated, intriguing life you can, and do it again and again over and over a thousand, a million, a billion times, and then infinite times.... you see my point. Everlasting life is horror, unimaginable horror for the human mind.
So the religious have much greater need in a hope that God not exist, than the atheists; and if the religious still hope He does, then so be it. Don't say I did not warn you.
That's possible.
Quoting Apollodorus
You're misinterpreting. Here's what you're doing:
Quoting Apollodorus
...you're morphing what I did say into something easier to refute... you're doing this in reaction to being challenged. Nowhere did I make the claim that atheists have no hopes or fears.
Quoting Apollodorus
Of course I realize atheists have hopes and fears. They're just people.
But I also realize that you said this:
Quoting Apollodorus
...there's a gigantic leap between an atheist having an irrational fear of spiders and hoping his favorite restaurant is still open, to it being a big part of atheism that atheists are afraid of the thought of there being something higher than themselves.
The thing you haven't justified is that thing about it being a big part of atheism that atheists are afraid of the thought of there being something higher than themselves.
Pretending that all you said was that sometimes atheists fear things isn't going to fly.
Exactly. So why deny it? You said that degrees in cognitive psych prove that to be untrue. Which is simply not true. So, you're contradicting yourself.
Quoting Apollodorus
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting Apollodorus
Those two things are separated by only one post in this thread; 180 Proof's post. The quote I have from 180 Proof is the exact quote you gave in your reply to him.
I read the antecedent of "those fears" is "of the thought of there being anything higher than themselves".
I find no reasonable reading of that where by "those fears":
Quoting Apollodorus
...you simply mean an atheist's irrational fear of spiders. But I find it suspicious that you should pretend you did.
Why all of the tricks? Why the gaslighting attempts? What's so wrong with just supporting the claim you made?
Yeah, I know what your reading is but if it's wrong it's wrong. You can't make a wrong right. So, what's your agenda? Why not say something that makes sense for a change and then we carry on the conversation like two grown ups instead of resorting to kindergarten tricks that don't lead anywhere. You haven't even convinced yourself so how on earth do you think you can convince others???
Why all of the tricks? Why the gaslighting attempts? What's so wrong with just supporting the claims you made? Because you can't that's why. And your degree in cognitive psych just can't help you. Maybe you should get some other degree and try again.
And why are you using that weird name if you've got nothing to hide?
That doesn't matter, for 'God' cannot exist. What is Fundamental cannot have parts. Not even something very simply composite can be First as the Absolute.
That does me no good. It's possible that I'm wrong, but the reading is direct, so it's justified. The justification from a straightforward reading of the text is also pretty solid... I'm not quote mining, and I'm following the precise chain of replies, including even the specific text you chose to quote.
Quoting Apollodorus
I've multiple agendas here. Dissuading bad epistemic practices is one.
Simply asking you to defend your original claim is another:
Quoting Apollodorus
Where does this claim come from? What does it mean for it to be true? Under what conditions do we say it's true? Do those conditions hold? Under what conditions do we say it's false? Since you mentioned psychologists, I am not a psychologist, but as I'm aware we can actually test for fear responses... can we test fear responses for the thought of higher beings? Or we can sanity check this... what does "higher" even mean here... does it suggest atheists would be scared of SETI? If so, how come atheists in practice tend to be interested in SETI?
There are all kinds of things we could discuss to honestly explore the veracity of your claim; on both sides. Maybe there are experiments showing fight or flight response to religious iconography of particular sorts. Or maybe they don't; and maybe this indicates you're wrong. Those are the kinds of things an honest exploration in the veracity of the claim you made looks like.
Quoting Apollodorus
...because you're not discussing it seriously. You're not saying "my opinion is backed by this psychology study". You're not explaining the fear response. You're not defining what you mean by a higher power.
You're spending all of your time asking what people's agendas are, and saying that 180 Proof's degree in psychology doesn't disprove anything. You're morphing your claim every post and trying to peg people to straw men versions of it. None of this has to do with the thing you originally claimed being true. And this, in my opinion that you acknowledged I'm entitled to, is because you're too busy trying to say what doesn't prove you wrong to be bothered by actually discussing why you should be treated seriously.
Nobody has to knock the legs out from under your theory if it doesn't have a leg to stand on in the first place.
Quoting Apollodorus
Why does it not make sense to you that in order to have your opinion treated seriously, you must first support it?
Neither are you. If a degree in cognitive psych doesn't help you prove your case then what's the point? How can you demand of others what you yourself are unable to provide?
And I don't need to defend anything. I don't feel I'm under attack at all and I'm not attacking anyone. You're barking at the wrong tree.
You have a warped view of what's going on.
You have made a claim. You have not supported it. Therefore, your claim can be dismissed.
I have made a claim as well. I have claimed that you have not supported your claim. My claim is testable; had you offered support for theory, it would appear in the two pages of post history here on this board. That can be scanned in minutes. Such a scan reveals a lack of support for your claim.
Quoting Apollodorus
I don't really have to provide it; it's already here in the forum. Anyone can click on that "7", that "8", and that "9", and confirm what I saw for themselves... that you have offered no support for your opinion.
Quoting Apollodorus
Sure. But you don't need to be taken seriously either.
If all you're after is slinging your opinion onto the pages here, you're done. Does that suggest that I can just chock up all of your responses to me as just being bored and trolling? I'm actually fine with that.
You are delusional. I don't need to support anything and I don't care about your claims. I told you many times you're wasting your time.
I only ever mention my cog. psych. master's to counter fatuous asides like this one and ad hominem insinuations such as "fear" as a motive for holding one position or another. Only someone without the requisite intellectual competence to defeat, or even validly challenge, a position s/he disagrees with resorts to spurious psychologizing and projection like you do/have done. My CV is not an argument; that's just me calling you out epistemically on your bullshit, Apollodoofus.
Quoting Apollodorus
So the troll confesses! (Kiss of death (banning) on a philosophy forum – or ought to be) Okay. I won't waste anymore of your time or my own on you, Apollodoofus, here or on any other thread. Good fuckin' luck with that.
Unfortunately, your cog. psych. doesn't counter anything apart from your own fallacies. The "ad hominems" are in your head. And you are again claiming that atheists feel no hope or fear, which rather contradicts your own spurious claims.
People change from one religion or political system to another all the time. And that involves choice. Why people choose something is a different matter. But the question was whether atheists hope that there is no God. You only hope something is not there when you're afraid of it. Otherwise you wouldn't care.
In the beginning of my transition to atheism, that wasn't the case. Speaking for myself, I got into philosophy because I wanted to justify my religious beliefs, so it was the opposite. I wanted God to exist and stubbornly stuck with it until I was forced to admit none of the theistic/fideistic arguments were convincing.
At this point, it sucks that I'll cease to exist after a short period of life on Earth as well as some other comforting thoughts, but it also means there is no hell. That's one of the Christian teachings that was most disturbing to me, it's good hell doesn't exist. The God of the Bible is more like the Devil in my current view, so I don't want him to exist.
I don't take that seriously.
Quoting Apollodorus
Okay, so you don't care about my claims (though for some odd reason you replied anyway). But why then should you expect me to care about your unsupported claims? Do you not see how this is connected?
Or, if you don't expect me to care about your unsupported claims, then what exactly is your complaint with me? I've already told you I'm perfectly content with the fact that you are not concerned with being taken seriously (which is simply another way to spell "I don't care about your claims"). What's the purpose of this reply?
