Why I believe in God?

[Scheherazade]

W a r n i n g

Posts containing inflammatory comments and ad hominem attacks will be deleted without any further warning.

[Redzeppelin]

I like to think that basic human nature established the morality we now hold.

Human nature is generally self-serving. It's primary goal is "taking care of #1." The default position for human nature is selfishness, not selflessness. Selfishness comes naturally; selflessness must be taught.

[billyjack]

taking care of #1 naturally involves taking note of #2,3,4,5,....in that being good to others brings good my way by way of people treating me dandy since i did them dandy. smart selfishness mirrors selflessness.

[zado_k]

I am sure there must be atheists who believe in sin. I am not saying the majority. But that it is not really important. But I agree with you. Atheists' moral code can vary from anything between nihilist and er, well, obviously anything.

I can't make sense of an atheist believing in sin at all I'm afraid. I suppose you might make "sin" just mean "doing wrong" and that would work. I don't think an atheist's moral code can include anything - at least not coherently. It can't include "This is wrong because god said so" for example, without being nonsense.

Peace and loving kindness

Z

[blp]

I don't think an atheist's moral code can include anything - at least not coherently. It can't include "This is wrong because god said so" for example, without being nonsense.


Well, if it's just a matter of having a higher authority to tell you what's right or wrong, most of us live in country's that do that for us through their legal systems.

The question is, if you're just doing things because a higher authority told you to, does that constitute a moral code? I would have thought a moral code would be something based on your sense of what was actually right and wrong, not just what you'd been told was right and wrong. This sense of right and wrong can be worked out through reason of the sort billyjack was engaging in in the post above yours and through empathy, e.g. I don't like to hurt others because I know what it's like to feel bad.

[MissyRobbins]

This world is full of people who do evil things, but it's also full of people who do only good. God gave all of humanity the ability to choose his/her own way. Science, though needed, doesn't supply all the answers. Only God in his infinate wisdom knows everything.
If you believe and trust in him you'll eventualy find the trueth.
May God Bless you all.

[blp]

I believe in God because there are good things and good people in the world.
I believe that if God didn't exist no one would ever act beyond their own natural instinct. They would live for the purpose of producing healthy offspring then die.
But because God exists, and because we are made in his image, we think, we feel, we learn, we create, we love. We have a purpose in life.

I just can't believe that we are all a coincidence, an accident. When you see a beautiful painting, or read an inspiring book, or hear an incredible song. How can the people who created these things - whether they believe in God or not - have simply been an accident?

Can you really look at someone you love dearly and tell them that they're here by accident, that it's all just a coincident that you ever met them?

That's why I believe in God, because any other concept just makes me feel worthless and hopeless.

Once again, go to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume

and click 2.8 the design argument

all the best.

[Il Penseroso]

Reading threads like this I come to the conclusion that atheists are the only optimists left out there. Are humans really so bad that without some outside force intervening and supplying us with "morals" we would be chomping at one another's throats? Can we not be credited with anything?

Isn't that sort of reasoning dangerous, when even ourselves, as well as others, become animal or thinglike?

[blp]

Isn't that sort of reasoning dangerous, when even ourselves, as well as others, become animal or thinglike?

Yes, it can look like a self-fulfilling prophecy at times - supposedly sinful desires are suppressed until finally they explode in a televangelist 'love' scandal or similar.

That's the flipside of this idea that we need a God to supply us with morals. Many of the morals supposedly supplied by her, him, whatever, appear arbitrary, illogical and painful rather than to spring from the real needs we see around us.

[atiguhya padma]

Thank you jon



Thank you skasian



Wrong. The Bible isn't a "rule book" we consult. It is the revelation of God's character and we are directed to "become" like God. As we grow in relationship, we voluntarily choose to engage in behaviors that mirror His character. Don't patronize us by making us sound like bean-counters who mindlessly parrot the behavior the Bible suggests we engage in. The atheist's philosophy of behavior isn't self-created; they consult their own "rule books" - whether that be conventional morality, social contract theory, utilitarianism, or other philosophies they have read or been exposed to. I don't buy this "Christians are parrots but atheists are creative" idea in terms of moral behavior. The supposed "freedom" of atheist ethics also makes their ethics unstable and unreliable.



Pretending that atheists create their own "bold creative" response to the cirucumstances of the world strikes me as a bit self-aggrandizing. Atheists adhere to morality by-and-large that they inherited from Christian morality or other sources.

You mean the same morality that christians inherited from the ancient Greeks. Don't kid yourself that there is anything original about christian morality. There isn't.

[atiguhya padma]

Sometimes I hear believers say that without their faith, they wouldn't know what is the right thing to do. In fact, I've even heard a minister saying that the bible tells him what to do, and whenever he is unsure about how to act, he asks god for advice. That seems to me to be tantamount to admitting an ignorance of morality and having to live life from a rule book because of moral incompetence. If you don't know the difference between a right action and a wrong one, then you need to study ethics. The last thing you need is to have a list of do's and don't's like some automaton responding to command. Think about what is right, don't just respond because a book, some arrangment of words tells you what to do.

[billyjack]

interesting stuff folks.

i wonder why a benevolent god would give us the ability to think for ourselves and then have us neglect this gift and dwell within the confines of a rulebook he created. seems, um....sort of evil--- like giving a kid the sweetest toy ever, say the hoverboard from back to the future 2, and then commanding him that he can only use it as a place to sit while he reads.

[Redzeppelin]

You mean the same morality that christians inherited from the ancient Greeks. Don't kid yourself that there is anything original about christian morality. There isn't.

I implied nothing of the sort. I asked where the atheist's idea of morality comes from. I'm still waiting for an answer.


Sometimes I hear believers say that without their faith, they wouldn't know what is the right thing to do. In fact, I've even heard a minister saying that the bible tells him what to do, and whenever he is unsure about how to act, he asks god for advice. That seems to me to be tantamount to admitting an ignorance of morality and having to live life from a rule book because of moral incompetence. If you don't know the difference between a right action and a wrong one, then you need to study ethics. The last thing you need is to have a list of do's and don't's like some automaton responding to command. Think about what is right, don't just respond because a book, some arrangment of words tells you what to do.

The Bible gives good advice. Remember: we believe it's divinely inspired - as such, assuming that God inspired it, why wouldn't we seek counsel from a Being far wiser than we? Don't most people seek counsel from those wiser and more experienced?

And where does our "knowledge" of morality come from? What do YOU follow in making your moral choices? Weren't you taught it from somewhere?

Not everybody seeks the Bible's counsel because they are automatons: many of us consult it because we try to understand why so many of our own choices ended up causing such problems in our lives.

[billyjack]

I implied nothing of the sort. I asked where the atheist's idea of morality comes from. I'm still waiting for an answer.


if i might jump in since its not a secret. here's a few:

*secular law: cops, judges, prisons, fines
*enlightened self interest (treat well, be treated well)
*Kant's categorical imperative: Whatever you do, consider the consequences if your actions were a universal law.
*humanism: compassion and altruism for self and others
*rejection of moral absolutes (bc there are none)
*rejection of a creator and his word (frees us up from holy wars)
*rejection of the apacolyspe mentality bread by religion (makes our planet's health important to us, since we want it to last as long as it can, thereby makes us green to some extent)
*rejection of jesus' vicarious repentance of sin (personal responsiblity should be placed on oneself, not on another)
*not to mention the morals of some atheist philosophers: Hume, Bacon, Ayn Rand, Russel, Nietzche, Freud, Feuebach, epircurus, buddhist texts, lao tsu, chung tzu, socrates (he believed in spirits, but not a god), thoreau (i know he didnt believe in any idea of god), same could be said of emerson.

i think there's plenty more too, but its late

[Ohmyscience]

The atheists get it the like everyone else. It's inherent. Without an idea of justice, and ethocentricity societies could never congeal. Doesn't the uniform devlopment of the golden rule prompt you to believe that humans even prior to recorded history were already pretty much moral. Highly developed mammals also have morality so asking the atheists where they get their morals would be the equivalent of asking higly developed mammals. Its inherent to them. The individuals with a lesser sense of morality and social awareness were castigated and probably did not breed. You really have no need for a divine being to institute it.

Of course what I think you're saying Redzep is that being inclined to something good does that mean you have to by some absolute decree. I will have to agree with you in that case because for atheists or anyone for that matter you do not have to do whats best for your or society. You are only inclined to do so.


However even if God existed that doesn't you have to act morally as well. Technically you or anyone is not physically prohibited to harm others even with existence of God. I've never seen God stop a murder. Unless of course you want to qualify Him letting the murder proceed only to serve as a warning on earth. In that case what about the victim? Doesn't God owe him/her anything?

[NikolaiI]

I can't make sense of an atheist believing in sin at all I'm afraid. I suppose you might make "sin" just mean "doing wrong" and that would work. I don't think an atheist's moral code can include anything - at least not coherently. It can't include "This is wrong because god said so" for example, without being nonsense.

Peace and loving kindness

Z

Basically that is what I meant, yes, that sin is doing wrong. Atheists as you said are not restricted by a belief system, so there could be an atheist which believed in anything, unless that belief would make him a pantheist, deist, theist, etc.


However even if God existed that doesn't you have to act morally as well. Technically you or anyone is not physically prohibited to harm others even with existence of God. I've never seen God stop a murder. Unless of course you want to qualify Him letting the murder proceed only to serve as a warning on earth. In that case what about the victim? Doesn't God owe him/her anything?

You ask why does anyone die? Why do they suffer? Do you know they actually die? :)

But would you argue with the existence of suffering against ANY other good thing, any other holy or sacred thing such as love, family, happiness, virtue? To use the argument of suffering against the existence of the divine is very similar to use it against the existence of anything such as love, virtue, goodness, etc. The divine does not exist because we NEED the divine to exist, although we do. The divine is the complete whole of the universe... we think of it is as spiritual only because we find some spiritual or mystical nature to that which is infinite to us, to that which is perfect to us in all respects - the complete whole, the natural universe, which to us is entirely supreme. We don't know anything outside it. If we do then it is still not farther than reality from us, so it is included in "reality". This means that we cannot know if there is a super-being or not, but we do know that there is an "infinite reality." The understanding of this reality comes in infinite forms, and they are all equally valid, they are just part of reality. No part needs to be justified, no part needs more power, less suffering, no part needs to be any more or any less, because all is part of all.

[blp]

I asked where the atheist's idea of morality comes from. I'm still waiting for an answer.


Then you seem not to have been paying attention. I gave an answer at the bottom of the previous page.



And where does our "knowledge" of morality come from? What do YOU follow in making your moral choices? Weren't you taught it from somewhere?


Yes. When I was about six or seven, I asked my Dad (an atheist) why we couldn't just imprison or kill the people he was always grumbling about while reading the newspapers. He explained that if you could imprison or kill people just because you disagreed with them, then at some point someone who disagreed with you might have the power to do the same to you.

I would say this was the beginning of my moral education, and that it was, in some ways, in conflict with the moral absolutism of religion. The democratic code that recognises a diversity of opinion, must, by definition, allow a diversity of moral codes to coexist. The governing principle is something like JS Mill's idea that individuals ought to be free to do what they want as long as it doesn't harm anyone else - which, as my dad's explanation shows, is, in a large measure, a matter of practicality. We agree this overall code as a society - and enforce it when it breaks down - as a means of allowing the greatest possible benefit and freedom to the greatest possible number.

To be fair, similar ideas are found in certain versions of religious morality: Augustine's 'Love and do what thou wilt.' and the Wiccan, 'an it harm no one, do what thou will.' There seems no reason for this code of freedom to come into conflict with religion in practice (though it frequently does), but, likewise, there seems to be no requirement for religion to derive the principle since it's based on a practical assessment of what will be fair and cause least trouble.

[zado_k]

Well, if it's just a matter of having a higher authority to tell you what's right or wrong, most of us live in country's that do that for us through their legal systems.

The question is, if you're just doing things because a higher authority told you to, does that constitute a moral code? I would have thought a moral code would be something based on your sense of what was actually right and wrong, not just what you'd been told was right and wrong. This sense of right and wrong can be worked out through reason of the sort billyjack was engaging in in the post above yours and through empathy, e.g. I don't like to hurt others because I know what it's like to feel bad.

No, it's to do with having a god as the higher authority. Of course there are/have been atheists who submit to authority - even for moral guidance and whether this is a good or a bad thing is a different question. But an atheist submitting to god as moral authority is being incoherent.

I can see prefering an moral code that people worked out for themselves but I don't see any reason to deny that any other kind is really moral. It's an interesting thought experiment to imagine an authoritarian dictator of morality who makes perfect moral choices for his subjects and ask is that good?

[blp]

No, it's to do with having a god as the higher authority. Of course there are/have been atheists who submit to authority - even for moral guidance and whether this is a good or a bad thing is a different question. But an atheist submitting to god as moral authority is being incoherent.

Where would god get her or his morality from?

Just to be clear, I never said anything about atheists submitting to god as anything at all.



I can see prefering an moral code that people worked out for themselves but I don't see any reason to deny that any other kind is really moral.

Well, I agree it might be a little early to consider the question settled. I can't help pointing out however, that it was you who said you couldn't imagine how one could have morality without god. Ergo, you were denying non-religious moralities. I'm glad to see you've changed your opinion. ;)



It's an interesting thought experiment to imagine an authoritarian dictator of morality who makes perfect moral choices for his subjects and ask is that good?

It's a big question. I would say volition is a key component of morality - not necessarily that all morality must be innate, but that, in committing moral acts, one must, at least, understand the reasons for them. This is not just because, without that understanding, it's hard to really qualify the acts as moral.

[Redzeppelin]

Then you seem not to have been paying attention. I gave an answer at the bottom of the previous page.

Well, b, that may be true. The other option available is that I saw your post and did not find that it sufficiently answered my question. I'll let you decide which one is true.


Yes. When I was about six or seven, I asked my Dad (an atheist) why we couldn't just imprison or kill the people he was always grumbling about while reading the newspapers. He explained that if you could imprison or kill people just because you disagreed with them, then at some point someone who disagreed with you might have the power to do the same to you.

Your father was very practical in his outlook. So what philosophy does his answer point to? From where I'm standing, his answer suggests that the only thing that controls our behavior is fear of retaliation. But isn't that fear predicated on the idea that the other has the power to retaliate? What if I'm stronger? Then what need I fear? Why do the right thing if the other whom I wrong doesn't have the power to return evil upon me? Now what stops me?


I would say this was the beginning of my moral education, and that it was, in some ways, in conflict with the moral absolutism of religion. The democratic code that recognises a diversity of opinion, must, by definition, allow a diversity of moral codes to coexist.

While there will certainly be cultural norms that come into play, once we entertain the idea of "a diversity of moral codes" we now step into ethical quicksand because not all moral codes will agree - and without a transcendant moral code that exists beyond human establishment and manipulation, how do we adjudicate conflicts between moral codes? If they're all equal, then who are we to criticize those inflicting genocide in Darfur, female genital mutilation in Africa, piracy in Somalian seas?


The governing principle is something like JS Mill's idea that individuals ought to be free to do what they want as long as it doesn't harm anyone else - which, as my dad's explanation shows, is, in a large measure, a matter of practicality. We agree this overall code as a society - and enforce it when it breaks down - as a means of allowing the greatest possible benefit and freedom to the greatest possible number.

Doesn't Mills idea require that we have some sort of frame of reference in deciding what "harm" is? Just because someone says they're "harmed" by my behavior, are they really? And, conversely, just because someone tells me their behavior really doesn't hurt anybody, can't that also be denial in action? How do we decided the nature of "harm" and whether or not it's legitimate?


To be fair, similar ideas are found in certain versions of religious morality: Augustine's 'Love and do what thou wilt.' and the Wiccan, 'an it harm no one, do what thou will.' There seems no reason for this code of freedom to come into conflict with religion in practice (though it frequently does), but, likewise, there seems to be no requirement for religion to derive the principle since it's based on a practical assessment of what will be fair and cause least trouble.

But that's part of the problem, b - how do we - selfish and self-interested humans - fairly decide on our own what is "fair" and "causes the least trouble"? History has shown that human law can be bent to serve the will of a tyrant. Without the higher law of nature/God, who can look at the legal slaughter of people under Hitler and Stalin's regime and challenge it? They were LEGAL as judged by society. That is the ultimate end of humanly established law and morality - it can be tweaked to serve power.

[blp]

Well, b, that may be true. The other option available is that I saw your post and did not find that it sufficiently answered my question. I'll let you decide which one is true.

I get to decide? Gee that's nice. Not much of an argument, was it, just saying your question hadn't been answered when it had. OK, I'm going to decide you didn't see it. ;)



Your father was very practical in his outlook. So what philosophy does his answer point to?

Pragmatism? Libertarianism?



From where I'm standing, his answer suggests that the only thing that controls our behavior is fear of retaliation. But isn't that fear predicated on the idea that the other has the power to retaliate? What if I'm stronger? Then what need I fear? Why do the right thing if the other whom I wrong doesn't have the power to return evil upon me? Now what stops me?

I don't think fear of retaliation is really the main thing that's going on here. My question was based on a childish, solipsistic assumption that we, as a family, represented an unquestionably right-thinking majority and it should be a simple matter for the right-thinking people of the world to put a stop to what we thought was wrong. What I really began to understand at this point was that other people held different opinions and our own moral superiority wasn't guaranteed. The further insights that flow from this make it clear that it's not even a desirable position to be able to oppress and silence the opposition because then you don't learn anything. Anyway, from families to governments, tyranny creates instability.

This is all still in the realms of the practical, but I don't see that that necessarily implies it's not also a philosophy. If it's not, I don't see why that should lessen its validity.

Of course, situations do arise constantly in which one individual or group oppress and silence all opposition. Many of these situations are driven and supported by philosophies of one sort or another. The practice of religion is, sadly, no bulwark against this and, in a number of these situations, the religion has actually been the driver of the oppression: the Spanish Inquisition, say. And in others, religion has been a constituent of the oppression or religious leaders have been collusive in it. Please note, I'm not saying this to designate religion the only driver of oppression - Stalinism was dogmatically atheistic, to give a notable example - just to suggest that using a too coherent philosophy may not be the best method of creating a stable society.

The philosophy that drives European and American-style democracy may be a little more ethereal, but it does, to use your term, lead to philosophy. Richard Rorty, with his attempts to come to terms, philosophically, with the multiple voices of modern democracies, might be said to be an example.



While there will certainly be cultural norms that come into play, once we entertain the idea of "a diversity of moral codes" we now step into ethical quicksand because not all moral codes will agree - and without a transcendant moral code that exists beyond human establishment and manipulation, how do we adjudicate conflicts between moral codes? If they're all equal, then who are we to criticize those inflicting genocide in Darfur, female genital mutilation in Africa, piracy in Somalian seas?

I'm a bit surprised at this question since I'd already laid out, if not a philosophy, a governing principle. I'll use the Wiccan version: 'An it harm no one, do what you will.'



Doesn't Mills idea require that we have some sort of frame of reference in deciding what "harm" is? Just because someone says they're "harmed" by my behavior, are they really? And, conversely, just because someone tells me their behavior really doesn't hurt anybody, can't that also be denial in action? How do we decided the nature of "harm" and whether or not it's legitimate?

These discussions are ongoing in democracies, which, as a founding principle, allow freedom of speech to navigate just such conundrums. However, I must say, your examples seem to me to be pretty unambiguous instances of 'harm'. Shucks, maybe I'm just a victim of cultural conditioning.

Wow I'm being mocked by synchronicity. Darfur's on the news right now and they're talking about the difficulty of establishing someone's guilt as a war criminal.

But the difficulties of these kinds of question are the precise reason we need room to manoeuver without overly strict dogma, freedom to judge each instance on its merits and try to arrive at the fairest outcome. Yes one can certainly have discussions about what words like 'merit' and 'fairness' should properly mean and philosophers since Socrates have, at millennial length, but even the religious ones, such as Socrates, have not found that religion helped decide the argument.



But that's part of the problem, b - how do we - selfish and self-interested humans - fairly decide on our own what is "fair" and "causes the least trouble"? History has shown that human law can be bent to serve the will of a tyrant. Without the higher law of nature/God, who can look at the legal slaughter of people under Hitler and Stalin's regime and challenge it? They were LEGAL as judged by society. That is the ultimate end of humanly established law and morality - it can be tweaked to serve power.

See my remarks above. However, the designation of humans as selfish, at least as a defining characteristic, is highly open to question and both philosophers and scientists have been busy questioning it. Philosopher Slavoj Zizek has referred to the way in which humans are frequently 'spontaneously moral'. Richard Dawkins, though he posited the theory of the selfish gene that does everything it can to survive, states emphatically that this must not be assumed to apply in human personality, suggesting that qualities such as empathy, compassion and the desire for social interaction and cooperation are genetically embedded and a big part of what has allowed us to survive as a race.

Perhaps that's why philosophical approaches to morality such as Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics so often seem, rather than laying down the law, to be telling us what we already know implicitly. What this points to, obviously, is a sense of morals that goes beyond the practical - but still without the need for a divinely imposed moral law.

[zado_k]

Where would god get her or his morality from?

Just to be clear, I never said anything about atheists submitting to god as anything at all.



Well, I agree it might be a little early to consider the question settled. I can't help pointing out however, that it was you who said you couldn't imagine how one could have morality without god. Ergo, you were denying non-religious moralities. I'm glad to see you've changed your opinion. ;)


When did I say this? Please quote or retract.


It's a big question. I would say volition is a key component of morality - not necessarily that all morality must be innate, but that, in committing moral acts, one must, at least, understand the reasons for them. This is not just because, without that understanding, it's hard to really qualify the acts as moral.

Volition seems a precondition of morality. We don't ascribe moral judgment or blame non-volitional entities usually. To be responsible for a thing morally you have to be at least able to will it should be so, no? No idea what this has to do with morality being innate. I suspect that behaviours that might be subject to moral judgment could be innate - aggression, nurturing for example - but I doubt that morality as such could be. Which morality would be innate? Kantian? Sartrean? Rule Utilitarianism? Is a child born Mill's moral calculus?

By moral acts you mean acts that are properly the subject of moral judgments? (Rather than say acts of morally judging). I'm reading you this way: to say that one is only subject to moral judgment if one could understand the reasoning by which an act is determined to be moral or immoral and that if you can't understand that reasoning then you are incapable of morality (which is not a criticism or slur: infants are lovely in all ways but are clearly not moral persons for a long while after birth).

I am unsure about the relation between understanding and moral responsibility - it's an age old question: is a man capable of some monstrous action (say, genocide) sick or evil? I want to say that there is evil on the one hand but my sympathies for the human condition make it nearly inconceivable to me that somone who does a truly wicked thing is not in fact in some way damaged and perhaps not fully responsible. Theoretically I'm clear: there is moral responsibility in competent people.

Z

[blp]

Where would god get her or his morality from?

Just to be clear, I never said anything about atheists submitting to god as anything at all.



Well, I agree it might be a little early to consider the question settled. I can't help pointing out however, that it was you who said you couldn't imagine how one could have morality without god. Ergo, you were denying non-religious moralities. I'm glad to see you've changed your opinion.
When did I say this? Please quote or retract.

Zado, it wasn't that hard to find. It was the point I was responding to in the first place.



I don't think an atheist's moral code can include anything - at least not coherently. It can't include "This is wrong because god said so" for example, without being nonsense.

[blp]

Volition seems a precondition of morality. We don't ascribe moral judgment or blame non-volitional entities usually. To be responsible for a thing morally you have to be at least able to will it should be so, no? No idea what this has to do with morality being innate.

Other than getting morality from God, the options seem to be, getting it from other people and getting it from yourself. As I said in my long reply to RedZeppelin, there do seem to be reasons for imagining that some morality is genetically inherited. You go on to mention Kant and, from what I can gather, yes, there's a suggestion of innate morality in Kant too. In The Dignity of the Moral Will from The Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morality he argues, what he hopes, I think, will be conclusively, for 'autonomy', by which he means moral freedom, stating (after some painstaking proofs) '...it is evident that all moral conceptions have their seat and origin in reason a priori [by which he means prior to any experience], and are apprehended by the ordinary reason of men...' In other words, he thinks each individual is privy to a shared, innate sense of morality. Further, he doesn't really think a coherent system of morals is possible unless this is the case. It's a rather beautiful argument, but I wasn't even trying to go that far. I was saying, even without innate morality, it seems to be possible to have a morality without God or belief in God.

I'm afraid I don't know enough about the other philosophers and philosophies you mentioned to say whether they had any belief in innate morality. I suspect not from what I do know about them.



By moral acts you mean acts that are properly the subject of moral judgments? (Rather than say acts of morally judging). I'm reading you this way: to say that one is only subject to moral judgment if one could understand the reasoning by which an act is determined to be moral or immoral and that if you can't understand that reasoning then you are incapable of morality (which is not a criticism or slur: infants are lovely in all ways but are clearly not moral persons for a long while after birth).

Perhaps it's best if you define your terms. You began by saying



I don't think an atheist's moral code can include anything - at least not coherently.

Perhaps you should explain what your conception of a moral code was, just so there's no misunderstanding.



I am unsure about the relation between understanding and moral responsibility - it's an age old question: is a man capable of some monstrous action (say, genocide) sick or evil? I want to say that there is evil on the one hand but my sympathies for the human condition make it nearly inconceivable to me that somone who does a truly wicked thing is not in fact in some way damaged and perhaps not fully responsible. Theoretically I'm clear: there is moral responsibility in competent people.

Well, speaking of innate morality, here's a bit of moral philosophy I favour, from the I-Ching, Richard Willhelm edition, hexagram 61, Inner Truth:

'Wind stirs water by penetrating it. Thus the superior man, when obliged to judge the mistakes of men, tries to penetrate their minds with understanding, in order to gain a sympathetic appreciation of the circumstances. In ancient China the entire administration of justice was guided by this principle. A deep understanding that knows how to pardon was considered the highest form of justice. This system was not without success for its aim was to make so strong a moral impression that there was no reason to fear abuse of such mildness. For it sprang not from weakness, but from a superior clarity.'

[Redzeppelin]

I get to decide? Gee that's nice. Not much of an argument, was it, just saying your question hadn't been answered when it had. OK, I'm going to decide you didn't see it. ;)

Just pointing out that your conclusion was one of two possiblilities. I didn't read your post - but once I did, I didn't find its answer convincing.


Pragmatism? Libertarianism?

Probably the former.


I don't think fear of retaliation is really the main thing that's going on here. My question was based on a childish, solipsistic assumption that we, as a family, represented an unquestionably right-thinking majority and it should be a simple matter for the right-thinking people of the world to put a stop to what we thought was wrong. What I really began to understand at this point was that other people held different opinions and our own moral superiority wasn't guaranteed. The further insights that flow from this make it clear that it's not even a desirable position to be able to oppress and silence the opposition because then you don't learn anything. Anyway, from families to governments, tyranny creates instability.

Part of our conception of the roots of morality come from our idea of human nature; you can be a Rousseau and think we're inherently good, or a Hobbes and believe that we're inherently bad. I - because of my Christian world view - tend to be more Hobbesian: human nature's default behavior is selfishness. Our views of morality are directly linked to that.


This is all still in the realms of the practical, but I don't see that that necessarily implies it's not also a philosophy. If it's not, I don't see why that should lessen its validity.

Certainly.


Of course, situations do arise constantly in which one individual or group oppress and silence all opposition. Many of these situations are driven and supported by philosophies of one sort or another.

At a collective level, yes; on an individual level, self-interest will generally be the primary motivating factor.


The practice of religion is, sadly, no bulwark against this and, in a number of these situations, the religion has actually been the driver of the oppression: the Spanish Inquisition, say.

A fair statement applied to history - however, most examples of Christian misbehavior on a large scale can only be found by going back a few hundred years. Radical Islam now wears that crown proudly. I don't think America's prior history with slavery makes it a terrible country now.



And in others, religion has been a constituent of the oppression or religious leaders have been collusive in it. Please note, I'm not saying this to designate religion the only driver of oppression - Stalinism was dogmatically atheistic, to give a notable example - just to suggest that using a too coherent philosophy may not be the best method of creating a stable society.

I appreciate your fairness; both examples suggest that ideology ultimately can be warped to serve flawed and self-interested human beings who also happen to agree with a certain ideology.


I'm a bit surprised at this question since I'd already laid out, if not a philosophy, a governing principle. I'll use the Wiccan version: 'An it harm no one, do what you will.'

The Wiccan ethical admonishment sounds nice, but I'm uncomfortable with its emphasis on will - on what I desire, what I want. It provides a mitigating condition, but its primary thrust deals with doing what one wants. That is very different from Christian theology which pretty much bypasses what an individual wants to what an individual should do. There's a difference. Acting in a way that "harms" nobody is very different than acting in a way that benefits other people. I'm not dismissing the validity of the Wiccan assertion - I'm pointing out how different it is from Christian ethics which says avoiding evil is not enough - one must actively do good.


These discussions are ongoing in democracies, which, as a founding principle, allow freedom of speech to navigate just such conundrums. However, I must say, your examples seem to me to be pretty unambiguous instances of 'harm'. Shucks, maybe I'm just a victim of cultural conditioning.

But that's the point, b: YOU see them as harmful - but the governments/groups enacting these atrocities have defenses for them - and without a stable moral frame - a transcendant morality that exists beyond cultural differences - we have no ground from which to condemn them. If we do condemn them, we are automatically implying a standard of morality that they should acknowledge as well - but if it's simply OUR morality, what gives us the authority to condemn/judge at all?


Wow I'm being mocked by synchronicity. Darfur's on the news right now and they're talking about the difficulty of establishing someone's guilt as a war criminal.

Don't you love it when that happens?


But the difficulties of these kinds of question are the precise reason we need room to manoeuver without overly strict dogma, freedom to judge each instance on its merits and try to arrive at the fairest outcome. Yes one can certainly have discussions about what words like 'merit' and 'fairness' should properly mean and philosophers since Socrates have, at millennial length, but even the religious ones, such as Socrates, have not found that religion helped decide the argument.

I will - to an extent - agree with you. The Biblical injunction against lying - IMO - is suspended if my telling the truth (here comes the cliched "Jews in the cellars, Nazis at the door" scenario) will end up in the suffering and death of an innocent person. But in that instance, I have violated a "smaller" restriction in favor of the greater good - because the saving of a human life outranks truth-telling (especially truth-telling that cooperates with evil). That said, we cannot make all ethics situational - but we should clearly be using a set of noncompromising principles to guide us.


See my remarks above. However, the designation of humans as selfish, at least as a defining characteristic, is highly open to question and both philosophers and scientists have been busy questioning it. Philosopher Slavoj Zizek has referred to the way in which humans are frequently 'spontaneously moral'. Richard Dawkins, though he posited the theory of the selfish gene that does everything it can to survive, states emphatically that this must not be assumed to apply in human personality, suggesting that qualities such as empathy, compassion and the desire for social interaction and cooperation are genetically embedded and a big part of what has allowed us to survive as a race.

Scientists can argue away - our day to day decisions and behaviors suggest otherwise (notwithsanding random acts of morality that occur - with far less frequency I would suggest than in decades past).


Perhaps that's why philosophical approaches to morality such as Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics so often seem, rather than laying down the law, to be telling us what we already know implicitly. What this points to, obviously, is a sense of morals that goes beyond the practical - but still without the need for a divinely imposed moral law.

But the Bible does that as well - most people who follow the Biblical commands to give to the poor, to offer compassion to the suffering, to serve the community rather than the self - find that they are more satisfied and fulfilled than when they serve themselves.

Divinely inspired law has one unbeatable advantage over human-made law: it cannot be manipulated by those in power; it cannot be changed by fickle masses. Therefore, its stability is considerably higher than law established by human beings.

[atiguhya padma]

Human nature is generally self-serving. It's primary goal is "taking care of #1." The default position for human nature is selfishness, not selflessness. Selfishness comes naturally; selflessness must be taught.

That's absolute nonsense. How did culture, society and civilization develop if we are all programmed towards selfishness? This is the kind of tired weary cliched response that believers trot out when they are too lazy to think about human development. Co-operation is as much inherent in us as is selfishness. Although some choose not to see it that way, as it spoils their treasured view of humanity and its assumed needs

[atiguhya padma]

God is not 100% unknowable, therefore agrees with your logic of X which can be substituted as God.


So what can be known about God?

[zado_k]

Zado, it wasn't that hard to find. It was the point I was responding to in the first place.

you were denying non-religious moralities

Not in anything you quote I'm not.

Peace and loving kindness,

Z

[blp]

you were denying non-religious moralities

Not in anything you quote I'm not.


Oh for...

You can deny it all you want, but I don't see how you can logically claim that



I don't think an atheist's moral code can include anything

is not a denial of non-religious moralities. Care to elucidate?

The remark quoted above was the sum total of what I set out to answer.

When I had, you appeared to retreat to the following more equivocal/relativist position:



I can see prefering an moral code that people worked out for themselves but I don't see any reason to deny that any other kind is really moral.

As if to suggest that it was I and I alone who had a narrow sense of what could constituted a moral code, when it was you who had begun the exchange by saying, I'll quote it again, lest there be any confusion or doubt:



I don't think an atheist's moral code can include anything

[Redzeppelin]

That's absolute nonsense. How did culture, society and civilization develop if we are all programmed towards selfishness? This is the kind of tired weary cliched response that believers trot out when they are too lazy to think about human development. Co-operation is as much inherent in us as is selfishness. Although some choose not to see it that way, as it spoils their treasured view of humanity and its assumed needs

Hmmm..."nonsense," "weary," "cliched," "lazy." Well, don't hold back now, OK?

You'll note - or at least I hope you'll note - that I said selfishness is the "default" position of human nature. That doesn't mean we are incapable of rising above it - it means that we will - especially under certain circumstances - drop into that mindset quite easily, quite naturally. Selfishness is not a behavior that most cultures claim to value; as such, most cultures teach their children the idea that selfishness is not conducive to harmonious relationships - but understand that they need to be taught that. Children will not generally grow up to share and put others first without explicit instruction to do so.

Under moments of stress, fear and duress, human beings will generally default to taking care of #1. There is no shortage of examples from history or contemporary society of individuals who callously abandoned those in need in order to preserve their own property, their own lives, their own interests. Call it "nonsense" if you wish - human behavior throughout history flatly contradicts you.

The "lazy" comment merely reflects your opinion of why others do what they do - but unless you're God and know the contents of all hearts, you have no such knowledge as to why believers believe as they do. As such, your opinion is largely groundless.

[zado_k]

Oh for...

You can deny it all you want, but I don't see how you can logically claim that



is not a denial of non-religious moralities. Care to elucidate?

Well, "this bag can't contain anything" doesn't have to mean that "this bag must only contain nothing" it just means "there are somethings this bag can't contain". I suppose it's ambiguous - I had thought the meaning obvious in context and didn't reflect on whether it should be phrased more carefully. I was after all, an atheist writing about morality!


The remark quoted above was the sum total of what I set out to answer.

In which case I apologise both for causing confusion and for challenging your recall. You were perfectly entitled to interpret what I wrote as you did. We have been talking at cross purposes. I simply meant by the sentence you quote that "there are somethings an atheist's morality can't contain".