Quoting Apollodorus
Possibly. I gave you that reply before too.
I hope that car is not still blocking my driveway by the time I head out.
People change views when they think they have compelling new information, not because they 'choose' to swap views. Belief is not like a TV remote control with the selection of 'atheism' or 'theism' as a form of channel hopping.
People stop believing in God when they have reasons that convince them and visa versa. 'Fear' obviously can't work as a reason for not believing in something because you have to believe in God in order to fear it.
Quoting Apollodorus
I would think it is impossible to disbelief something by hoping it is not so. You are either convinced something is true or you are not convinced. This is one of the reasons why Pascal's Wager is silly. You can't choose who you love, or what you believe.
Quoting Apollodorus
This one is interesting. You could also not want something be there because you hate it, or are angry with it, or you think it is terribly sad, or you think it is defective.
I think atheism is a false concept on a rational basis. Because there is an issue with the official definition in the dictionary which renders the term “atheist” pretty useless.
It states “ disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.” but it fails to qualify what god/gods it is a lack of belief in?
Is it a physical person? Is it the universe? Is it an object or a subject or a place or a thing? Or is it nature or energy?
In order to reject a god you must have a preconceived idea of what that god is. When you reject Christian god you are rejecting all the characteristics of said god outlined in its doctrine -the bible or popular Christian culture - namely that he is a man (person) with a beard that floats around asking men to kill their sons as a proof of faith, evicting couples from gardens, causing disease and catastrophe and promising paradise etc.
But there are hundreds of religions. Should we not go about proving the falsity of each of them before we call ourselves a true “ultimate” “all encompassing” atheist. Furthermore it’s not like religions are static, eternal or finite in number. Old ones are lost to history and new ones develop continuously.
If I create a religion tomorrow - no one is as of yet atheist to it. Only agnostic. Sure they can question me on my doctrine until we reach a point at which they either agree or disagree and so the religion spreads or is rejected.
Suppose you have a religion with no authoritarian figure head. But rather a set of principles and philosophies. It is inherently more difficult to refute because whilst say “ a giant man in the clouds” is absurd given our current knowledge, the existence of “cycles of suffering”, “a means of mental training (meditation) in order to avoid suffering and the idea that nature recycles dead inanimate material into living creatures, is a bit more reasonable and harder to contest. It approaches something loosely scientific and can be argued with reason.”
So if a religion doesn’t require a “personified” god that can speak and behave like a human as we see in Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism etc then what’s to stop us from replacing “god” with the term “nature” (of reality). Surely “everything” is a good substitute for “god”. Everything = all energy (omnipotence), all places (omnipresence) and all information/interactions (omniscience)
Then we could have a strict and conserved dogma just like every other religion but rather then one based on “blind faith” without openness to discussion and questioning, we could have one based on “I’ll believe it when I see it.” A dogma that states if you can show someone that something is universally true (can be repeated, is consistent, not influenced by bias and variables) then it will be accepted as a correct understanding of our god (nature) unless later improved or proven otherwise.
Enter: science. The new religion so far removed from its ancestors that we don’t even define it as such. Much less controlling, manipulative and oppressive and much more fostering of inquiry and discussion and revelation.
In essence if you aren’t god yourself (omniscient and all knowing) and keeping it very quiet, then you are agnostic (not all knowing/don’t know) but you can’t be atheist (refuse to know) towards all religions because it’s just a blind rejection of any possible description of reality which is absurd. Atheism is ignorance, Agnosticism is the process of inquiry and theism is well, I’m agnostic so I don’t know what theism is. Theism is I guess the end of our pursuit to understand the entirety of the universe - the answer to all of our questions.
That's not "obvious" at all. You may start not knowing or believing anything but still find an idea frightening and you push it out of your thoughts. By suppressing an idea that has a negative connotation for you, you may end up convincing yourself that the thing represented by that idea doesn't exist or shouldn't exist. People say all the time things like "this can't be true" even when it is. IMHO this tends to prove my point.
I tend to agree with that. People often have a fear of the unknown and, in particular, of something they have no control over. So, instead of engaging with the reality of it they try to suppress it and end up denying its existence. It's a common psychological defense mechanism that comes into operation in many other cases not just in atheism.
I notice you use the words 'you may' to indicate that this is not certain. I agree with you this is far from certain. When people say things like 'this can't be true' they usually believe it first on order to bury it with a denial. If you were to argue that atheists actually believe in God but deny his nature because of fear or hatred, you would have a more traditional apologist's argument with a psychological component. Anyway this is getting silly since it doesn't actually matter. Thank you for the argument.
The atheist rejects theism (maybe even deism too if she is consistently inclusive), or what theists claim about (their) g/G because those claims are either incoherent, insufficiently warranted or demonstrably false. Atheism, as I understand it, denotes a 2nd order denial of what 1st order theism affirms about g/G. It's simply not the case that the atheist must have her own conception of g/G in order to reject the theistic (and also deistic) conception of g/G on its own terms. For instance, I don't need know "what $%#&!@ is" in order to disbelieve you when you say "$%#&!@ created the world" or "$%#&!@ says X is right and Y is wrong" when the evidence entailed by what you say about $%#&!@ is lacking or uncorroborated.
Dictionary definitions are shorthands of common usage and often caricature-like simplifications compared to more technical or specialized usage. 'Atheism' is no different. You're only shadowboxing with your own "preconceived idea", Benj96, while not addressing atheism as (many? most? very strict?) atheists – nonbelievers – actually use the term. We do not "reject whatever g/G is" but rather we reject only what you "believers" say about g/G.
[quote=Stephen Roberts]I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."[/quote]
Words do not have meaning, they have usage. Dictionaries are pretty limited. Most atheists I know would say they have not heard a good reason to accept the proposition that a God of any kind exists. Once they hear one they can accept, they may change their mind.
Quoting Benj96
I think that's a bit concrete. Incidentally Christians are atheists too; about all the other God claims and the many God's they have not heard of. How can they commit to one narrow version when they don't know all of them? An atheist would argue that they have yet to hear of any God they believe in. As an atheist I would say, keep them coming and I will consider them. But it is safe to say I have no reason to accept the proposition that a god exists.
Quoting Benj96
Why limit yourself to this? There are thousands of versions just of Christianity. They hold different views on morality and on what God wants and who God is. You really can't say there is such a thing as Christianity. What there is are a range of beliefs under a common title. Some Christians try to kill each other. Some are pro abortion. Some think abortion is evil. Some are members of the KKK, some follow Martin Luther King. Some believe the Bible is literally true others think it is just an allegory. These are different faiths. Possibly different religions.
Quoting Benj96
You have a concrete version of atheism. Did you grow up in a religious household? An atheist doesn't generally 'refuse to know' that seems to be a clumsy and fallacious statement. Maybe you didn't mean it that way.
There are many forms of atheism, the best in my view argue that there is no reason to accept the proposition that a deity exists. Incidentally atheism and agnosticism address two different categories. The atheism part addresses the belief component the agnostic addresses the knowledge component. This is why there are people who call themselves agnostic atheists. I would put myself into this category. I can't know if there is or is not a god (just as I can't know if there are or are not aliens) but I don't have good reason to believe in one. It's pretty simple. You can't choose your beliefs. Most agnostics in my view are atheists. They may say they don't know but technically they do not have a belief in any kind of god. All they are addressing with agnosticism is the knowledge component.
Yes, but as far as I am aware, denial is often a fear reaction. It is a function of the defense mechanism that seeks to protect the ego from things that the individual cannot cope with or thinks it cannot cope with.
It may well be that some atheists reject the idea of God on “rational” grounds. But not all people are rational, many are emotional and react emotionally to ideas and other things.
I understand what your personal opinion is, but is there any scientific reason to exclude the possibility of that denial being rooted in fear, anxiety, etc. when those emotions often result in denial?
Denial is not always a fear reaction, so atheism is not always a fear reaction. So associating fear based denial with atheism is fallacious.
Quoting Apollodorus
Sure, you would have to ask the person what the reasons for their atheism. If you didn’t believe them and want to deny what they say and posit fear based denial as their reason then you would have to demonstrate that to be the case. (And no, the fact that it is possible does not demonstrate this).
Quoting Apollodorus
There is no “scientific” reason to exclude the possibility, but only the possibility. All we could say is that that is one possibility until we get more information to conclude one possibility over the others.
Quoting 180 Proof
If one is an atheist because theistic claims of God are false, then what matters of fact are that atheist in denial of?
If. But that hasn't been established, has it? Where is the evidence that no atheist ever rejects the idea of God out of fear?
Talking about yourself again aren't you?
So, I'm asking for a scientific reason and you call that "unreasonable"?
Exactly. We can't exclude the possibility on logical or philosophical grounds.
I never said "always". I said "denial is often a fear reaction". That's an established psychological fact.
Yes, it would be overreaching to say it wasn’t at least possible.
Quoting Apollodorus
I’m not saying you did, I intended only to clarify. I don’t know how often denial is a fear reaction compared to other sources of denial but yes I think denial and fear are psychologically linked.
We agree on these two points. I’ll wait for you to respond to the rest of what I said.
Quoting Percy Bysshe Shelley (1811)
The Ego And The Mechanisms Of Defense by A Freud explains exactly how defense mechanisms work. "Defense motivated by fear", etc.
"Denial is often a fear reaction" - The Essential Guide to Defense Mechanisms | Psychology Today
There is a fine line between "ordinary" and "clinical" that can only be established on a case-to-case basis.
But it is wrong to assert that denial can't be motivated by fear.
Actually, that's an interesting statement. I tend to believe that fear can work in both directions. Some people believe in God as a result of fear while others may deny God's existence out of fear that he might actually exist.
I think atheists don't want god to exist in the same way that theist hope god will forgive them.
Nothing. I posted a comment expressing my personal view after which I was attacked for doing so as seems to be standard procedure here.
I think that's wishful thinking. In my experience, if people want to attack you because you've expressed a view that is incompatible with their own ideology or mode of thinking they'll attack you no matter what.
As I said, I saw this as an informal exchange of views not as a formal discussion or debate. I wouldn't have had the time for that anyway.
I could have put my view in more precise or more technical language but I'm not particularly fond of jargon and I didn't feel that to be necessary. I still think that the OP term "hope" may be taken to imply fear in some form or other. Normally, when we hope something it means we fear that the opposite might happen. When we really like something we have, we consciously or subconsciously fear that we might lose it, etc. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter though. I don't think it's wise for people to hold a grudge against one another just for holding different views. That isn't what a philosophy forum, or any forum, should be about.
Maybe some such disbelievers can be found? An odd kind of wishful thinking?
Doesn't seem all that likely, though, or at least uncommon.
Plenty reasons to disregard the Vedic Shiva, the Avestan Ahura Mazda, the Bhagavad Gitan Vishnu, the Biblical Yahweh, the Quranic Allah, Eru/Ilúvatar of The Silmarillion, ...
:100: Agreed.
While an atheist may hope he's not wrong out of fear of finding a god on the other side, he doesn't really then go the extra step of hoping god doesn't exist just because he doesn't want a god for some other fearful reason (the OP, as I understood it). To not want god for fear of what might happen if you are wrong, is much different than not wanting god simply because you don't want god. What, in the latter case, would you possibly be afraid of?
Most atheists I know wish there was a god, thinking he'd come down here and spank the shit out of all his dumb-ass followers who violate his tenants on a daily basis.
That's what it is anyway. I rarely see discussions here leading to anything, to be quite honest. But I may be wrong.
You'll be surprised at the amount of subconscious baggage some people carry around with them without ever realizing.
Sure. And let's not forget all those atheist saints like Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot and their millions of followers.
You're just proving my point. Atheists are more likely to wish they were wrong than to hope they are right.
I suspect most atheists just don't know. They certainly can't prove that there is no God and I doubt many of them have even tried. Most people are really lazy when it comes to these matters.
:100: :up:
I thought that was an agnostic?
Quoting Apollodorus
They are the same as theist in that regard, for they can't prove there is a god.
Quoting Apollodorus
Do you have any evidence to support your doubt? Most atheists I know tried damn hard but logic and reason just wouldn't let them do it. Hell, many of them were raised deep in it, and were believers.
Quoting Apollodorus
Indeed. Thinking can be hard. It's a lot easier to let go and let god.
No. The agnostic is an atheist who admits that he doesn't know.
Quoting James Riley
I don't think Marx ever thought about it. Most likely he never believed. If you start from the unexamined premise that religion is "the opium of the people", then you don't think about it. It is like a religious belief that you accept on faith. In my experience, honest and thoughtful atheists tend to admit that, ultimately, they don't know.
You just said:
Quoting Apollodorus
Doh!
Quoting Apollodorus
I'm beginning to see where Tim Wood is coming from. If we are to tie the specific to the general, then you end up conflating the disparate. Please don't be so fundamentally stupid as to run to Marx when discussing atheism generally. That's like me running to Hitler when discussing Christianity generally.
Quoting Apollodorus
In my experience, most theists are not honest or thoughtful.
And I'm beginning to see that you're getting angry for your own inability to convince anyone, perhaps not even yourself.
I simply gave Marx as a well-known example of unthinking atheist.
Hitler and Christianity is a totally different story. If you were to run to Hitler in a discussion on religion that would be "fundamentally stupid" indeed.
And yes, most atheists are agnostics who refuse to admit that they don't know.
I'm not angry at all. I've convinced lots of honest, thoughtful people.
Quoting Apollodorus
I don't believe you. I think you gave Marx because he's your boogey man and easy to paint. It's lazy. And to say he's "unthinking" demonstrates your dishonesty; either that or your ignorance. I'm no fan of Marx, but I'd never say he was unthinking. That would make me stupid.
Quoting Apollodorus
An analogy, by definition, is not the thing itself. It is no argument to simply point that out. Rather, it is incumbent upon those who wish to defeat it to draw a distinction with a relevant difference. To do that, you would have to understand the purpose for which it was offered. Apparently it flew right over your dualistic mind.
Quoting Apollodorus
Yeah, and most theists don't think or admit they don't know. I'd rather the honesty of those who aren't sure. And besides, this thread isn't about "most atheists" who you suspect (without evidence) are agnostics; it's about the atheists that aren't agonistic. See OP.
I've got absolutely nothing against you. I just happen to disagree with your statements. I'm sure even you would disagree if you cared to look at what you are saying:
Quoting James Riley
I never said "Marx was unthinking". I said "unthinking atheist", i.e. a person who was an atheist from the start, not as a result of thinking about it. That was precisely why I chose him as an example. You are confusing yourself. Or maybe you're just a bit tired.
I was raised to be a christian, dragged to more than a few churches. Eventually, as a teenager, I got bored enough to actually read the bible, not selectively, but cover to cover. It was interesting, so much so that I was compelled to concurrently read multiple versions/iterations of the bible, so as to compare and contrast the language used, with the hope of gleaning a more accurate understanding.