Peace and loving kindness,

Z

[blp]

In which case I apologise both for causing confusion and for challenging your recall. You were perfectly entitled to interpret what I wrote as you did. We have been talking at cross purposes. I simply meant by the sentence you quote that "there are somethings an atheist's morality can't contain".


Okeedoke. No hard feelings.

[skasian]

So what can be known about God?

Read the bible and that will answer your enquiry.

I'll make a start for you. What do we learn from the first passage of the first page of the bible?
God is the Creator.

I'll leave the rest to you.

[atiguhya padma]

Well thanks for that Skasian, but you see, I have read the whole of the bible and find it totally unconvincing. It is neither credible nor even compelling. It is a mish-mash of stories that over the ages have come to be interepreted literally by people with a certain mindset. However, they are really inadequate attempts to explain what the primitive society of those times found baffling.

[skasian]

Well thanks for that Skasian, but you see, I have read the whole of the bible and find it totally unconvincing. It is neither credible nor even compelling. It is a mish-mash of stories that over the ages have come to be interepreted literally by people with a certain mindset. However, they are really inadequate attempts to explain what the primitive society of those times found baffling.

So you feel that the idea human should be aiming for perfection, for purity is unconvincing? Ah no worries, theres millions out there that feels just as you. The word faith comes between the line that sets the people apart. Thats one of the things that I like about God. He gives us freewill, we are free to enjoy what we want in life, and take own decisions and full responsibility.

Could you please elaborate in your thoughts about your last statement?

[Redzeppelin]

Well thanks for that Skasian, but you see, I have read the whole of the bible and find it totally unconvincing. It is neither credible nor even compelling. It is a mish-mash of stories that over the ages have come to be interepreted literally by people with a certain mindset. However, they are really inadequate attempts to explain what the primitive society of those times found baffling.

Well, then, if you've read the whole thing, then certainly you came across the verse that explains your failure to understand the Bible, didn't you?

"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." I Corinthians 2:14

That, in a nutshell, is why the Bible makes no sense to those who read it only to discredit it.

[skasian]

Well, then, if you've read the whole thing, then certainly you came across the verse that explains your failure to understand the Bible, didn't you?

"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." I Corinthians 2:14

That, in a nutshell, is why the Bible makes no sense to those who read it only to discredit it.

Brilliant. I should be memorising this verse.:)

[blp]

Part of our conception of the roots of morality come from our idea of human nature; you can be a Rousseau and think we're inherently good, or a Hobbes and believe that we're inherently bad. I - because of my Christian world view - tend to be more Hobbesian: human nature's default behavior is selfishness. Our views of morality are directly linked to that.

Your reasoning seems somewhat circular here, or, at least to be risking circularity. You don't believe it's possible to have morality without God because you take a Hobbesian view of humanity because you believe in a Christian God.

Just out of interest, how do you square this version of the Christian view with the parable of the Good Samaritan?

I haven't read Hobbes or Rousseau, except, the latter, in a pinch, so I don't want to damn either of them without a hearing, but their positions, at least as you lay them out here, seem simplistic and excessively polarised. All yin or all yang. In practice, don't we see evidence for both altruism and selfishness as innate, even in very young children. It always seems to me it's the very small kids, the ones who aren't self-interestedly watching the budget perhaps, who want to give money to beggars.

OK, I realise this doesn't exactly constitute a philosophical proof. :D I've been mulling over your question about what philosophy my Dad's starter explanation of democratic freedom led to. For reasons that go beyond point-scoring pedantry, the question seems clearly to require a working definition of philosophy itself or of 'a philosophy', at least. Break it down to its Greek roots to 'love of knowledge' or 'love of wisdom' and you've got something that seems clearly weighted to epistemology. This is limited, obviously, but this is where I feel your inquiry is leading, to whit, yes we don't really like the idea of murder, we wouldn't want anyone to do it to us or our loved ones, even to strangers, but how do we know it's wrong, absolutely, in such a way as allows us to legislate against it? To put it in, I think, Kantian terms, we think we know this, but how? How is this knowledge given to me? Note that Kant was a Christian, but never felt able to resort to God as an explanation. From his philosophical perspective, it isn't one because it simply removes the question to a transcendent, inexplicable realm, an unknowable realm. God is one of Kant's noumena - an unknowable, something about which we cannot have any certain knowledge. Hence, it has nothing to do with philo-sophy.

Of course, lots of religious people don't require Kant's proofs. They know what they know because they know it in their hearts, have faith etc. - even if, up to the point where proof broke down, they were quite happy to use proofs. This is, of course, the point where non-believers have very little option to throw up their hands and leave the field.



At a collective level, yes; on an individual level, self-interest will generally be the primary motivating factor.

If you'll forgive me, zep, to say this statement lacked rigour would be kind. ;) No evidence, no rational deduction. What am I supposed to do? Just say, oh right, yeah, of course?

As it happens, I actually agree, if this was the implication, that in extreme situations such as tyranny, acts of self-interest predominate. Anyone in doubt about this just needs to read Primo Levi's accounts of life in Auschwitz. However, part of the point about those accounts, I think, is that the memories of those acts of self-interest in extremis are part of the emotional burden that concentration camp survivors carry. In other words, they feel bad about having behaved selfishly, even in this situation where they had very little choice - which implies a conscience and a deep-seated desire to do good. Not for nothing are situations like this described as 'dehumanising', I think.



A fair statement applied to history - however, most examples of Christian misbehavior on a large scale can only be found by going back a few hundred years. Radical Islam now wears that crown proudly. I don't think America's prior history with slavery makes it a terrible country now.

Let's not get sidetracked. I'm not citing instances of past or present misdeeds in order to simply trash religion completely - even if that was my intention when I did it in a certain previous thread. The matter at hand, I think you'll agree, is the question of how we derive our morality. All I'm trying to show is that religion, far from being our only possible hope of having a moral code, is no guarantor of moral behaviour at all.



I appreciate your fairness; both examples suggest that ideology ultimately can be warped to serve flawed and self-interested human beings who also happen to agree with a certain ideology.

Possibly. Or possibly, and, yes, I admit it, this is my view, the idea that an ideology guarantees rightness makes it much more likely that oppression will occur. Look at the Stalinist purges. At a certain point, they reach an almost comical pitch of the nonsensical in which the mere idea of this rightness is enough to drive murder and imprisonment on a massive scale - even as the precise notion of what it was people were supposed to be right about becomes indistinct. Zizek tells a story about Shostakovitch being badgered by a Kremlin official to admit certain information that could be used to condemn a friend of his as traitorous - or be condemned himself. Shostakovitch didn't have the information and went home to spend an agonising weekend imagining his time was nearly up. On Monday, as requested, he went in to see the official and was told that the man had, himself, been arrested as a traitor.

It's this kind of excess of certainty that Christopher Hitchens is talking about when he tries to claim that apparently atheistic phenomena such as Stalinism and the Khmer Rouge were actually implicitly religious. He doesn't make a very convincing case for this at all in my view, but the point does touch on something interesting, which is the way that, at precisely the point in the nineteenth century where it's becoming harder and harder to sustain religious belief philosophically, a powerful move towards certainty asserts itself, like the return of the repressed, in the form of Hegelian dialectics and, thence, Marxist dialectical materialism. It's a sign of the shift taking place that Marx went so far as to justify his system by calling it 'scientific', indicating clearly that the certainty he believed he was offering had nothing metaphysical about it. But it's a last gasp, nonetheless, one that, one might hope, utters its uncanny last post-mortem squeak with Francis Fukuyama's End of History, an attempt to justify capitalism and democracy as absolutely right on the same dialectical terms at a point when everyone really should have known better.



The Wiccan ethical admonishment sounds nice, but I'm uncomfortable with its emphasis on will - on what I desire, what I want. It provides a mitigating condition, but its primary thrust deals with doing what one wants. That is very different from Christian theology which pretty much bypasses what an individual wants to what an individual should do. There's a difference. Acting in a way that "harms" nobody is very different than acting in a way that benefits other people. I'm not dismissing the validity of the Wiccan assertion - I'm pointing out how different it is from Christian ethics which says avoiding evil is not enough - one must actively do good.

But, as your own line of questioning seems to me to apply, how do we know what's good?

It's a bit of a sideline, but I disagree about your interpretation of 'will'. It's not necessarily synonymous with 'want'. It could just imply the future tense - do what you are going to do. This, to me, seems the right degree of ambiguity. Whether it's 'want' or 'are going to do', it's only a problem if you think that, off the leash, people are just going to go around committing acts of destructive self-indulgence (well you would think that as a Hobbesian, I guess). I think it allows a lot of room for doing good, but, crucially, doesn't insist on it. Insisting on it seems too rigid, a repression that will ultimately result in a backlash and it also removes volition in moral acts. You asked how my father's schema amounted to anything other than 'fear of retaliation', but how does a religious morality that absolutely insists on acts of virtue amount to anything other than fear of punishment and desire for reward? Where are our good Samaritans in that? The ones who actually have empathy and a moral sense, rather than just a moral rulebook? The ones who do good because they want to?



But that's the point, b: YOU see them as harmful - but the governments/groups enacting these atrocities have defenses for them - and without a stable moral frame - a transcendant morality that exists beyond cultural differences - we have no ground from which to condemn them. If we do condemn them, we are automatically implying a standard of morality that they should acknowledge as well - but if it's simply OUR morality, what gives us the authority to condemn/judge at all?

Actually, you virtually never see these guys trying to defend their atrocities. Usually they just try to say, it wasn't me, someone else did it. That's what was being described on the news last night. The guy was either the leader of a Lords Resistance Army that had forced women to murder their own babies (I know. WTF?) or, in his version, an unwilling conscript.



Don't you love it when that happens?

Yeah, it's almost like God talking to me. ;)



I will - to an extent - agree with you. The Biblical injunction against lying - IMO - is suspended if my telling the truth (here comes the cliched "Jews in the cellars, Nazis at the door" scenario) will end up in the suffering and death of an innocent person.

Or Kant's notorious murderer at the door after your children example, in which he says that the obligation to tell the truth is not void. Uh oh.



But in that instance, I have violated a "smaller" restriction in favor of the greater good - because the saving of a human life outranks truth-telling (especially truth-telling that cooperates with evil). That said, we cannot make all ethics situational - but we should clearly be using a set of noncompromising principles to guide us.

OK, maybe, but we're on more solid, potentially universal ground if we make those principles practical. If I say to a war criminal, who might, for the sake of argument, also be a member of a sect that sacrifices virgins, 'You are a criminal because God says murder is wrong.' he'd reject my argument on his own moral terms. The ground is no more solid than if I say 'You are a criminal because I just know somehow that murder is wrong.' since this man has a different conception of God from mine.

He might still try to reject it if I said, 'You are a criminal because you took the lives of people who were no threat to you and who were not willing to give up their lives', he might try a moral defense, but he'd have a harder time. The principle at work: possession is nine tenths of the law. In terms of maintaining social stability, it's a good 'un. He can recognise the terms because he can see that, if the situation was reversed, he wouldn't want the acts he committed to be committed against himself and might even consider them unjustified.

You might say, OK, but this doesn't really imply a morality, just a practical governing framework. And I might agree. I might even go on to say, what's the need for a morality at all as long as we know that we are protected from unprovoked harm? i.e. from injury or removal of our property by another person to whom we've done nothing wrong. As long as that is in place, why shouldn't people 'do what they will' and practice any moral code that suits them?

Roughly the same governing principle also occurs, of course, in the Bible: 'Do unto others as you would have them do to you.' At which point, it does rather look like a (wonderfully simple) guideline for moral action, but one that is, very much, grounded in the practical. No need for a deity to impose such a law. One can see the logic of it immediately and could derive it without reference to a deity.

Of course, to take an unHobbesian view, if you were to accept that morality is innate, the matter would be different. I'll get back to this...



Scientists can argue away - our day to day decisions and behaviors suggest otherwise

Sorry, but, once again, you're on shaky ground philosophically, not because you're obviously wrong, but because you're simply making a bald statement without any kind of evidence.


(notwithsanding random acts of morality that occur - with far less frequency I would suggest than in decades past).

I don't think we've got space to get into this. We'll have to agree to disagree.

"'History', said Stephen, 'is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.'" - Ulysses



But the Bible does that as well - most people who follow the Biblical commands to give to the poor, to offer compassion to the suffering, to serve the community rather than the self - find that they are more satisfied and fulfilled than when they serve themselves.

Good. Yes, the Bible can instill morality, but that's not the point of the argument. The point is, do we absolutely need religion to give us morality?

And where are your Hobbesian monsters of self-interest now? Why are these people more satisfied and fulfilled? Why does it feel good to do good? Because God rewards good deeds with an immediate sensory kickback? Or because of an innate moral sense to which altruistic action speaks?

Don't get me wrong. I don't think we're all just Rousseauian noble savages who will be more moral the less we learn of society's ways. People do seem to require moral guidance at times. But the point is, something in them responds to this, often with a kind of relief.

This is what I said I'd get back to. Do you want to say, 'How can we have morality without a God to impose it externally?' which seemed to be your initial question, or, 'How can we have the moral sense we do, internally without a God having put it there?' I don't mind if you want to switch to the latter, but please be aware that it would seem to contradict the terms of the previous question, which depend on humans having no innate morality and therefore requiring guidance.



Divinely inspired law has one unbeatable advantage over human-made law: it cannot be manipulated by those in power; it cannot be changed by fickle masses. Therefore, its stability is considerably higher than law established by human beings.

I'm actually slightly at a loss as to how an intelligent person such as yourself can make a statement like this. When has religion ever possessed this degree of monolithic certainty? When has Christianity? Many, but not all Christians agree that the Bible is the word of God, but doctrinal debates have continued among them long after its writing, often with very specifically moral implications.

Even if you could somehow get the entire world to agree a set of supposedly divinely imposed moral dogmas, though how you'd do this even God doesn't seem able to imagine, do you really really think that would prevent manipulation by the powerful? What about the Borgias? Selling of indulgences? Jim and Tammy Bakker? etc. etc. Why do you think Lutheranism even happened if not, in part, because of and in opposition to perceived manipulation by the existing powers that were?

Unlike you, with your sense that spontaneous acts of morality occurred more frequently in the past, I rather think we've moved on somewhat. However, that's not to say that the limited moral framework I outline is foolproof. Abuses, especially by the powerful (some of them avowedly religious people) continue to an almost incalculable extent. But, unlike you, I'm not arguing that an all-encompassing morality that will absolutely ensure nothing but moral acts is possible, let alone derived from God.

Quite the contrary. I think it's an imperfect world people by imperfect people, most likely because it was not created by a god. But, even if you don't accept this lack of a god, as you don't, you surely admit that the evidence of moral imperfection is all around, some down to the complexity and ambiguity of issues, some down to out-and-out, fully self-aware corruption.

What is the proper moral response to this imperfection? Gleeful acceptance? I think we can agree that won't do.

But I also think the assumption of a divine moral certainty is inadequate. It's not that, in the end, it allows us too much space not to continue thinking, not to take each case on its own merits. I wouldn't argue that because, as I've said, the debates continue even when one thinks one has got the word of God. It's just that, far from being our only possible source of morality, it doesn't seem necessary, for all the reasons I've given.

[blp]

Well, then, if you've read the whole thing, then certainly you came across the verse that explains your failure to understand the Bible, didn't you?

"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." I Corinthians 2:14

That, in a nutshell, is why the Bible makes no sense to those who read it only to discredit it.

So we can't accept the things of the Spirit unless we have the Spirit? How are we supposed to get the Spirit in the first place if, without it, its 'things' seem foolish?

It's interesting that even when Corinthians was being written, there were people who thought this kind of thing was 'foolishness'.

This would seem to apply to more than just people who read the Bible 'only to discredit it'. It would also seem to apply to people who just can't see the sense in it, even if they wanted to.

[Redzeppelin]

So we can't accept the things of the Spirit unless we have the Spirit? How are we supposed to get the Spirit in the first place if, without it, its 'things' seem foolish?

It's interesting that even when Corinthians was being written, there were people who thought this kind of thing was 'foolishness'.

This would seem to apply to more than just people who read the Bible 'only to discredit it'. It would also seem to apply to people who just can't see the sense in it, even if they wanted to.

Since I'm at work (and students will be here soon) I'll have to answer the shorter of your two responses.

I am working off of a couple assumptions, based upon what the Bible says.

1. God created all of us, and He loves us.
2. Because He loves us, He seeks to be in relationship with us.
3. Whether we acknowledge Him or not, He still works to bring us into relationship with Him.
4. This is generally accomplished through the Holy Spirit's influence upon us - the Holy Spirit convicts us of our need for God.
5. Depending upon our circumstances, and the "softness" of our hearts, we will hear that conviction in "louder" or "softer" volumes.

Often-times, the only way for our heart to become softened is for God to allow us to see our need of Him - which may come in the form of a failure, a loss, a trial of some sort.

Either way, it is the heart that truly wants to understand that is given the insight. The attitude with which you approach scripture determines whether or not you'll understand it. Even if you don't know God at all, but you approach the scriptures with an open mind and a heart willing to listen, He'll open your eyes. But if you come looking only for "proof" of some position, if you only come looking to discredit, or to scoff - well, that's what Paul is talking about. You won't get anywhere and it will strike you as nonsense. But I tell my students something similar when they poo-poo great literature: their dismissal of it may be due to the failure of the book - but it may also be due to their immaturity, and perhaps their lack of wisdom/experience to appreciate the profound nature of the book. King Lear - for instance - becomes much more powerful to read once you've had children. As a teen, the play is interesting, but not the harrowing and devastating examination of family dynamics that it is to a parent. The Bible operates similarly.

[Redzeppelin]

Your reasoning seems somewhat circular here, or, at least to be risking circularity. You don't believe it's possible to have morality without God because you take a Hobbesian view of humanity because you believe in a Christian God.

It's not that morality is impossible without God, it is that without God morality has not true, stable force upon us. Since I believe that people generally function on self-interest, without a transcendant morality, we risk becoming a law unto ourselves.


Just out of interest, how do you square this version of the Christian view with the parable of the Good Samaritan?

I'm not sure I understand the question.


I haven't read Hobbes or Rousseau, except, the latter, in a pinch, so I don't want to damn either of them without a hearing, but their positions, at least as you lay them out here, seem simplistic and excessively polarised. All yin or all yang. In practice, don't we see evidence for both altruism and selfishness as innate, even in very young children. It always seems to me it's the very small kids, the ones who aren't self-interestedly watching the budget perhaps, who want to give money to beggars.

I use the two as sort of rough sketches of the two views of humanity - Rousseau believing that human nature is basically good, Hobbes believing that human nature is basically evil.

Those altruistic children were raised by parents who - more than likely - instilled within them something pointing towards the moral action of taking care of the less fortunate.


OK, I realise this doesn't exactly constitute a philosophical proof. :D I've been mulling over your question about what philosophy my Dad's starter explanation of democratic freedom led to. For reasons that go beyond point-scoring pedantry, the question seems clearly to require a working definition of philosophy itself or of 'a philosophy', at least. Break it down to its Greek roots to 'love of knowledge' or 'love of wisdom' and you've got something that seems clearly weighted to epistemology. This is limited, obviously, but this is where I feel your inquiry is leading, to whit, yes we don't really like the idea of murder, we wouldn't want anyone to do it to us or our loved ones, even to strangers, but how do we know it's wrong, absolutely, in such a way as allows us to legislate against it? To put it in, I think, Kantian terms, we think we know this, but how? How is this knowledge given to me? Note that Kant was a Christian, but never felt able to resort to God as an explanation. From his philosophical perspective, it isn't one because it simply removes the question to a transcendent, inexplicable realm, an unknowable realm. God is one of Kant's noumena - an unknowable, something about which we cannot have any certain knowledge. Hence, it has nothing to do with philo-sophy.

But Kant ignored the fact that - even if God is ultimately unknowable, we can know - from the Bible - what he expects of us in terms of moral behavior.


Of course, lots of religious people don't require Kant's proofs. They know what they know because they know it in their hearts, have faith etc. - even if, up to the point where proof broke down, they were quite happy to use proofs. This is, of course, the point where non-believers have very little option to throw up their hands and leave the field.

But what about the other option: that the morality that God provides us with makes sense and is the one that benefits humanity the most? What if part of our faith in God is based on the logical cohesion of things like His moral framework?


If you'll forgive me, zep, to say this statement lacked rigour would be kind. ;) No evidence, no rational deduction. What am I supposed to do? Just say, oh right, yeah, of course?

As it happens, I actually agree, if this was the implication, that in extreme situations such as tyranny, acts of self-interest predominate. Anyone in doubt about this just needs to read Primo Levi's accounts of life in Auschwitz. However, part of the point about those accounts, I think, is that the memories of those acts of self-interest in extremis are part of the emotional burden that concentration camp survivors carry. In other words, they feel bad about having behaved selfishly, even in this situation where they had very little choice - which implies a conscience and a deep-seated desire to do good. Not for nothing are situations like this described as 'dehumanising', I think.

I think our default position is self-interest. It takes a heroic effort to be selfless in such situations as those you describe above.




Let's not get sidetracked. I'm not citing instances of past or present misdeeds in order to simply trash religion completely - even if that was my intention when I did it in a certain previous thread. The matter at hand, I think you'll agree, is the question of how we derive our morality. All I'm trying to show is that religion, far from being our only possible hope of having a moral code, is no guarantor of moral behaviour at all.

Religion cannot guarantee moral behavior because moral behavior must be acted out by human agents - and human beings will always struggle with morality (which always deals with how we treat others) because of our innate self interest. Religion is irrelevant - it is God that matters; unless morality come from a basis that humans cannot manipulate, it is liable to be abused by our self-interest.




It's this kind of excess of certainty that Christopher Hitchens is talking about when he tries to claim that apparently atheistic phenomena such as Stalinism and the Khmer Rouge were actually implicitly religious. He doesn't make a very convincing case for this at all in my view, but the point does touch on something interesting, which is the way that, at precisely the point in the nineteenth century where it's becoming harder and harder to sustain religious belief philosophically, a powerful move towards certainty asserts itself, like the return of the repressed, in the form of Hegelian dialectics and, thence, Marxist dialectical materialism. It's a sign of the shift taking place that Marx went so far as to justify his system by calling it 'scientific', indicating clearly that the certainty he believed he was offering had nothing metaphysical about it. But it's a last gasp, nonetheless, one that, one might hope, utters its uncanny last post-mortem squeak with Francis Fukuyama's End of History, an attempt to justify capitalism and democracy as absolutely right on the same dialectical terms at a point when everyone really should have known better.

The issue at hand, though, isn't so much religion and its zealots as it is the basis or morality. Religious people do immoral things - sometimes cloaking it in a very sincere belief that it is God's will to do something really immoral (the Inquisitions come to mind, as does the psychopath Fred Phelps and his vicious anit-gay stance). Despite the missteps by religious people, the moral framework of God IS valuable.


But, as your own line of questioning seems to me to apply, how do we know what's good?

It's a bit of a sideline, but I disagree about your interpretation of 'will'. It's not necessarily synonymous with 'want'. It could just imply the future tense - do what you are going to do. This, to me, seems the right degree of ambiguity. Whether it's 'want' or 'are going to do', it's only a problem if you think that, off the leash, people are just going to go around committing acts of destructive self-indulgence (well you would think that as a Hobbesian, I guess). I think it allows a lot of room for doing good, but, crucially, doesn't insist on it. Insisting on it seems too rigid, a repression that will ultimately result in a backlash and it also removes volition in moral acts. You asked how my father's schema amounted to anything other than 'fear of retaliation', but how does a religious morality that absolutely insists on acts of virtue amount to anything other than fear of punishment and desire for reward? Where are our good Samaritans in that? The ones who actually have empathy and a moral sense, rather than just a moral rulebook? The ones who do good because they want to?

There are certain "goods" that are universally accepted. Life, family, friendship, work, play, the experience of beauty, knowledge, integrity.

Although your discussion of "will" is very good, I don't think it applies. If the Wiccan dictum uses "will" as "in the future," then it is merely saying "do what you plan to do" which really isn't even worth saying. If "will" is used as I take it - desire, want - now we have a statement that deals with morality because I'm being told that I can do as I wish as long as no one is harmed.

The Bible's insistence that we do good, I think, is an inunction from God that is meant to nurture our souls; He created us to be in loving relationships; every immoral act we do does a violation to our hearts that has consequences both in our relationship with him and each other.


Actually, you virtually never see these guys trying to defend their atrocities. Usually they just try to say, it wasn't me, someone else did it. That's what was being described on the news last night. The guy was either the leader of a Lords Resistance Army that had forced women to murder their own babies (I know. WTF?) or, in his version, an unwilling conscript.

Fair enough - but do you really think they believe they're doing something wrong? Why would a group assent to do something they believe is wrong? Or is their lack of a defense simply a way to avoid entering into a dialogue they know they will not fare well in? Either way, the actions are being taken, and the censuring from other sources has little effect. Only monetary sanctions seem to speak. Moral ones go unheard - because if morality is humanly established, what hold does it have on me?


Yeah, it's almost like God talking to me. ;)

I love those moments (depending on what He's telling me).


Or Kant's notorious murderer at the door after your children example, in which he says that the obligation to tell the truth is not void. Uh oh.

That's where Kant is wrong. The Categorical Imperative is WAY more rigid than Christian morality.



OK, maybe, but we're on more solid, potentially universal ground if we make those principles practical. If I say to a war criminal, who might, for the sake of argument, also be a member of a sect that sacrifices virgins, 'You are a criminal because God says murder is wrong.' he'd reject my argument on his own moral terms. The ground is no more solid than if I say 'You are a criminal because I just know somehow that murder is wrong.' since this man has a different conception of God from mine.

But here's the thing: morality is a reflection of God's character - they aren't random rules He arbitrarily picked to enforce. That is largely why I believe most of us have an innate sense of moral behavior imparted to us because our creator implanted within our hearts a certain way of interacting with the world around us. We were created to love - because that is the primary characteristic of God. I'm not suggesting that saying "God says so" carries moral force to someone who doesn't believe in Him. I'm arguing that from a philosophic position that once we start agreeing with the criminal, we lose our moral high ground.


He might still try to reject it if I said, 'You are a criminal because you took the lives of people who were no threat to you and who were not willing to give up their lives', he might try a moral defense, but he'd have a harder time. The principle at work: possession is nine tenths of the law. In terms of maintaining social stability, it's a good 'un. He can recognise the terms because he can see that, if the situation was reversed, he wouldn't want the acts he committed to be committed against himself and might even consider them unjustified.

The fact that the criminal wouldn't want his actions perpetrated upon himself suggests his awareness that what he did was wrong. Because if behavior has no moral content, then why should he fear reciprocation?


You might say, OK, but this doesn't really imply a morality, just a practical governing framework. And I might agree. I might even go on to say, what's the need for a morality at all as long as we know that we are protected from unprovoked harm? i.e. from injury or removal of our property by another person to whom we've done nothing wrong. As long as that is in place, why shouldn't people 'do what they will' and practice any moral code that suits them?

Because, although avoiding evil is a basic minimum, but I don't think it goes far enough in producing good people. Think about raising children - should we apply that dictum to parenting? To our relationships? I'm not sure avoiding evil/harm is sufficient.


Roughly the same governing principle also occurs, of course, in the Bible: 'Do unto others as you would have them do to you.' At which point, it does rather look like a (wonderfully simple) guideline for moral action, but one that is, very much, grounded in the practical. No need for a deity to impose such a law. One can see the logic of it immediately and could derive it without reference to a deity.

Unless the diety implanted such an idea in us in the first place. Genesis says we were created in the "image" of God - this refers not to likeness, but to characteristics. I take this to mean that He gave us His attributes - love, kindness, compassion, justice - a sense of morality. Those things can be corrupted, but He gave us those things in the first place by making us like Him.


Of course, to take an unHobbesian view, if you were to accept that morality is innate, the matter would be different. I'll get back to this...

Morality is innate, but not because of evolution. See comments directly above.


Sorry, but, once again, you're on shaky ground philosophically, not because you're obviously wrong, but because you're simply making a bald statement without any kind of evidence.

How much evidence do I need to prove that human beings generally base much of their behavior around what they think is best for them? How many marriages have fallen apart because one of the partners is "unhappy"? How many babies have been aborted because people didn't want to deal with the consequences of their actions? How many people are currently suffering in this financial disaster because of self-interested banks? How many people have lost their savings or retirement because of ruthless CEOs? Come on - do you really want me to go on?



I don't think we've got space to get into this. We'll have to agree to disagree.

No argument there.


Good. Yes, the Bible can instill morality, but that's not the point of the argument. The point is, do we absolutely need religion to give us morality?

We don't need religion to provide morality; we need to acknowledge that its source is divine so that it has binding power. Otherwise our only choices are moral relativism, utilitarianism (which leads to totalitarianism), or "might makes right."


And where are your Hobbesian monsters of self-interest now? Why are these people more satisfied and fulfilled? Why does it feel good to do good? Because God rewards good deeds with an immediate sensory kickback? Or because of an innate moral sense to which altruistic action speaks?

Self-interest never completely goes away - but we can choose a higher course of duty. Many people, I think, are surprised that serving others, that doing good, that making an altruistic sacrifice - feels good. Perhaps it lacks the immediate gratification of choosing selfishness, but it provides a quieter, yet deeper, feeling of satisfaction. That doesn't mean it's always easy to choose. Doing good doesn't feel good because of anticipation of reward: it feels good because God designed us to love each other. Sin warps that into self-love - which - like any drug - tastes really good, but hurts you later. Doing good to others doesn't always feel good at the time (like eating well or exercising) but you feel better later.


Don't get me wrong. I don't think we're all just Rousseauian noble savages who will be more moral the less we learn of society's ways. People do seem to require moral guidance at times. But the point is, something in them responds to this, often with a kind of relief

This is what I said I'd get back to. Do you want to say, 'How can we have morality without a God to impose it externally?' which seemed to be your initial question, or, 'How can we have the moral sense we do, internally without a God having put it there?' I don't mind if you want to switch to the latter, but please be aware that it would seem to contradict the terms of the previous question, which depend on humans having no innate morality and therefore requiring guidance.

God doesn't need to "impose" morality from the outside; it's already inside us, but sin has corrupted it so that the Bible exists to remind us of what we innately know but either have forgotten or choose to twist around until it serves us.


I'm actually slightly at a loss as to how an intelligent person such as yourself can make a statement like this. When has religion ever possessed this degree of monolithic certainty? When has Christianity? Many, but not all Christians agree that the Bible is the word of God, but doctrinal debates have continued among them long after its writing, often with very specifically moral implications.

Remember: I'm not talking about religion or Christianity as much as I'm talking about the Bible. There's a difference. The Bible does not cover all moral issues (like slavery, abortion, euthanasia, etc) - but it does provide us with principles to use in our assessment as to how to respond to these issues. The certainty is not placed in particular denominational dogmas, but the basic principles of morality that the Bible acknowledges - which would be easier to attack if they weren't things that are generally acknowledged as being good.


Even if you could somehow get the entire world to agree a set of supposedly divinely imposed moral dogmas, though how you'd do this even God doesn't seem able to imagine, do you really really think that would prevent manipulation by the powerful? What about the Borgias? Selling of indulgences? Jim and Tammy Bakker? etc. etc. Why do you think Lutheranism even happened if not, in part, because of and in opposition to perceived manipulation by the existing powers that were?

The fact that God had to use human language to communicate His character to us automatically means that His word is liable to be manipulated. That is unavoidable. I'm not suggesting that returning to a God-based morality would solve all problems - I'm suggesting that without it we are caught in ethical quicksand because our platform for making ethical judgments is seriously compromised.


Unlike you, with your sense that spontaneous acts of morality occurred more frequently in the past, I rather think we've moved on somewhat. However, that's not to say that the limited moral framework I outline is foolproof. Abuses, especially by the powerful (some of them avowedly religious people) continue to an almost incalculable extent. But, unlike you, I'm not arguing that an all-encompassing morality that will absolutely ensure nothing but moral acts is possible, let alone derived from God.

I'm not arguing that in the least. My post above pretty much gives my position. I don't believe in a moral utopia - but disconnecting God from morality loosens morality's power to hold us in check. A good book on Natural Law philosophy ravels this out better than I can.


Quite the contrary. I think it's an imperfect world people by imperfect people, most likely because it was not created by a god. But, even if you don't accept this lack of a god, as you don't, you surely admit that the evidence of moral imperfection is all around, some down to the complexity and ambiguity of issues, some down to out-and-out, fully self-aware corruption.

We are morally corrupted - but the Bible explains that; we were created by a perfect God and we existed initially as perfect beings; however, we were given freewill, and we used it - and because of that, our perfection disappeared and we have become corrupted in our ability to apprehend God and obey Him.


What is the proper moral response to this imperfection? Gleeful acceptance? I think we can agree that won't do.

We must look to something higher than our corrupted selves to guide us.


But I also think the assumption of a divine moral certainty is inadequate. It's not that, in the end, it allows us too much space not to continue thinking, not to take each case on its own merits. I wouldn't argue that because, as I've said, the debates continue even when one thinks one has got the word of God. It's just that, far from being our only possible source of morality, it doesn't seem necessary, for all the reasons I've given.

Perhaps. But morality's force largely comes from what stands behind it. Just like a parent who carries out threats with consequences, the moral law must have something behind it that gives it authority. If the parent never consequences, his threats become meaningless to the child. If the authority is us, then we can revise it at will until it bends to our will. If the authority behind it is God's, then we have to acknowledge its authority and act accordingly to the best of our ability.

[blp]

It's not that morality is impossible without God, it is that without God morality has not true, stable force upon us.

My point is, how do you propose to make this stable force work, given that you admit that believers still fail, often quite egregiously, to live up to your god's moral code?



Since I believe that people generally function on self-interest, without a transcendant morality, we risk becoming a law unto ourselves.

You're still predicating your entire argument on something you don't seem to think it's necessary to prove - this dominance of self-interest. You do need to prove it. It's not apodictic or axiomatic.



I'm not sure I understand the question.

The question was how you square your idea that we are driven by self-interest with the parable of the Good Samaritan, the story, said to have been told by Jesus, of someone offering help without either fear of punishment or desire for reward, i.e. without being governed in any obvious way by self-interest. By the by, the Samaritans were people whom the Jews, to whom Jesus was primarily preaching, regarded as enemies, which increases the sense that the act was purely altruistic.



Those altruistic children were raised by parents who - more than likely - instilled within them something pointing towards the moral action of taking care of the less fortunate.

Just because you say it's so, doesn't mean it is. Again, to recap, I was talking about children who want to give to beggars, even when their parents don't want to.

I don't know what to say to your response, Red. Are you seriously trying to suggest you've never felt these kinds of altruistic impulses without being told to? I'll do you the credit of simply saying I don't believe you. Other than that, all I can tell you is, some of us have.



But Kant ignored the fact that - even if God is ultimately unknowable, we can know - from the Bible - what he expects of us in terms of moral behavior.


He ignored this because he was in pursuit of philosophical certainty, not, as he makes clear in an early work, Dreams of a Spirit Seer, superstition or hearsay. My point, in bringing him up, was only that - that his project was philosophical. I made this point in direct response to your question about what 'philosophy' my father's explanation of democratic freedoms led to.