Being full of teenage hormones and a strong natural sense of justice/fairness, I was more than taken aback by the plethora of blatant contradictions I found in the bible, not to mention the horrific behavior of the main and ancillary characters. I knew there were some in there (contradictions) , I'd encountered a few previously, but in my quest to better comprehend the literary work and thus the derivative ideologies, I had gone about it with as open and objective a mind as I could manage. Suffice it to say that the end result was my complete and total atheism, at least in regard to the Abrahamic/biblical "god".
It wasn't merely the contradictions, the imperfect nature of what should've been the perfect work of a perfect entity, that drove me so far from belief, but more so the childish and disgusting, outright repulsive personality of this god thing.
Do I hope that your terrible magic sky daddy doesn't exist? Obviously, but not actively or often, I so very rarely to never think about it. If you've actually read the bible, in its entirety, in as short a period of time as you can manage, you would be insane to wish for such an entity to have any basis in reality, unless of course, you were some sort of immoral masochistic sociopath.
You parse a hair too thin. He was born Jewish, the family changed to Christianity, he was baptized, and grew up in a secular environment of philosophy which, I'm pretty sure, did not make him an unthinking atheist. I'd say the burden would be upon you to show that he was. But you've got nothing.
Quoting Apollodorus
Then you chose poorly. I think you chose Marx, as I said, because he is your go-to when trying to saddle atheists with all kinds of other baggage irrelevant to the merits of the discussion. It's a distraction when you are getting your ass handed to you in argument.
Quoting Apollodorus
And there's the loss. :smile:
Well, at least you seem honest enough to admit that hope is an element of atheism.
However, I would point out that the conception of God in the Christian Gospels is not the same as that of God in the Hebrew Bible.
It's the opinion of historians and scholars. But if you think you know better, that's OK with me.
Oh, okay. "Historians and scholars" say Marx arrived at atheism without thought. Gotcha. I would never pretend to question historians and scholars.
As I said, take a better look at your own statements:
Quoting James Riley
No logic there at all. You're constructing a narrative there from unrelated bits of information.
Young Germans at the time were often atheists because that was the new fashion in that period, not because they had analyzed religion and found it to be unscientific or whatever. The same happens even today. Atheists aren't any more intelligent or thoughtful than theists.
Tim Wood tried to teach you about extrapolating from the specific to the general and back again. I mentioned it, but I think that, and logic in general, are over your head. You go from atheism to Marx, from Marx back to young Germans at the time, blah blah blah. You have absolutely know evidence that Marx came to his atheism in an unthinking manner. You made some vague reference to "historians and scholars" but that dog won't hunt. I gave you my anecdotal experience of atheists, and how not a one came to it in an unthinking manner. Most were Christians at one time. See Seditious, above. I pointed out how Marx was not raised in a vacuum, but was exposed to much theology. Most people (you might be an exception) think about their decisions. So foreign that may be to you, that you can't fathom it. After all, you are a Christian, aren't you? Did you come to a sky being through faith? I get that. But you certainly didn't get there through logical thought.
But let me tell you and any reader what is going on here: Apollodorus, you are like the Christian who says that anyone who doesn't act in accord with Christian values isn't really a Christian. You know, like the Vatican, circa 13th Century, et seq. Anyone who is an atheist is really an agnostic. Anyone who is an atheist is unthinkingly so. Anyone who doesn't see it your way is illogical or constructing a narrative from unrelated bits of information. But it's not true, Apollodorus. I didn't create a narrative. I just cited some Wiki crap about Marx's early years, showing you that he wasn't in some secular, unthinking vacuum.
You've been spanked. You keep digging. And digging. You are in over your head. Let it go. If you don't, I will have to add you to my short but growing list of people on here who have lost all credibility and who no longer warrant my attention.
You cited it from Wikipedia and in so doing you made it your narrative. What's the point in saying "he was born Jewish"? His father had already converted to Christianity before he was born. So, what?
You have no idea what my religion is. You're making it all up. And why are you defending Marx? You must be either some sort of neo-Marxist or something along those lines.
And anyway, @Seditious has already admitted that he is an atheist who hopes that God doesn't exist. So, that already answers the question. There is nothing more to be said unless you want to start a new thread.
So what? So, if a person is born and raised a theist and then switches, it is more likely than not that the change was thinking, not unthinking. You say Marx was an unthinking atheist, but you've got exactly squat to show for it.
Quoting Apollodorus
I didn't make up anything. I asked: "you are a Christian, aren't you?
Quoting Apollodorus
Now you make my point about why you brought up Marx. It had nothing to do with him being an atheist who served to make your argument. It was so you could try to cast shade on my argument about atheism with your "commie bad" BS. You are so transparent and predictable.
Quoting Apollodorus
Seditious admitted no such thing. He said he doesn't "want your terrible magic sky daddy" to exist, and the end result of his extensive thought was his complete and total atheism, at least in regard to the Abrahamic/biblical "god". This was after expressing concerns about a biblical demonstration of blatant contradictions, horrific behavior, and the childish and disgusting, outright repulsive personality of this god thing. You'd have to be some sort of immoral masochistic sociopath to want such a "god".
So again, Apollodorus, you stand corrected. Only now you have started misstating what I and other's have said. You can disagree all day long, but when you start with those tactics, and the "commie bad" shit, you have lost your credibility. You are now beneath me and no longer warrant my time. Buh bye.
That was pretty entertaining.
There are crusty, dogmatic atheists, refective, philosophical atheists and simple, untheorized atheists. Many atheists don't employ any real arguments, they were simply brought up secular and have never thought God was a useful option. Others earned their atheism after careful investigation and hard thinking.
What I do know is there are some people who resent atheism (it upsets them) and it fits into a broader culture war against secularism. Such people are often on the look out for ideas to slander an atheist's motivations or belief system.
One such slander is that atheists are all secret believers. Another is that they are Communists (very popular in the 1950's). Another is that they are afraid of God and therefore repressed theists, living in denial. Yet another is that they are egomaniacs who don't have room in their lives for someone more powerful than them. That's my favorite one.
And on it goes. I have heard most of these lazy ad hominems many times and they are generally provided when people want to avoid engaging with ideas.
Well said!
That's a blatant lie. Seditious said exactly what I said he did:
Quoting Seditious
So, the BS is entirely yours Mr Riley. Anyway, I think you should calm down. There is no need to foam at the mouth just because you've failed to convince people. You're beginning to sound like Nation of Islam or the Taliban.
I see what you mean. But why is it "slander" to try to find an explanation for atheism? Most people do believe in God. Atheists are an exception. Therefore it is legitimate to find an explanation for this exception. Psychology does that all the time.
I think precisely because atheists come in many shapes and forms we shouldn't dismiss out of hand the possibility that at least some of them have a conscious or unconscious hope or desire for God not to exist. In fact, as we have just seen, to atheists like @Seditious this is "obvious".
But I agree that most "discussions" tend to end in ad hominems and that shouldn't be the case, especially on a philosophy forum.
No, you said "God". He didn't say God. He qualified his comment to the Abrahamic god. That's why I asked if you were Christian. I assumed you had your panties all up in a knot because that's the only god you know. So I asked. You didn't answer.
If most "discussions" tend to end in ad hominems and that shouldn't be the case, especially on a philosophy forum, then it's probably because you lack analytic thinking skills and are over your head. At least I hope that's what it is. Otherwise, your misquoting people, or saying things they didn't say, is trolling.
My experience with trolls is, they must get the last word. So the floor will be yours.
I always try to focus not on who said what, but what was said. That seems more logical to me. However, once in a great while, I am forced to consider who said what, if only because they are a waste of time and incapable of reasoned argument, or the understanding of it. It’s such a drag because I’m one of those people who naturally doesn’t focus on names. So, when I feel compelled to remember someone, so I don’t waste my time any longer, it is, itself, time consuming. I’m still feeling my way around TPF, but so far:
Synthesis, check;
3017amen, check;
Apollodorus, check.
Hopefully the list doesn’t get too long.
He said "sky daddy". "Sky daddy" is a well-known slang name for God:
"The use of the mundane sky and extremely familiar daddy in place of lofty terms such as God in Heaven or God the Father is intended disrespectfully, mocking (and potentially offending) those who might believe in such a figure" sky daddy Wiktionary
You can tell as many lies as you wish, Mr Riley. That won't change the facts.
Here's the record. I will emphasis the relevant portions for you:
"TL;DR: upon close inspection of the biblical god, it quickly becomes apparent it was fashioned after Man's lesser-desirable traits, making the worship thereof foolish at best.
I was raised to be a christian, dragged to more than a few churches. Eventually, as a teenager, I got bored enough to actually read the bible, not selectively, but cover to cover. It was interesting, so much so that I was compelled to concurrently read multiple versions/iterations of the bible, so as to compare and contrast the language used, with the hope of gleaning a more accurate understanding.
Being full of teenage hormones and a strong natural sense of justice/fairness, I was more than taken aback by the plethora of blatant contradictions I found in the bible, not to mention the horrific behavior of the main and ancillary characters. I knew there were some in there (contradictions) , I'd encountered a few previously, but in my quest to better comprehend the literary work and thus the derivative ideologies, I had gone about it with as open and objective a mind as I could manage. Suffice it to say that the end result was my complete and total atheism, at least in regard to the Abrahamic/biblical "god".
It wasn't merely the contradictions, the imperfect nature of what should've been the perfect work of a perfect entity, that drove me so far from belief, but more so the childish and disgusting, outright repulsive personality of this god thing.
Do I hope that your terrible magic sky daddy doesn't exist? Obviously, but not actively or often, I so very rarely to never think about it. If you've actually read the bible, in its entirety, in as short a period of time as you can manage, you would be insane to wish for such an entity to have any basis in reality, unless of course, you were some sort of immoral masochistic sociopath."
You stand corrected.
No. The relevant portion is this:
"Do I hope that your terrible magic sky daddy [God] doesn't exist? Obviously "
Hope that God (or "sky daddy") doesn't exist is not only factual but "obvious" to atheists like Seditious.
That's what that statement means to the rest of us. But maybe you are Irish or something. Which is not my fault.
The record speaks for itself and it's says you are a liar.
Not at all. The record doesn't say that. You say that. And we've seen what your statements are worth. As I said, you need to calm down, you are only aggravating yourself and making your condition worse.
Thank you for your concern for me, Apollodorus. I will take this under advisement.
Look at your own picture, you will immediately understand what I mean. Or maybe not. In which case it's probably too late.
Aha. Atheism is a condition. It can be treated, much like homosexuality and kleptomania and the common cold.
Apollodorus, I saw several men (they may be women, or anywhere on the non-binary spectrum; and I shall say this several-word reference every time I indicate a human being in my texts, because I a so fucking fed up with the progressive protocol of proper political correctness) fall out from arguing with you.
This is because you seem to be impervious to logic, impervious to considering facts and arguments, you can't see reason if it bit you on the leg, and your only, and I say only, saving grace is your faith, which is not logical, but hey, you got to go with what you got.
I've only seen one person on the forums who is equally as erudite in his (or her or anyone's who is on the non-binary spectrum) text, and who is so doggonedly impervious to other's arguments, and that was ImmanuelCan in the other forum. There is one difference: ImmanuelCan constantly referred to Plato and Socrates as the keepers of some secret wisdom, which the forum user ImmanuelCan was in possession of, but would never give out.
He was right, if I had the secret of the universe, I would not give it out, either.
So I propose to you to answer this: Are you in fact ImmanuelCan from the other forum? Yes, or no, it actually is neither here nor there, I'm just curious.
I am curious because I've noticed that several other of the psychopathic and / or mild mannered schizophrenics (in my opinion; I have no medical proof of this diagnosis) have migrated to this forum, for instance, johndoe7, another one, and one who is not schizophrenic but displays some mild forms of narcissistic rage is fooloso4, which rage does not come out as anger, but as a pretension of not understanding the simplest things when he is defeated in an argument.
Of the lot, I like, and look up to fooloso4 because he is very well read, and is smart, and logical, and reasonable (except when he or she or the being on the spectrum of nonbinary sexuality loses and argument), and then for long nobody, and you come in as a distant second as my favourite from that forum, oh, 180, he's smart too, and then there are the cannibals. I call them cannibals because there is so much rage, anger, and outright hatred on that forum.
Well, to be quite honest, this forum has always looked to me more like a social club for the retired and the unemployed, no offence intended.
In particular, what I've noticed here is that some members tend to read an awful lot into other people's comments that just isn't warranted by the original comments. Your comment seems to belong to this category.
Personally, I very rarely frequent online forums. I happen to work from home at the moment so I have a bit of spare time to engage in discussions here. However, my colleagues and I will be back in the office in June and I don't think you'll hear from me again. Additionally, I'm sure the forum admins or whoever they are can confirm that I'm not who you imagine I am.
I do agree that I tend to be outspoken and "impervious to other people's arguments". But this is only because I believe in freedom of speech, I allow others to present their views and I expect the same in return. It's as simple as that. So, I wouldn't be quite so paranoid if I were you.
:100: Anger management does not seem to be popular with the fanatical atheists here!
:joke:
Very true. That's an idea for a new thread: Does atheistic philosophy foster fanaticism, paranoia, and mindless violence?
Yep. Check out my profile I did one awhile back on that very same topic. We uncovered a lot of resentment, anger and other emotional deficiency kinds of things. Maslow would call it, deficiency motivation, as opposed to growth motivation.
I've always said we're boys and girls in adult bodies. Having a sense of Innocence, wonderment, curiosity, positive energy, are certainly among many virtues to behold. However, to act reasonably, as a so-called responsible adult, one must know which hat to wear when, by of course treating like cases likely and different cases differently.
That said, one must learn not to exclusively dichotomize things by staying in one emotional place too long. In this case, the angry Atheist adult who now decides to, for whatever reason, wallow in the bottomless chasm of self pity, does so at the risk of much shame and interminable misery, not to mention risking one's overall health and well-being.
In a world of volitional existence, one could argue that it's all about self-awareness and courage. The good news is that for the most part, we humans can be who we want to be.
Anyway, check out the thread if you want to revisit it...
I wouldn't say that's an objective statement. Atheists like Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot murdered more millions in one century than Christians did in the whole history of Christianity.
For example, Imperial (Christian) Russia's government executed 3,932 people for political crimes between 1825 and 1910 (nearly a century). Stalin's atheist regime executed 681,692 people for "anti-Soviet activities" in one year alone, 1937-1938.
Soviet Russia murdered more than 20 million and Maoist China more than 60 million of their own people.
Will do, thanks.
Kindly provide us with the statistic of the abortions that Christian women have had.