My overall point in doing so was that, yes, it is indeed difficult to justify our values on strict philosophical grounds, however, if you want to make this point, you have to go all the way with it. 'Because God says so', is not accepted as a philosophical proof, because it doesn't prove anything.

I'll anticipate a possible retort: it would be if we all accepted the Bible as God's word. This self-evidently won't do, for reasons I've already given. Christianity was the dominant belief system in Europe from the Middle Ages almost to the present, but has been riven, throughout the period, with theological debates and disagreements. The word of God appears to be open to interpretation, even interpretations that have allowed popes to sanction holy wars against unbelievers.



But what about the other option: that the morality that God provides us with makes sense and is the one that benefits humanity the most?

If it makes sense in itself, we don't need a God to tell it to us. That's the main point I've been trying to argue. Everything I've written has been in response to your question, stated as follows:


I asked where the atheist's idea of morality comes from. I'm still waiting for an answer.

There you go. It's comes from the fact that it makes sense - it's something that can be worked out logically. The only thing left for you is to retreat back to your idea that we need God to impose this logical framework through reward and punishment and/or a transcendent gaurantee of perfect rightness. In fact, if it makes sense, we don't even need the transcendent gaurantee, just the sense.



What if part of our faith in God is based on the logical cohesion of things like His moral framework?

Your faith in God. Just to be clear, I don't have one.

I don't know, Zep. To some extent, what your faith is based on is up to you, but this, again, is hopelessly circular. Presumably, this is the 'moral framework' laid down in the Bible, which you believe is the word of God. To even believe it is His moral framework you're being convinced by, you'd have to have faith in his existence first, so I don't see how the moral framework could, in itself, be the basis for your faith.



I think our default position is self-interest.

So you keep saying. Without doing any work to prove it.



It takes a heroic effort to be selfless in such situations as those you describe above.

Yes, and people make that effort frequently without being religious, or without believing in the God from whom you believe you get your morality.

Are you saying that the effort required for selfless action implies we're always overcoming our default position of self-interest? You can just as easily argue it the other way: that really selfish action also requires a huge effort to suppress one's conscience. I'm guessing you'll say, well, that's because we've been told by some higher authority that sefishness is bad.

All I can say is, you really haven't proved the point. You're just saying what you believe and what you appear to believe defiantly in the face of overwhelming evidence that human beings are capable of both extraordinary selfishness and extraordinary selflessness.

But what about situations where no one would begrudge the self-interest morally and yet conscience still comes into play? Why did some concentration camp survivors, for instance, feel 'survivor's guilt'?



Religion cannot guarantee moral behavior because moral behavior must be acted out by human agents - and human beings will always struggle with morality (which always deals with how we treat others) because of our innate self interest. Religion is irrelevant - it is God that matters; unless morality come from a basis that humans cannot manipulate, it is liable to be abused by our self-interest.

More unsubstantiated insistence, but I'll go along with it. I'd just like you to show me a basis that humans cannot manipulate. The Word of God, as it appears in the Bible, seems not to provide that.



The issue at hand, though, isn't so much religion and its zealots as it is the basis or morality. Religious people do immoral things - sometimes cloaking it in a very sincere belief that it is God's will to do something really immoral (the Inquisitions come to mind, as does the psychopath Fred Phelps and his vicious anit-gay stance). Despite the missteps by religious people, the moral framework of God IS valuable.

And another bald statement without anything to back it up. Earlier you suggested the possibility that



that the morality that God provides us with makes sense and is the one that benefits humanity the most

to which I retorted, yes, and if it does make sense, we can work it out ourselves logically. So, in that sense, I might concede that the moral framework you think God provides us with is valuable, it's just that there's no need for a god either to provide it, since we can work it out, or to guarantee it absolutely, because the sense it makes is its own guarantee of validity.



Although your discussion of "will" is very good, I don't think it applies. If the Wiccan dictum uses "will" as "in the future," then it is merely saying "do what you plan to do" which really isn't even worth saying. If "will" is used as I take it - desire, want - now we have a statement that deals with morality because I'm being told that I can do as I wish as long as no one is harmed.

The Bible's insistence that we do good, I think, is an inunction from God that is meant to nurture our souls; He created us to be in loving relationships; every immoral act we do does a violation to our hearts that has consequences both in our relationship with him and each other.

You're arguing now almost as if I'm trying to set up Wiccan morality in opposition to Christian morality. I'm not, I'm just trying to show that we don't need a God, Christian or otherwise, to instill morality in us. I'll admit your point that morality probably requires a little more of us than simply not doing harm, to whit, it probably requires that we do good.



Fair enough - but do you really think they believe they're doing something wrong? Why would a group assent to do something they believe is wrong?

Er.... I'd have thought you'd be able to answer this one yourself: self-interest, the thing you believe is our default position; either, in this case, the desire to commit sadistic acts for themselves or to win in battle even by unfair means.



Or is their lack of a defense simply a way to avoid entering into a dialogue they know they will not fare well in? Either way, the actions are being taken, and the censuring from other sources has little effect. Only monetary sanctions seem to speak. Moral ones go unheard - because if morality is humanly established, what hold does it have on me?

Its own internal sense.

You said above that 'Religious people do immoral things - sometimes cloaking it in a very sincere belief that it is God's will to do something really immoral'. It seems then, for the nth time, that divinely established morality doesn't have a stable hold on believers either.


That's where Kant is wrong. The Categorical Imperative is WAY more rigid than Christian morality.

As far as I understand this concept so far, I agree.




But here's the thing: morality is a reflection of God's character - they aren't random rules He arbitrarily picked to enforce. That is largely why I believe most of us have an innate sense of moral behavior imparted to us because our creator implanted within our hearts a certain way of interacting with the world around us. We were created to love - because that is the primary characteristic of God.

Well, then you've answered your own question:


I asked where the atheist's idea of morality comes from.

In your schema, it comes from God because you believe God imparts an innate sense of moral behaviour to us. But I guess what you're trying to say, now, is that, yes, we have this innate moral sense, but we need to believe in God and read his word in order to bring it out and overcome our desire to sin. Is that accurate?



I'm not suggesting that saying "God says so" carries moral force to someone who doesn't believe in Him.

No, but you seem to have been saying, despite my proofs against, that it does, in the same way, for all the people who believe in Him.


I'm arguing that from a philosophic position that once we start agreeing with the criminal, we lose our moral high ground.

The only reason I started talking about convincing criminals that what they'd done was wrong was because you seemed to be concerned with how we might arrive at a universal moral code that allows us to condemn them:



If we do condemn them, we are automatically implying a standard of morality that they should acknowledge as well - but if it's simply OUR morality, what gives us the authority to condemn/judge at all?

This seemed to me to suggest that we should agree with criminals, in that they should understand what they were being punished for in order to, like, imply 'a standard of morality that they should acknowledge as well'. Something I would agree with. Now I see that you want us to agree with God, but not with the criminals. Is that what you meant?


The fact that the criminal wouldn't want his actions perpetrated upon himself suggests his awareness that what he did was wrong. Because if behavior has no moral content, then why should he fear reciprocation?

I can't really see what you're getting at. I'm not talking about reciprocation, for one thing, I'm talking about understanding that an action is wrong because you wouldn't like it if it was done to you. You surely don't need a God or a transcendent morality to tell you that you'd find being robbed, injured or murdered unpleasant?



Because, although avoiding evil is a basic minimum, but I don't think it goes far enough in producing good people. Think about raising children - should we apply that dictum to parenting? To our relationships? I'm not sure avoiding evil/harm is sufficient.

It's a big question. The doctrine of 'no harm' is frequently evoked in child-rearing, e.g.
Authority figure A: Small boy, will you please stop picking at that/making that noise/getting yourself dirty?
Authority figure B: Oh, leave him alone. He's not doing any harm.

This is just a massive subject. From what I can gather, but it's all pretty much fragments picked up hear and there from chit chat, TV etc. child-rearing experts believe that the way you treat a child, from a moral point of view, is largely a self-fulfilling prophecy. Assume they're basically decent and treat them with respect and they'll be decent and respectful. There also seems to be a strong emphasis on praising their good actions and being very clear about explaining why they're wrong actions are unacceptable.

I don't have kids, but various friends of mine do. I don't see them actively telling their kids to do good deeds or anything, but I do see the kids, frequently, being spontaneously kind.

Again, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of telling people to do good because then there's nothing of themselves in it, they're really just acting as the instrument of the person who told them to do it'; they're not giving anything of themselves etc. and the idea that they need to be told fails to recognise any good impulses they have of their own.



Unless the diety implanted such an idea in us in the first place. Genesis says we were created in the "image" of God - this refers not to likeness, but to characteristics. I take this to mean that He gave us His attributes - love, kindness, compassion, justice - a sense of morality. Those things can be corrupted, but He gave us those things in the first place by making us like Him.

How much evidence do I need to prove that human beings generally base much of their behavior around what they think is best for them? How many marriages have fallen apart because one of the partners is "unhappy"? How many babies have been aborted because people didn't want to deal with the consequences of their actions? How many people are currently suffering in this financial disaster because of self-interested banks? How many people have lost their savings or retirement because of ruthless CEOs? Come on - do you really want me to go on?

No, I just want you to

a) see that, just as there are, indubitably, countless acts of extreme inhumanity and selfishness, there are countless acts of kindness and decency too. What about all the people who regularly give to charity, risk their lives to save others, protest, in huge numbers, against what they perceive to be unjust wars and dictators, take in foster children, provide free medical services to the poor etc.? A guy in South Africa is currently on a 21 day hunger strike to try to get his country and others to take decisive action against Robert Mugabe.

b) explain to me precisely how, if God imparts an innate morality to us, our 'default' position can be said to be one of self-interest. Are you saying God imparts the innate morality and then the devil immediately takes control?




We don't need religion to provide morality; we need to acknowledge that its source is divine so that it has binding power.

But, as I say above, if, as you suggest, it just makes sense, isn't that binding enough?



Otherwise our only choices are moral relativism, utilitarianism (which leads to totalitarianism), or "might makes right."

More unsubstantiated argument. How does utilitarianism lead to totalitarianism? How do you know it always would? I'm not denying that it would, but you can't honestly be hoping to convince me by just saying whatever you happen to think is true without any kind of proof?

Anyway, as I said before, those aren't the only options. There's also 'Do unto others as you would have them do to you', a perfectly good principle that is so obvious in its sense that we hardly need a God to provide us with it. As you say, it just makes sense.

And you say, yourself



There are certain "goods" that are universally accepted. Life, family, friendship, work, play, the experience of beauty, knowledge, integrity.

and




Self-interest never completely goes away - but we can choose a higher course of duty. Many people, I think, are surprised that serving others, that doing good, that making an altruistic sacrifice - feels good. Perhaps it lacks the immediate gratification of choosing selfishness, but it provides a quieter, yet deeper, feeling of satisfaction. That doesn't mean it's always easy to choose. Doing good doesn't feel good because of anticipation of reward: it feels good because God designed us to love each other. Sin warps that into self-love - which - like any drug - tastes really good, but hurts you later. Doing good to others doesn't always feel good at the time (like eating well or exercising) but you feel better later.

I might quibble with the details, especially the religious ones, but I'm happy to agree with the substantive point that doing good feels good, love feels better than hate etc. You say this comes from God. I say it's the evolved tendency that holds societies together and allows for perpetration of the human race. Potato Potahto.




God doesn't need to "impose" morality from the outside; it's already inside us, but sin has corrupted it so that the Bible exists to remind us of what we innately know but either have forgotten or choose to twist around until it serves us.

sin has corrupted our innate moral sense at what point? The moment of conception or birth?



Remember: I'm not talking about religion or Christianity as much as I'm talking about the Bible. There's a difference. The Bible does not cover all moral issues (like slavery, abortion, euthanasia, etc) - but it does provide us with principles to use in our assessment as to how to respond to these issues. The certainty is not placed in particular denominational dogmas, but the basic principles of morality that the Bible acknowledges - which would be easier to attack if they weren't things that are generally acknowledged as being good.

Right, because they make sense to people even without a religious framework or a belief in God.



The fact that God had to use human language to communicate His character to us automatically means that His word is liable to be manipulated. That is unavoidable.

Oh. Poor God, doing his best, but it's not good enough, to be clearly understood. Are you saying he's not all-powerful?



I'm not suggesting that returning to a God-based morality would solve all problems - I'm suggesting that without it we are caught in ethical quicksand because our platform for making ethical judgments is seriously compromised.

By what? By what that doesn't appear to be just as able to compromise a God-based morality?



I'm not arguing that in the least. My post above pretty much gives my position. I don't believe in a moral utopia - but disconnecting God from morality loosens morality's power to hold us in check.

But it doesn't. The only extra leverage God would seem to have is eternal punishment/reward. But you can get the reward and dodge the punishyment just by repenting. (Also, as an aside, as Rozzy's posts in the Christian Hell thread suggest, the original gospels may not actually have communicated anything about an eternal punishment.)



We must look to something higher than our corrupted selves to guide us.

You haven't yet given one good reason why.

Would you agree, at least, that, as the example of Stalinism indicates, when humans believe themselves to be guided by something higher, they run a serious risk of losing touch with the reality of their imperfection and acting as if they do have perfect understanding?



But morality's force largely comes from what stands behind it. Just like a parent who carries out threats with consequences, the moral law must have something behind it that gives it authority. If the parent never consequences, his threats become meaningless to the child. If the authority is us, then we can revise it at will until it bends to our will. If the authority behind it is God's, then we have to acknowledge its authority and act accordingly to the best of our ability.

No. Authority based solely on punishment or power is tyranny. The check on that in democracies is reason. Authority figures of any kind gain respect by behaving rationally and giving reasons for the things they do that are understood by the people over whom they have authority.

It's clear you understand this because you've already argued against 'might is right' as a governing principle. You've also suggested several times that the value in Christian morality is that it just makes sense. What makes sense does not require a powerful authority figure to be 'behind' it, nor can we be said to be behind it. Its authority derives from its internal logic.

[blp]

BUMP *weeks later*

So, did I win then?

[Redzeppelin]

Ummm...No.


My point is, how do you propose to make this stable force work, given that you admit that believers still fail, often quite egregiously, to live up to your god's moral code?

I'm not discussing whether the system "works" - I'm philosophically stating that without a transcendant base, morality becomes more susceptible to manipulation by humans. Yes - God's morality can be manipulated, but since the morality exists to be verified (His word), it's harder to twist into unrecognizable shapes.




You're still predicating your entire argument on something you don't seem to think it's necessary to prove - this dominance of self-interest. You do need to prove it. It's not apodictic or axiomatic.

How do you suggest I "prove" this? What would convince you I'm right?


The question was how you square your idea that we are driven by self-interest with the parable of the Good Samaritan, the story, said to have been told by Jesus, of someone offering help without either fear of punishment or desire for reward, i.e. without being governed in any obvious way by self-interest. By the by, the Samaritans were people whom the Jews, to whom Jesus was primarily preaching, regarded as enemies, which increases the sense that the act was purely altruistic.

Our "default" behavior is selfishness, unless overridden by something "higher" (like a moral framework). The Samaritan's act was altruistic - so? I never said we were helplessly selfish - I said it's the default position unless something higher intervenes - a moral code, fear of punishment, desire for the good opinion of others, etc.


Just because you say it's so, doesn't mean it is. Again, to recap, I was talking about children who want to give to beggars, even when their parents don't want to.

Exceptions exist, yes. No statement of human behavior can ever be 100%.


I don't know what to say to your response, Red. Are you seriously trying to suggest you've never felt these kinds of altruistic impulses without being told to? I'll do you the credit of simply saying I don't believe you. Other than that, all I can tell you is, some of us have.

Yes - I have those impulses. But more often than not my first instinct is to take care of me.


He ignored this because he was in pursuit of philosophical certainty, not, as he makes clear in an early work, Dreams of a Spirit Seer, superstition or hearsay. My point, in bringing him up, was only that - that his project was philosophical. I made this point in direct response to your question about what 'philosophy' my father's explanation of democratic freedoms led to.

OK. Point noted.


My overall point in doing so was that, yes, it is indeed difficult to justify our values on strict philosophical grounds, however, if you want to make this point, you have to go all the way with it. 'Because God says so', is not accepted as a philosophical proof, because it doesn't prove anything.

God's morality isn't about "philosophical proof" - it's about how human nature works vs. how He designed it to work. The Bible tells us that the law exists to show humanity their need of God - that without Him we cannot be "good" in any way, shape or form. But that's a tangent: I'm not suggesting that God's morality is any more valid than another "morality" except that it is more stable because it exists beyond human creation; because it is established by a divine being, it has more authority than humanly-created law.


I'll anticipate a possible retort: it would be if we all accepted the Bible as God's word. This self-evidently won't do, for reasons I've already given. Christianity was the dominant belief system in Europe from the Middle Ages almost to the present, but has been riven, throughout the period, with theological debates and disagreements. The word of God appears to be open to interpretation, even interpretations that have allowed popes to sanction holy wars against unbelievers.

OK - and I'm not asking the world to accept God's moral law. I'm simply saying that the consequences of the reality that you've described is that totalitarianism becomes easier once man becomes his own arbiter of right and wrong because then law can be made to serve the state's will - whether the state is just or not.


If it makes sense in itself, we don't need a God to tell it to us. That's the main point I've been trying to argue. Everything I've written has been in response to your question, stated as follows:

Sure - but just because it's "common sensical" doesn't give it the same authority. Common sense can be challenged or bypassed by circumstances. God cannot.


There you go. It's comes from the fact that it makes sense - it's something that can be worked out logically. The only thing left for you is to retreat back to your idea that we need God to impose this logical framework through reward and punishment and/or a transcendent gaurantee of perfect rightness. In fact, if it makes sense, we don't even need the transcendent gaurantee, just the sense.

Addressed above. I'm talking about the power behind the law. A police officer can order 20 people what to do (though he's only one man) because people know that the entire law of the state stands behind him. If the only authority a cop had was him/herself, why listen if there's more of us than him/her? It's the authority behind the officer that gives him/her their power. The same is true for moral law.


Your faith in God. Just to be clear, I don't have one.

Understood.


I don't know, Zep. To some extent, what your faith is based on is up to you, but this, again, is hopelessly circular. Presumably, this is the 'moral framework' laid down in the Bible, which you believe is the word of God. To even believe it is His moral framework you're being convinced by, you'd have to have faith in his existence first, so I don't see how the moral framework could, in itself, be the basis for your faith.

God's moral framework is not the basis of my faith, and I'm not sure I've ever indicated that to be so. My faith in God is based upon my upbringing, my study of His word, and my personal experience as a Christian. The moral framework actually took a while to accept and understand.


So you keep saying. Without doing any work to prove it.

Give me some parameters and I'll see what I can do.


Yes, and people make that effort frequently without being religious, or without believing in the God from whom you believe you get your morality.

True - but the Bible tells us that all good comes from God - so that any "good" behavior by anybody - believer or not - is a result of God's presence in that person's life. Since God created us all, He doesn't need to ask permission to be a part of someone's life, though He will - with continued rejections, eventually withdraw from an individual. But this takes a long time and many, many rejections.


Are you saying that the effort required for selfless action implies we're always overcoming our default position of self-interest? You can just as easily argue it the other way: that really selfish action also requires a huge effort to suppress one's conscience. I'm guessing you'll say, well, that's because we've been told by some higher authority that sefishness is bad.

Yes I am.

Do you have children? I do - and I work with teen-agers for a living. Raising kids generally is a revelation as to how human nature works.


All I can say is, you really haven't proved the point. You're just saying what you believe and what you appear to believe defiantly in the face of overwhelming evidence that human beings are capable of both extraordinary selfishness and extraordinary selflessness.

Humans are capable of both - but you seem to want to paint me into an "either/or" corner and that's not what I'm saying. Without the intervention of something mediating, I believe we will tend to look out for ourselves. If our first inclination was to take care of those around us, I would suggest a much lower divorce and abortion rate. Not every decision to terminate a marriage or a life is done for justifiable reasons. As well, the incidence of extramarital affairs suggests that doing the right thing isn't as compelling as you'd like to make it seem. That's just a few examples.


But what about situations where no one would begrudge the self-interest morally and yet conscience still comes into play? Why did some concentration camp survivors, for instance, feel 'survivor's guilt'?

Could be the moral framework that they were raised with. Christians are taught to believe that "there, but for the grace of God, go I." That's one explanation.


More unsubstantiated insistence, but I'll go along with it. I'd just like you to show me a basis that humans cannot manipulate. The Word of God, as it appears in the Bible, seems not to provide that.


God's word can be manipulated, but not permanently because someone else can examine it and challenge the interpretation taken by another individual/group. It exists to be referenced. But humanly-established law can be changed so that there is not standard to check it against.


And another bald statement without anything to back it up. Earlier you suggested the possibility that...to which I retorted, yes, and if it does make sense, we can work it out ourselves logically. So, in that sense, I might concede that the moral framework you think God provides us with is valuable, it's just that there's no need for a god either to provide it, since we can work it out, or to guarantee it absolutely, because the sense it makes is its own guarantee of validity.

Already addressed already.



You're arguing now almost as if I'm trying to set up Wiccan morality in opposition to Christian morality. I'm not, I'm just trying to show that we don't need a God, Christian or otherwise, to instill morality in us. I'll admit your point that morality probably requires a little more of us than simply not doing harm, to whit, it probably requires that we do good.

Just pointing out the difference between the two.




Er.... I'd have thought you'd be able to answer this one yourself: self-interest, the thing you believe is our default position; either, in this case, the desire to commit sadistic acts for themselves or to win in battle even by unfair means.

Good point.


Its own internal sense.

You said above that 'Religious people do immoral things - sometimes cloaking it in a very sincere belief that it is God's will to do something really immoral'. It seems then, for the nth time, that divinely established morality doesn't have a stable hold on believers either.

Whether believers adhere to it doesn't change its stability - because ultimately, we will be held accountable for our behavior as measured by that law. That's the difference. If human law changes to allow random murder, how could anybody be held accountable? It would be "right" because it's "legal" (the reality of positive law) which is different from divine (or natural) law - which allows us to evaluate the justness of the positive law. God's law allows us to validate the justness of human law.


As far as I understand this concept so far, I agree. [//QUOTE]

Phew!

[QUOTE=blp;667320]In your schema, it comes from God because you believe God imparts an innate sense of moral behaviour to us. But I guess what you're trying to say, now, is that, yes, we have this innate moral sense, but we need to believe in God and read his word in order to bring it out and overcome our desire to sin. Is that accurate?


Yes. But that innate moral sense has been corrupted by sin (the fall in Eden) which now gives us a predisposition towards self-interest that conflicts with that innate moral sense (kind of the angel and devil on our shoulder cartoon).


No, but you seem to have been saying, despite my proofs against, that it does, in the same way, for all the people who believe in Him.

It should - but being a Christian doesn't mean the battle against self-interest simply disappeared. We struggle with that selfishness too. Christians aren't that different from those who aren't - we're simply supposed to be working on those things.


The only reason I started talking about convincing criminals that what they'd done was wrong was because you seemed to be concerned with how we might arrive at a universal moral code that allows us to condemn them:

The postive law is sufficient to condemn a criminal. We need divine law to validate the justness of the positive law that condemns the criminal.


This seemed to me to suggest that we should agree with criminals, in that they should understand what they were being punished for in order to, like, imply 'a standard of morality that they should acknowledge as well'. Something I would agree with. Now I see that you want us to agree with God, but not with the criminals. Is that what you meant?

No. Criminals don't have to agree with our interpretation of the law - but the positive law should agree with divine/natural law.


I can't really see what you're getting at. I'm not talking about reciprocation, for one thing, I'm talking about understanding that an action is wrong because you wouldn't like it if it was done to you. You surely don't need a God or a transcendent morality to tell you that you'd find being robbed, injured or murdered unpleasant?

You're right. That should be obvious - but that didn't stop Nazi Germany from legitimizing the extermination of human beings based upon ethnicity.



It's a big question. The doctrine of 'no harm' is frequently evoked in child-rearing, e.g.
Authority figure A: Small boy, will you please stop picking at that/making that noise/getting yourself dirty?
Authority figure B: Oh, leave him alone. He's not doing any harm.

Not doing harm doesn't mean that an action is beneficial or edifying. A child scratching his genitals in public with his hand inside his pants isn't "harming" anybody, but is his action appropriate, beneficail or edifying in terms of preparing him for society?

T
his is just a massive subject. From what I can gather, but it's all pretty much fragments picked up hear and there from chit chat, TV etc. child-rearing experts believe that the way you treat a child, from a moral point of view, is largely a self-fulfilling prophecy. Assume they're basically decent and treat them with respect and they'll be decent and respectful. There also seems to be a strong emphasis on praising their good actions and being very clear about explaining why they're wrong actions are unacceptable.

I don't have kids, but various friends of mine do. I don't see them actively telling their kids to do good deeds or anything, but I do see the kids, frequently, being spontaneously kind.

Again, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of telling people to do good because then there's nothing of themselves in it, they're really just acting as the instrument of the person who told them to do it'; they're not giving anything of themselves etc. and the idea that they need to be told fails to recognise any good impulses they have of their own.

Sorry - "friends with kids" doesn't give one any authority in the area of childraising any more than being single and having married friends gives one authority in committed relationships. Raising your own kids - I dare suggest - would radically alter how you see human nature.

I'm not telling anybody they need to "do good." But - if you don't actively train MOST children to be good and think of others (generally what we mean by being "good") they will tend to think only of themselves.


No, I just want you to

a) see that, just as there are, indubitably, countless acts of extreme inhumanity and selfishness, there are countless acts of kindness and decency too. What about all the people who regularly give to charity, risk their lives to save others, protest, in huge numbers, against what they perceive to be unjust wars and dictators, take in foster children, provide free medical services to the poor etc.? A guy in South Africa is currently on a 21 day hunger strike to try to get his country and others to take decisive action against Robert Mugabe.

b) explain to me precisely how, if God imparts an innate morality to us, our 'default' position can be said to be one of self-interest. Are you saying God imparts the innate morality and then the devil immediately takes control?

I've already admitted that "a" is true above.

I've already addressed "b" above as well: sin has corrupted the integrity of that innate moral sense.



But, as I say above, if, as you suggest, it just makes sense, isn't that binding enough?

As I said above: "makes sense" can be shoved out of the way by exceptional circumstances (like some of the ridiculous "Patriot Act" components that were terrific violations of American citizens' civil rights, all in the name of "national security").


More unsubstantiated argument. How does utilitarianism lead to totalitarianism? How do you know it always would? I'm not denying that it would, but you can't honestly be hoping to convince me by just saying whatever you happen to think is true without any kind of proof?

Seeing moral choices as a means to an end makes people into "means unto ends." Once the "greater good" becomes the standard for morality, we can do all kinds of detestible things for the "greater good" (whatever the powerful state tells us that "good" is, by the way. Without a divine law to measure the state's laws against, how can we protest these laws?).


Anyway, as I said before, those aren't the only options. There's also 'Do unto others as you would have them do to you', a perfectly good principle that is so obvious in its sense that we hardly need a God to provide us with it. As you say, it just makes sense.

But the reality that God is behind the Golden Rule means that we understand that it can't just be pushed out of the way without serious moral consequences.


I might quibble with the details, especially the religious ones, but I'm happy to agree with the substantive point that doing good feels good, love feels better than hate etc. You say this comes from God. I say it's the evolved tendency that holds societies together and allows for perpetration of the human race. Potato Potahto.

"Evolved"? How does a moral sense "evolve"?


sin has corrupted our innate moral sense at what point? The moment of conception or birth?

Yes. We are "born into sin."


Right, because they make sense to people even without a religious framework or a belief in God.

Yes - but that's because God created them and they bear this "stamp" of their maker within them whether they acknowledge Him or not.


Oh. Poor God, doing his best, but it's not good enough, to be clearly understood. Are you saying he's not all-powerful?

How patronizing.

I'm suggesting that God attempting to put His ideas into human language is like us trying to put quantum mechanics into dog barks. He's working inside the limitations of our existence.



By what? By what that doesn't appear to be just as able to compromise a God-based morality?

But there is a final accounting with God. That is the authority behind the law. Even if you manipulate God's law, you will ultimately answer for it from He who created it. You might get away with it for now - but not permanently.


But it doesn't. The only extra leverage God would seem to have is eternal punishment/reward. But you can get the reward and dodge the punishyment just by repenting. (Also, as an aside, as Rozzy's posts in the Christian Hell thread suggest, the original gospels may not actually have communicated anything about an eternal punishment.)

No. God knows the contents of the human heart. Repenting just to save your skin doesn't work if not sincere. The Bible also teaches that repeated sinning "hardens" one's heart against repenting. The longer you sin, the less likely it becomes that you'll even WANT to repent. It's a dangerous gamble to bet on a "deathbed conversion."


You haven't yet given one good reason why.

I've given numerous reasons thus far in this post.


Would you agree, at least, that, as the example of Stalinism indicates, when humans believe themselves to be guided by something higher, they run a serious risk of losing touch with the reality of their imperfection and acting as if they do have perfect understanding?

That is a risk. CS Lewis postulated that the "higher" one flies, the farther down he falls - saying that the greatest saints make the most horrendous of sinners.


No. Authority based solely on punishment or power is tyranny. The check on that in democracies is reason. Authority figures of any kind gain respect by behaving rationally and giving reasons for the things they do that are understood by the people over whom they have authority.

With God, reward or punishment is a function of reality - not His arbitrary choice; choosing God is its own reward; not choosing God is its own punishment.


It's clear you understand this because you've already argued against 'might is right' as a governing principle. You've also suggested several times that the value in Christian morality is that it just makes sense. What makes sense does not require a powerful authority figure to be 'behind' it, nor can we be said to be behind it. Its authority derives from its internal logic.

Already addressed above more than once.

[NikolaiI]

"Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!"

William Woodsworth

[jaywalker]

Laid back says ''If we consider things from scientific point of view, we find that everything in nature, right from a simple leaf to a blue whale or to just whatsoever else we can think of has a beautifully planned system.'' Like Cancer -birth deformities, Mental illness, a Rabbit found underground dead with a dead baby rabbit stuck in the birth canal?

[NikolaiI]

Laid back says ''If we consider things from scientific point of view, we find that everything in nature, right from a simple leaf to a blue whale or to just whatsoever else we can think of has a beautifully planned system.'' Like Cancer -birth deformities, Mental illness, a Rabbit found underground dead with a dead baby rabbit stuck in the birth canal?

You haven't stated it, but I am taking your position to mean that those instances make you doubt the existence of the divine. They also make you doubt the existence of the soul, I presume? What about any other ideal? Love? Hope? Faith? Should we not have hope because of some evils in the world? Should we not have faith? Hope, faith and love are all completely integral in coming to know God. They're also necessary for us as human beings. We aren't fulfilled without them - external, material objects don't satsify us permanently or ultimately.

[Pendragon]

In the words of a song by Michael Card:

"So surrender the hunger to say you must know
Have the courage to say I believe
For the power of paradox opens your eyes
And blinds those who say they can see"

[laidbackperson]

Laid back says ''If we consider things from scientific point of view, we find that everything in nature, right from a simple leaf to a blue whale or to just whatsoever else we can think of has a beautifully planned system.'' Like Cancer -birth deformities, Mental illness, a Rabbit found underground dead with a dead baby rabbit stuck in the birth canal?

What I meant is that you think of anything in Nature- living or non-living, you will find there a beautiful planning i.e. a complex mechanism by which a system (leaf or a stone or water, etc) perform its tasks or hold itself together. It makes you marvel, how everything happens by itself. If you study the physics or chemistry or biology of anything in Nature, you will find this planning there and to which scientists would not dispute. Further, if you take any human made objects ( Are humans anywhere near creating life in the laboratory with all know-how available whereas the life on its own evolved by itself as per science many billions of years ago? Also are we anywhere near putting an end to death? The day science gets there; I will start having doubts about God) like cars, TVs cell phone, nuclear bomb etc, what we have actually done is studied only the laws (science) of nature and harnessed this knowledge in coming out with our inventions. But why nature works in a particular way, why positive and negative charges attracts and like charges repels, do we really know?

Second point I guess from your remarks are that you say there is also a bad side to nature. Examples that you have given. I fully agree with you. But even in the bad things that happen, there is a mechanism still working, but working now in a particular way owing to failure of a normal mechanism. Perhaps you are indirectly implying that if a good God is there then why bad things happen. I don’t know the answer and I only guess that it is a part of our learning in earth. If all remains good for ever, then we may take everything for granted. So the pain, suffering, losses, deaths etc are there which make us reflect on our transitory happiness and make us seek God, seek for everlasting happiness.

Do also read my next post, where I have used your example.

[laidbackperson]

I have been mulling over this for some time. What do you say? It is a bit long but if you are able to finish it, and it makes your shake your head with amusement or disgust, do comment.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is it not possible that God is actually the director of the continuous drama that is being played in world day and night, week after week, year after year? He operates silently from backstage but it is He who calls all the shot, pulls all the strings. And does so, so quietly, and so furtively that we fail to feel His presence and start believing that this whole drama runs on its own without any one directing it.

One day 9/11 happened. Misguided persons, pent up emotions take the control and succeed in their mission of terror. The whole world watches the TV replays again and again. Unbelievable. What is the world coming to? What the heck the God can be doing? How come He let such a thing happen? Or is it God’s doing? He must have been aware of all this and still He let this happen?
Is it actually His way of asking us, Can you still believe on me after this. Can you still hold on to your faiths.? Or is God trying to send a message to humanity: Life is too short, too uncertain, don’t take yourself as invincible.

A Sunday afternoon. Sunny day. The city center is buzzing with activity. People are purchasing, tourists are sight-seeing, there is a zing in the air, lovers are gazing deeply into each-other’s eyes, oblivious of the world. Everything is looking fine with the world. A car comes at a breakneck speed and crushes a little kid who just moments ago was chuckling with glee. The kid’s young mother is inconsolable. Everyone who sees the sight is shocked, heartbroken. Why an innocent kid has to die this way?

Simple… A fast car, out of control. Probably the driver was drunk or casual or lost somewhere in thought or some other thing. But such things happen in the world. It can happen to anybody. There is no God. World runs on its own by its own rules.
Or again is God playing trick on us. Is He luring us into believeing that the whole drama runs on it own. Probably challenging us can we still believe in Him after this.

If we look around, watch TV or read newspapers, we will find plenty of bad and sad things happening: Rapes, unsolved grim murders, fit persons becoming severely handicapped for life, Mentally sick people, people dying of hunger or committing suicide out of loneliness, a rabbit found underground dead with with a dead baby rabbit stuck in the birth canal etc. We will find the world rampant with bad things.
Can it be God playing trick on us. Playing His drama so effectively that we begin to suspect His presence. Is He challenging us- Can you still believe in me? Can you still cling to your faith if your world going topsy-turvy?