I can't talk to the statistical comparison. In your view is there a connection between atheism and mass murder or are mass murderers more likely to be atheists. Or both. Or is there another factor behind this?
. Friend ... it is simple ... do not put your mind in it ... do not complicate a simple phenomenon ... do not become more confused than you already are ...
. Atheism is ... a Negative Belief ... about existence ... It is a big NO to existence ... to Godliness ... to divineness ...
. Yes ... There is no God beyond ... God is in Here-Now ... Everything is God ... Everything is Brahma ... There is nothing in this whole existence whose nature is apart of Godliness ...
. Atheist are right in a sense ... but wrong in another sense ... Yes ... there is no God up there to judge you ... not because ... there is no divine quality in existence ... as atheist do say ... but because ... everything is God ... and everything is good as it is ... nothing is judged by anything ...
. You don't need a belief about that which is ... because that which is ... is ... regardless your so-called philosophical beliefs ...
That's a good question.
I suppose it would be arguable that religion aims to convert people and save them from ignorance and sin, not to murder them.
By contrast, atheism when combined with extremist political views, would more readily lend itself to the murder of political opponents.
Whether atheism would of itself lead to mass murder is debatable. However, given that atheism is often accompanied by extremist political views, this may render it more prone to commit destructive actions such as mass murder.
Maybe we should start a discussion to explore this a bit further.
Most Atheists are very unsophisticated in their thinking when it comes to justifying their belief system. For example, even their own conscious existence is essentially logically impossible to explain. Which goes back to their precarious and untenable position of the Atheist having to defend same (no EOG). They can't.
Must be some sort of issue with cognitive dysfunction as it relates to emotion... :joke:
Yes it is a belief system, we'll have to agree to disagree. Because logically you have to use reason to arrive at your conclusion. Hence, in logic, any atheist who posits God does not exist has the precarious and untenable position of defending same.
The most prudent thing an atheist could do is to say nothing about it. Otherwise, he has essentially endorsed another belief system.
As I said, the amusing and ironic part is that the Atheist can't even logically explain their own conscious existence, it's logically impossible. So how can they posit no God?
. First of all ... Atheism is a belief system ... it is not a fact ...
. And as all belief systems ... is unreal ... because one who believes ... does not know ... otherwise ... he would not believe ... in something which is a fact ... You cannot believe in the moon's existence ... Can you ... ?
. You see ... friend ... Philosophy ... is really for mediocre beings ... and ... you must consider yourself a philosopher ... hence ... your great comment ...
. But reading your sentence ... it teased me a big laugh ... reminding me ... the whole pathology of beliefs and ignorance ... reflected by you ... through you ... that ... humanity have ...
. You did not even read my answer ... you did not even respond to my answer ... you reacted to it ... you must be a reactionary ... a so-called activist ... trying to fight for any stupid belief ... for any stupid dogma ... that you find good with you ...
. You just vomited your prejudices ... because ... it did not make any sense ...
. I did say ... that Life ... is beyond any prejudice ... any stupid belief ... and you ... go to me with your philosophical rubbish ... declaring that I'm one with beliefs ...
. Life is beyond any philosophy ...
If there had been ever, then they must had been for their own personal reasons, which must have been their own private and psychological state.
Emotion would certainly seem to be a factor. You can tell from the way they tend to become agitated and turn irate the moment you challenge their preconceived ideas. And it isn't just @180 Proof
Well said. A tell tale sign of cognitive behavioral dysfunction/therapy usually surrounds ad hominem. Meaning, when backed into a corner, you attack the person and not the issue. Kind of like what politicians did in the recent election. They lost the issue in court, so let's attack the people and the process itself.
But you're right, their agitation persists for some unknown emotional reason :joke:
Well, that statement of yours definitely makes it sound like a proper philosophy forum.
But as a matter of fact I said this:
Quoting Apollodorus
So, I don't think it's me that goes on and on about it.
Don't be afraid of yourself!
LOL
Well, if you start like that, I wonder how many people who are singled out as a group like having these attributes blindly attached to them?
It is very similar to "all theists are shit-sucking gentlemen who don't know their minds from a hole in the ground." You like this, don't you. You don't get angry at all. Never, you.
That was an exaggeration on my part. I had no intention to start a thread with that specific title and I never will. And no, I'm not "angry" at all. Least of all with that statement. But maybe you are?
Anyway, why are we going on and on about this when @Seditious has already admitted that he/she does hope that God/"sky daddy" doesn't exist?
Let's start another thread if you want. Why keep flogging a dead horse?
That's one person, and you apply it to all atheists? And you wonder why people are getting angry with you. Your thought processes and reasoning power equals that of a three-year-old, yet your erudite language makes your snide remarks stick.
Please try it the other way around: think like a reasonable person, and save your jokes for those instances when your bias and prejudice is not an influence in creating them.
What do you mean? Why am I going on and on about this? Look at yourself in the mirror. You think your shit don't smell? You have been doing nothing on the forums but going on and on and on about it.
Save your superiority complex to your family. Here you CAN NOT TELL ANYONE what to do and what not to do... especially when you are hypocritical about it to the maximum.
It wasn't me who started this thread. You're getting angry with yourself IMO.
And save your psychoanalysis to your family members. You seem to recognize (falsely, most of the time) one emotion, and no more. You're a one-emotion guy.
So please explain to me, because you can't: why is the statement "It wasn't me who started this thread" there? What does it prove or show? It only shows your infantile attitude... "teach, it was was not me who started the fight." It absolutely does not matter who started the thread when it comes to voicing your opinion. And you are too narrow-sighted to realize that.
That's what I'm saying. Save your psychoanalysis to your family members. You seem to recognize (falsely, most of the time) one emotion, and no more. You're a one-emotion guy.
And in addition, you are incapable of original thought. You even repeat after me what I said to you.
Indeed. I've challenged many atheists on this site to start threads and they were all afraid to do so. I'm not sure why these discussions are so emotionally charged for them.
I've used Kantian pure reason with them and it just gets them agitated. Once again, the atheist still cannot explain their own conscious existence because it's logically impossible. So how can they explain no EOG :cool:
:lol: Jerk me off! Jerk me off! :rofl:
Yep. I keep telling Mr. Wood to not be so afraid of himself :rofl:
I don't know why he doesn't celebrate. Maybe he's repressed :joke:
For theists, it's a prompt, gentle/rude, for some deep soul-searching. The bottom line is that theism, from beginning to present and probably for the foreseeable future, may be more about hope than truth - fed up with the this world's hostility and indifference towards our condition, we envision the better, a world without, in the most basic sense, suffering and death and since we ourselves seem utterly powerless to create such a world, we entertain the possibility of a being, God, who can, someone who'll save the day come hell or high water. Among logicians this is known as the fallacy of wishful thinking which implies that all attempts by believers to prove the existence of God are nothing more than textbook cases of rationalization - ascribing a belief/action to a better (here more logical) reason than the true rather pathetic one.
For atheists, the question does about the same thing. Do they too secretly hope that a God exists? After all theism "...makes an offer we can't refuse..." and I mean that in both senses of that which simply can't be refused - either irresistably good (heaven) or horrifyingly bad (hell). That a Mafia Don (The Godfather) no less, too said, even if only in a fictional universe, "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" sends chills down my spine, I don't know about you though. Hope suddenly turns into despair! For certain, given what I said vide supra, atheists hope but do they hope God is or do they hope God is not? That, my friend, is the million dollar question.
Asking if atheists hope there is no god is like asking if atheists like vanilla ice cream. They may or may not, as like their taste in ice cream whether or not they hope god doesn’t exist will vary with each individual.
Hoping whether god exists or not isn’t definitive of atheism, what’s definitive of atheism is whether or not you believe there is a god and that’s it.
Some atheists might like the idea of god bit just are not convinced there actually is one. Other atheists are anti-theists and reject that there being a god is a good thing.
Just asking this question displays an ignorance of what atheism is.
Some of us try to live in such a way that if there is something after death we will be judged well and will avoid punishment.
But what is the reason you are unsure about eternity?
It hasn't happened in my lifetime. Seriously, I have nothing by which I can determine whether there is such thing and its consequences for me.
What if it is? And what if it's not?
I have had no such intuition or feeling or experience.
Not every intuition or feeling or experience I have had turned out to be reliable.
Do you feel plato experienced this feeling. Or do you think he was striving for this through his dialectics?
I just completed a long essay in several parts on Plato's Phaedo. Read it and get back to me if you want to discuss Plato.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10914/platos-phaedo/p1
Plato does seem mighty keen on "proving" eternity?
What do you think the reason is for that?
If you followed the thread with sufficient attention you would not have asked the question.
You suggest he experienced eternity or hunkered for it?
I suggest you read the posts. You have time. It's long but won't take an eternity.
It can work out only for the worse.
If and only if there is eternal life after death, then it's eternal boredom that will lead to eternal suffering even in heaven. Man has been created to enjoy change and not monotony; living lifelong a million times sure will take out all the joy there is in life. Living life infinite times, is going to be worse than hell if you get to heaven, and it's going to be worse than heaven, if you get to hell.
I really, but really don't understand why theists (at least the Christian and the Muslim ones) pray to go to heaven, which is only possible if god really exists and exists in ways their religion describes him.
Muslims: they get 49 virgins at death, if they do a good job of living in life. 49 virgins can be turned to 49 non-virgins in a very short time. And 50 years later you will have 49 women who are past their prime. At 200 years of celebrating life in heaven, the devout Muslim will have 49 prunes, and at a 1999999 years mark in heaven, the poor sap wished he had never been born in the first place.
No, I hope there is no god. That is my only wish and hope, everything else is happenstence and acceptable to some degree. And I am amazed, truly amazed, at the stupidity of those who hope god(s) exist(s).
No time involved??? Then what is eternity if there is not time involved? The very meaning of eternity involves infinite time. Why would it be an intuition, a feeling, an experience? From our point of view eternity is a concept, nobody around here has experienced it.
Really.
And why can't that be experienced?
You are so inept, 3017amen, that you completely misread human reactions. We do not start new threads, true. But it's not due to fear. It is due to our foreknowledge of our complete inability to get through to you, because you surround your mind with a senseless, reasonless, stupid religiosity.
And let's say we got through to your mind. Scary thought, but we are not afraid; we just know now, before even we start, that we would find nothing but endless stupidity, infinite ignorance, and not an iota of any ability to listen to, or to express reason.
In a way I admire you: you are so stupid, that nothing in the world is threatening to you, you lack the imagination needed for paranoia, you lack the insight to know you are wrong, and you lack the reasoning ability to see when you are proven wrong.
It is Christ who said, "Happy are the stupid, for they shalt inherit the Earth." Heck, you do a hundred times better than that; you are so stupid NOW, way before the alleged judgment day, that the world is your oyster, for no other reason but for your stupidity.
You are new here. Are you another stupid one, like 3017Amen? If you are, you can't hide it for too long. The truth will out.
Yes,I've experienced eternity,continously as well.
Since when was the truth a particular conception only?
Your defensiveness shows your fear and anxiety of eternity. Or for you,let's say life after death.
Aha. Strawman. You are stupid.
Quoting Zenny
You're delusional as well. Or perhaps you have a very good supplier.
Quoting Zenny
You are denying that truth is unique. You are implying therefore that it's possible that two contradictory statements can both be true. Therefore you are either stupid, or delusional, or both, but you sure don't accept the law of excluded middle and the law of non-contradiction.
Quoting Zenny
My fear and anxiety of eternity is not at all a source of defensiveness. They are real, and they are caused by clearly seeing what eternal life means and all its accoutrements. And if you see any defensiveness in my text, it's again your delusionary nature, my friend.
--------------------------
Unless you behave and think like a philosopher, you have no place here. I'm sure there is a place for you somewhere, Zenny, but it's not here, that's for sure.
You cannot experience a minute in less that a minute, or an hour in less than an hour, or 100 years in less than a hundred years. For the same reason you cannot experience eternity in less time.
Your problem is that you are not used to debate with thinkers. You are most likely used to debate with people who are impressionable to emotive put-downs.
We are not like that. We are thinkers here. You start behaving like a thinker, or else you will be targeted for your fallacious thinking, your ill logic, your wrong reasons, and for your appeal (or attempts to appeal) to emotions.
That's a statement of no consequence. You did not support it. You just blurted out an opinion which you wish would be true. I think chances are you are unaware of what constitutes a reasoned, supported opinion and how to write one.
Let's say the opinion you wrote is true. At least you should believe so. Now gather all the quotes that show, or evidence to a reasoned person, that our reaction to a discussion (any discussion) is a proof of fear.
If you can do that, then do it. That way you will garner some respect around here. Right now, without having done that, you are nothing but an angry, intimidated nincompoop in the eyes of those who belong here.
Ahh...aaahhh...okay?
Think of it this way, those of you who continue to insist God does not exist (which is false in the face of Christianity), should start threads, rather than troll honest threads that want to explore the philosophical reasoning associated with a God's existence.
By virtue of your trolling (180, Tim wood, etc..) you have effectly put yourself in a precarious and untenable position of having to defend your belief system (or value system)... . Nobody asked you to troll. Otherwise, much like the other fanatical atheists on this site you would be considered a person who instigates conflict, hostility, and uses inflammatory messages to provoke emotional responses out of people, disrupting otherwise civil discussion.
In this instance, a civil discussion or debate would require you or anyone who is not comfortable with their belief system to, shall we say, put up or shut up. The atheist's on this site tend to just blow smoke, and get all emotional and defensive, not sure why...
In my experience, I've seen many fanatical atheists embrace the meme that says if you can't attack the issues, you attack the person. In any event, I'll be happy to debate any atheist one-on-one, on this site, arguing any of the EOG topics out there... .
Thanks
Wtf. :lol:
Once again for the slow (or disingenuous & panicking) ones like 3017troll, Apollodoofus, Benj96, Zippy, Barftrix...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/537031
Quoting DingoJones
:100: :up:
Nice work - agree. A lot of people who have been socialized into religions seem unable to even hear the definition in order to grasp it and seem willfully culpable of misrepresenting atheism wherever possible in order to trash the idea with some interpretive smear or another. Of course many atheists do similar things to theism, so I guess it's par for the course...
Yes, dishonest argumentation knows no group boundaries Im afraid.
It’s the nature of the internet too...it’s pretty easy to wiki or google an argument for or against whatever you choose and repeat it without really understanding it. You see it a lot with logical fallacies, people are always making accusations of ad hom or argument from authority without really understanding the fallacy.
It’s strange when you find atheists who are dogmatic about it...you would think coming to atheism requires some thought but alas many come to it through anger at religion as well. Understandable of course given religions horrors but not a sound process.