Coming back, why that kid had to die. We can see it only as the death of a seven year old- a bubbly life coming to an abrupt end in an unnatural way. But may be there is a reincarnation thing after all. For God the kid is not seven year old but a soul taking birth again and again in various human forms in earth. May be even earlier than Buddha, Muhammed, Christ, Krishna and others. In His eternal play, may be in a karma theory we don’t know much about, the soul was to stay only for seven year as that kid. God sees the kid as an eternal entity ever existing and He is working towards the entity’s final union with Him. With our limited knowledge about an event, what for us is mindless, unforgivable and too callous, for benevolent God who sees everything in full light it may only be a passing show in an eternal play.
Yes, there are no proofs for these things. It seems that God sees to it that there are no proofs of the type atheists seek. And believers just have to march forward on a faith that may get tested time and again.
__________________________________________________ _
mm.. What happened?

I just hope that atheists and believers are not aiming their guns at me.

[Judas130]

Well, then, if you've read the whole thing, then certainly you came across the verse that explains your failure to understand the Bible, didn't you?

"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." I Corinthians 2:14

That, in a nutshell, is why the Bible makes no sense to those who read it only to discredit it.

In context with quote, its hardly useful. Paul felt mistreated upon visiting CHRISTIAN Corinthians, and accused them of being 'of the flesh'. He was late to his meeting, and was seen as unreliable: 'we do not listen to him'.

15
The spiritual person judges all
things, but is himself to be judged by no one.

16
"For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct
him?" But we have the mind of Christ

-- so those that indulge in a transcendent reality are not to be judged, they have their 'get out jail free' card for their ignorance of assertion and axiom? I'm sorry, but i'm judging already. it seems a hardly fair, loving, religion when the outsiders get discriminated towards. It contradicts jesus' views: there are many rooms in my fathers house - a respect for other people outside of his own faith. Paul, thus, does not possess the mind of Christ. simple. Paul here says that it does not matter if you are spiritual, you can be Buddhist, or a Christian of varying belief to that of Paul (the one who converted so many states) and yet you are still of the flesh: 'But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh'. This seems to contradict the views of Jesus, this contradiction makes the bible no better. your quote, in context, has no real argument.





So you feel that the idea human should be aiming for perfection, for purity is unconvincing?

The church tells me i must repent for my 'sins'. and what sins are these? looking a someone's rear and thinking 'damn! if only!'? because, why should i repent for this? It is not perfection or purity the Church is pointing you towards, it is to selflessness, to guilt. it is ridiculous - you were made with these 'default settings', why ignore them? if you are created in God's image then God is no more than a higher animal like we all are.

[Redzeppelin]

In context with quote, its hardly useful. Paul felt mistreated upon visiting CHRISTIAN Corinthians, and accused them of being 'of the flesh'. He was late to his meeting, and was seen as unreliable: 'we do not listen to him'.

15
The spiritual person judges all
things, but is himself to be judged by no one.

16
"For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct
him?" But we have the mind of Christ

-- so those that indulge in a transcendent reality are not to be judged, they have their 'get out jail free' card for their ignorance of assertion and axiom? I'm sorry, but i'm judging already. it seems a hardly fair, loving, religion when the outsiders get discriminated towards. It contradicts jesus' views: there are many rooms in my fathers house - a respect for other people outside of his own faith. Paul, thus, does not possess the mind of Christ. simple. Paul here says that it does not matter if you are spiritual, you can be Buddhist, or a Christian of varying belief to that of Paul (the one who converted so many states) and yet you are still of the flesh: 'But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh'. This seems to contradict the views of Jesus, this contradiction makes the bible no better. your quote, in context, has no real argument.

"Outsiders" are "outside" because they refuse to believe in God. You can't be a member of a club if you reject the club's foundation. That's kind of how it works (though Christ DID sacrifice himself for all humanity - those who choose to follow him and even those who don't).

Your interpretation of Paul's words leave a lot to be desired. I Corinthians 2:10-16 are a unified discussion on the enlightenment that the Spirit - the Holy Spirit - brings to humanity about God. Without the assistance of the Holy Spirit, we would be in the dark about who God is how to understand His will. Paul makes it clear that the Holy Spirit is what makes scripture meaningful to Christians (and foolish to nonbelievers) because it is through the Holy Spirit's work that we aprehend God in our hearts. I suggest a closer re-read of Corinthians before you attempt to take apart Paul's ideas.



The church tells me i must repent for my 'sins'. and what sins are these? looking a someone's rear and thinking 'damn! if only!'? because, why should i repent for this? It is not perfection or purity the Church is pointing you towards, it is to selflessness, to guilt. it is ridiculous - you were made with these 'default settings', why ignore them? if you are created in God's image then God is no more than a higher animal like we all are.

"Default settings" eh? Sounds like a justification to me. If they're so normal, why then do people get angry if they see it? Why would a woman get annoyed and her boyfriend/husband angry if they caught you exercising your "default setting" on her rear end if it were a normal and socially acceptable behavior? Perhaps it's because that behavior is innately wrong - because it is you "taking" something that you have no right to.

Your assessment of God is absurd. Clearly you know nothing of Him and can speak with as much authority about His character as I can about yours (which is with no authority whatsoever).

The reality is that if you'd actually read the Gospels closely, or even Paul's letters, you'd know that the worst sins are all spiritual in nature - the sin of jealousy, of bitterness, of self-righteousness and pride - those are the sins that Jesus lashed out against. For the carnal sins (checking out rear ends) he was surprisingly compassionate. Like me, you good sir, are a sinner. And, like me, you can be forgiven.

[blazeofglory]

There are plenty of reasons for us to believe in God. When our questions can not get answered we turn to God. God is the answer.

That is why turn to God.

[krymsonkyng]

God seems to be something of a security blanket. These days he's like insurance. Back in the day he was the only way of life. Folks believe and have believed in a god mostly out of self interest.

In Christianity the general consensus is if you believe in God, good things happen to you in this life and the next. If you don't you suffer for eternity. Other religions have similar rewards and punishments (Buddhism you spin your wheels, Taoism you constantly hurt, Any idea similar heaven or hell is like waving a carrot or a gun respectively).

People are selfish even in their charity.

Why should I be a member of your club? Because the club will keep the hounds from eating your soul.

Now please don't get me wrong, not everyone is religious just for the benefits God has to offer. I believe there are truly charitable people out there, who honestly fear other people will go to hell. They fear for themselves as well, but they know their odds are better than the heretic's odds. Fear becomes the heart of their love. God is love. People only believe in God because they are afraid of what will happen if they (and others) don't.

Having a god does not mean you have morals. It just means you have a higher being to answer to for those morals. True morals are for moralities sake. Otherwise you're acting out of extortion. It is possible to believe in justice without needing god at every turn to tell you justice is good. Consequences of actions, social contracts, and other reasons are enough to make a person realize that Integrity and Service to others are good things. God just does it quicker. Like money. Like a gun.

[Redzeppelin]

God seems to be something of a security blanket. These days he's like insurance. Back in the day he was the only way of life. Folks believe and have believed in a god mostly out of self interest.

A sweeping generalization. Said as if God is some entity that can be manipulated for our own "self-interest." You've not read much of the Bible, I take it? God knows the motives of the human heart - He can't be manipulated. Those whose interest is only in theirselves wouldn't bother believing in God for very long - their servitude for theirselves wouldn't permit it. "Believing" in God is not the sign of being saved - even demons believe in God.


In Christianity the general consensus is if you believe in God, good things happen to you in this life and the next.

Untrue. The Bible tells us that good things and bad things happen in this world to the evil and the righteous alike. In fact, choosing to follow God often means walking a more difficult path here on earth.



If you don't you suffer for eternity. Other religions have similar rewards and punishments (Buddhism you spin your wheels, Taoism you constantly hurt, Any idea similar heaven or hell is like waving a carrot or a gun respectively).

The carrot and the gun are not inherent and natural consequences; they have been contrived to get results. The mistake in this line of thinking is that heaven and hell are the same. They're not. They are the logical destination of people who either wish to serve God or serve themselves. And, it is not the oversimplified result of not "believing" in God - ending up in hell is choice made by people who persistently and over time refuse to accept the truth that God is their creator and they owe Him their lives in obedience. Heaven and Hell aren't assigned - they are chosen.



Why should I be a member of your club? Because the club will keep the hounds from eating your soul.

But the fact is this: that kind of deterent really doesn't have much force, does it? If we can do things here on earth that fly in the face of common sense (smoking, though we know it will kill us; ditto with numerous other self-destructive behaviors) with the consequences right in front of us, how are we to really take seriously consequences that can't be seen, and are at best beyond our ability to conceptualize?


People only believe in God because they are afraid of what will happen if they (and others) don't.

Another sweeping generalization that merely reveals why you think others might choose to believe in God. You cannot speak for all other Christians. Many of us believe in God because we recognize His ownership of us and we recognize the blessings He has given us.


Having a god does not mean you have morals. It just means you have a higher being to answer to for those morals.

And that makes a big difference. See below.


True morals are for moralities sake. Otherwise you're acting out of extortion.

How noble sounding. Pure altruism does not exist. And, without consequences, laws, and courts to enforce them, your utopian vision of morality would vanish in a heartbeat. One need not have a god to obey laws out of fear of retribution. That's pretty much how it works on this planet. Is it "extortion" to tell someone that if they steal they might go to jail? Is it extortion to tell the smoker that smoking will more than likely cause him cancer? How about the reality that consequences always attend moral transgressions, whether inflicted by the state, or our own heart?



It is possible to believe in justice without needing god at every turn to tell you justice is good. Consequences of actions, social contracts, and other reasons are enough to make a person realize that Integrity and Service to others are good things. God just does it quicker. Like money. Like a gun.

It's possible to believe in justice without God - but that "justice" has no stable foundation because it can be "revised" by humans whenever their self-interest or capricious whims decide that the laws do not serve their need. Witness the Nazi regime, Stalin, Communism, etc...

[krymsonkyng]

A sweeping generalization. Said as if God is some entity that can be manipulated for our own "self-interest." You've not read much of the Bible, I take it?

Admittedly, I couldn't get past the first chapter of the bible. My reasoning in not taking the good book too seriously has little to do with this topic though.




Untrue. The Bible tells us that good things and bad things happen in this world to the evil and the righteous alike. In fact, choosing to follow God often means walking a more difficult path here on earth.


Good point. But folks wouldn't brave the difficulties in this life if there was no reward or punishment in the next. That's self interest.






The carrot and the gun are not inherent and natural consequences; they have been contrived to get results. The mistake in this line of thinking is that heaven and hell are the same. They're not. They are the logical destination of people who either wish to serve God or serve themselves.


My point is that they are both basically the same thing in the next life...




And, it is not the oversimplified result of not "believing" in God - ending up in hell is choice made by people who persistently and over time refuse to accept the truth that God is their creator and they owe Him their lives in obedience. Heaven and Hell aren't assigned - they are chosen.


Some choice really. Owing god something isn't a choice, it's a debt.




But the fact is this: that kind of deterent really doesn't have much force, does it? If we can do things here on earth that fly in the face of common sense (smoking, though we know it will kill us; ditto with numerous other self-destructive behaviors) with the consequences right in front of us, how are we to really take seriously consequences that can't be seen, and are at best beyond our ability to conceptualize?


That's merely the difference of immediate gratification compared to long term happiness. I believe there's little comparison: Long term is more measurable than a shot of booze or a puff of smoke. God never enters the equation for temperance in this mortal coil.




Another sweeping generalization that merely reveals why you think others might choose to believe in God. You cannot speak for all other Christians. Many of us believe in God because we recognize His ownership of us and we recognize the blessings He has given us.


True. I did generalize, but I think I'm justified in it. People believe in god because they feel a benefit. I believe the post mortem benefits are the main incentive.




How noble sounding. Pure altruism does not exist. And, without consequences, laws, and courts to enforce them, your utopian vision of morality would vanish in a heartbeat. One need not have a god to obey laws out of fear of retribution. That's pretty much how it works on this planet. Is it "extortion" to tell someone that if they steal they might go to jail? Is it extortion to tell the smoker that smoking will more than likely cause him cancer? How about the reality that consequences always attend moral transgressions, whether inflicted by the state, or our own heart?


I see it more as economics than altruism. We are in agreement that consequence is the governing factor for a human being: I believe that people follow laws because they comprehend the consequences of the law on their selves. That's also why they follow god: It's in their best self interest.




It's possible to believe in justice without God - but that "justice" has no stable foundation because it can be "revised" by humans whenever their self-interest or capricious whims decide that the laws do not serve their need. Witness the Nazi regime, Stalin, Communism, etc...

The Nazis had plenty of church on their side when they started out. Communism is based on selflessness (isn't that a Christian ideal? Wasn't Jesus selfless?).

God does not equal morality in my book, he equals supernatural authority. The two may not always be coterminus in human thought, and can be twisted pretty nicely. There are plenty of examples of the abuse of religious authority. Self interest with foresight is where morality really comes from. It is also why people usually believe in god. You don't need god for the first though, he just helps.

[Redzeppelin]

Good point. But folks wouldn't brave the difficulties in this life if there was no reward or punishment in the next. That's self interest.

Let's put it this way: relationships go through a number of stages - the deep love that a man and a woman may feel for each other is not present in its earliest stages; that's infatuation and attraction. The deep committed love develops over time. With God it is the same way; in the beginning, some people may simply choose to believe for the "benefit" - but if they are truly developing a relationship with God (which they must do, otherwise the "benefit" will cease to be meaningful to them) that motivation may still be present, but it will cease to take the highest priority.



My point is that they are both basically the same thing in the next life...

How can you even begin to assume knowledge of what the next life will be like?

People who wish to serve themselves reject God. You can't get to heaven by putting yourself first. Regardless as to how YOU interpret people's motivation for believing in God, the Bible makes it clear how one gets into heaven and it doesn't agree with your interpretation. Sorry.


Some choice really. Owing god something isn't a choice, it's a debt.

An attitude that clearly speaks of a denial that we owe God anything; are you willing to reject all obligation here on earth? Do parents owe their children anything? Do spouses owe each other anything? Do children owe their parents anything? Do you dare day no to those questions (because civilization is based on these shared obligations)? If we acknowledge that these relationships involve legitimate obligations, why do you seem to bristle at the idea that we owe something to the Entity that not only created us, but all the blessings we enjoy and the universe itself?


That's merely the difference of immediate gratification compared to long term happiness. I believe there's little comparison: Long term is more measurable than a shot of booze or a puff of smoke. God never enters the equation for temperance in this mortal coil.

I don't see the point you're trying to make here. Consequences are only just so effective. Most people understand that intrinsic controls are much more effective than extrinsic. Kids who are raised up correctly are a much better deterent to crime than higher jail sentences; the former is proactive, the latter reactive. As such, the extrinsic reward of heaven/punishment of hell is only just so effective; those who don't have a real relationship with God will eventually reject the reward and deny the punishment.



True. I did generalize, but I think I'm justified in it. People believe in god because they feel a benefit. I believe the post mortem benefits are the main incentive.

Well, you've simply repeated yourself again without providing any real argument as to why your generalization might be correct. You can't defend a generalization by simply repeating the generalization.



I see it more as economics than altruism. We are in agreement that consequence is the governing factor for a human being: I believe that people follow laws because they comprehend the consequences of the law on their selves. That's also why they follow god: It's in their best self interest.

To an extent, yes; but it's more complicated than that. The key is why people come to God at all. Generally, people come to God because the Holy Spirit has been working on their heart, convicting them of their sin and showing them their need of God (we do need him - C.S. Lewis suggests that we were desgined to "run" on God just as a car is designed to run on gasoline - anything else will leave us unsatisfied and searching). Once the individual accepts that s/he needs God, then they ask Him to enter their lives and the growth begins. The average person doesn't go "Well, I'm not sure about all this but I want to go to heaven." It's not that simple.


The Nazis had plenty of church on their side when they started out. Communism is based on selflessness (isn't that a Christian ideal? Wasn't Jesus selfless?).

Communism is NOT based on selflessness, PLEASE. You simply must be kidding. Let's not bring the Nazi's into this - claiming affiliation with God is easily done - proving it is an entirely different story. Next.


God does not equal morality in my book, he equals supernatural authority. The two may not always be coterminus in human thought, and can be twisted pretty nicely. There are plenty of examples of the abuse of religious authority. Self interest with foresight is where morality really comes from. It is also why people usually believe in god. You don't need god for the first though, he just helps.

That flawed and sinful human beings have misinterpreted God's will (either knowingly or unknowingly) doesn't invalidate God's morality anymore than your twisting my words would invalidate my argument.

Self-interest is usually working against morality. Morality always involves doing what is in the best interest of the other, not of me. In serving the other I end up taking care of me, but certainly not in a way that is explicitly based in "self-interest."

Without God behind morality, morality has no stable basis and is open to manipulation and distortion by self-interested people and their governments.

[krymsonkyng]

Let's put it this way: relationships go through a number of stages - the deep love that a man and a woman may feel for each other is not present in its earliest stages; that's infatuation and attraction. The deep committed love develops over time. With God it is the same way; in the beginning, some people may simply choose to believe for the "benefit" - but if they are truly developing a relationship with God (which they must do, otherwise the "benefit" will cease to be meaningful to them) that motivation may still be present, but it will cease to take the highest priority.


I agree. A relationship is initially benefit, eventually the immediate trade becomes less important. It's the first and strongest "why I believe" though.

Note the I in the sentence, folks don't do things for prolonged periods unless they feel they're right or benefit in some way or another. Otherwise they've stopped thinking and are just doing. That's not belief, that's blind faith and it's more dangerous than anyone who takes a moment to consider the real world consequences of their actions.




How can you even begin to assume knowledge of what the next life will be like?


Heaven = good. Whether it's paradise with harps and robes or merely being in the presence of god Heaven by definition is a good thing. Hell is its inverse to some degree. It's not an assumption, it's a definition.



People who wish to serve themselves reject God. You can't get to heaven by putting yourself first. Regardless as to how YOU interpret people's motivation for believing in God, the Bible makes it clear how one gets into heaven and it doesn't agree with your interpretation. Sorry.


Whether the bible proposes that's how it is or isn't, is moot. This isn't about how to get into heaven, or what an ideal person is like, it's about why a person believes in a god. Any god. It drives me crazy when folks take only the Christian point of view. Because why would anyone consider anything else?





An attitude that clearly speaks of a denial that we owe God anything; are you willing to reject all obligation here on earth? Do parents owe their children anything? Do spouses owe each other anything? Do children owe their parents anything? Do you dare day no to those questions (because civilization is based on these shared obligations)? If we acknowledge that these relationships involve legitimate obligations, why do you seem to bristle at the idea that we owe something to the Entity that not only created us, but all the blessings we enjoy and the universe itself?


God isn't my parents. God isn't my children. God isn't my society. The give and take in this life and between me and them is something like the give and take between god and man. I love them because they love me, or benefit me, not because I owe it to them. What about kids whose parents are abusive drunks? Kids with guns? Oppressive rule? Do we owe them love too? Love out of guilt? Shame.




I don't see the point you're trying to make here. Consequences are only just so effective. Most people understand that intrinsic controls are much more effective than extrinsic. Kids who are raised up correctly are a much better deterent to crime than higher jail sentences; the former is proactive, the latter reactive. As such, the extrinsic reward of heaven/punishment of hell is only just so effective; those who don't have a real relationship with God will eventually reject the reward and deny the punishment.


This is true. Parents raise their kids using lesser consequences and (hopefully) rationality to see what their actions will result in once they're of age. The idea is to comprehend consequences in order to avoid them and excel despite them. The fringe benefits of being a good person are well worth the trouble, despite the obvious benefits of being crude and getting away with it. Integrity means a good reputation. Robbery has immediate benefits but society sees the robber as a cheater and punishes them for it. Understanding the consequences of a persons actions is more important.

Eternal bliss or eternal pain are only so effective, my eye! They're eternally effective!!! Assuming someone can be convinced to believe in them. I see it as something like Stockholm syndrome: Initially cooperate and everything goes smoothly. Eventually it's just habit. There's love there.





Well, you've simply repeated yourself again without providing any real argument as to why your generalization might be correct. You can't defend a generalization by simply repeating the generalization.


Ok, invert my generalization. Do people believe in god because they feel no benefit from it? Is it out of guilt alone?

I believe rational people do what they feel benefits them. Which is why they believe in a god. It's that simple.




Communism is NOT based on selflessness, PLEASE. You simply must be kidding. Let's not bring the Nazi's into this - claiming affiliation with God is easily done - proving it is an entirely different story. Next.


Proving affiliation is unnecessary. In war both sides believe their god's on their side. I was pointing out that using the Nazi's and Commies as examples does nothing for this argument. Justice is just as stable as god.




Self-interest is usually working against morality. Morality always involves doing what is in the best interest of the other, not of me. In serving the other I end up taking care of me, but certainly not in a way that is explicitly based in "self-interest."


I disagree.

[Judas130]

"Default settings" eh? Sounds like a justification to me. If they're so normal, why then do people get angry if they see it?
Because society is very much practiced in good form. Behind the closed doors however, oh boy! Read Jekyll and Hyde to understand how dualistic society can be, how society spits hypocrisy, how they do not practice what they preach. But we all think it, desire for example, to do what you really want to do, is part of what you are, when you strip away all the strings that tie you down, you are an animal.



Why would a woman get annoyed and her boyfriend/husband angry if they caught you exercising your "default setting" on her rear end if it were a normal and socially acceptable behavior?
I never said it was.


Perhaps it's because that behavior is innately wrong
Feels good to me, feels free. Moral imperatives are shaped from your upbringing and your surroundings, what you accept unquestionably as a child, or force yourself to accept as an adult, for varying reasons and factors and incentives. To you, perhaps doing sorry you 'ought' not to feels bad, because you simply shouldn't, you'd get a slap, you'd feel dirty, because you are instilled with a notion of cleanliness. 'adama'/adam = earth. Your bible claims we are made from dirt, we are not divine, we are an imperfect form of a concept. You can squeeze more from the soil, but i'll take what i have and won't waste me' time sir.




The reality is that if you'd actually read the Gospels closely, or even Paul's letters, you'd know that the worst sins are all spiritual in nature

Then I have nothing to fear. I do not possess the transcendent power from this unseen 'spirit'. I possess a brain, and a body.


The key is why people come to God at all. Generally, people come to God because the Holy Spirit has been working on their heart, convicting them of their sin and showing them their need of God

Your opinion. Psychologically, people come to a religion to commune together in their guilt, using trance and conformity as the cognitive mechanism to find some middle ground between their melancholy and joy. The man who creates his god, builds his god to suit his characteristics, and preaches of it. Others who worship this deity, worship the man's characteristics. religious people seem to be in some perpetual search of forgiveness for some unseen sin, completely obsessed with their guilt, in union with what they think they feel is right, or what they are told. Tell me, if God influences us through our imperatives, if God innately speaks to us about what is wrong, then how comes we differ in opinion over morality? Clearly, God does not speak to all. Only those, select religious few...the ones who tell themselves day in and out that there is some mercy for their 'sinful' desires at the end of the tunnel. is evil really evil? or is evil simply live ? evil/live


ending up in hell is choice made by people who persistently and over time refuse to accept the truth that God is their creator and they owe Him their lives in obedience. if God is all powerful - why then does suffering exist, the problem of evil etc etc. I understand the comebacks to these questions and this isnt exactly my point. My viewpoint is that Hell is where God is not. God does not exist physically, it can't. So hell is here. Heaven, like God, is your abstract notion. Hell is your realm of pain and suffering, destruction, and 'evil' - heaven is an end to all this, and frankly I call it death. Heaven and Hell = Life and Death. Both journeys, both tests.


How can you even begin to assume knowledge of what the next life will be like?

how can we know what the next life will be like? how can we know a God? the 'bible' is riddled with contradictions and is hardly a sound basis for absolute truth. It is the job of organizations, congregations of humans, to interpret biblical meanings and these interpretations flood in abundance. God does not exist empirically, we established this in another thread, yet he exists in concept. so then, with so many differing viewpoints on God, and on the bible, surely they can't all be right? God is the supreme being, yet you or anybody else is trying to explain him to me, undermines his superiority, because he fails prey to our differing, conceptual, abstract thinking. It eats itself, you might say.

[Redzeppelin]

Note the I in the sentence, folks don't do things for prolonged periods unless they feel they're right or benefit in some way or another. Otherwise they've stopped thinking and are just doing. That's not belief, that's blind faith and it's more dangerous than anyone who takes a moment to consider the real world consequences of their actions.

OK - this is simply going to go in a circle until we get some clarity on how you're using the term "benefit" and the idea of "self-interest." You're using the term in a way to suggest "selfishness" but that is not always so. To do what is in my "best interest" may mean doing things that require sacrifice and discomfort. That is very different from "self-interest" that is inwardly focused. For example, if I eat the right foods and exercise, I'm doing that out of "self-interest," but nobody would call that selfish. However, if I eat junk food because I like it and it makes me feel good - well, that's a different sort of "self-focus." The problem with making Christians "self-interested" and no more is that that flatly contradicts the Bible's injunctions that believers be outwardly (not inwardly) focused.



Heaven = good. Whether it's paradise with harps and robes or merely being in the presence of god Heaven by definition is a good thing. Hell is its inverse to some degree. It's not an assumption, it's a definition.

No - you've merely categorized both places - but that is not sufficient to make assumptions about the nature of either place - especially since the definition of "good" must match God's definition of "good" (not our own) if it is to be accurate.



Whether the bible proposes that's how it is or isn't, is moot. This isn't about how to get into heaven, or what an ideal person is like, it's about why a person believes in a god. Any god. It drives me crazy when folks take only the Christian point of view. Because why would anyone consider anything else?

Because I AM a Christian; why should I take a view I don't believe in? Do you do that?



God isn't my parents. God isn't my children. God isn't my society. The give and take in this life and between me and them is something like the give and take between god and man. I love them because they love me, or benefit me, not because I owe it to them. What about kids whose parents are abusive drunks? Kids with guns? Oppressive rule? Do we owe them love too? Love out of guilt? Shame.

On the contrary - God is your parent as He is the parent of all created beings. Wrong - you owe your parents certain things as their child: respect, love, honor, care. Before you understood what it meant to love them, you had instilled within you the idea that you had certain obligations to them. Kids who aren't taught that do not grow up to respect and love their parents. Your negative examples are clever, but they are merely exceptions you're tossing out to deflect the point I was making. Family memebers have obligations to each other - the family is the most fundamental unit of government because it is the natural model of obligation and duty.




Eternal bliss or eternal pain are only so effective, my eye! They're eternally effective!!! Assuming someone can be convinced to believe in them. I see it as something like Stockholm syndrome: Initially cooperate and everything goes smoothly. Eventually it's just habit. There's love there.

No. Both options (bliss and pain) are equally unreal to us. It requires faith to believe in either, just as it takes faith to believe in God. There are plenty of people who believe in both who still willingly sin. Consequences cannot keep all people from doing what they ought not. The idea is that while the fear of the consequence or desire of the reward may bring someone to God, that once that person gets into a relationship with God that such mercenary ideas fall to the side; if the person does not develop a relationship with God, then he/she will more than likely fall away and decide not to believe in either.


Ok, invert my generalization. Do people believe in god because they feel no benefit from it? Is it out of guilt alone?

I believe rational people do what they feel benefits them. Which is why they believe in a god. It's that simple.

Yes - rational people do that - but "benefit" is not the nasty word you're trying to make it. Your simplification over-simplifies both human nature and our interactions with God.


Proving affiliation is unnecessary. In war both sides believe their god's on their side. I was pointing out that using the Nazi's and Commies as examples does nothing for this argument. Justice is just as stable as god.

No - justice is a function of law - and if unjust laws are passed then justice becomes unjust.


Because society is very much practiced in good form. Behind the closed doors however, oh boy! Read Jekyll and Hyde to understand how dualistic society can be, how society spits hypocrisy, how they do not practice what they preach. But we all think it, desire for example, to do what you really want to do, is part of what you are, when you strip away all the strings that tie you down, you are an animal.

We are capable of this, yes. All of us.


Feels good to me, feels free. Moral imperatives are shaped from your upbringing and your surroundings, what you accept unquestionably as a child, or force yourself to accept as an adult, for varying reasons and factors and incentives. To you, perhaps doing sorry you 'ought' not to feels bad, because you simply shouldn't, you'd get a slap, you'd feel dirty, because you are instilled with a notion of cleanliness. 'adama'/adam = earth. Your bible claims we are made from dirt, we are not divine, we are an imperfect form of a concept. You can squeeze more from the soil, but i'll take what i have and won't waste me' time sir.

Feelings ought not ever be taken for reality. Freedom is not simply doing what you wish. In fact, most textbooks on law, freedom and justice make it plainly clear that the only way to ensure freedom is to restrict it - that total freedom without restriction means that somebody gets oppressed in some way. As the old saying goes - my freedom to swing my arm is limited by the freedom you have to keep your nose unbroken. If I respond that "well, too bad, swinging my arm 'feels good' and 'feels free' " I'm not sure you'd go for that logic.

I am instilled with respect for a woman's body which is not rightfully mine to possess even in my heart (see Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Matt 5). The only rear end on earth that is rightfully mine to attach my eyes to is my wife's.

We are fashioned from dirt and the breath of God - which means we are partially "divine" beings in that we have a "spark" of God inside us called a "spirit."


Then I have nothing to fear. I do not possess the transcendent power from this unseen 'spirit'. I possess a brain, and a body.

There are sins of the flesh (murder, adultery, theft) and sins of the spirit (pride, self-righteousness, vindictiveness, arrogance). Mocking God and those who believe in Him fall under the second category.



[QUOTE=Judas130;683811]Your opinion. Psychologically, people come to a religion to commune together in their guilt, using trance and conformity as the cognitive mechanism to find some middle ground between their melancholy and joy. The man who creates his god, builds his god to suit his characteristics, and preaches of it. Others who worship this deity, worship the man's characteristics. religious people seem to be in some perpetual search of forgiveness for some unseen sin, completely obsessed with their guilt, in union with what they think they feel is right, or what they are told. Tell me, if God influences us through our imperatives, if God innately speaks to us about what is wrong, then how comes we differ in opinion over morality? Clearly, God does not speak to all. Only those, select religious few...the ones who tell themselves day in and out that there is some mercy for their 'sinful' desires at the end of the tunnel. is evil really evil? or is evil simply live ? evil/live

1. It's my opinion, but that opinion is based upon what the Bible tells me - on what Paul says in the epistles. So it's more than just my opinion. If you had closely read the book you are indirectly criticizing you might know this.

2. Although your psychoanalytical undown of religion is interesting, it is largely incorrect - it is the view from the "outside" and I don't expect you to have a much more accurate view than that. We did not create God - He created us.

3. God's "voice" will not overwhelm us; it speaks quietly and can be drowned out by the other voices of this world (our desires, our lusts, our selfish motives) as well as the voice of he who wishes to derail any conversation we might have with God - Satan. He speaks - but you can't hear Him unless you wish to, or your heart is in a place where you're willing to hear Him.

Christians do not revel in their guilt. They understand and accept that they are sinners (as we all, including you, are) and that only God can help them become a better, less sinful person. Nobody on this earth is a "good" person per se - we all have done and continue to do things that hurt ourselves and our relationships - even you are guilty of this.


if God is all powerful - why then does suffering exist, the problem of evil etc etc. I understand the comebacks to these questions and this isnt exactly my point. My viewpoint is that Hell is where God is not. God does not exist physically, it can't. So hell is here. Heaven, like God, is your abstract notion. Hell is your realm of pain and suffering, destruction, and 'evil' - heaven is an end to all this, and frankly I call it death. Heaven and Hell = Life and Death. Both journeys, both tests.

Hell is the "quarantine" place that God will allow those who do not wish to serve Him to continue their existence. You are using simplistic logic to argue where hell is located. God is ultimate reality - whether or not He has a physical form is immaterial. Heaven and Hell are real places.


how can we know what the next life will be like? how can we know a God? the 'bible' is riddled with contradictions and is hardly a sound basis for absolute truth. It is the job of organizations, congregations of humans, to interpret biblical meanings and these interpretations flood in abundance. God does not exist empirically, we established this in another thread, yet he exists in concept. so then, with so many differing viewpoints on God, and on the bible, surely they can't all be right? God is the supreme being, yet you or anybody else is trying to explain him to me, undermines his superiority, because he fails prey to our differing, conceptual, abstract thinking. It eats itself, you might say.

I have little idea as to what the next life will be like - but if I am in the presence of God, I do not care.

Spare me the "riddled with contradictions" theory - it's tired and worn out. Most of them are easily resolved, and very few deal with theology. The apparent contradictions actually serve to reinforce its validity - because I book simply contrived by humanity to manipulate others (another popular charge) would most certainly have revised those contradictions out of existence. You can't have it both ways.

I can't explain God to you - nobody really can - except that the Bible tells us that God is love - so what you understand about love is what you understand about God.

[krymsonkyng]

First I want to thank you for hanging in here so long with me. I really enjoy this discussion. :)


OK - this is simply going to go in a circle until we get some clarity on how you're using the term "benefit" and the idea of "self-interest." You're using the term in a way to suggest "selfishness" but that is not always so. To do what is in my "best interest" may mean doing things that require sacrifice and discomfort. That is very different from "self-interest" that is inwardly focused. For example, if I eat the right foods and exercise, I'm doing that out of "self-interest," but nobody would call that selfish. However, if I eat junk food because I like it and it makes me feel good - well, that's a different sort of "self-focus." The problem with making Christians "self-interested" and no more is that that flatly contradicts the Bible's injunctions that believers be outwardly (not inwardly) focused.


You're right, self interest has a negative connotation not completely in line with what I'm trying to say, but it's the closest thing I could think of. Best interest doesn't fit either because I'm talking about a perceived "best" interest based on what an individual understands to be true.

It is a far sighted self interest, not always a logical choice, but a perceived truth. People believe in god because they think in the long run there will be a payoff. That's the only rational explanation I've considered until this conversation, where the concept of a deistic debt was hit upon. I guess folks believe what they're raised to believe. I don't think tradition or doctrine is always spot on (Genesis for example. I can't buy it.) but "that's the way it is" seems as good a reason as any, if one doesn't want to dig into other ideas.





No - you've merely categorized both places - but that is not sufficient to make assumptions about the nature of either place - especially since the definition of "good" must match God's definition of "good" (not our own) if it is to be accurate.


Ok... what? Would you consider Heaven a benefit of having Faith in whichever Christian group you belong to? By benefit I mean a good thing.




Because I AM a Christian; why should I take a view I don't believe in? Do you do that?


All I ask for is an open mind. That's the only way learning or an educational discussion is accomplished. I consider a view even if I don't believe in it. That's respect, isn't it? I'm trying to stay open to all the other gods that have come and gone both before and after the Christian texts were written, interpreted, edited, rewritten and reinterpreted. I want a generalized reason why people believe in god(s). As I understand it, people believe because they think it's right. They think it's right because of the benefits.





On the contrary - God is your parent as He is the parent of all created beings. Wrong - you owe your parents certain things as their child: respect, love, honor, care. Before you understood what it meant to love them, you had instilled within you the idea that you had certain obligations to them. Kids who aren't taught that do not grow up to respect and love their parents. Your negative examples are clever, but they are merely exceptions you're tossing out to deflect the point I was making. Family memebers have obligations to each other - the family is the most fundamental unit of government because it is the natural model of obligation and duty.


A parent and a biological predecessor are two different things. A baby owes his or her parents nothing until they begin to raise and nourish it. Love honor and respect must first be given to be deserved. A child doesn't understand those concepts until a parent instills them.





No. Both options (bliss and pain) are equally unreal to us. It requires faith to believe in either, just as it takes faith to believe in God. There are plenty of people who believe in both who still willingly sin. Consequences cannot keep all people from doing what they ought not. The idea is that while the fear of the consequence or desire of the reward may bring someone to God, that once that person gets into a relationship with God that such mercenary ideas fall to the side; if the person does not develop a relationship with God, then he/she will more than likely fall away and decide not to believe in either.


A developmental relationship is not a sole initial reason for believing or disbelieving in a god. It is a reason, to stay with a god but that's a moot point for me. The relationship is merely part of the pay off, and considered in the person's best interest.



Yes - rational people do that - but "benefit" is not the nasty word you're trying to make it. Your simplification over-simplifies both human nature and our interactions with God.

I believe egoism is base human nature. I believe if a human is to be a member of a society, or a part of the race there needs to be some progression from this egoism. Whether this progression is through a god, or through philosophy, there needs to be that first step, from egoism to some form of values beyond the immediate-self.



No - justice is a function of law - and if unjust laws are passed then justice becomes unjust.


The values of a god or faith in such are a function of interpretation. How many sects of any major religion are there? Compare this to how many sets of national laws there are. One or two for each nation. Justice and law are akin to god and faith in such. Again though, this is off topic.

My basic statement is that people believe in any god for the benefits it brings them in this life or the next.
A feeling of belonging, a personal relationship with some higher being, a get out of hell free card and many other things are to be considered benefits, since they are considered more desirable than the alternatives.

[NikolaiI]

I want a generalized reason why people believe in god(s). As I understand it, people believe because they think it's right. They think it's right because of the benefits.

Forgive me for interrupting! I almost did before, but I waited. Anyway, I wanted to say the same thing as before. Perhaps some do it for a reward, but I think it's a minority. I mean can you remember talking to a believer about their reasons, and if so, do you recall any saying "so I'll be rewarded"? In my experience people believe because they are convinced there is a higher reality, or something like this, or that they have had spiritual experiences. Or they decided intellectually or by reason.

[krymsonkyng]

Forgive me for interrupting! I almost did before, but I waited. Anyway, I wanted to say the same thing as before. Perhaps some do it for a reward, but I think it's a minority. I mean can you remember talking to a believer about their reasons, and if so, do you recall any saying "so I'll be rewarded"? In my experience people believe because they are convinced there is a higher reality, or something like this, or that they have had spiritual experiences. Or they decided intellectually or by reason.

To believe because one is convinced of a higher reality, is repetitive and circular, "I believe (in god) because I believe (in a higher reality)". I'm trying to rationalize faith. Folks wouldn't believe in something unless it was to their betterment. They may not explicitly state a reward, but feeling justified in their beliefs is certainly to be considered a benefit of the belief.

Perhaps a general reason like, "folk believe, because it feels right" isn't good enough. Please give me a reasoning for believing something that doesn't benefit a person in some way? I've talked with believers before and it's not "so I will be rewarded", it's "because my belief is rewarding" every time so far. That sounds pretty reasonable to me...

[Judas130]

Feelings ought not ever be taken for reality. Freedom is not simply doing what you wish. In fact, most textbooks on law, freedom and justice make it plainly clear that the only way to ensure freedom is to restrict it - that total freedom without restriction means that somebody gets oppressed in some way. As the old saying goes - my freedom to swing my arm is limited by the freedom you have to keep your nose unbroken. If I respond that "well, too bad, swinging my arm 'feels good' and 'feels free' " I'm not sure you'd go for that logic.
yet these democratic ideals do not always apply in society, sometimes the people do not matter, and what you alone think is the important thing. I'm bickering here, for if we reversed jesus' teachings, we would have chaos. To get hit on the cheek, and smash him in the other would mean only senseless war. In the animal kingdom, which is the source of my idea here, the winner takes all, the strongest survives and society is a long way away from that. I wouldn't be physically hurting anybody by being a lil in touch with the carnal human, if abiding certain laws and understandings...such as murder, which is unnaturally taking away a naturally given life, and interfering with the telos of the human. (to kill animals is fine, hunting gives the animal a purpose other than to procreate, yet it must not be wasted). anyways...


I am instilled with respect for a woman's body which is not rightfully mine to possess even in my heart (see Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Matt 5). The only rear end on earth that is rightfully mine to attach my eyes to is my wife's.
feel free to limit yourself, and your anger for having another man staring at your territory is justified, natural.


We are fashioned from dirt and the breath of God - which means we are partially "divine" beings in that we have a "spark" of God inside us called a "spirit."
For Plato, the spirit is supposed to be an immortal thing, completely perfect and unchanging, which is, for a christian maybe, because of where it derives from - yet how can an unchanging thing suffer from a flux of emotion?
what is your understanding of the spirit? not just the textbook christian definition, but how it works and what is it essentially?




There are sins of the flesh (murder, adultery, theft) and sins of the spirit (pride, self-righteousness, vindictiveness, arrogance). Mocking God and those who believe in Him fall under the second category.
Assuming this to be true, we therefore all have spirit. Okay. To mock a God means to acknowledge a God, while your everyday nihilist wouldn't even bother, not all atheists mock either. Yet pride is a human nature i don't feel we should ignore. If I had a kid, and he got good grades, i'd feel pride. this is wrong? so i should show indifference and not encourage him?

to be self righteous is to be 'Piously sure of one's own righteousness; moralistic.' and being pious is to 'have or show a dutiful spirit of reverence for God or an earnest wish to fulfill religious obligations.' Surely this, is what Jesus, and his disciples themselves did, and what religious people do today. To be self righteous is to be intolerant of other people's moral systems that differ to your own, to be completely intolerant of the behaviors of others - maybe checking out a rear end. to be the opposite of this, is to be completely relative. Sounds to me like you have to have the sins of the spirit to preach out against the sins of the flesh.



2. Although your psychoanalytical undown of religion is interesting, it is largely incorrect - it is the view from the "outside" and I don't expect you to have a much more accurate view than that. We did not create God - He created us.
Its amusing that IF i ardently supported my belief I would condemn you ignorant for your belief, and here the same is suggested - the outsiders cannot possibly understand. chill, i'm only pondering...my questions are childish, but my acceptance isn't. However, throughout my stay on these boards I want you to tell me if you feel offended, because I'm sure its happened before when my opinion surfaces. I can't logically understand how a concept can directly effect the physical reality. People talk of how contingency requires a necessary being - but how is this supported? I hear the physical examples, but these do not apply to God, being beyond physicality and all.


3. God's "voice" will not overwhelm us; it speaks quietly and can be drowned out by the other voices of this world (our desires, our lusts, our selfish motives) as well as the voice of he who wishes to derail any conversation we might have with God - Satan. He speaks - but you can't hear Him unless you wish to, or your heart is in a place where you're willing to hear Him.
This is understandable, reminds me of Plato's 'charioteer'. or the mind steering the body and the soul (both of which are running in opposite directions). To not understand what you hear from 'Satan' is further dangerous if you want to score some heaven points, for there's that saying that the greatest deception Satan ever did was make believe he wasn't real. I think there is more to argue that our mind is one with the soul. The mind is what we have physically as a mechanism of the brain to conclude that there is a God, can't this longing for perfection that people seem to possess be from a spark from God? and seeing as the conclusions are formed in the mind...


Christians do not revel in their guilt. They understand and accept that they are sinners (as we all, including you, are) and that only God can help them become a better, less sinful person. Nobody on this earth is a "good" person per se - we all have done and continue to do things that hurt ourselves and our relationships - even you are guilty of this.
But you have proven to me that Christians are, on the basis that you believe in sin. You believe that what you would do without any influence is sinful, because the Bible tells you, and the Bible is your proof of God, it seems. Satan represents the natural side to us humans, without this personification we would not understand Good or evil, which are human notions. Personally, i feel giving alms or lowering myself to a servant for others (which i have done) made me feel dirty and worthless, even though I did it because I felt that would be what God would want of me. I know the road is tough, but this 'good' is just a word, and you can play with words. I have done things that hurt myself and others, but 'guilty' is something I can reject, because 'guilty' implies being 'bad', sometimes I feel brilliant, is brilliance good? sure it is. Words are only words. Good is something you have applied and you use it to categorise my example in to 'sin' - because 'bad' is all that is naturally felt in the human mind, indulgences, pride, hate/anger and 'sin' is applied in order that we remove what is natural of us and conform to repentance for being who we were born to be. I can only see guilt, and a weak argument on my part.




Hell is the "quarantine" place that God will allow those who do not wish to serve Him to continue their existence. You are using simplistic logic to argue where hell is located. God is ultimate reality - whether or not He has a physical form is immaterial. Heaven and Hell are real places.
Saying that Heaven and Hell are real places doesnt help me much. surely the logic is far simpler to say 'it just exists'. If God has no physical form, yet we can exist beyond physical existence, then we must transcend the reality and onto the abstract? like taking a photograph, I understand an afterlife of existence in the thoughts of others that will come to know of you due to writings or music or other talents. However, the idea of being physical, and then not being physical but existing necessarily, is one that takes some work to prove. A flower exists, but it is contingent because it doesn't have to. Heaven and Hell isn't a flower...so it doesn't exist, but it must?





Spare me the "riddled with contradictions" theory - it's tired and worn out. Most of them are easily resolved, and very few deal with theology. The apparent contradictions actually serve to reinforce its validity - because I book simply contrived by humanity to manipulate others (another popular charge) would most certainly have revised those contradictions out of existence. You can't have it both ways.
what of the bibles that add extra books or take some away and claim to be the voice of God still? The contradictions aren't taken out because this would cause a might stir im sure, instead it is interpreted by many different people and then preached from these people's conclusions, it is unclear.


I can't explain God to you - nobody really can - except that the Bible tells us that God is love - so what you understand about love is what you understand about God.
If God is love, then why did God drown all those below Noah's Arc? if God is love then why did he inflict pain on the Egyptians and take the side of another race? The Bible tells me that God is also a vehement creature, completely charged with fury for those who do not care for him and worship the gods that came before him, this is not love. Jesus is very compassionate...I dont see how Jesus is God however, so any argument that God is love based on Jesus falls on deaf ears. The Koran promotes a loving God in many cases, yet also a vengeful God. I just see contradictions.

An interesting argument I heard was the God manifests in varying degrees. God possesses perfect mercy, yet is sometimes merciless in action. This might overcome the contradictions. Most of the characteristics of God are relative characteristics, I would throw Love into this category. However, The fact that God is spiritual, is an absolute characteristic and is quite blatant.

food for thought.

[Nightshade]

If God is love, then why did God drown all those below Noah's Arc? if God is love then why did he inflict pain on the Egyptians and take the side of another race? The Bible tells me that God is also a vehement creature, completely charged with fury for those who do not care for him and worship the gods that came before him, this is not love. Jesus is very compassionate...I don't see how Jesus is God however, so any argument that God is love based on Jesus falls on deaf ears. The Koran promotes a loving God in many cases, yet also a vengeful God. I just see contradictions.

An interesting argument I heard was the God manifests in varying degrees. God possesses perfect mercy, yet is sometimes merciless in action. This might overcome the contradictions. Most of the characteristics of God are relative characteristics, I would throw Love into this category. However, The fact that God is spiritual, is an absolute characteristic and is quite blatant.

food for thought.

humm a couple of things and not just directly related to this but things that have been mulling in my mind while I read this thread this evening. Firstly as far as I understand it and have always taken it to mean, The Koran doesn't say that God is necessarily kind or 'nice' or in anyway lovlydovley all soft and cuddley. No that would be putting Human characteristics on God when He/She/It is something so completely other the reality of which is beyond both Human comprehension and imagination. God is just God end of story. At least that is what I have always understood the Koran's stand on the subject to be, I could be wrong.

On the subject of love .. . I don't believe in love human love in any form, it is a survival mechanism that is controlled by hormones and electrochemical releases in the brain. Which is why in most cases the instinct of a mother is to 'love' her baby, its to ensure the survival of the species of course sometimes the natural click goes wrong some how and we have postpartum depression. I can go on forever, and have an explanation for most types of love and bonds but I wont bore you with it and let's just leave at that , and yes I know that a weird view and yes Ive heard it is a remarkably unhealthy take on life.
Yet I believe in God, I believe that perhaps if there is any kind of love even possible then it would be Divine Love as it were ( I like that term although I probably use it differently to most people). Loving God has not evolutionary or survival purpose, its irrational and it doesn't really affect anything life goes on however you feel about god, therefore I would argue that because there is no really benefit in it it has to be real ( actually that's a fairly irrational argument looking at it but then Faith never had much to do with rationality anyway its about what you Believe not what you can prove. and I know God loves me and none will ever convince me otherwise, why else would good things happen to me so often just exactly when I need them to? :D

[Emmy Castrol]

Those who understand and have a love for literature, who delight in the consistency of character and wonder at the beauty of a perfectly constructed story line, cannot help but love the Bible, if not for a book of religious accuracy, then as the ultimate expression of the collected word.

Joyce, Proust and James reached the pinnacle of literature and yet not even they could construct a character with the compassionate, complexity, and understanding of the 'higher being' that Jesus represents.

A question people always like to ask is that if there was a God, why is there so much suffering allowed in this world. The suffering in this world exists not because of God, but because of human nature. We, as a whole, have chosen suffering and death. Why do the good and innocent suffer? It is as simple as this - a person, A, gets angry at being mistreated by B. Because he is too cowardly to take his anger out on B, he picks on C, who is good and innocent but meek. C, being good and innocent, suffers. Is that because of God or because of the wickedness of A?

[Judas130]

humm a couple of things and not just directly related to this but things that have been mulling in my mind while I read this thread this evening. Firstly as far as I understand it and have always taken it to mean, The Koran doesn't say that God is necessarily kind or 'nice' or in anyway lovlydovley all soft and cuddley. No that would be putting Human characteristics on God when He/She/It is something so completely other the reality of which is beyond both Human comprehension and imagination. God is just God end of story. At least that is what I have always understood the Koran's stand on the subject to be, I could be wrong.
My Koran example was odd, especially when discussing something with Red, who is a Christian...I have the koran at home, I havent read it over yet, only parts that seem to collide with Christian things, such as mentions of Mary and Jesus.


it is a survival mechanism that is controlled by hormones and electrochemical releases in the brain. Which is why in most cases the instinct of a mother is to 'love' her baby, its to ensure the survival of the species of course sometimes the natural click goes wrong some how and we have postpartum depression. I can go on forever, and have an explanation for most types of love and bonds but I wont bore you with it and let's just leave at that , and yes I know that a weird view and yes Ive heard it is a remarkably unhealthy take on life.
would you say to support this is belief? It is belief if it is but a theory. Of course, i'm sure there is empirical data in abundance to support your claim, someone else linked us to a thread on the same issue. Its a common argument to say 'science cannot prove everything, what about love?' frankly, it can explain love. What science does is deal with 'what' not 'why', faith deals with 'why' as well as 'what'.



Loving God has not evolutionary or survival purpose, its irrational and it doesn't really affect anything life goes on however you feel about god, therefore I would argue that because there is no really benefit in it it has to be real ( actually that's a fairly irrational argument looking at it but then Faith never had much to do with rationality anyway its about what you Believe not what you can prove. and I know God loves me and none will ever convince me otherwise, why else would good things happen to me so often just exactly when I need them to? :D
The phrase: ignorance is bliss springs to mind. But I'd actually have to defend many many many christian philosophers who worked their bottoms off to rationally show their understanding of God, to the level where it gets so complicated. Anselm, Augustine, Aquinas....interesting thinkers, very well thought out arguments, and if not, were developed and also shot down by others...as is the way philosophy goes. Anselm + Descartes - Kant (forget Guarnillo) = little argument. Recently, being the Agnostic I am, I have seen how blissfully happy religious people are, how I felt when i was alone and had no one in very stressful times, and how I felt I knew and really actually knew there was something there to interact with, i [I]told[I] myself there was. Prayer...It got me out of the hole, ignorance is bliss. But I know that Prayer = Trance = cognitive mechanism to bridge melancholy and joy and etc, etc. Did I care? no.

I'm sure there are cold and analytical way to discribe this, I probably already have. But recently I pondered on the notion of a happy atheist. I wrote a poem, a cold, analytical poem, surprisingly, and its ending hasnt yet got the resonance I want, and its also surreal, so its a lil complex, but essentially, the notion of being 'Free' from the establishment, free from the trance, the conformity, the 'opiate of the people' as Marx had said, leaves very little in terms of significance, except to procreate. I accept this. But personally, its rather unfulfillable...but faiths such as Christianity which feel so guilt ridden in practise do little else as well ... makes me question why we choose new religions after leaving others...self interest? or in one's best interests?

peace.



A question people always like to ask is that if there was a God, why is there so much suffering allowed in this world. The suffering in this world exists not because of God, but because of human nature. We, as a whole, have chosen suffering and death. Why do the good and innocent suffer? It is as simple as this - a person, A, gets angry at being mistreated by B. Because he is too cowardly to take his anger out on B, he picks on C, who is good and innocent but meek. C, being good and innocent, suffers. Is that because of God or because of the wickedness of A?

you have chosen a very big topic here. here is a short essay for ya :)

A fundamental challenge to God’s existence is the concept of evil in reality. For example, how could an all powerful and benevolent God allow for earthquakes, tornadoes, pestilence and other such natural disasters to take lives? Believers in God see Him as loving and just, and this evidence is difficult for them, logically.

The common reaction to the suffering in the physical world is that it all suggests that either God is omnipotent or not perfectly good. The ideologies of Deism or Agnosticism may fall in to play, that there is evil and suffering in the world because God is disinterested, or does not exist at all, the whole idea of God a mistake – frightening prospects for the theist.

Furthermore, due to the fact that there is indeed suffering in the world, one can argue that God either cannot remove suffering, or will not. If God cannot, this contradicts God’s omnipotence, if he will not then God is not benevolent or all-good.

The theist must deal with the problem of evil, as it empirically opposes the common attributes of God, and must show the suffering in the world as consistent with a perfectly good and all powerful God. If the theist can answer the problem of evil, this would provide a theodicy – a vindication of divine actions to mankind to allow the existence of the divine with natural and moral evil.

There have been many theistic arguments for explaining the problem of evil and one which is noteworthy is the book, The Divine Principle, the main theological textbook of the Unification Church. The book holds that redemption is the process through which God is working to remove the consequences of the fall and restore humanity back to the relationship and position that God had originally intended. The road to redemption is one of suffering and hardship, yet more importantly, the notion of redemption suggests sin and it is sin that has caused the suffering in the world.

If it is sin that causes the suffering in the world, then God is not benevolent, as He will not remove the natural evil, instead using it to punish, - a notion that does not comply with a loving God. However, perhaps as humans we are all imperfect and none of us good due to the fall of man and original sin, and must therefore seek to bridge our relationship with God once more. It is thus our free will that is the responsible for chaos in the world.

A question which leads from free will (which is a rather large topic in concerning evil) is that if God is omniscient He would have known of the fall before it happened, and could have prevented it. This leads us to ponder to what extent is evil man-made. God created the world ex-nihilio, establishing order in chaos, the unpredictable void. Yet evil exists long after the establishment of order, suggesting both evil and order must co-exist, being reflections of each other, meaning in short that God cannot be wholly perfect if good is relative to evil.

The theist must look at the attributes of God, for example looking at how God is omniscient and maybe taking the position of the skeptical theist, a viewpoint that one cannot possibly conceive God’s ultimate plan, or think or par with God, this is a popular belief. When looking at the different manifestations of God, we can see that he manifests in varying degrees. God possesses perfect mercy, yet sometimes does not show it, meaning mercy is a relative characteristic, while something like spirituality would be an absolute characteristic.

[Emmy Castrol]

Furthermore, due to the fact that there is indeed suffering in the world, one can argue that God either cannot remove suffering, or will not. If God cannot, this contradicts God’s omnipotence, if he will not then God is not benevolent or all-good.

What a catch-22 for God, eh? :)

Following is my reasoning, I am not a philosopher so I have tried to keep it simple for myself.

1. Even God has to abide by His Law, which we have yet to understand perfectly, if we ever will.

I am inclined to think that God 'cannot' remove suffering as we would like to picture Him to be able (i.e. stop all suffering right now from this moment on) because He 'cannot' go against His Law, which created the universe.

So we would assume from this that God is not omnipotent, however, keep in mind that He created His Law, which He cannot override. So if he is non-omnipotent, it is due only to Himself. A bit of a paradox? so what next?

2. Just because God 'cannot' end suffering now does not mean that he 'cannot' end suffering ever.

God has to work aligned with and within His Law. That is why Jesus came and the Word became human. Everything that Jesus did was within the Law (of nature and creation).

Christians like to believe that God can remove suffering. Unfortunately, unlike God, we live within time and may be in the middle of God's plan to remove suffering. The story of humankind is not finished and soon suffering may be ended yet, but it is done according to God's will, not humankind's.

[blazeofglory]

Believing in God has so many reasons. First and foremost is we are not knowledgeable about the origin or creation of this universe and in point of fact we can not solely subscribe to the idea of Darwin.

We are all conscious beings and there must be a source of it, and of course all that we do are not sheer quivers, vibrations, tremors and the like. There are things that are beyond our ranges of comprehensions and believing in God is not beleiving in our confinements and to think that there must be something beyond all these webs as a matter of fact.

And may be some of our questions that go unanswered will find answers in believing in God. God is not a word, nor an entity, nor an object, nor a process. May the last answer or the last destination is what God is. God is everything or not everything. It is something that is not explained away in books of scriptures, not in religious faiths, not even in benediction. And wherein is a question we can never answer.

[krymsonkyng]

Those who understand and have a love for literature, who delight in the consistency of character and wonder at the beauty of a perfectly constructed story line, cannot help but love the Bible, if not for a book of religious accuracy, then as the ultimate expression of the collected word.

Joyce, Proust and James reached the pinnacle of literature and yet not even they could construct a character with the compassionate, complexity, and understanding of the 'higher being' that Jesus represents.


Jesus is complex because he is a surreal character, and the bible contradicts itself in several instances. The bible is a sequel to the Old testament, but it had parts cut from it: Apocryphal texts are mostly ignored. The bible is far from perfect or whole. The bible has been interpreted in whatever way it is needed to mean. It's ambiguity and mysticism allow others to lead minds unwilling to think for themselves. Jesus is like an ancient superman, a character with absolute power who overcomes moral struggle and previous doctrine. Jesus is a catalyst. he has all the marks of a superhero, righteous fury, rise, and fall included.

The bible's ancient, but constantly revised and given new spin. If anything it's on the same level as the Koran, the Sutras, or any other religious document unless you happen to be Christian biased. Jesus wasn't the first of his kind or the last. Gilgamesh, Heracles and other ancient heroes were parented by the god(s).

I refuse to accept the bible as a valid reason why people in general believe in a god. It is a fine story, but I do not see it as perfect, ultimate, or anything more than what it is: Doctrine.



A question people always like to ask is that if there was a God, why is there so much suffering allowed in this world. The suffering in this world exists not because of God, but because of human nature. We, as a whole, have chosen suffering and death. Why do the good and innocent suffer? It is as simple as this - a person, A, gets angry at being mistreated by B. Because he is too cowardly to take his anger out on B, he picks on C, who is good and innocent but meek. C, being good and innocent, suffers. Is that because of God or because of the wickedness of A?


I agree that people allow themselves to suffer. I feel the "Jesus take the wheel!" mentality that religion sometimes breeds is partly to blame. But this is a different topic...

[Emmy Castrol]

The bible's ancient, but constantly revised and given new spin. If anything it's on the same level as the Koran, the Sutras, or any other religious document unless you happen to be Christian biased. Jesus wasn't the first of his kind or the last. Gilgamesh, Heracles and other ancient heroes were parented by the god(s).

I refuse to accept the bible as a valid reason why people in general believe in a god. It is a fine story, but I do not see it as perfect, ultimate, or anything more than what it is: Doctrine.

It is very difficult for an individual to approach the Bible with a completely objective and open mind; in fact, I'm tempted to say it is impossible. From the moment we are born, we are influenced by the beliefs of those around us.

The world naturally finds Christianity repulsive and unnecesary. The average man is brought up on a secular view of Christianity and almost automatically categories Jesus to other ancient 'king types' of past cultures.

A sincere study into the character of Jesus will affirm many differences. Jesus was the only character whom aim it was to establish a 'spiritual kingdom' rather than a physical one. The character of Jesus has never been able to be emulated in any of the modern literature, and the reason why I say modern literature is because only modern literature (due to it being the product of literary advancement) would be able to (if it could) create such a character.

In fact, the closest character to Jesus I have come across is Superman (but he is a DC comic character) and he made no attempt to change things on the spiritual level on earth.

Those known as the greatest writers have rarely made any attempt to construct a God and wisely so, have chosen for their masterpieces to be focused on the human condition.

My point is, no literature other than the Bible has been able to craft a character as original, as consistent, with as thorough an understanding of the human condition, as that of Jesus.

[krymsonkyng]

A sincere study into the character of Jesus will affirm many differences. Jesus was the only character whom aim it was to establish a 'spiritual kingdom' rather than a physical one. The character of Jesus has never been able to be emulated in any of the modern literature, and the reason why I say modern literature is because only modern literature (due to it being the product of literary advancement) would be able to (if it could) create such a character.

In fact, the closest character to Jesus I have come across is Superman (but he is a DC comic character) and he made no attempt to change things on the spiritual level on earth.

Those known as the greatest writers have rarely made any attempt to construct a God and wisely so, have chosen for their masterpieces to be focused on the human condition.

My point is, no literature other than the Bible has been able to craft a character as original, as consistent, with as thorough an understanding of the human condition, as that of Jesus.

Siddhartha was said to have been born a half century before Christ... Martyrs existed long before Jesus, and long after. Spiritual martyrs as well.

Modern literature has a term for the Christ Figure: link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_figure). Given, a lot of these people are considered mimic of the original, but several have their own reasons. A good example would be Finny in A Separate Peace. Another (though to a much lesser extent) would be Victor from Choke. He becomes so worried about his kindness and niceties that he begins to strive to be anything but Christ in defiance of his psychotic parent.

Jesus is perfect. In theory, that isn't too hard to write. Jesus has no weakness. There is no fear there, no complexity to his decisions. I would say he's less complex for his perfection, and his few imperfections are contradictions considered trivial and ignored.

Any writer to construct a god would not be considered great for long because of the retribution such "arrogance" would bring. People get persecuted for questioning the church. Such writings are not considered "great" by mainstream readers for a reason.

I reject the bibles as the main motivating factors for people to believe in the Christian God. Scripture of any sort is sort of like an instructional story (Not too unlike a series of fables, but of a more serious nature. People don't kill over the tortoise and the hair...) for the already faithful to take to heart. Few people I have met ever join Christianity after reading the entire bible. The usual indoctrination takes place at a younger age and is accepted household fact that bias' the newly faithful towards scripture for reinforcement. Again though, this is only because the child (if rational) accepts the teachings of his parents enough to believe them beneficial.

[Lynne Fees]

Oh, but I have seen Jesus work in my life in such a wonderful way. Who do you think Jesus is? Cuz if you study the Bible with an open mind, you will be amazed.

[krymsonkyng]

Oh, but I have seen Jesus work in my life in such a wonderful way. Who do you think Jesus is? Cuz if you study the Bible with an open mind, you will be amazed.

I wholeheartedly agree, an open mind is necessary in learning anything, the bible(s) included. The point of my posts in this thread are to determine a cause for faith in any god though, not just whichever god you subscribe to. I have come to the bible with an open mind before, but I refuse to take it as fact for several reasons not important to this thread.

To keep on topic may I ask you a question? If you're alright with a personal question (you do not have to answer if you do not want to) would you say you believe in a god because of the good things Jesus does for you?

[blazeofglory]

This is a topic that can fuel our imagination and as a matter of fact it engages us to think and imagine greatly.

In point of fact beleiving God widens your horizon of life. Or else life is meaningless. If we try to understand life in material terms or take it as a physical entity and can not think beyond a point life becomes very dry.

Believing in God broadens our perspectives.

Man suffers and still he hopes he can be out of it. He can overcomes hardships. He believes prayer is powerful.

In fact prayer is powerful. The most important thing is beleif or confidence and if one loses one tends to lost greatly. Prayer props up faith and confidence in ourselves, in others, and in everything.

Prayer braces our sense of morality. Of course prayer soothes our minds and we will be doing things that morality approves.

There are so many reasons that make us beleive in God. Man does not want to be confined and man wants to grow infinitely and limitlessly.

God is a height, an ideal, a summit man wants to be at.

The most important value man has is God, and no achievement is higher in glory and worthier than realizing or attaining liberation.

[laidbackperson]

God seems to be something of a security blanket. These days he's like insurance. Back in the day he was the only way of life. Folks believe and have believed in a god mostly out of self interest
In Christianity the general consensus is if you believe in God, good things happen to you in this life and the next. If you don't you suffer for eternity. Other religions have similar rewards and punishments (Buddhism you spin your wheels, Taoism you constantly hurt, Any idea similar heaven or hell is like waving a carrot or a gun respectively).People are selfish even in their charity

I will answer it like this:

I feel pretty sure that there is a higher Power behind everything.

The higher power wants us to live in a particular way: Be good person, compassionate, honest, loving, tolerant etc.
By striving to live this way, I feel God’s grace will be with me and He will take care. He will also lead me towards God realization.
So, you can say here that by believing in God, I am looking for a benefit that my present life will be OK in general.

What if my life gets in disarray, then I will still keep believe hoping that God will straighten it out.
What if He does not straighten it out?
I think I will continue believing and hoping and working towards solving my problems.
This is the way it is presently with me and may be with many other believers.

One more point I would like to mention here:
God has also been taken as ultimate lover or beloved.
So when you love God, like a true lover or a beloved you want to please God. You resign yourself to the will of God and accept God in whatever situation He puts you.

If you have seen the movie ‘Casablanca’, then there are two good men in love with same woman. Both men would have laid their lives for the happiness of this fine woman and there was just love for the woman without thought of any self-interest. That is how it should be ultimately between God and human.

May be here also you can say that there is a benefit involved: Doing the thing that you like ‘loving someone without any care for self’

[krymsonkyng]

I will answer it like this:

I feel pretty sure that there is a higher Power behind everything.

The higher power wants us to live in a particular way: Be good person, compassionate, honest, loving, tolerant etc.
By striving to live this way, I feel God’s grace will be with me and He will take care. He will also lead me towards God realization.
So, you can say here that by believing in God, I am looking for a benefit that my present life will be OK in general.


I would believe in a god for very much the same reason.

I have not seen Casablanca (yet) but I can see how a person loves a god, I wanted to find a general reasoning for people to believe. I believe people believe, in general because it feels right. Love is a powerful motivator, but I wanted to classify it as a "benefit" in terms of motivation. I now see how careful one must be when trying to make general statements about something so near and dear to so many hearts.

I wanted to make a statement similar to Pascal's wager, but in relation to religion as a whole instead of just Christianity. I hope I have not offended anyone with my obstinacy in believing that the feeling is a stronger motivator than the doctrine.

[blazeofglory]

In fact it is very hard to carry on without having to believe in God, for God is inundated with life, and we feel totally at one with God in many respects. Today more than ever we turn to God, for all we eye these days are falsehoods, deception, forgeries.

How can we not beleive in God the savour.

For what is God is not the Biblical or mythological God. God is a symbol or ideal of something, and not believing in God is not believing in any ideal.

[cfh]

without indulging personal religious beliefs, it is a basic and inherent part of our nature to believe in a higher power. early philosophers consistently proofed this in logic. by pure observation of known civilization this is true.

people who cling to the idea that there is no God seem truly contradictory to their own human nature, internally they battle what they say does not exist.

even the most recent discoveries in quantum physics and string theory have arrived at a point of ill consequence that they must now explain something from nothing. it is a leap, it is faith.

[blazeofglory]

In point of fact it is hard not to beleive in God, for without God ultimately everything becomes worthless.

God is an accumulation of our all values in point of fact.

[theatrics]

"I think believing in God provides a comfort."
That is hardly a reason to prove God's existence. God can be COMPLETELY fictional yet still provide us comfort.
You are way to general on other points. For example you gave a reason for sin in the world as follows: [because if we didn't have sin] "the world would become very automated, dull and without spice." You're joking right? That's justification for God, and further, for him allowing sin in the world? Because it would be homogeneously good without sin? Sorry, I can't believe that. I've seen the religious folks come up with A LOT better reasons than that.

[Lynne Fees]

I wholeheartedly agree, an open mind is necessary in learning anything, the bible(s) included. The point of my posts in this thread are to determine a cause for faith in any god though, not just whichever god you subscribe to. I have come to the bible with an open mind before, but I refuse to take it as fact for several reasons not important to this thread.

To keep on topic may I ask you a question? If you're alright with a personal question (you do not have to answer if you do not want to) would you say you believe in a god because of the good things Jesus does for you?
I believe in God because I have studied apologetics (good ex: Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell) and I believe the Bible is God's inspired Word. In the Bible, I have learned God's plan for Jesus to come to earth to redeem mankind. Then, I have studied the Bible and applied its principles to my life. I have seen the peace and joy that comes from that.

[zado_k]

I've pruned drastically for brevity. Apologies if this inadvertantly misrepresents anything.

"Outsiders" are "outside" because they refuse to believe in God.
Where does refusal come into it? I can't decide to believe in god or refuse to believe in god: either the evidence and arguments compel me or they don't! There would be, as I think you imply elsewhere, little point in opportunistically confessing belief that wasn't real: god would know the difference! I'm outside not because I refuse to believe in god but because I simply can't honestly say that I do. I can't pretend to you or to god that I believe it even remotely likely that god exists.

Jakob

[Lynne Fees]

"I think believing in God provides a comfort."
That is hardly a reason to prove God's existence. God can be COMPLETELY fictional yet still provide us comfort.
You are way to general on other points. For example you gave a reason for sin in the world as follows: [because if we didn't have sin] "the world would become very automated, dull and without spice." You're joking right? That's justification for God, and further, for him allowing sin in the world? Because it would be homogeneously good without sin? Sorry, I can't believe that. I've seen the religious folks come up with A LOT better reasons than that.

Think about the world with God not allowing sin (or sickness or injury or death, which entered the world due to sin according to the Bible). What would happen to the laws of physics? For instance, you jump off your roof, fall but are unhurt. Cars crashing into eachother with no dents and no injuries. But worst of all is that man's free will would be gone. An evil person couldn't do any evil - that is why we would all be robots. There would be no way to judge people at all - good people wouldn't do anything bad; bad people wouldn't do anything bad. We'd all just have to die and go to heaven together; what would be the point of Earth at all, then?

[Judas130]

Irenaeus looked at your problem by suggesting that God wished to create Humans perfect but, in our infancy, we could not receive the gift of perfection that had been bestowed upon us. The Fall of Man is seen as a childish mistake of naivety, and that the world, with suffering, is a training ground for humankind to become closer to God, closer to perfection. The Augustine ideals fail in many ways, Irenaeus seems only to postulate...but he has some interesting ideas that are worth delving into, search up the Irenaean theodicy.
There is a stressed discrimination between the 'Image' and the 'Likeness' of God. God created human beings as imperfect (In his likeness) so that they could grow into moral, spiritual and intelligent beings (In his image) who would love him.

peace.

[Lynne Fees]

Irenaeus looked at your problem by suggesting that God wished to create Humans perfect but, in our infancy, we could not receive the gift of perfection that had been bestowed upon us. The Fall of Man is seen as a childish mistake of naivety, and that the world, with suffering, is a training ground for humankind to become closer to God, closer to perfection. The Augustine ideals fail in many ways, Irenaeus seems only to postulate...but he has some interesting ideas that are worth delving into, search up the Irenaean theodicy.
There is a stressed discrimination between the 'Image' and the 'Likeness' of God. God created human beings as imperfect (In his likeness) so that they could grow into moral, spiritual and intelligent beings (In his image) who would love him.

peace.

Or did "in His image" mean that human beings WERE moral, spiritual and intelligent beings, like God? And where we fell off the wagon was when we disobeyed?

[jakobmuller]

I can't respect religion, mainly christianity, as anything more than a story that was fabricated to make people naiively fall in line with other people who believe the same story and thus make them feel justified in doing so.

One huge revelation (pun intended) i've had is that so many elements of christianity are similar to the story of santa claus and the north pole. While this probably sounds silly, since St. Nick was started way after jesus, I have found that whenever someone talks about their faith and how amazing God is, i can't help but think of them as a little kid talking about Santa. Isn't it amazing how Santa can make it around to every house in the whole world in one night? What about how God can hear and act upon billions of prayers every day? If little billy is good this year, he'll get lots of toys; if he's bad, he will get dirty black coal. Lead a God-ful life, you end up in Heaven; A bad one will land you in Hell.

To end the metaphor, most of the core values and morals that many religions teach are the only thing rooted in reality. The majority of would agree that it is bad to steal, kill, and hate; we also tend to agree that it is good to love, appreciate what we have, and be kind to others.

So why do we need a big silly story to back those simple principles up?

Abraham Lincoln once said:

"If I do good, I feel good
If I do bad, I feel bad
and that is my religion."

[Judas130]

Or did "in His image" mean that human beings WERE moral, spiritual and intelligent beings, like God? And where we fell off the wagon was when we disobeyed?
well, that is the Augustine route of argument. That all the suffering in the world is a result of the perverse turning away from God - the fall of man. This creates the moral evil we have in the world. Yet the other fall, the fall of Lucifer and his angels, consequentially produced natural evil..earthquakes etc.
The idea that we were all present in the loins of Adam is biologically impossible, and we should not have to suffer for another person's sin.

[Lynne Fees]

well, that is the Augustine route of argument. That all the suffering in the world is a result of the perverse turning away from God - the fall of man. This creates the moral evil we have in the world. Yet the other fall, the fall of Lucifer and his angels, consequentially produced natural evil..earthquakes etc.
The idea that we were all present in the loins of Adam is biologically impossible, and we should not have to suffer for another person's sin.

I think DNA evidence has traced all of our roots back to the Middle East.
We only personally suffer for our own sin. The world at large suffers from the "moral evil" you described.

[MarkBastable]

In point of fact it is hard not to beleive in God, for without God ultimately everything becomes worthless.

God is an accumulation of our all values in point of fact.

Or, of course, it could be that everything is worthless. The fact that everything would be worthless without God is not enough to make God exist.

If you want everything to have worth, that might be reason to believe God exists. But it's not a mechanism to make him exist

[Lynne Fees]

I can't respect religion, mainly christianity, as anything more than a story that was fabricated to make people naiively fall in line with other people who believe the same story and thus make them feel justified in doing so.

One huge revelation (pun intended) i've had is that so many elements of christianity are similar to the story of santa claus and the north pole. While this probably sounds silly, since St. Nick was started way after jesus, I have found that whenever someone talks about their faith and how amazing God is, i can't help but think of them as a little kid talking about Santa. Isn't it amazing how Santa can make it around to every house in the whole world in one night? What about how God can hear and act upon billions of prayers every day? If little billy is good this year, he'll get lots of toys; if he's bad, he will get dirty black coal. Lead a God-ful life, you end up in Heaven; A bad one will land you in Hell.

To end the metaphor, most of the core values and morals that many religions teach are the only thing rooted in reality. The majority of would agree that it is bad to steal, kill, and hate; we also tend to agree that it is good to love, appreciate what we have, and be kind to others.

So why do we need a big silly story to back those simple principles up?


Abraham Lincoln once said:

"If I do good, I feel good
If I do bad, I feel bad
and that is my religion."

It's funny - I remember praying to God as a child and throwing in right before the Amen, "Oh, could you please tell Santa about the doll I want for Christmas?" I thought they were both sitting up in heaven together hanging out.

Santa, however sadly, is made up. He did not have a historical account like that in the Bible to verify his existence. So it turns out he is make-believe. And the whole "be good, get heaven; be bad, get hell" is just a Santa idea, not God's. None of us can be good enough to please God. God told Moses to tell the Israelites: "Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy." No mere mortal can be that good! It's a much higher standard than Santa's.

[billyjack]

you should skim over some religious polemics--see if your faith can stand up to the onslaught of a hitchens or a harris

[Judas130]

Or, of course, it could be that everything is worthless.
Not so. Everything, however little, has some abstract and physical worth. The Sun, for example, is not worthless for it is needed for there to be much of the life we see on this planet (and to see naturally at all for that matter).
A hairbrush may be of value and worth to one person, and not to you or I, yet that is not to say it has no worth, for it evidently does to its owner - including the price it cost (thus allowing the seller to become more prosperous), and the materials needed for its existence - and the worth of those materials, and the worth of mechanisms to bring those materials together - as well as the jobs created in the process, and the families it feeds, etc, etc.
What might be a pebble to man, is home or protection for the insect - everything has worth, god or not.



The fact that everything would be worthless without God is not enough to make God exist.


...it's not a mechanism to make him exist

I beg to differ. Anselm already proved that God existed (at least in conception, though his ontological argument in terms of physical existence borders on ridiculous, although rational). Anselm shows us that, in concept, god actually exists. Human beings and the primitive societies that have gone before us, time and time again conclude of a God - to do such is a cognitive mechanism, to have faith allows the mind to expand and indulge, placing trust and respect, even aspects of love, into this abstract God. In this way, God exists through cognitive mechanism. even the Atheist, known as the 'fool' (i do not say this to be cruel) in psalm 53, i believe..or around, who claims not to believe in God, believes in God - for he recognizes a deity in concept to claim it doesn't exist, and through this recognition, the conceptual God exists. I dislike using A priori arguments, but I think it bears some relevance to your statement.




Santa, however sadly, is made up. He did not have a historical account like that in the Bible to verify his existence.

wrong, St Nicholas of Bari is the model for santa clause - He had a reputation for secret gift-giving, such as putting coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him, and thus became the model for Santa Claus, whose English name comes from the German 'Sankt Niklaus.'

"a poor man had three daughters but could not afford a proper dowry for them. This meant that they would remain unmarried and probably, in absence of any other possible employment would have to become prostitutes. Hearing of the poor man's plight, Nicholas decided to help him but being too modest to help the man in public, (or to save the man the humiliation of accepting charity), he went to his house under the cover of night and threw three purses (one for each daughter) filled with gold coins through the window opening into the man's house." (wikipedia 2009)

He is said to have died about 330AD, so the accounts aren't dead certain, but nor is most history (read JBI's ideas in the Bible thread) or the bible for that matter.

[grotto]

Just as an outsider with an opinion, same as every one else here; I don’t think that God is the issue here, it’s “belief” that causes the problem. Human beliefs have killed far more people than any God ever has.

Why is it you believe anything? The existence or non existence belief, it matters not which one you choose, either one will keep you closed minded to the possibilities beyond what you fight so hard to cherish. Your belief is what keeps you bound.

Never mind trying to get people to agree or conform to what you believe, ask why it is that you believe what it is you believe.

[jakobmuller]

The point i attempted to make with the santa analogy is that many christian people try to justify doing so with the same logic as little kids who believe in santa.

Why do you believe in God?
"because He created me and how else could we all exist in such a beautiful world"

Why do you believe in Santa?
"well DUH, how else do you think all these presents got under the tree??!! Who else could have eaten the cookies?!"

[Rorshach69]

Why do you believe in Santa?
"well DUH, how else do you think all these presents got under the tree??!! Who else could have eaten the cookies?!"

It was me i ate the cookies and i created the universe. There that should end the whole religion debate. haha

[MarkBastable]

Not so. Everything, however little, has some abstract and physical worth. The Sun, for example, is not worthless for it is needed for there to be much of the life we see on this planet (and to see naturally at all for that matter).



Hey, it wasn't me who said everything was worthless. The guy earlier in the thread said that without God everything would be worthless. And maybe it would, but that doesn't make God exist.

Me, I think that it's possible - indeed, more believable - that things have worth without God.

And that's my point. If you need God to give things worth, go ahead. Be my guest.


Me, all I need to give things worth is...well, the things that to me give things worth. And one of them, just so you know, is not God.


However, just to address your rebuttal of the notion, you suggest that the sun has worth because it sustains life on this planet. Which would suggest that life on the planet has worth. Which then needs justifying.

I think we need to define 'worth' then. If we mean 'purpose' then I disagree. I can't see any, in anything, not on any scale that appears sensible. If we mean 'value' then, yeah, locally, subjectively and selectively - some stuff has worth. I mean, me and my kids - lots of worth. The Siberian tiger - some worth. Jeffery Archer - no worth at all.

But that would be true with or without God. Especially the bit about Jeffery Archer.

[Judas130]

It doesn't really work that way Rorshach, but

...damn my cynical nature. :(

To answer grotto's question, i'll put up the argument of indoctrination, conformity, and upbringing as factors that influence belief in a religion. However, I am not wholly right, as these factors may be the case up until a certain age, but doesn't explain how adults later turn to religions from nothing previous.
I think what attracts many adults into belief is a sense of calamity, or peace both inner and outer, and some real love. Someone mentioned on these forums once that it takes a great deal more to turn from God, or your belief, than turn to it - as your mind searches for spiritual conclusions, not to empirical fact, but to spiritual purpose - questions asked from childhood and to deny this, to cut off and isolate yourself from a higher sense, is a downsight harder.


However, just to address your rebuttal of the notion, you suggest that the sun has worth because it sustains life on this planet. Which would suggest that life on the planet has worth. Which then needs justifying.

not at all. my argument is a simple one, that conceptually..everything has worth..i suppose to the eyes of the beholder and to that which is directly affected by it. Your J. Archer example is humorous, but does not mean that the man has no worth - and yes, by worth i do man value and not purpose - as the man has worth to say, a wife, or a dear friend, or his parents and that makes the man have worth - purpose is a whole separate thing, which is something i don't have the capacity to argue at this hour.


I can't see any, in anything, not on any scale that appears sensible.

Aristotle opened our eyes to the gift of actuality and potentiality. I'd say if we had purpose, though this is not really what I wanted to talk about..but meh, then it lies in our potential. You child for example, say at the age of four, has the actuality of being four, though has the potential of being 84. This is true at least...we are all two people, our actual and our potential...our potential is our unforeseen purpose.

I'm also very cynical, and personally believe we all live to breed and die...but that's no fun really is it?
purpose has varying meanings...the purpose of a tool is to be used to fix something or make it work. the purpose that we affix to the space between birth and death, is a whole separate matter...some breed of fish, i believe trout or maybe salmon, swim upriver after giving birth, and die...for their purpose is complete...so what have humans got in the same scenario?

peace.

[Drkshadow03]

I'm also very cynical, and personally believe we all live to breed and die...but that's no fun really is it?
peace.

If you're not having fun then you're not doing it right. :lol:

[jakobmuller]

If you're not having fun then you're not doing it right. :lol:

brilliant :D

[Judas130]

:( shot down like...


...pheasant. :bawling:

[grotto]

:( shot down like...


...pheasant. :bawling:

Yes, but did it make you smile? ::D Some times, that's all you can do. You have to watch those who smile through adversity! They know something!

[Judas130]

indeed, quite true ;)

[Lynne Fees]

wrong, St Nicholas of Bari is the model for santa clause - He had a reputation for secret gift-giving, such as putting coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him, and thus became the model for Santa Claus, whose English name comes from the German 'Sankt Niklaus.'

"a poor man had three daughters but could not afford a proper dowry for them. This meant that they would remain unmarried and probably, in absence of any other possible employment would have to become prostitutes. Hearing of the poor man's plight, Nicholas decided to help him but being too modest to help the man in public, (or to save the man the humiliation of accepting charity), he went to his house under the cover of night and threw three purses (one for each daughter) filled with gold coins through the window opening into the man's house." (wikipedia 2009)

He is said to have died about 330AD, so the accounts aren't dead certain, but nor is most history (read JBI's ideas in the Bible thread) or the bible for that matter.

But no historical account of the Santa of which you spoke, you know, the one who travels the world in his sleigh on Christmas Eve?
However, there is a historical account of God's and Jesus's miracles. Jesus died about 33 AD. His death was documented by a secular historian at the time, I believe his name was Josephus. The account of his resurrection was also mentioned by Josephus. You have to study all of this thoroughly. Evidence That Demands a Verdict is an excellent resource if you really want to know the scientific and historical evidence surrounding the Bible. It's not just another fairy tale. It's not like Santa - a kernal of truth because a real nice man named Jesus once lived and people have devised a nice story about him.

[grotto]

Yes, it’s a nice story about a very nice man who lived long, long ago in a very different world. Then, a group of people of dubious origin decide to write about it in the vernacular of the time. Then, let’s not forget all of those after the original writers who had a hand in conveniently adding there own agenda to the story. It has since been manipulated continually for every conceivable gain and manipulation to the point of being a mere fairy tale. Yet every fairy tale has a grain of truth I suppose.

[Redzeppelin]

Yes, it’s a nice story about a very nice man who lived long, long ago in a very different world. Then, a group of people of dubious origin decide to write about it in the vernacular of the time. Then, let’s not forget all of those after the original writers who had a hand in conveniently adding there own agenda to the story. It has since been manipulated continually for every conceivable gain and manipulation to the point of being a mere fairy tale. Yet every fairy tale has a grain of truth I suppose.

And what is the sources of this evident manipulation? Care to quote them? Or is this yet another repeating of what you've heard - you know: hearsay? The coherence of the Bible defies much of this attempt to discredit it. We take for truth ancient texts (like Homer and Plato) with far less credibility behind them (in terms of textual integrity) than the Bible.

[grotto]

Who said I was talking about the bible?

[jakobmuller]

We take for truth ancient texts (like Homer and Plato) with far less credibility behind them (in terms of textual integrity) than the Bible.

The Iliad and the Odyssey don't give an exact set of guidelines by which millions of people live their lives, so we don't have anywhere near as much motive to question them.

[c4its]

I believe in God, most ardently and His son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost. I would like to address one of the issues that seems to arise when God is mentioned. If there is a God, how can He let such terrible things happen in the world?
God does not want us to suffer, but he must let us have our own free agency (right to make independent choices) in order for us to become more perfect beings. All of the terrible things that have happened have happened because of human error, and that's okay. When we as humans go through things that are difficult, we have a responsibility to grow from those diversities. It is like a refining fire, we are tossed and turned and burned so that we can become more like God. When a couple goes through tough times, and they try to correct their mistakes and solve their problem, their relationship gets stronger. When natural disasters happen, others rush in and try to help and serve those who have been affected, those people involved can become more like Christ in his perfectness. When someone close to you dies, you have the chance to realize how precious life is. We are on Earth to learn and grow and to be tested. What determines our happiness is how we decide to respond to the trials that are put in our way, will you become bitter with hate or will you try to refine yourself?

[laidbackperson]

I would like to address one of the issues that seems to arise when God is mentioned. If there is a God, how can He let such terrible things happen in the world?

God does not want us to suffer, but he must let us have our own free agency (right to make independent choices) in order for us to become more perfect beings. All of the terrible things that have happened have happened because of human error, and that's okay. When we as humans go through things that are difficult, we have a responsibility to grow from those diversities. It is like a refining fire, we are tossed and turned and burned so that we can become more like God. When a couple goes through tough times, and they try to correct their mistakes and solve their problem, their relationship gets stronger. When natural disasters happen, others rush in and try to help and serve those who have been affected, those people involved can become more like Christ in his perfectness. When someone close to you dies, you have the chance to realize how precious life is. We are on Earth to learn and grow and to be tested. What determines our happiness is how we decide to respond to the trials that are put in our way, will you become bitter with hate or will you try to refine yourself?

Nicely put, c4its. I also think, it has to be something like this.

[MarkBastable]

God does not want us to suffer, but he must let us have our own free agency (right to make independent choices) in order for us to become more perfect beings. All of the terrible things that have happened have happened because of human error, and that's okay. When we as humans go through things that are difficult, we have a responsibility to grow from those diversities. It is like a refining fire, we are tossed and turned and burned so that we can become more like God. When a couple goes through tough times, and they try to correct their mistakes and solve their problem, their relationship gets stronger. When natural disasters happen, others rush in and try to help and serve those who have been affected, those people involved can become more like Christ in his perfectness. When someone close to you dies, you have the chance to realize how precious life is. We are on Earth to learn and grow and to be tested. What determines our happiness is how we decide to respond to the trials that are put in our way, will you become bitter with hate or will you try to refine yourself?



So God allows terrible things to happen in order to give us the chance to improve ourselves? He came up with the fabulous idea of childhood leukaemia to make it easier for bereaved parents to aspire to a state of Christ-like grace?


It's becoming increasingly obvious to me during this discussion that if God exists then I don't like him much. I have serious reservations about his methods and I'm not prepared to adopt the attitudes and behaviours that are apparently necessary to gain his approval.


...what would be the point of Earth at all, then?

Well, quite possibly none. Which seems to me much more likely to be true than any other suggested possibility.

And because there's no ultimate point, the way you live your life matters on a human scale - you have to exhibit kindness, companionship, fair dealing, charity, all that stuff.

Here's the scary part though. If you decide not to be humane, there's no ultimate punishment. There's no wait till your father gets home comeuppance. You have to be good simply because it seems the right thing to do. There's no payoff, no threat, no reckoning.

That's a much tougher requirement of human beings, in my opinion, than the God-led alternative where the good children get a long holiday in Paradise Resorts, and the bad children are locked in the cellar forever.

It's hard work being an atheist. It's not an easy path to follow- but I think it's a more responsible one.

[laidbackperson]

So God allows terrible things to happen in order to give us the chance to improve ourselves? He came up with the fabulous idea of childhood leukaemia to make it easier for bereaved parents to aspire to a state of Christ-like grace?


It's becoming increasingly obvious to me during this discussion that if God exists then I don't like him much. I have serious reservations about his methods and I'm not prepared to adopt the attitudes and behaviours that are apparently necessary to gain his approval.



Well, quite possibly none. Which seems to me much more likely to be true than any other suggested possibility.

And because there's no ultimate point, the way you live your life matters on a human scale - you have to exhibit kindness, companionship, fair dealing, charity, all that stuff.

Here's the scary part though. If you decide not to be humane, there's no ultimate punishment. There's no wait till your father gets home comeuppance. You have to be good simply because it seems the right thing to do. There's no payoff, no threat, no reckoning.

That's a much tougher requirement of human beings, in my opinion, than the God-led alternative where the good children get a long holiday in Paradise Resorts, and the bad children are locked in the cellar forever.

It's hard work being an atheist. It's not an easy path to follow- but I think it's a more responsible one. .

Even if our final fate is just to be born, to procreate and die, with enjoyment or suffering thrown in in-between to varying degree for different persons, then also I agree with you that right way of living is with kindness, companionship, fair dealing and all such stuff. To understand this is very important.

All your ego trips, flaunting of power or money, physical attraction and charms, prizes, adulation, knowledge etc should not have much meaning, for ultimately like all others who have gone before us, each one of us alive here have to leave all this and die.

As for your doubt about connection between suffering and God do please read my post (#300) at last of page 20 of this thread.

May be, if you see the things from recarnation angle & everything-is-God's- play, you will be able to get at some answer.

[marxengels2012]

All the way back to Epicurus and Lucretius ("On the Nature of Things"), the ancient Greeks found that disbelief in "god(s)" was a very liberating experience. Religion has always been "the opiate of the masses" long before Marx and Engels. I am today a non-theist (atheist) who has found that slavery to religion generally is the worst of slaveries. During these hard economic times, more and more people are lining up at the "churches" for comfort and salvation, but are finding that they "come out the same door as in [they] went" in the words of Omar Khayyam. The "God" of the Bible is a tyrant in every way; he is for fratricide, ethnic cleanising, and hatred of women. Read the books of Joshua and Judges and then tell me about the "love of God."

[laidbackperson]

During these hard economic times, more and more people are lining up at the "churches" for comfort and salvation, but are finding that they "come out the same door as in [they] went" in the words of Omar Khayyam. The "God" of the Bible is a tyrant in every way; he is for fratricide, ethnic cleanising, and hatred of women. Read the books of Joshua and Judges and then tell me about the "love of God."

What about others few like Mother Teressa.

I once met her during her last years. As a young person, I stood in a que of teenagers for her autograph. As the person just ahead of me took her autogrph, the thought flashed through my mind, 'Let us see, what's so great about her?'

When my turn came, she looked at me with such compassionate eyes (as you can see in he so many photographs), the thought came unbidden in my mind, 'Well, she is different'.

I still carry that autograph with my I card as a good luck sign when I move out for town on offical tours.

Today I think of a single benevolent God for the entire humanity, and seperate religion and religions text and rituals from God. Still instead of basing your beliefs on fears, I think it is better not to believe. To each his own.

[marxengels2012]

Mother Teresa and Pope John-Paul II are much over-rated in today's world. There are many others who are doing even more than they did. Why pick out one or two "saints" to emulate when history is full of them, both within and outside the Catholic Church. And why a "good luck charm" from an autograph? Many teenagers are carrying the autographs and pictures of "rock stars" as "good luck charms" and none of this means anything at all. When will humankind grow up? Even the ancient Greeks saw through this guise of "religion" (cf. Epicurus and Lucretius). Mother Teresa was "possessed" by an "evil spirit" at one time, was she not? Was she "possessed" when you saw her and got her autograph?

[NikolaiI]

For all those conerned, I would like to quote a Sanskrit verse from the Vedas..


"Delight"

Anandadd hy eva khalv imani bhutani jayante,
Anandena jatani jivanti
Anandam prayantyabhisam visanti.


Translation

From Delight we came into existence.
In Delight we grow.
At the end of our journey’s close,
Into Delight we retire.

[Judas130]

For all those conerned, I would like to quote a Sanskrit verse from the Vedas..

Translation

From Delight we came into existence.
In Delight we grow.
At the end of our journey’s close,
Into Delight we retire.


Mothers experience pain in pregnancy, children cry in fright in birth
many grow through society, collecting and attaching, paying money and living in the state, raising families
When we die - death - can vary in pain or ease. Such practices as bodhicitta automatically bring calm at the time of death.
Is the delight that you refer to something which is attained, or something that is there by default? I've read some of thoughts of the present Dalai Lama, and much work is to be had to attain goals and ease throughout life: "let us take a moment to review how progress toward a meaningful life unfolds: first comes morality, then concentrated meditation, then wisdom." (How to practise - Dalai Lama)



Religion has always been "the opiate of the masses" long before Marx and Engels. I am today a non-theist (atheist) who has found that slavery to religion generally is the worst of slaveries.

Are you sure it is slavery? For if one does not wish to believe, then one will not. Do you not think instead that religion is an indulgent rather than a slavery? When you truly come to comprehend how little we are in relation to a universe of which we presently know little of, then such a thought that we are all alone in a great sea is a heartbreaking one. The thought that, even within our own galaxy, we cannot 'see' what is around us - indeed, what we 'see' is the history of our neighbouring stars, light years into the past - we can not know what the gallaxy, or the universe looks like - because all we see is it's history - thanks to the speed of light. To say "a galaxy is presently colliding' is wrong, for it collided perhaps 4 billion years ago. This is a further lonely idea to add to the arsenal of loneliness. Humans worship and have faith, we conclude and try to understand.

Yet to think of atheism as liberation is an idea I cannot personally understand. In recent years I have thought long and hard, and the path of atheism is a cold and distressing one for me to have indulged in, I am a less happy person - it is, after all, the process of stripping away an in-built cognitive mechanism that allows one to believe and have faith - when people pray for example, or meditate, their senses are heightened, more of the brain is used. Religion has it's corruption yet religion is a natural part of society, it is conformity, clumping of groups with similar concepts and ideals - so that they do not feel alone, so that they can share the things they need: purpose, goals, love, guidance, safety. Faith, however, is the personal belief that comes separate to Religion (which is the congregation of similar faiths). Faith is the true liberation in this lonely universe, while atheism and explicitly nihilism, is the indulgent in cold, purposeless, and spiritless existence - it is slavery to the void, to isolation. :(

[NikolaiI]

Mothers experience pain in pregnancy, children cry in fright in birth
many grow through society, collecting and attaching, paying money and living in the state, raising families
When we die - death - can vary in pain or ease. Such practices as bodhicitta automatically bring calm at the time of death.
Is the delight that you refer to something which is attained, or something that is there by default? I've read some of thoughts of the present Dalai Lama, and much work is to be had to attain goals and ease throughout life: "let us take a moment to review how progress toward a meaningful life unfolds: first comes morality, then concentrated meditation, then wisdom." (How to practise - Dalai Lama)

This is just my interpretation, but I interpret the passage to be speaking about the soul. In Hinduism the soul is called Atman, its nature bliss and knowledge. This was my point. We come from the soul, actually we are the soul, not only the body. We are seeking for... what- peace? We are seeking for our source, and our source is Atman, the soul. And yet the soul is not somewhere apart from us or distant from us. The soul, the source, is the center from which we seek. We have gone however many twists and turns that we feel separate from ourselves, from the Universe, from Atman. Since we have encountered this ignorance of separation of Atman, we doubt it. I am saying, it is real.

[Stargazer86]

I was raised strictly Catholic. Throughout my childhood, I believed it all, no question. I remember when I started to really doubt my faith. I was in 7th grade and I asked my religion teacher, "If God is supposed to be our Father who loves us, and we're his children, why are we supposed to fear him?" Her response: "I remember being about your age, asking my religion teacher the very same thing." and then she just walked away...no answer. That's when I started to realize that I needed something more tangible in which to believe. The more I examined my religion from a different perspective, the more it horrified me. I find a lot of the hypocrisy, idolatry (worship of the Virgin and saints etc), and suffering to be very distasteful. After years of angry, bitter old nuns and priests, I was done. The Christian/Judeo God reminds me far to much of a Greek god. The anger, the jealousy, the suffering...and then all of a sudden, in the new testament, he becomes like this whole different entity entirely. If he was always perfect, why the change?
That's not to say that I'm an athiest; I'm not. I find it just as hard to believe that there's absolutely NOTHING out there beyond us. Religion is a good thing for some people. Kudos to anyone who is secure in thier faith. The problem comes in when people can't graciously accept that others have different beliefs that they hold just as dear as the next person does thier own religion. The violence, hatred, and killing that is carried out in the name of religion is completely unconscionable. Anyone who is truely spiritual (and there is a definate distinction between being religious and being spiritual) would never engage or condone such violence. What happend to Love thy neighbor? and the Golden Rule? Religious or not, anyone can agree on these general principles of morality.

Nikolai, I've enjoyed reading your posts. More and more I'm gravitating towards the ideas of Hindu, Buddhism, and Shinto. The idea of a soul, morality, and working to attain a higher sense of peace and knowledge. Beautiful.

Sorry for my writing being so disjointed with the misspellings etc. I'm operating on no sleep in the past few days.

[MarkBastable]

May be, if you see the things from recarnation angle & everything-is-God's- play, you will be able to get at some answer.

I already have an answer. That's what my post was - an answer. I was trying to help you get at it.

[Lynne Fees]

So God allows terrible things to happen in order to give us the chance to improve ourselves? He came up with the fabulous idea of childhood leukaemia to make it easier for bereaved parents to aspire to a state of Christ-like grace?


It's becoming increasingly obvious to me during this discussion that if God exists then I don't like him much. I have serious reservations about his methods and I'm not prepared to adopt the attitudes and behaviours that are apparently necessary to gain his approval.



Well, quite possibly none. Which seems to me much more likely to be true than any other suggested possibility.

And because there's no ultimate point, the way you live your life matters on a human scale - you have to exhibit kindness, companionship, fair dealing, charity, all that stuff.

Here's the scary part though. If you decide not to be humane, there's no ultimate punishment. There's no wait till your father gets home comeuppance. You have to be good simply because it seems the right thing to do. There's no payoff, no threat, no reckoning.

That's a much tougher requirement of human beings, in my opinion, than the God-led alternative where the good children get a long holiday in Paradise Resorts, and the bad children are locked in the cellar forever.

It's hard work being an atheist. It's not an easy path to follow- but I think it's a more responsible one.


God did not come up with the "fabulous idea of childhood leukemia." When man/woman sinned, and chose to choose putting themselves above God, God gave Satan certain power on Earth. Hence, death, disease, etc.
As far as "why are we here," I think you have hit the nail on the head. Using "good" and "bad" to decide whether a person goes to heaven or hell does not work. Hence, Jesus.

[MarkBastable]

When man/woman sinned, and chose to choose putting themselves above God, God gave Satan certain power on Earth. Hence, death, disease, etc.


There was a time when Christians would have burned you at the stake for saying that - because the implication is that God is not all-powerful.

And it's a real paradox. Either God is not all-powerful, which means that he's not, actually, in charge of the Universe. Or he is all-powerful, which means he could stop suffering but he chooses to give Satan free rein to screw with us.

If it's the latter, then he is ultimately responsible for childhood leukaemia, although he lets Satan take the rap.

If it's the former, then he's not in any position to save us from anything, including death, disease, famine or Jeffery Archer - which renders prayer a bit of a lottery really.

[Lynne Fees]

It's not that they cannot explain god scientifically. It is that there is no proof of god, and plenty of proof against god. In other words, believers argue (and here I am talking specifically about the Judeo-Christian tradition note, not eastern or world religions) that their belief is a product of faith, which is virtuous. That's rhetoric for they are too afraid to change their minds, when faced with overwhelming evidence against god.

I can respect religion to an extent, but this "I believe because it makes me who I am, and makes me comfortable," is pure rhetoric. That isn't a reason to believe in something, it just shows the inner cowardice of the believer.

In the spirit of valuing everyone's views, let's not use "coward." This reminds me of the old "religion is a crutch" argument. Let's stick to the facts.
The proof of God is in creation. I believe it takes more faith to believe that the butterfly, the elephant, the frog and people are just random happenings. Look at the brain. Look at the eye.

[billyjack]

God did not come up with the "fabulous idea of childhood leukemia." When man/woman sinned, and chose to choose putting themselves above God, God gave Satan certain power on Earth. Hence, death, disease, etc.


ummmmmm??? you're attributing the ebb and flow, death and life, disease and health of mankind to sin or piety. do you know how out of touch with reality that is?... to actually think that a mental phenomenon, such as the choice between putting yourself above or below god, could affect even the tiniest atom on this planet.

i know you're not saying that our mentalities affect minor physical phenomenon. you're saying that they affect the most important, large scale physical phenomenon in terms of our human value systems. making your stance that much more baffling.

[BienvenuJDC]

It's not that they cannot explain god scientifically.

What you mean to say...or what you should be saying...is that God cannot be explained empirically, which is to say that He cannot be explained by the experience of the five senses. He is not of a physical nature, so He cannot be measured by the scientific standards that man understands. That is why He gave us revelation, so that we could know more about Him. If there are those who choose to reject His message...well that is to their own detriment.



It is that there is no proof of god, and plenty of proof against god.

There is no proof that God does not exist. However, there are many proofs that the existence of the universe could only be by an Intelligent Creator.


In other words, believers argue (and here I am talking specifically about the Judeo-Christian tradition note, not eastern or world religions) that their belief is a product of faith, which is virtuous.

Many Christians argue the existence of God from a "scientific" stand point. Just because there have been some that have used such arguments, does not mean that all or even most use such arguments. If you want to look into the Christian Evidences that some use to establish their beliefs check out such websites as...http://www.apologeticspress.org/

[MarkBastable]

ummmmmm??? you're attributing the ebb and flow, death and life, disease and health of mankind to sin or piety. do you know how out of touch with reality that is?... to actually think that a mental phenomenon, such as the choice between putting yourself above or below god, could affect even the tiniest atom on this planet.

i know you're not saying that our mentalities affect minor physical phenomenon. you're saying that they affect the most important, large scale physical phenomenon in terms of our human value systems. making your stance that much more baffling.

I think you've misunderstood what Lynne means. She's employing the 'original sin' argument - which goes like this: God made the world perfect for mankind, and all he asked in return was that mankind should stick to a few simple rules. Mankind didn't (in the metaphor, Adam and Eve ate of the fruit) and so God said, "Right - just for that, I'm going to let Satan take a shot at you, and then you'll have to make decisions about where your loyalties lie."

So she's not saying that each individual's mentality affects stuff like leukaemia. She's saying it's inherent to the human condition that God allows Satan to impose suffering on us, and that's no fault but our own.

All that's not, though, an argument for the existence of God, because the situation as stated requires the pre-existence of God in order to be possible.

Me, I think that a God who gives people curiosity and then puts them in a garden that contains a tree they can't touch is just asking to be disobeyed, so if that's how it happened, I'd say God was as much to blame as Adam and Eve. If it were a court case, he'd be charged with contributory negligence.

[billyjack]

even worse then. an old analogy that doesn't coincide with reality as we know it is being used to blame bad stuff on people.

at least my favorable take on lyne's stance gave her an out, telekinesis.

[NikolaiI]

Debate about Satan and Adam and Even and so on is really all off-topic to this thread. The original post of this thread said nothing about any of those, nor did the creator of this thread ever mention them. The thread is about God, not Christianity or Christian theology.


And it's a real paradox. Either God is not all-powerful, which means that he's not, actually, in charge of the Universe. Or he is all-powerful, which means he could stop suffering but he chooses to give Satan free rein to screw with us.

This is exactly what I'd rather be discussiong, rather than Christian theology. :thumbs_up

Mark, let me reply to your position; first, I understand the reasons for atheism as I was an atheist for most of my young life. I studied philosophy and then Eastern philosophy and then some religions, mainly Buddhism and now Hinduism.

It seems like atheism is very far away from theism, but it isn't quite as far removed as one might think. When I shifted my views from atheism, I did not become a theist straightaway. As far as I can tell, although by some definitions there are more, there are three main types of perspectives. Atheism, impersonalism, and personalism (theism).

Personalism worships God as Lord, as the Personality of Godhead. In theism, though, God also has impersonal attributes. Such as an impersonal spiritual effulgence. Impersonalists see God to be impersonal, just this impersonal spiritual effulgence. This is referred to as brahmajyoti. In this philosophy (Mayavadin) the question of how could an all-powerful God allow suffering doesn't come up, or it isn't answered. It's answered honestly, "I don't know."

Atheism is not so much different from impersonalism, because neither concludes the existence of a Personality of Godhead.

Impersonalism is different from atheism because impersonalism does think there is some spiritual path.

Eastern philosophy generally has the idea that the material universe is Maya, or Samsara. The question mainly is, what is reality, and what are we? Why is there suffering? What is our true nature?

Atheism or skepticism is good so far as it goes. It's certainly necessary to protect against dogma. But it can, and I have seen it do so, become a dogma in itself. Your statement, "I already have the answer, I am just trying to get you to see it," is an indication of this.

Why is it mystics of all religions, cultures, nations, and times, say such similar things? Why do they say there is a truth which is the only thing which is important, but yet equally inexpressible in its vastness? What they say is that this truth is basically one of peace, bliss, saying... "Do not worry, and be happy," and as much as they can, they describe this infinite bliss which is what really is.

What I am trying to say is, not everything which exists can be measured with a ruler. Not everything which is of value can be put into words. Not everything which is true can be expressed in thought. There is truth, reality, beyond words, thought, and measurement. I guess that is my main point.

And about God; God is one of these which can't be understood by thought, words, or measurement. God is infinite bliss, truth, and existence. God is the source of everything which exists. Everything in this world, when we are thinking, "I am this body," is illusion. This may conflict with what you believe, and you may think whatever you wish in response. Please understand I am not justifying moral relativity. Actually I think we should be very moral, and not waste time on nonsense. But - what I am saying is, what happens to the body does not affect the soul. We are all the soul, and the soul actually cannot be hurt, cut, burned, or dried by air. It is eternal. What is temporary does not exist in relation to what is eternal.

Someone else mentioned revelation...I too speak of revelation. One must know that everything related to the ego is illusion. What is reality is a deeper peace, truth and bliss. Awakening is realizing one's nature - not simply understanding intellectually, but realizing, on all levels of being - one's Buddha-nature, or one's divine nature. This is what is true, that every living being's true nature is that.

I am not here to argue but merely discuss, as arguing is a waste of everyone's time.

[Eugenie]

I have believed since I was a baby and noone in my house believed or gave Him the time of day. I have always been aware of HIm , his love and a sense of destiny from Him.
My family always talks of when I was not yet three and suddenly hurried to the coat rack, taking down from the low peg my dress coat.
'where do you think you are going?' father asked in surprise.
'I am going to find God" I answered and went to the door."
They stared at one anothe and were silent as they took my coat off and tried to find some way to stop my tears of protesttion.

[BienvenuJDC]

I am not here to argue but merely discuss, as arguing is a waste of everyone's time.

Thank you, NikolaiI. That was a very informative and well thought out response. Although we may not see all things together, I think that there are some basic rudimentary thoughts that no doubt we will agree on. In fact, I think that your information given may even have helped me to understand my own beliefs better.

I do have a question for you, having studied many religions, it seems that you are currently holding to aspects of Hinduism (if I referred that properly). Do you hold fast to Hinduism, or have you blended aspects of several?

There is also the considerations of Theism vs. Deism. I've heard this in respects to Christianity, but I'm sure it applies across the board. If the existence of all things come from an intelligent powerful God...or a cooperative effort of Spiritual Persons, is He/They still involved with the creation? Obviously this begins to imply the area of Personalism vs Impersonalism...possibly? Please forgive me if I speak in terms of Christianity in this thread, I will try my best to comment, question, or explain in broader terms.

[Lynne Fees]

ummmmmm??? you're attributing the ebb and flow, death and life, disease and health of mankind to sin or piety. do you know how out of touch with reality that is?... to actually think that a mental phenomenon, such as the choice between putting yourself above or below god, could affect even the tiniest atom on this planet.

i know you're not saying that our mentalities affect minor physical phenomenon. you're saying that they affect the most important, large scale physical phenomenon in terms of our human value systems. making your stance that much more baffling.

Think of it this way. The Lord's prayer says, "Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven." Due to sin, Earth is not heaven. In heaven, God's will is done in a complete way. On Earth, it is done in a more roundabout way. Once Adam & Eve (and every other human on Earth, past, present & future other than Jesus) sinned, the rules changed. We all bring disease and death upon the world in our own way, by our sin. (Not a tit-for-tat kind of disease and death for sin, but in a general sense.) God can pre-empt Satan and evil when He decides to - look at Job. When God does not pre-empt Satan, He does promise that He can help us make good out of any situation, however terrible.

[NikolaiI]

Thank you, NikolaiI. That was a very informative and well thought out response. Although we may not see all things together, I think that there are some basic rudimentary thoughts that no doubt we will agree on. In fact, I think that your information given may even have helped me to understand my own beliefs better.

I do have a question for you, having studied many religions, it seems that you are currently holding to aspects of Hinduism (if I referred that properly). Do you hold fast to Hinduism, or have you blended aspects of several?

There is also the considerations of Theism vs. Deism. I've heard this in respects to Christianity, but I'm sure it applies across the board. If the existence of all things come from an intelligent powerful God...or a cooperative effort of Spiritual Persons, is He/They still involved with the creation? Obviously this begins to imply the area of Personalism vs Impersonalism...possibly? Please forgive me if I speak in terms of Christianity in this thread, I will try my best to comment, question, or explain in broader terms.

No, that seems right. It does seem to imply the area of Personalism vs. Impersonalism. I wasn't thinking about Deism vs. Theism when I wrote my post.

I would agree that you and I have many similar fundamental beliefs. Our differences are... I don't know if you are, but I am assuming, you are not a vegetarian. For me it is absolutely essential. But besides that difference, assuming it is one, there probably are many similarities. For instance neither you or I take any intoxication. That is probably second to vegetarianism (or rather non-injuring, of which vegetarianism is part) to me.

I know that went off topic a little... to answer your question yes, Hinduism is mainly my religion but I think it incorporates other religions. My only desire is to understand what is true, what is real. I believe God is the source of everything. My experiences led me to this conclusion. I've had experiences of the soul and of God. Basically these led me to understand that God's reality is peace, bliss, power, and knowledge. That is what is true, what is real. The rest is illusion.

Basically I believe God is infinite. All the rest is ignorance, Maya, or illusion; it is imagination. The central question is why is there suffering? But to me more central is, what is true/ what is real? I believe eventually, we will all wake up, to the infinite nature of God. Until that happens I will continue to live a simple life and try to increase happiness, knowledge, peace, and love. I basically believe in simplicity as well. I try to be undivided.

[MarkBastable]

Atheism or skepticism is good so far as it goes. It's certainly necessary to protect against dogma. But it can, and I have seen it do so, become a dogma in itself. Your statement, "I already have the answer, I am just trying to get you to see it," is an indication of this.

Actually, that was a deliberately and facetiously provocative response to the suggestion that I might need to read previous posts in order to find an answer. You would think that I'd've learned by now that it's futile to attempt to make a serious point by the application of fatuous logic.


Why is it mystics of all religions, cultures, nations, and times, say such similar things? Why do they say there is a truth which is the only thing which is important, but yet equally inexpressible in its vastness?

Well, not because there's a God, if you ask me. I think that they say such similar things because people are led astray by the very attributes that make us human beings - to wit, the talents for language and symbolic thought. We construct a metaphor for Big Cosmic Stuff, and we choose to personify it. We need to refer to it in conversation, so we give it a name. Because it has a name, we start to think of it as a Real Thing. Next thing you know, we can't separate the metaphorical construct from our own perception of reality, and before long we're building cathedrals and intercontinental missiles.


What I am trying to say is, not everything which exists can be measured with a ruler. Not everything which is of value can be put into words. Not everything which is true can be expressed in thought. There is truth, reality, beyond words, thought, and measurement. I guess that is my main point.

Unfortunately a ruler and some words are all I have, because that's all God gave me. And if God decides to create children who are incapable of comprehending him, he has no one to blame but himself. If I were a bright orange god who smelled strongly of celery, it'd be pretty unsporting of me to create blind creatures with no noses, and then to blame them for not being able to find me.


I am not here to argue...as arguing is a waste of everyone's time.

Oh I am. I don't think it's a waste of time at all.

[Scheherazade]

R e m i n d e r

Please do not personalise your arguments during discussions.

Posts containing such remarks will be removed immediately.

[Lynne Fees]

Well, not because there's a God, if you ask me. I think that they say such similar things because people are led astray by the very attributes that make us human beings - to wit, the talents for language and symbolic thought. We construct a metaphor for Big Cosmic Stuff, and we choose to personify it. We need to refer to it in conversation, so we give it a name. Because it has a name, we start to think of it as a Real Thing. Next thing you know, we can't separate the metaphorical construct from our own perception of reality, and before long we're building cathedrals and intercontinental missiles.



Unfortunately a ruler and some words are all I have, because that's all God gave me. And if God decides to create children who are incapable of comprehending him, he has no one to blame but himself. If I were a bright orange god who smelled strongly of celery, it'd be pretty unsporting of me to create blind creatures with no noses, and then to blame them for not being able to find me.

Paul says in Romans God gave us creation to show He exists. So now people have managed to take God out of that, even, by espousing the theory of Darwinism to explain how we got here. Who or what put the "survival" instinct into plants and animals, by the way? That it all happened by chance it harder to believe than to believe in God.

[MarkBastable]

That it all happened by chance it harder to believe than to believe in God.

It is if you believe in God. But, believe me, if you don't take God as read, chance is a much more believable explanation than anything else. In fact, it's so believable, I'm always a bit surprised that anyone bothers to find another explanation.

However, believability is no argument in support of truth.

For instance - because of the way in which the human mind interprets the world, it's much easier to believe the Earth is a plate than to believe it's a ball. But, despite the fact that the plate is more believable, the world is in fact a ball.

What's easy to believe is not necessarily true. I find chance easy to believe. You find God easy to believe. But neither my predisposition nor yours is in the least useful as an argument in support of either belief.

[BooK WorM 13]

Im only 12 and to most people im still a kid. But i have my own opinionson things. like thewhole god aspect. I still quiestion my true faith simply because the bible confuses me, not in a way as though to make me fell stupid bbut challenges my brain and tests my beleifs. my family is religious(very) so i suppose i should be aswell, but i still think there is something out there. We had learned about the ancient greeks in school the other day, and it clearly stated that they also had simular religions as welll as us here in the present.

[lichtrausch]

Im only 12 and to most people im still a kid. But i have my own opinionson things. like thewhole god aspect. I still quiestion my true faith simply because the bible confuses me, not in a way as though to make me fell stupid bbut challenges my brain and tests my beleifs.


How so?



my family is religious(very) so i suppose i should be aswell


There's no reason to believe in something just because your family does.



i still think there is something out there. We had learned about the ancient greeks in school the other day, and it clearly stated that they also had simular religions as welll as us here in the present.

Most religions come from the early days of man when we were incredibly primitive and knew nothing about the world. The human brain has a habit of looking for patterns and meaning, and finding them even where they don't exist. So early men searched for a meaning of how human beings were created and most decided that we were created by an all powerful celestial being. Not a bad guess at the time. The key thing to remember is that these guesses which quickly became dogma remain nothing more than guesses trying to explain the world. Back then they were decent guesses but they couldn't and still can't be backed up with reason.

[NikolaiI]

Most religions come from the early days of man when we were incredibly primitive and knew nothing about the world. The human brain has a habit of looking for patterns and meaning, and finding them even where they don't exist. So early men searched for a meaning of how human beings were created and most decided that we were created by an all powerful celestial being. Not a bad guess at the time. The key thing to remember is that these guesses which quickly became dogma remain nothing more than guesses trying to explain the world. Back then they were decent guesses but they couldn't and still can't be backed up with reason.

Oh - because all those who believe in God are the same, equally inept and inferior to the atheist, who knows the truth by reason? I am being a little blunt, but I don't mean to be harsh. I was an atheist until I was 17, and I understand the position well. Still, just believe me that there is more out there. I would suggest reading some of Emerson's essays. And a book on Buddhism, which doesn't teach about God, but is a wonderful first step begin to be free from Western materialism, I also suggest, which is called Entering the Stream.

Anyway, I would take Emerson's intellect, personality, mind and ideas over any atheist's writings I have ever read.

[lichtrausch]

Oh - because all those who believe in God are the same, equally inept and inferior to the atheist, who knows the truth by reason?


An atheist doesn't know "the truth". He admits ignorance at the point where others, who can't possibly know "the truth", claim to know "the truth".



Still, just believe me that there is more out there.


I believe you. After all the universe is a big place, ain't it?



I would suggest reading some of Emerson's essays. And a book on Buddhism, which doesn't teach about God, but is a wonderful first step begin to be free from Western materialism, I also suggest, which is called Entering the Stream.


I'll check it out when I get the chance.



Anyway, I would take Emerson's intellect, personality, mind and ideas over any atheist's writings I have ever read.


That's nice.

[NikolaiI]

An atheist doesn't know "the truth". He admits ignorance at the point where others, who can't possibly know "the truth", claim to know "the truth".

I believe you. After all the universe is a big place, ain't it?

Yes.. and yet you just say that others cannot possibly know the truth. Can you see the error in this? What if I said you could not possibly know the truth? I wouldn't say that, though.

It's just, that's one thing which is amazing to me, when people say, "others, who can't possible know the truth"...

Quite the contrary, anyone can attain self-knowledge, self-truth, self-realization. Not no one, but anyone and everyone. It is possible for anyone to attain peace and enlightenment.

[lichtrausch]

Yes.. and yet you just say that others cannot possibly know the truth. Can you see the error in this? What if I said you could not possibly know the truth? I wouldn't say that, though.

It's just, that's one thing which is amazing to me, when people say, "others, who can't possible know the truth"...

Quite the contrary, anyone can attain self-knowledge, self-truth, self-realization. Not no one, but anyone and everyone. It is possible for anyone to attain peace and enlightenment.

When you said "the truth", I was assuming you meant the dogmas common to our world which ask for blind faith in exchange for "the truth". Terms like the truth, self-knowledge and self-truth are vague and not conducive to a rational discussion.

[Dr. Hill]

To attain peace and enlightenment is to become a secular humanist.

[NikolaiI]

When you said "the truth", I was assuming you meant the dogmas common to our world which ask for blind faith in exchange for "the truth". Terms like the truth, self-knowledge and self-truth are vague and not conducive to a rational discussion.

You forgot to reply to my criticism. You said in your last post that there are some who cannot know the truth. You didn't specify who, so I might ask - who is it that cannot know the truth?

Perhaps anyone who says something which isn't materialist? Or anyone who believes in anything mysticial or spiritual?

Or is it anyone who speaks of peace, or ineffable peace beyond normal thought? Or worse, the worst crime in a rationalist's mind, speaks of mysticism?

There do exists states of mind, and states of reality, beyond anything you know, or also beyond anything I know. When I experienced one of those, it was like a revelation.

Just as in the spectrum of light there are light which we cannot see, so in the spectrum of consciousness is there consciousness which we are not aware of - spiritual, or divine consciousness is not perceptible to mental thought, just as mental thought is not perceptible to lower forms of consciousness (animal thought/behavior).

[lichtrausch]

You forgot to reply to my criticism. You said in your last post that there are some who cannot know the truth. You didn't specify who, so I might ask - who is it that cannot know the truth?

Perhaps anyone who says something which isn't materialist? Or anyone who believes in anything mysticial or spiritual?

Or is it anyone who speaks of peace, or ineffable peace beyond normal thought? Or worse, the worst crime in a rationalist's mind, speaks of mysticism?

There do exists states of mind, and states of reality, beyond anything you know, or also beyond anything I know. When I experienced one of those, it was like a revelation.

Just as in the spectrum of light there are light which we cannot see, so in the spectrum of consciousness is there consciousness which we are not aware of - spiritual, or divine consciousness is not perceptible to mental thought, just as mental thought is not perceptible to lower forms of consciousness (animal thought/behavior).

To make sure we're on the same page, can you define what you mean by "the truth"?

[NikolaiI]

Back then they were decent guesses but they couldn't and still can't be backed up with reason.


Oh - because all those who believe in God are the same, equally inept and inferior to the atheist, who knows the truth by reason?


An atheist doesn't know "the truth". He admits ignorance at the point where others, who can't possibly know "the truth", claim to know "the truth".

This is the line of conversation... I am not even sure what all you are claiming. Obviously you are against God and religion. I can only assume you are also saying, Daoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Wiccan, and all other types of religion or spirituality are all dogma and opposite to reason...? You might like to read the Tao Te Ching, read a good book on Buddhism or the Dhammapada, read the Bhagavad-Gita, before you obliquely criticize the first three, anyway...

I am not a big fan of religions which think they are exclusively true, that is worse than anything. But also it is a big, wild, and totally unreasoned leap to say that all those who say anything about spirituality or spirit or soul are wrong. Do you know really, very much about Hinduism, Buddhism or Taoism, to say that they aren't supported by reason? Or even Christianity or Islam or Judaism for that matter?

[lichtrausch]

This is the line of conversation... I am not even sure what all you are claiming. Obviously you are against God and religion. I can only assume you are also saying, Daoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Wiccan, and all other types of religion or spirituality are all dogma and opposite to reason...? You might like to read the Tao Te Ching, read a good book on Buddhism or the Dhammapada, read the Bhagavad-Gita, before you obliquely criticize the first three, anyway...

I am not a big fan of religions which think they are exclusively true, that is worse than anything. But also it is a big, wild, and totally unreasoned leap to say that all those who say anything about spirituality or spirit or soul are wrong. Do you know really, very much about Hinduism, Buddhism or Taoism, to say that they aren't supported by reason? Or even Christianity or Islam or Judaism for that matter?

I have nothing against spirituality. It's monotheistic religions and their believers who indoctrinate their children with dogmas which encourage blind faith and discourage questioning, curiosity, and rational thinking that I am against.

When I said no one knows "the truth", I was referring to the claim by most religions that they have the absolute truth. That is to say, they know the answer to why the universe was created, who created it, what the meaning of mankind's existence is and similar questions.

In short, spirituality and thinking are good, indoctrination and blind faith are bad. I think we can agree on that, no?

[Judas130]

When studying all the theodicies for the problem of evil, or reasoning behind God's existence, be it a priori or a posteroiri, and understanding that all fail or prove ineffectual with modern understandings...what proof can one bring to the table to suggest the existence of a deity? True empirical reasoning will suggest no proofs for God at the end of the day, and no one philosopher has before managed to prove a deity's existence without contradiction, or without corrupt or bias premises. To say you can disprove a God is probably wrong, there is no way of knowing, yet the same is applied to believing - there is no way of knowing.
No one can fully agree on what a God is - as we all have varying ideas upon the subject. Anselm would claim that even the atheist understands God (or 'that than which nothing greater can be perceived') and thus proves the existence through disbelief, because the Atheist understands God to disprove it (as existence, to Anselm, is necessary to 'that than which nothing greater can be perceived', as existence is a characteristic of perfection). However, you can't take one idea from the mind and just bullet it with pure logic, and being a priori, it relies wholly on definition, not physicality. All Anselm proves is that God is purely conceptual, and exists only in the mind as fabrication - Kant and Hume made sure to bring that argument to its knees.
Essentially, my question to believers, is that, with the knowledge that God cannot be disproved by sciences and such, nor proved, only traditional ideas challenged, why still believe without the proof, without any empirical evidence? Polkinghorn challenged Dawkins by saying that dawkins forgets about the Human longing for a deity, that humans strive for divinity - but Polkinhorn does not prove a God here, he only proves that there is a longing, nothing more is said.
peace

[sc9108]

I don't believe because I don't feel the need, I have great believe but also great doubt in humanity, And that keeps me going also when I think of the war and death religion has caused that makes me uncomfortable,

[NikolaiI]

I have nothing against spirituality. It's monotheistic religions and their believers who indoctrinate their children with dogmas which encourage blind faith and discourage questioning, curiosity, and rational thinking that I am against.

When I said no one knows "the truth", I was referring to the claim by most religions that they have the absolute truth. That is to say, they know the answer to why the universe was created, who created it, what the meaning of mankind's existence is and similar questions.

In short, spirituality and thinking are good, indoctrination and blind faith are bad. I think we can agree on that, no?

Yes, absolutely. We agree on it very much. I am sorry I didn't reply sooner but I've been traveling. I'll reply in more length soon, hopefully.

[NovemberGuest]

I am a christian. Someone once asked me: What if you're wrong...what if you're living a lie?

I thought...and this is my conclusion: So what if I am? By my friends way of thinking...we could ALL be living a lie. At least mine is an "honest" lie...a lie that compells me to do good and fills me with hope. A lie that makes me to think of others before myself. A lie that, I think, can make me a better person.

I believe in God, because of the many things he has done in my life...the answered prayers, his mercy when i deserved malice. You know, I can't really explain it...but thats why its called faith. :)

[Judas130]

I am a christian. Someone once asked me: What if you're wrong...what if you're living a lie?

I thought...and this is my conclusion: So what if I am? By my friends way of thinking...we could ALL be living a lie. At least mine is an "honest" lie...a lie that compells me to do good and fills me with hope. A lie that makes me to think of others before myself. A lie that, I think, can make me a better person.

I believe in God, because of the many things he has done in my life...the answered prayers, his mercy when i deserved malice. You know, I can't really explain it...but thats why its called faith. :)

Your faith does not mean you live a lie. even if I can quite easily reduce and tell you what faith is, what happens in the brain, what tests show, why empirical evidence shows it as fallacy, or anything and everything, "who can we possibly thank for all the beauty?" - I'd be a beast for doing so, and no man should on these forums or here on this thread. Faith, it seems, keeps you happy and keeps your mind at ease on your journey from A to B - and that is the case with many a person. To me, religion or faith is a guilt trip for my human nature - i feel just as good acting as I was born to act (animal) as you do being humble and selfless (buddha or christ). And good. so what of it?
As a less bluntly and cruel atheist than most, i would say your beliefs are not wrong. They are in fact correct! God, Santa, whatever, its all true - CONCEPTUALLY, in belief, in the mind. If you chose to act from it, then so be it - and whoever judged you for it is wasting their time in my opinion, and were pretty cruel too.
The moment faith becomes a lie is when it becomes applied through religion. when it seems to think some external force can implement change in the world - it is not a deity, but the processes of communal trance. that is where the evidence stops, where the logic and reason stop. No theist can prove their deity's existence, only that they believe. my conclusion is that God exists in concept alone. To me God is consequentially fabrication, to a theist God is true and now lets buy some drinks and watch the sport.

Never let an atheist take your faith from you. it is yours to grow out of on your own terms, or live with to make ya happy. peace.

[NikolaiI]

Your faith does not mean you live a lie. even if I can quite easily reduce and tell you what faith is, what happens in the brain, what tests show, why empirical evidence shows it as fallacy, or anything and everything, "who can we possibly thank for all the beauty?" - I'd be a beast for doing so, and no man should on these forums or here on this thread. Faith, it seems, keeps you happy and keeps your mind at ease on your journey from A to B - and that is the case with many a person. To me, religion or faith is a guilt trip for my human nature - i feel just as good acting as I was born to act (animal) as you do being humble and selfless (buddha or christ). And good. so what of it?
As a less bluntly and cruel atheist than most, i would say your beliefs are not wrong. They are in fact correct! God, Santa, whatever, its all true - CONCEPTUALLY, in belief, in the mind. If you chose to act from it, then so be it - and whoever judged you for it is wasting their time in my opinion, and were pretty cruel too.
The moment faith becomes a lie is when it becomes applied through religion. when it seems to think some external force can implement change in the world - it is not a deity, but the processes of communal trance. that is where the evidence stops, where the logic and reason stop. No theist can prove their deity's existence, only that they believe. my conclusion is that God exists in concept alone. To me God is consequentially fabrication, to a theist God is true and now lets buy some drinks and watch the sport.

Never let an atheist take your faith from you. it is yours to grow out of on your own terms, or live with to make ya happy. peace.

And you, also, should never give up searching. :) And don't act like an animal. :p Most of the time. :)

[NovemberGuest]

I really like the way you put it Judas130, and I agree for the most part.

However, as much as I wish it were true, I cannot say the the purpose of my faith is to me "happy". Yes, I have my happy moments...peace...but its not all nice. Anyone who has been persecuted for their faith would tell you that...personally, I have not. But even so, when I do something that, according to christianity, is a sin, I feel guitly (and maybe this is going back to your "religion or faith is a guilt trip for my human nature ") and I need to apologize. So yes...my faith gives me peace, but not necessarily happiness.

This is what you said that I really like:


No theist can prove their deity's existence, only that they believe.

That is exactly what faith consists of. To prove it would turn it into something else...

Tennyson puts it better than I can:


Strong son of God, immortal love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing what we cannot prove.
-In Memoriam A.H.H.

Hebrews 11:1...Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Thanks for your insightful reply, and peace to you, too.

[Redzeppelin]

I have nothing against spirituality. It's monotheistic religions and their believers who indoctrinate their children with dogmas which encourage blind faith and discourage questioning, curiosity, and rational thinking that I am against.

When I said no one knows "the truth", I was referring to the claim by most religions that they have the absolute truth. That is to say, they know the answer to why the universe was created, who created it, what the meaning of mankind's existence is and similar questions.

In short, spirituality and thinking are good, indoctrination and blind faith are bad. I think we can agree on that, no?

Why shouldn't a religion claim a truth? Science does so all the time - and much of that truth is speculative in nature. How do YOU know that a certain religion doesn't have the truth? How can you know?

We can only agree if our definitions of your terms agree; what you call "spirituality" or "thinking" or "indoctrination" or "blind faith" may not be what I perceive them to be at all. I'd have to hear your definitions first.

[jocky]

Faith should always be private and a free choice of the individual to follow or not. How many times have we heard the sermon, Gods ways are unknowable , immediately followed by , this is what God wants you to do? Athiesm and agnosticism are intellectually reasonable and morally defensible. If we are wrong, yet at the same time have lived a decent life, then I am sure a God of love would be forgiving. I agree that science can never provide all the answers, but blind faith based on a 4000 year old religious text, written by fallable humans is not the answer either. Tennyson also wrote about ' honest doubt ' in his elegy on death. Is humanity a result of a big bang, or some sort of beneficial intelligent design, who knows? No one should pretend to certainty, because that is the worst kind of falsehood.

[The Comedian]

Faith should always be private and a free choice of the individual to follow or not. How many times have we heard the sermon, Gods ways are unknowable , immediately followed by , this is what God wants you to do? Athiesm and agnosticism are intellectualy reasonable and morally defensible. If we are wrong, yet at the same time have lived a decent life, then I am sure a God of love would be forgiving. I agree that science can never provide all the answers, but blind faith based on a 4000 year old religious text, written by fallible humans is not the answer either. Tennyson also wrote about ' honest doubt ' in his elegy on death. Is humanity a result of a big bang, or some sort of beneficiant intelligent design, who knows? No one should pretend to certainty, because that is the worst kind of falsehood.

Well said jocky.

[jocky]

:):)
Well said jocky.

Comedian, I wasnt sure if you were still alive after the woodpile, or maybe skulking out in the backwoods, but its great to hear from you. I thought I would never be spotted in a serious discussion, but there you go. :)

[JuniperWoolf]

Jocky, what you wrote sums up what I've been trying to say about religion in the last three years so perfectly and to the point that I actually copied it and e-mailed it to myself to make sure that I never lose it. You are MUCH more eloquent than I am.

[jocky]

Jocky, what you wrote sums up what I've been trying to say about religion in the last three years so perfectly and to the point that I actually copied it and e-mailed it to myself to make sure that I never lose it. You are MUCH more eloquent than I am.

That is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me, however if you check out some of the rubbish I talk on the Blokes thread you may change your opinion. :)

[virginiawang]

I believe in God because I believe in everything Emerson wrote. Emerson held that all of us must accept fate, which is beyond our power to alter, and that this fate understands itself. At one time I was so obssessed with fortune telling that I actually visited a fortune teller once for about ten days to learn some of the hidden secrets about my fate and some of the things that may happen in the near future. That fortune teller reads palms. At the moment he reads your palm, he delves into your heart and discerns what you are thinking and feeling. I believe there is a part of the universe that has been occult and inexplicable throughout the past centuries, and this mysterious part may give evidence to the existence of God.

[blazeofglory]

But palmists are kind of making predictions that are not done with occult powers and they are not occultists in point. They have certain ideas that work for them. It is generalization and that works.

[blazeofglory]

Faith should always be private and a free choice of the individual to follow or not. How many times have we heard the sermon, Gods ways are unknowable , immediately followed by , this is what God wants you to do? Athiesm and agnosticism are intellectually reasonable and morally defensible. If we are wrong, yet at the same time have lived a decent life, then I am sure a God of love would be forgiving. I agree that science can never provide all the answers, but blind faith based on a 4000 year old religious text, written by fallable humans is not the answer either. Tennyson also wrote about ' honest doubt ' in his elegy on death. Is humanity a result of a big bang, or some sort of beneficial intelligent design, who knows? No one should pretend to certainty, because that is the worst kind of falsehood.

I always advocate that faith should be totally a private thing and religions should never be politicized and today the basic problem with religion is with the idea of fundamentalism and fundamentalists always try to politicize religions and used it as tools for propagating their ideas and they take advantages out of this.

[Odysseus93]

My belief in God is rooted in logic. I believe that the existence of a created object implies the existence of a creator.
If you saw a beautiful chair you would automatically assume that someone created it, rather than assuming that it was created by simple random chance, since human logic states that that is impossible. Since the uniiverse is so much more complex doesnt it follow that someone created that?

In believing this I am simply following the greatest philosophers and scientists of all time who believed in god in some form or another; Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Einstein, Newton, St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas to mention a few.

[blazeofglory]

It is really hard not to believe in point of fact; even if empirical science holds the contrary view, given the vastness and complexity of the world we live it is in reality reasonable that we imagine there is a creator of everything and this is our comfort zone.

[Fat Romeo]

The simple reason that you were brought up with the belief in God does not justify that belief. The belief is not innate - children are born atheists - you acquire the belief from your role models, or whoever instilled that belief in you.



Yes but we have tangible, empirical reasoning for scientific theory. The universe exists, given that we live in it, and the effects of atoms can be seen chemically. God, on the other hand, has no real tangible manifestation. There is no reason why we should belief such a thing exists. Scientists did not come up with the big bang theory for kicks, they are trying to explain the creation of the universe. There would be no reason to come up with a theory if the universe did not exist.

What empirical data do we have that would require the existence of a god?
"Children are born atheist" - this doesn't make sense.They are not atheists neither believers.
I am 99% atheist,but I don't believe in science.I mean...the scientists are going forward and back in one hundred different ways in slow motion,compaired with the complexity of Nature they would explain.They are working by curiosity in a field full of lacunas.We can doubt Darwin and carbon-14 dating being atheists.
You see - was it the supposed first images of atoms? - it is written "I.B.M."
and disagree on how the scientists thought atoms were.Suspect.
At less the LHC is not too expensive.

[atiguhya padma]

Children are born atheists. They have no understanding of monotheism. They are more like primitive or prototype scientists, always questioning. give a child enough freedom to question and they will rarely become religious believers

[Buh4Bee]

This is true. Religion is taught.

[Turtletoast]

I mean, I have been both an Atheist and someone who believes in a God. Neither one is wrong, but, as Leo says in "stones from the river", the important thing is just to be kind.

Just on a side note, I feel as though often people see science and faith at war with each other. This has never been, and probably never will be the case. Furthermore, science isn't one force. A 3 year old who studies the bugs in his backyard is technically a "scientist", which is name for someone who discovers information, usually just for the sake of finding things out. Therefore, are scientists that different from philosophers of religion? They have the same goal, just different, non-conflicting methods.

[Scheherazade85]

It remains a puzzle to me as to which point in our lives we decided to believe or not to believe. Or did we ever?

[Redzeppelin]

Children are born atheists. They have no understanding of monotheism. They are more like primitive or prototype scientists, always questioning. give a child enough freedom to question and they will rarely become religious believers

Some problems with this post:
1. Is there anything beyond your opinion to substantiate your claim that children are "born atheists"? Since the majority of atheists - it would seem - tend to be naturalists and claim empiricism as the basis of reality and understanding, I would think you'd have more than just your opinion (since we Christians get dinged for our opinions about the nature of reality that can't be scientifically proven).
2. According to the Bible, all men are born with an innate knowledge of their Creator (sorry - don't have a specific text handy - apologies for that); unfortunately, sin clouds that knowledge and that is why we teach our children about God and why we read the Bible - so that that innate encoding makes more sense.
3. The idea that children left to simply question will not believe is fallacious for a number of reasons; first, a childish view of the world would seem to indicate that the sun revolves around the earth and that at night it sinks into the ocean (if you live on the west coast). Second, depending upon whom the child questions, the answers will be different (and often equally subjective). If you teach a child that the world possesses only a material existence, then yes - the child will grow up unbelieving. If you teach the child that matter is not the full frame of reality, well, the outcome might be a bit different.
4. Many of the questions asked by children and adults alike are unanswerable by science or naturalism.

Atheism is not a "natural" condition - it is a chosen condition. The greatest strivings of philosophers, artists, musicians and writers have always been to seek after the greater purposes of life, to fathom the mysteries of existence, to identify that restless longing of the heart. All those things point to something larger than ourselves, prompting us to find that thing which lies outside of us. If atheism were "natural" - well, I doubt that history would be littered with the overhwhelming evidence that all people have believed in something larger than themselves through which they and the universe take a greater, more profound meaning.

[blazeofglory]

This question whether God exists or whether children were atheists by birth is really a classical question and of course great treatises have been written on this debate and are still being written persistently. I do not think children are innately atheists. Theisms and atheisms are certain philosophical notions and children are not philosophers. Indeed they are questioners. The idea of God came to us by thinking evolutionarily from time immemorial and I do not surmise that children do not keep on thinking. They wonder at what they observe around them, the beauty and immensity of nature. Maybe they do not think the way we do after reading books of theologies that conditioned us to think about Biblical or Islamic or Hindu Gods and goddesses. If they cannot think up mythological ideas of Gods with certain sizes, faces and capacities but nevertheless they may think there must be some grand intelligence or something that integrates all animate and inanimate beings. For, man has the capacity for thinking and children think and are more imaginative than adults and this presupposes the fact that Children are atheists. We kind rational fools hypothesize ideas of theism and atheism woven out of what we have learned from others or books. People who choose to call themselves atheists, fashioning ideas of atheism out of swanky predisposition think they are rationalists, empiricists, scientists and those who believe in God are dogmatists or irrational. But the fact is both theists or atheists or the whole gangs of scientists, philosophers cannot conclusively say that God exists or does not in point of fact. They simply theorize ideas and those so called atheists by hinging on those theorized ideas make a series of conjectures and confuse the common man. I am not siding with both, theists and atheists biasedly or fixedly with sets of ideas or theorists. People may brand me as unprincipled or something like that. I am open to ideas, to both theists and atheists and love to discuss as an unprejudiced individual with no preconceived notions of things.

[Babbalanja]

Many of the questions asked by children and adults alike are unanswerable by science or naturalism.
And how, pray tell, does supernaturalism answer the profound questions of our existence? Faith merely makes people trade honest doubt for the most hollow certainty. Religion short-circuits the process of inquiry by making people repeat empty affirmations as many times as it takes to convince them that they're answers to the big questions.

Regards,

Istvan

[virginiawang]

It's not that they cannot explain god scientifically. It is that there is no proof of god, and plenty of proof against god.

That's rhetoric for they are too afraid to change their minds, when faced with overwhelming evidence against god.

I can respect religion to an extent, but this "I believe because it makes me who I am, and makes me comfortable," is pure rhetoric. That isn't a reason to believe in something, it just shows the inner cowardice of the believer.

The fact that you don't feel God does not alter the fact that soembody else does feel Him. You cannot deny everything you don't understand or never perceive as non-existent because it is a bizzar world full of wonders that may shock people into idiots at any moment. Can you possibly have seen all events, felt all the unknown, or understood all the miraculous in the universe? NO. Then try to be modest.
Evidence tells nothing. It only offers a certain amount of proof to anything you wish to know, but it can escape the real truth. Who knows? You may have no evidence to prove that you are not lying when you are actually teling the truth, but you may have a great deal of evidence to prove what you're saying when you are in fact telling sheer lies.
Please respect the wonder of the world, some of which may not have reached you yet.

[Redzeppelin]

And how, pray tell, does supernaturalism answer the profound questions of our existence? Faith merely makes people trade honest doubt for the most hollow certainty. Religion short-circuits the process of inquiry by making people repeat empty affirmations as many times as it takes to convince them that they're answers to the big questions.

Regards,

Istvan

A belief in God supplies us with answers that science cannot - questions concerning our origins, our human nature, the problem of sin, the existence of morality and the purpose of human life. Science dismisses all of these things into mere random forces - which drains all thought, all words, all actions of meaning.

The certainty is only "hollow" if God isn't real. Science can neither confirm or deny God's existence - so it's dismissal of Him is premature.

The affirmations are only empty if God isn't real. If He isn't real - neither you nor I will ever know; if He is real - you and I will BOTH know.

I don't get where being a believer implies a lack of intelligence, critical thinking ability and logic. Science cannot answer all questions; that many people choose to accept its hypotheses and theories as fact simply suggests that many people are afraid of the unknown; I prefer to say the jury is still out on a number of important matters.

[Babbalanja]

A belief in God supplies us with answers that science cannot - questions concerning our origins, our human nature, the problem of sin, the existence of morality and the purpose of human life. Science dismisses all of these things into mere random forces - which drains all thought, all words, all actions of meaning.You didn't answer my question. What answers does belief provide? At least scientific research has given us provisionally reliable information on our real origins and the evolutionary basis of much of our behavior. It seems that credulity merely allows the believer to think whatever he wants.


I don't get where being a believer implies a lack of intelligence, critical thinking ability and logic. Science cannot answer all questions; that many people choose to accept its hypotheses and theories as fact simply suggests that many people are afraid of the unknown; I prefer to say the jury is still out on a number of important matters.But the religious approach to the unknown is actually less honest and more fearful of the unknown than the scientific approach. The religious believer has certainty because he already affirms the validity of the Bible, and considers it a virtue to keep believing regardless of new information. The empirical researcher only has statistical confidence in his beliefs, because he realizes that new information could change or refute what he currently believes. Which approach is actually more accepting and curious about the unknown?

You say science can't answer all questions, and I agree. But as I said before, religion only pretends to answer them.

Regards,

Istvan

[Redzeppelin]

You didn't answer my question. What answers does belief provide? At least scientific research has given us provisionally reliable information on our real origins and the evolutionary basis of much of our behavior. It seems that credulity merely allows the believer to think whatever he wants.

Christianity tells us how the universe began, where humanity came from, why we do the things we do to each other, the origin and composition of "evil" and the definition of of "good," as well as the solution to the problem of human pain/evil. It establishes that the universe is ultimately just and that we as human beings have meaning and purpose - that life is intentional and significant.

Science has a limited view; what it can do (assess the material world and its contents) it does exceptionally well (though we often find as time goes on that science's assessments need to be revised); what it fails to have the ability to do is answer those questions that Christianity does answer. Science can only speculate and theorize about our origins; it cannot verify its theories in any concrete way - it may only argue circumstancially, using subjective tools in the process. That science can explain how the universe appears to function doesn't mean that it can do everything; it cannot prove/disprove the existence of God, neither can it fully account for the origins of life or the universe itself.

Believers do not believe "whatever they want." That is an oversimplification of something far more complex and profound.


But the religious approach to the unknown is actually less honest and more fearful of the unknown than the scientific approach.

Don't see how this is true. It's only "less honest" if it's wrong, and science has not proven that conclusively; it has taken circumstancial evidence that is open to interpretation and then prematurely called out "case closed," but that doesn't prove anything. You'll have to clarify the "fearful" part for me.


The religious believer has certainty because he already affirms the validity of the Bible, and considers it a virtue to keep believing regardless of new information. The empirical researcher only has statistical confidence in his beliefs, because he realizes that new information could change or refute what he currently believes. Which approach is actually more accepting and curious about the unknown?

You assume that "new information" somehow contradicts the Bible. Archeological finds over the last 30-40 years continue to affirm the Bible's claims by verifying the existence of people and locations that scholars once (mistakenly) asserted didn't exist. I think the scientific community is guilty of the same thing - there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Bible is accurate, yet plenty of people continue to dismiss it as "fairy tales" and "myths."

The empirical researcher also is not completely objective in his/her pursuit of knowledge. Science sometimes involves objective tools of interpretation (like mathematics); other times it must rely upon more subjective methods of interpretation. If I begin from the mindset that there is no such thing as a spirtitual dimension to reality, then all my conclusions will reinforce this belief; if I believe that a spiritual dimension exists, then my scientific conclusions will lean that way (hence intelligent design): both scientists look at the same evidence and arrive at different conclusions because both began from a specific philosophical foundation upon which they assessed their evidence.


You say science can't answer all questions, and I agree. But as I said before, religion only pretends to answer them.

Regards,

Istvan


Again - you beg the question: "pretends" is only accurate if Christianity/religion is wrong; but that has not been irrefutably established.

[Babbalanja]

Christianity tells us how the universe began, where humanity came from, why we do the things we do to each other, the origin and composition of "evil" and the definition of of "good," as well as the solution to the problem of human pain/evil. It establishes that the universe is ultimately just and that we as human beings have meaning and purpose - that life is intentional and significant.

Again - you beg the question: "pretends" is only accurate if Christianity/religion is wrong; but that has not been irrefutably established.
Well, you believe the "answers" Christianity gives you regardless of whether science validates them, so why should you care if science contradicts them?

The Genesis account of creation is as fascinating as any ancient creation story. However, it's also no more consistent with what science has discovered about the formation and development of the universe and Earth than any of the rest. I wouldn't have expected the ancients to be privy to such knowledge. However, since you do, you simply choose to believe what's in the Bible.

Both of the Genesis accounts of where humans came from are similarly poetic and metaphorical. Neither jibes with what the overwhelming evidence from archaeology, molecular biology, and comparative morphology tell us: that we share ancestry with all life through a long process of evolution. If a believer rejects the evolution of species by natural selection, he does so because he wants to believe Genesis.

As far as the morality and justice inherent in the universe, religious belief is simply an excuse for complacency. It sets up a construct that is validated regardless of what we observe in our universe: if things appear just, it's because there's justice in the way things are. If things do not appear just, it's only because we're not equipped to understand the ineffable wisdom of the Almighty. So birth defects, trypanosomes, liver flukes and all the rest of the things that make the innocent suffer are assumed to be part of God's plan by the believer.

That life is significant is exactly the opposite of what religion teaches. By defining this life as a mere warm-up for the afterlife, religious belief denigrates human endeavor and trivializes human suffering. Only by believing that this life is all we have can we be motivated to strive for justice here on Earth.


Believers do not believe "whatever they want."
That's exactly what they believe. And, as you demonstrated above, they also believe whatever they want about what they believe.

Regards,

Istvan

[NikolaiI]

Well, you believe the "answers" Christianity gives you regardless of whether science validates them, so why should you care if science contradicts them?

The Genesis account of creation is as fascinating as any ancient creation story. However, it's also no more consistent with what science has discovered about the formation and development of the universe and Earth than any of the rest. I wouldn't have expected the ancients to be privy to such knowledge. However, since you do, you simply choose to believe what's in the Bible.

Both of the Genesis accounts of where humans came from are similarly poetic and metaphorical. Neither jibes with what the overwhelming evidence from archaeology, molecular biology, and comparative morphology tell us: that we share ancestry with all life through a long process of evolution. If a believer rejects the evolution of species by natural selection, he does so because he wants to believe Genesis.

As far as the morality and justice inherent in the universe, religious belief is simply an excuse for complacency. It sets up a construct that is validated regardless of what we observe in our universe: if things appear just, it's because there's justice in the way things are. If things do not appear just, it's only because we're not equipped to understand the ineffable wisdom of the Almighty. So birth defects, trypanosomes, liver flukes and all the rest of the things that make the innocent suffer are assumed to be part of God's plan by the believer.

That life is significant is exactly the opposite of what religion teaches. By defining this life as a mere warm-up for the afterlife, religious belief denigrates human endeavor and trivializes human suffering. Only by believing that this life is all we have can we be motivated to strive for justice here on Earth.

That's exactly what they believe. And, as you demonstrated above, they also believe whatever they want about what they believe.

Regards,

Istvan

One problem with this is that you begin by critiquing Christianity but then switch to speaking about all religious people. Now what you say would be true if it were corroborated by evidence. If you saw Christians, Hindus, and the rest behaving completely disrepectfully or worse toward all life.

There is good and bad in all people. But let me speak of some of the good people I know, of those religions. For instance the Christians I know and respect have a deep respect for life, considering it sacred. There is a creed within Christianity which says they are supposed to be "Good stewardship." And there are many Christians who realize that our stewardship of this planet has not been up to standard and they are working to change it.

Similarly, there are Christians who do understand that it's also wrong to kill animals as well as humans, and so they have become vegetarian. Or at least they may give up the buying of meat where it comes from factory farms, etc.

But again there is good and bad in all of us. You say that religion is all negative, basically, or in effect, and I am just pointing out that this is not true at all. Nor is it true that Christians (I will just speak of them as it seems that is the religion you are most familiar with) are all good. There is a deep fallacy a lot of Christians hold, generally the more fundamentalist ones, and that is also one of negative viewing. They say, if you have said one lie, then you are a liar. They actually say this. Now why not the reverse? Why not if you have said one kind word, you are a kind person? But they generally run by emotion and cannot see the glaring fallacy there.

But as for whether God exists; that is not dependent on what we see here. The shadow is dependent upon the person, but the person is not dependent on the shadow. So many have eloquently projected their inner visions of God and I do not have really the ability; but I have experienced the divine consciousness and can tell you from experience it is real. It can be hard to come out of the illusion, because there are billions of people on the planet reinforcing it, but once you become free of the illusion, you then realize it was always nothing.

[G4C Chiodos]

A way to answer the " Why does God allow Evil and Wrong to take place" questions. God allows us to be put through trials everyday. And people that attempt these trials either pass them or fail. If you pass then it could lead to something good or another trial. If you fail then it could have the same outcome as if you were to pass it. God simply allows Satan to tempt us all. Its basically a giant test. If everyone would resist the temptation of Satan then I believe the world would be a better place. That doesn't mean that it would be, That's just what I believe.

[Lacra]

All Praise is for God and all Power is His. He is our Lord and with Him is the end of all journeys.
Why I believe in God? Leaving alone the spiritual experiences and reasons I do have strong logical reasons which lead me to belive unconditionally in God. People use to say that there is no logical reasons to believe God exists. But... there are powerful arguments as:
1. There is an Unique Designer for the whole Universe including time, space, energy and matter - everything is so organized that I can't belive in nature doing so.
2. God's existence is clearly evident and easily traceable in unlimitated signs and proofs manifested in the creation of numberless atoms, cells, tissues, muscles, and everyone and everything created. How can I, as educated person, ignore all these evidences?

[lupe]

All Praise is for God and all Power is His. He is our Lord and with Him is the end of all journeys.
Why I believe in God? Leaving alone the spiritual experiences and reasons I do have strong logical reasons which lead me to belive unconditionally in God. People use to say that there is no logical reasons to believe God exists. But... there are powerful arguments as:
1. There is an Unique Designer for the whole Universe including time, space, energy and matter - everything is so organized that I can't belive in nature doing so.
2. God's existence is clearly evident and easily traceable in unlimitated signs and proofs manifested in the creation of numberless atoms, cells, tissues, muscles, and everyone and everything created. How can I, as educated person, ignore all these evidences?

If you are really an educated person, please go back to your science books and find out that all these have nothing to do with gods. The arguments of "intelligent design" and "beauty" have been debated for decades now and most deists don't even used them a lot anymore.

[NikolaiI]

All Praise is for God and all Power is His. He is our Lord and with Him is the end of all journeys.

...

Hello Lacra!

That was a very beautiful post and thank you so much for posting it! I agree completely with what you said, and I think it's important to find out these answers for ourselves, within, rather than being too influenced by the zeitgeist around us or of society.

I would also add two ideas of logical reason for God. The first is that the existence of the infinite exists in the maths, and so it is logical by similarity to understand this as evidence that the infinite exists in philosophy, ontology, or reality, or spirit.


The second is that everything has a source. We can understand that everything which exists in the universe has a source, and it is logical to think the universe also has a source. Now sometimes people will ask what this means, and they remain unconvinced. They aren't stirred by it. But what it means is that there are more levels of reality than at first glance. (But since when did first glance ever reveal real knowledge?!)

So the source of the universe is a more real existence, so to speak. Its relation to us is like our relation to a computer game, or a novel, or a dream. That's why, yes a very logical, a highly advanced, and not superstitious why, that Muslims and Hindus both say that God is the only reality. Muslims have a sacred phrase for it... I don't know what the Sanskrit equivalent is, though it was the main tenant of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.

[Babbalanja]

I would also add two ideas of logical reason for God. The first is that the existence of the infinite exists in the maths, and so it is logical by similarity to understand this as evidence that the infinite exists in philosophy, ontology, or reality, or spirit.But infinity actually doesn't exist in mathematics. There's no number n for which you couldn't say n+1, right? It's true that the concept of infinity is symbolized as ∞ , but that's simply because it can't be defined mathematically.

And the reason for this is relevant to your argument. Graphing a function like y = 1/x, you notice that the lower the positive value of x, the higher the value of y. But you can't divide 1 by zero, so the y value of the function when x=0 is said to be an infinitely large number, or ∞ .

So in the for-us-by-us system of mathematics, the infinite is just a concept we created to deal with the reality of nothingness. By implication, then, what does this say about the concept of the infinite in the for-us-by-us construct of religion?

Regards,

Istvan

[Lacra]

:thumbsup:
If you are really an educated person, please go back to your science books and find out that all these have nothing to do with gods. The arguments of "intelligent design" and "beauty" have been debated for decades now and most deists don't even used them a lot anymore.

Thank you for your suggestion... I never stopped to study and to develop myself as a normal educated person ( At least, I hope so! ). You said that the deists concluded that accidentally, the mother nature created and developed all those. Well this is their opinion and I do have my personal opinion as well. Or I don't have the right to write my ideas, even badly expressed?
I understand that you display the postmodern attitude. That's great but exactlly the science books you were referring to, made me able to understand that there is an unique Designer in the background. :)

[BienvenuJDC]

:thumbsup:

Thank you for your suggestion... I never stopped to study and to develop myself as a normal educated person ( At least, I hope so! ). You said that the deists concluded that accidentally, the mother nature created and developed all those. Well this is their opinion and I do have my personal opinion as well. Or I don't have the right to write my ideas, even badly expressed?
I understand that you display the postmodern attitude. That's great but exactlly the science books you were referring to, made me able to understand that there is an unique Designer in the background. :)

You show yourself to be an extremely intelligent person. Able to discern and decide truth for yourself. Keep up your education beyond that what someone merely tells you. Always remember, the science books are filled with misinformation...but I think that you already know that.

:thumbsup:

[Lacra]

Hello Lacra!

That was a very beautiful post and thank you so much for posting it! I agree completely with what you said, and I think it's important to find out these answers for ourselves, within, rather than being too influenced by the zeitgeist around us or of society.

I would also add two ideas of logical reason for God. The first is that the existence of the infinite exists in the maths, and so it is logical by similarity to understand this as evidence that the infinite exists in philosophy, ontology, or reality, or spirit.


The second is that everything has a source. We can understand that everything which exists in the universe has a source, and it is logical to think the universe also has a source. Now sometimes people will ask what this means, and they remain unconvinced. They aren't stirred by it. But what it means is that there are more levels of reality than at first glance. (But since when did first glance ever reveal real knowledge?!)

So the source of the universe is a more real existence, so to speak. Its relation to us is like our relation to a computer game, or a novel, or a dream. That's why, yes a very logical, a highly advanced, and not superstitious why, that Muslims and Hindus both say that God is the only reality. Muslims have a sacred phrase for it... I don't know what the Sanskrit equivalent is, though it was the main tenant of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.

Welcome, Nikolai! I am glad you like it... also your 2 logically adds are very interesting and I never realized this before. Can you give me a quote related to the Muslims' sacred phrase? Thank you! :)


You show yourself to be an extremely intelligent person. Able to discern and decide truth for yourself. Keep up your education beyond that what someone merely tells you. Always remember, the science books are filled with misinformation...but I think that you already know that.

:thumbsup:

Thank you, Bienvenu! Ya, right, science books are not susceptible to be perfect. :)

[BienvenuJDC]

Science books say that it takes millions of years for coal to form......however, we know for a FACT that coal is formed in a matter of decades in nature. Yet the education system has neglected to make the correction.

[Scheherazade]

~

W a r n i n g

Personalised and off-topic posts have been and will be deleted without further notice.

~

[Virgil]

If you are really an educated person, please go back to your science books and find out that all these have nothing to do with gods. The arguments of "intelligent design" and "beauty" have been debated for decades now and most deists don't even used them a lot anymore.

Says who that intelligent design is no longer used? You are just making that up and completely wrong. Not only is intelligent design based on the physical world, but ity has now expanded into the biological. Read Stephan Meyer's Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design.

Here:http://www.amazon.com/Signature-Cell-Evidence-Intelligent-Design/dp/0061472786


[Stephan] Meyer graduated with a degree in physics and earth science in 1981 from Whitworth College and worked as a geophysicist for the Atlantic Richfield Company.[5] Shortly after, Meyer won a scholarship from the Rotary Club of Dallas to study at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in history and philosophy of science in 1991.[6] His dissertation was entitled "Of clues and causes: A methodological interpretation of origin of life studies."[6]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_C._Meyer

[NikolaiI]

~

W a r n i n g

Personalised and off-topic posts have been and will be deleted without further notice.

~

Yay...o!

heh...


Welcome, Nikolai! I am glad you like it... also your 2 logically adds are very interesting and I never realized this before. Can you give me a quote related to the Muslims' sacred phrase? Thank you! :)



Well, I was referring to la ilaha illallah. I know that some translated it as "There is no God but Allah," while others translate it as "There is no reality other than God (or Allah)." I asked one Sufi to explain the two translations, and she replied that reality is another name for God.

Now I am not a Muslim although I'm learning some gradually and getting to know some Sufis. I did read a wonderful poem about la ilaha illallah muhammad rasulallah by Lex Hixon Al Nur Jerrahi, the poem was called Affirmation of Unity. Really amazing poem!

And Ramakrishna Paramahamsa's central idea was similar to the Sufis' saying there's no reality but God. He would say often that God alone is real, nothing else exists. Of course, though, he didn't originate this. Meher Baba said the same thing in the same words.

[tailor STATELY]

Topic: Why I believe in God?

For me, a Christian, all things denote the existence of God. I know this. I've always known this. The prophets of old and new testify of this fact. The Holy Ghost testifies to me of this fact.

I love this scripture from Matthew chapter 6:
24 ¶ No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Mammon, to me, describes the natural man who is in opposition to that of God.

I am ever amazed at the new theories or models to explain every nuance that the natural man discovers - each contradicting the last. How many dimensions (this month) to justify the mathematics of theoreticians. How many more universes or dimensions or models or particles will be foisted before the natural man proves 'his' vanity.

With regards to Babbalanja answering Nikolai earlier:
Quote:Originally Posted by NikolaiI
I would also add two ideas of logical reason for God. The first is that the existence of the infinite exists in the maths, and so it is logical by similarity to understand this as evidence that the infinite exists in philosophy, ontology, or reality, or spirit.UnQuote

Babbalanja: "But infinity actually doesn't exist in mathematics. There's no number n for which you couldn't say n+1, right? It's true that the concept of infinity is symbolized as ∞ , but that's simply because it can't be defined mathematically.

And the reason for this is relevant to your argument. Graphing a function like y = 1/x, you notice that the lower the positive value of x, the higher the value of y. But you can't divide 1 by zero, so the y value of the function when x=0 is said to be an infinitely large number, or ∞ .

So in the for-us-by-us system of mathematics, the infinite is just a concept we created to deal with the reality of nothingness. By implication, then, what does this say about the concept of the infinite in the for-us-by-us construct of religion?

Regards,
Istvan" It is fashionable to divide by zero when it suits mathematicians and theorists when describing complex systems such as Wheel theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_theory), string theory, and Riemann spheres (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_sphere)
In mathematics, the Riemann sphere is a way of extending the plane of complex numbers with one additional point at infinity, in a way that makes expressions such as 1/0= ∞ well-behaved and useful, at least in certain contexts.
The Riemann sphere has many uses in physics. In quantum mechanics, points on the complex projective line are natural values for photon polarization states, spin states of massive particles of spin 1/2, and 2-state particles in general. The Riemann sphere has been suggested as a relativistic model for the celestial sphere. In string theory, the worldsheets of strings are Riemann surfaces, and the Riemann sphere, being the simplest Riemann surface, plays a significant role. It is also important in twistor theory.

Truths that I ascribe to:

Axiom: There is a God.

Axiom: All things denote a God.

Axiom: The natural man is in opposition to God.

Axiom: Science and mathematics does not preclude the existence of God.

Axiom: It is of far greater importance for God to prove men than for man to prove God.

From "The Book of Mormon" Alma 29:
1 O that I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people!
2 Yea, I would declare unto every soul, as with the voice of thunder, repentance and the plan of redemption, that they should repent and come unto our God, that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the earth.
3 But behold, I am a man, and do sin in my wish; for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me.

May those with ears listen, those with eyes see; and those without seek. Again from Matthew chapter 6:
33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

With utmost respect to those of differing views,
sincerely,
tailor STATELY

[Babbalanja]

Science books say that it takes millions of years for coal to form......however, we know for a FACT that coal is formed in a matter of decades in nature. Yet the education system has neglected to make the correction.


Says who that intelligent design is no longer used? You are just making that up and completely wrong. Not only is intelligent design based on the physical world, but ity has now expanded into the biological. Read Stephan Meyer's Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design.
Religion is all about believing whatever you want, but that's not what science is about.

Expecting scientific inquiry to pander to our prejudices does a great disservice to the millions of researchers (believers and nonbelievers alike) whose work has given us a consistent, coherent picture of our universe. The vastness of space, the development of life on Earth over billions of years, and the amazing world of microbiology, are all comprehensible to us because of the long legacy of empirical evidential inquiry.

What we believe about our material universe doesn't depend on wishful thinking or appeal to scripture. The process of scientific inquiry is cumulative and inductive: new information refines or changes what we know. We don't believe DNA is the basis of heredity because it makes us feel good; we believe because the theory is backed by evidence. If a theory puts more evidence into a coherent, testable framework, it's considered a better theory until something even better comes along.

There's no way to test religious beliefs; they are merely affirmed until the believer no longer doubts them, and redefined whenever it's convenient. In the process of empirical evidential inquiry, obsolete ideas are scrapped forever. No one says "geocentrism wasn't literally true, but since people believed it for most of human history, it must have some value."

But is scientific support ever relevant to religious belief anyway? For the record, I have never stated that scientific inquiry invalidates religious belief. In fact, I submit that people profess religious belief for reasons that have nothing to do with facts and evidence.

Regards,

Istvan

[lupe]

Religion is all about believing whatever you want, but that's not what science is about.

Expecting scientific inquiry to pander to our prejudices does a great disservice to the millions of researchers (believers and nonbelievers alike) whose work has given us a consistent, coherent picture of our universe. The vastness of space, the development of life on Earth over billions of years, and the amazing world of microbiology, are all comprehensible to us because of the long legacy of empirical evidential inquiry.

What we believe about our material universe doesn't depend on wishful thinking or appeal to scripture. The process of scientific inquiry is cumulative and inductive: new information refines or changes what we know. We don't believe DNA is the basis of heredity because it makes us feel good; we believe because the theory is backed by evidence. If a theory puts more evidence into a coherent, testable framework, it's considered a better theory until something even better comes along.

There's no way to test religious beliefs; they are merely affirmed until the believer no longer doubts them, and redefined whenever it's convenient. In the process of empirical evidential inquiry, obsolete ideas are scrapped forever. No one says "geocentrism wasn't literally true, but since people believed it for most of human history, it must have some value."

But is scientific support ever relevant to religious belief anyway? For the record, I have never stated that scientific inquiry invalidates religious belief. In fact, I submit that people profess religious belief for reasons that have nothing to do with facts and evidence.

Regards,

Istvan

Thank you Istvan, I personally don't have the energy anymore to respond to these kind of posts.
At the end of the day, arguments that are presented without proofs, can be dismissed without proofs...

[Lacra]

Everything around me, the Universe itself testifies for me that God exist and I do have to believe in His existence. Our Universe operates in accordance with exact scientific laws. Science leads to believe in God.
Can a person reasonably be expected to believe that these exacting requirements for life as we know it have been met “just by accident”? The Earth is exactly the right distance from the Sun; it is exactly the right distance from the Moon; it has exactly the right diameter; it has exactly the right atmospheric pressure; it has exactly the right tilt; it has exactly the right amount of oceanic water; it has exactly the right weight and mass; and so on.
Of course I have spiritual reasons to believe in my Lord but in this thread I just mentioned the logical perspective. There are many scientists who talk about the existence of God, without being religious persons.

[hoope]

We believe in God ..simply because He exists and he is the only that worths being Worshipped.
And knowing that there is a One Great Lord behind this universe makes one fear God and worship him not only believe in Him.

The existance of this universe was not spontaneously ;it didn't cease to exist because we can witness death of creatures .. others being born , we witness life , water , winds things that come into exisrence and then disappear all that shows that there is a outside determining factor that brought it to existence and here comes the invalidity of an infinite sequence. Because there is only One Almighty God that runs this uuniverse...
Don't you think that He is worth believing?????

[MarkBastable]

O. M. lack of. G.

[Virgil]

Religion is all about believing whatever you want, but that's not what science is about.

Expecting scientific inquiry to pander to our prejudices does a great disservice to the millions of researchers (believers and nonbelievers alike) whose work has given us a consistent, coherent picture of our universe. The vastness of space, the development of life on Earth over billions of years, and the amazing world of microbiology, are all comprehensible to us because of the long legacy of empirical evidential inquiry.

What we believe about our material universe doesn't depend on wishful thinking or appeal to scripture. The process of scientific inquiry is cumulative and inductive: new information refines or changes what we know. We don't believe DNA is the basis of heredity because it makes us feel good; we believe because the theory is backed by evidence. If a theory puts more evidence into a coherent, testable framework, it's considered a better theory until something even better comes along.


It's not based on any religious principles. None whatsoever. Show me the religious statement where it is. It's based on pattern, structure, organization, and probability. Argue with the PhDs that support. Otherwise you just blowing smoke. Claiming it's wishful thinking proves nothing but your lack of acceptance of anything but your fixed views. And what is your scientific background? What's your education level?

[OrphanPip]

I'm sorry, but I find Meyer offensive to everything biology stands for. He has continuously used dishonest tactics to support ID, and has also conveniently made a fortune out of his schemes through the Discovery Institute.

I've read his 2004 paper, the only peer reviewed paper ever published by the DI, and it was a travesty that this got to be published. For one, it was a comparative anatomy paper that somehow got published in a journal of systematics (the publishing of the discovery of new species). Secondly, it was composed primarily of speculation.

ID is simply not science. Their early pet project, irreducible complexity, was quickly unmasked as a load of ****. Meyer and company (usually Behe) used to argue that the flagellum was so complex that it could never have evolved because it required too many steps, so it was "irreducibly complex". However, it only took 4 years for biologist working on the origins of the flagella to identify intermediate forms in the secretory systems of bacteria. This is just one example of the intellectual laziness of the ID movement. You find something you don't have to the answer to at the moment, resort to the "God did it" cop out, and then quit looking for evidence. This is the tactic they repeatedly utilize, find unanswered problems and tack on the "design" explanation. There is no actual attempt to answer any scientific questions, there is no utilization of the scientific method, it is simply not science.

Not to mention that the DI initially started out as an explicitly pro-Christian organization, and just remodeled itself as a non-partisan deistic organization for PR reasons.

[DanielBenoit]

Hey here's my opinion on the issue and I'm sure Babajana knows it, as we have debated over it before :p

I find faith to be fascinating in the Kierkegaardian sense of being making the leap of faith. This act is beyond words, and thus beyond justification. It is in a sense humanistic transcendence (I do not mean this in some Kantian way), but in the fact that it transcends the dialectical rules of language.

I usually think of faith and reason analogously to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem: With reason one can have a non-contradictary but incomplete system, and with faith, one can have a complete system but with contradictions. Again, this is merely an analogy and has no relation with the theorem itself.

[Virgil]

Baloney. Argue with all the other scientists that support it. Look design doesn't confirm there is a God, but it sure proves it to anyone who understands probabilty. You people are so fixed that you can't even accept the possibility of a God. I accept the possibility that there may not be one, just like there is the possibility I can hit the lottery. but you people refuse to even acknowledge a possibility. That's fundementalist athiesm.

[OrphanPip]

Except Meyer's arguments are flawed. He has failed to show that life can't evolve through natural means. I could care less if people believe in a creator and design, but I object to pseudoscientific explanations, especially ones with declared political motivations, like the Discovery Institute.

Real scientist publish research that stands up to criticism, they don't publish books from a private press. The Discovery Institute self-publishes all its "science", its dishonesty is a disgrace not only to science but to religion as well.

It is not merely atheist scientist who reject the style of ID promoted by the Discovery Institute, the vast majority of scientist reject it, and many of those scientist are religious.

Even physicist and religious philosopher Stephen Barr, who has dedicated his life to promoting theological naturalism, rejects ID http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/02/the-end-of-intelligent-design

[Babbalanja]

Baloney. Argue with all the other scientists that support it. Look design doesn't confirm there is a God, but it sure proves it to anyone who understands probabilty. You people are so fixed that you can't even accept the possibility of a God. I accept the possibility that there may not be one, just like there is the possibility I can hit the lottery. but you people refuse to even acknowledge a possibility. That's fundementalist athiesm.Try to stay civil, okay?

It's really got less to do with probability than with affirming the consequent (http://www.fallacyfiles.org/afthecon.html). It's the logical fallacy where you paint a target around the arrow sticking out of the wall. ID theorists talk about an attribute such as 'irreducible complexity' or 'complex specified information,' and assert that this attribute is prima facie evidence of the intentional activity of a designing entity.

However, this doesn't follow logically. The very things that the ID people claim are evidence of design (like DNA or the bacterial flagellum) in fact represent disconfirming evidence of the design hypothesis. That is, the very existence of 'irreducible complexity' in DNA can't be used to support the major premise 'irreducible complexity is evidence of design' without demonstrating that DNA was in fact designed by an intelligent agent.

I don't refuse to acknowledge the possibility of a God. However, I refuse to accept arguments for His existence if they lack logical coherence. And if the argument simply panders to the human bias for seeing intent where there is none, that's not convincing either.

Regards,

Istvan

[Virgil]

Except Meyer's arguments are flawed. He has failed to show that life can't evolve through natural means. I could care less if people believe in a creator and design, but I object to pseudoscientific explanations, especially ones with declared political motivations, like the Discovery Institute.

Real scientist publish research that stands up to criticism, they don't publish books from a private press. The Discovery Institute self-publishes all its "science", its dishonesty is a disgrace not only to science but to religion as well.

It is not merely atheist scientist who reject the style of ID promoted by the Discovery Institute, the vast majority of scientist reject it, and many of those scientist are religious.

Even physicist and religious philosopher Stephen Barr, who has dedicated his life to promoting theological naturalism, rejects ID http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/02/the-end-of-intelligent-design

First of all it depends what one means by intelligent design. There are several definitions out there, and people conveniently pick the one that is not scientifically oriented to knock down as a strawman.

Second, he is under no obligation to prove that "can't evolve through natural means." He proved it was highly unlikely that it can't, and the preponderance of probility was toward a creator. And even there we have a conflict of definitions. Natural means is God!

[Virgil]

Try to stay civil, okay?


Where was I uncivil? Your language of ridicule is in almost every other post. You are the uncivil person here. I can find a list of people here who detest your arrogance.

I asked you a number of times. What are your scientific qualifications? What is your education? What makes you such an expert that your arrogance has to come through in every post?

[OrphanPip]

First of all it depends what one means by intelligent design. There are several definitions out there, and people conveniently pick the one that is not scientifically oriented to knock down as a strawman.

Second, he is under no obligation to prove that "can't evolve through natural means." He proved it was highly unlikely that it can't, and the preponderance of probility was toward a creator. And even there we have a conflict of definitions. Natural means is God!

In science you do have an obligation to show a testable alternative or disprove the current explanation. ID has no interest in science. Meyer parades the idea of abiogenesis being improbable, but he doesn't even do that honestly. First of all you have to presume you have knowledge of how abiogenesis occurred to make a claim to its probability, which he certainly doesn't have. Thus, what you get is the terms for calculating the probability are created out of Meyer's own mind, there's no objective science going on here. The most he could claim is that the specified form of abiogenesis that he is attacking is improbable given the assumptions he makes.

[Babbalanja]

In science you do have an obligation to show a testable alternative or disprove the current explanation. ID has no interest in science. Meyer parades the idea of abiogenesis being improbable, but he doesn't even do that honestly. First of all you have to presume you have knowledge of how abiogenesis occurred to make a claim to its probability, which he certainly doesn't have. Thus, what you get is the terms for calculating the probability are created out of Meyer's own mind, there's no objective science going on here. The most he could claim is that the specified form of abiogenesis that he is attacking is improbable given the assumptions he makes.God-of-the-Gaps arguments always take this form. Certain events happened so long ago in history (like the emergence of life, or the evolution of the bacterial flagellum) that reconstructing the circumstances billions of years later is by definition speculative. But not all forms of speculation are equally valid.

A scientific approach to speculation involves the formation of testable hypotheses using known processes. This is the cumulative nature of empirical evidential inquiry: build on what we know, and try to expand our knowledge in a responsible, comprehensible manner.

The "intelligent design" perspective, however, fetishizes the unknown by characterizing science's current inability to explain these events as a flaw in naturalistic science itself. These quotes are from Meyer's "Signature in the Cell" website:

Meyer is the first to bring the relevant data together into a powerful demonstration of the intelligence that stands outside nature and directs the path life has taken.

The signature in the cell is that of the master programmer of life.

Meyer illuminates the mystery that surrounds the origins of DNA. He demonstrates that previous scientific efforts to explain