As to the religious...well they already believe in fairy tales and myths so expecting an honest, straightforward conversation is a long shot from the get go. They have already drawn their conclusion and all argumentation is just a attempt to rationalize that conclusion. This of course is the exact wrong way to come to conclusions.
:smirk: :clap:
:cool:
You show your vitriol and lack of insight with every post. Argument my pompous anger and fear!
And I suppose you don't distinguish between felt time and clock time?
Your feeling has nothing to do with what might happen when you die. You seem to have lost track of your own argument.
In our context, it means that for the Atheist, if he/she reasons that God does not exist (philosophical discourse) then he/she puts themselves in a precarious position of defending their belief system (or value system). In other words, it puts them in an untenable position of authority.
From what I've seen on this site, that is one of many reasons why they get so agitated/emotional. Simply put, they troll threads; huff and puff and blow smoke about religious dogma with little substance. Then they get mad when asked existential or metaphysical questions (because they can't answer them).
Almost as a kind of political statement with an underlying axe to grind. You know, much like what Einstein observed... :snicker: As inspired by the book of Ecclesiastes (Existentialism), that human behavior is really nothing new under the sun :yikes:
Actually, it occurred to me that some of them are agnostic or even Christians or whatever. And that perhaps, they are just gaslighting people because they are weak in faith or want to understand apologetic's stuff...
Follow this closely, if you feel you can jump out the window and fly then you feel you can, but you can't. Try it.
I said: "if you feel". That has nothing to do with what I do or do not feel. Some people do have a feeling of being able to fly. When acted on it can be fatal. Having a feeling does not mean that feeling is anything more than a feeling, whether it is the feeling you can fly or competently do philosophy or whatever.
Do you include the feeling or experience or intuition of eternity in things about which one might be mistaken?
Are you referring to Bayesian statistics and probability logic??
Quoting tim wood
An Atheist.
Quoting tim wood
What's considered appropriate evidence?
Quoting tim wood
Jesus existed.
Quoting tim wood
Any positive statements that posits no-God puts you in that position.
Quoting tim wood
Is it possible to re-word that, not exactly sure what you're trying to articulate there.
What are you denying? I am not questioning whether you have this feeling, I am questioning whether it goes beyond that, that there is an eternity that is more than just your feeling. If I have a feeling I am going to win the lottery, I cannot be mistaken that I have this feeling, but that does not mean I will win the lottery.
Again, your feeling has nothing to do with what might happen when you die. You seem to have lost track of your own argument.
I examined my position further up. Go read and then come back. Hint,if I'm eternal,no death except for the outer body.
Quoting Zenny
Having a feeling of eternity does not mean you are eternal. You want to believe otherwise.
But you want more than just the comfort of your beliefs. You asked me why I am unsure of eternity, and then, on the basis of your feeling, tried to persuade me of eternity.
You conflate a feeling of eternity with life after death. For all you know, that feeling will die along with you.
When your hot do you dispute that? Do you dispute your feelings of hunger. Do you dispute your feelings of existing?
I don't have to persuade you,why would I? Your obviously closed minded. A worshipper of dialectics.
And just because your to wishy washy to be intuitively certain doesn't mean I'm not.
Yep (y) Somehow they just don't trust their deities to speak for themselves
(then they pretend to speak on behalf of their imaginary friends, then they pretend to be telepaths knowing that others fear their imaginary friends, ..., weird)
Quoting Zenny
Why would anyone care what you feel? (I don't mean in a cynical sense)
It's the moment you preach that your understanding of your feeling is equally applicable to everyone else, universally even, that we'll need a bit more than your words about your feelings (and not charged rambling and raving).
• https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/520013
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_feeling
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection_illusion
As if science doesn't claim its "findings" are universal!
You guys have no sense of irony or self awareness.
Is the "introspection illusion" universal?
Well, there's a lot to unpack there. Do you want to defend Atheism based on cosmology, cognitive science (consciousness) , phenomenology, metaphysics, or... ? Let me know which means/method approach you want to argue for Atheism.
Alternatively, in Christianity, the historical Jesus existed, so if that's your hippo, then the hippo existed.
Quoting tim wood
Is that through induction or deduction or something else... ?
Quoting tim wood
Faith is irrelevant in our particular discussion for the time being. We are trying to discuss your no EOG using logic.
Quoting tim wood
I'm not sure what that means. I can only speculate that there is some sort of grudge or axe to grind there. Alternatively, are you suggesting throwing out the baby with the bathwater? And if so, how does that relate to other dichotomous belief or value systems that humans hold as being true to them?
Quoting tim wood
The how, is by advancing a proposition that a God does not exist. The why, would likely related to human sentient existence. You know, cognitive science kinds of stuff :joke:
Good example! My wife says she is hot or cold and wants to turn the temperature up and down. The thermostat, however, is set at a specific temperature. 70 degrees F is the temperature whether she feels hot or cold.
Maybe you are too young or too sheltered to have ever found that your intuitive certainty about something turned out to be wrong, but it happens all the time.
Is it your intuitive certainty that led you to conclude that I am a worshiper of dialectics? If you had actually read the essay on Plato's Phaedo that you said you did you would know that this is false.
You didn't catch on.
You yourself mentioned that LoVe feeling.
As if that is somehow external to the lover.
Interesting question. The answer lies somewhere in your participation in this thread, right? Let's parse why an 'atheist hopes there is no God', meaning, is the idea of 'hope' itself the reason you are participating? I mean, otherwise, as I've said, if you are advancing a position on no God, you have to explain your position, no?
Quoting tim wood
Sure they do. It's done all the time. That's why I asked you about which method of discourse you prefer... . BTW, any thoughts on that?
Quoting tim wood
As I've stated, Jesus existed.
Quoting tim wood
I'm not quite following you there, sorry.
Quoting tim wood
Interesting concepts. Let's start with this question. In your mind, what is considered inconceivable? For instance, does that have something to do with being logically impossible?
Quoting tim wood
Great question. Does that mean it's logically impossible for the hippo to be in your closet?
Alternatively, I insist that Jesus existed in history.
Quoting tim wood
I've answered your question twice. You asked: "And how am I in a position of authority, and how or why would that position be untenable?"
And I answered with: The how, is by advancing a proposition that a God does not exist. The why, would likely relate to human sentient existence. You know, cognitive science kinds of stuff. (Which btw, is that your preferred method of discourse to prove no God-cognitive science?)
Let me know.
Let me repeat third time:
Do you want to defend Atheism based on cosmology, cognitive science (consciousness) , phenomenology, metaphysics, or... ? Let me know which means/method approach you want to argue for Atheism.
Alternatively, in Christianity, the historical Jesus existed. So if that's your hippo, then the hippo existed.
Your essay means Jack.. Your posts and assertions show you value dialectic over intuition.
My wife is the judge of whether or not she feels hot, a properly calibrated thermometer does not judge it, simply provides an accurate reading of the temperature.
Quoting Zenny
But this is not what you accused me of and not what I responded to. You accused me of worshiping dialectics. I don't. But you are right, I do value dialectic over intuition.
It is evident that you prefer to live in a world of your own making. Good luck to you.
No luck needed mate.
You prefer to live in a world of abstractions,obfuscations and maybes.
Maybe one day you will see how powerful human intuition can be. Until then,keep your thermometer handy old boy.
Much of our affiliations are results of reactions. If you look deep you will find atheism isn't any different. Nor is theism. They are two poles of the same movement of hope and reactions. Both originate in the believer's conditioning, prejudices, and bias's.
Now what did I tell you about opening that door Tim... your hippo might come out !
:joke: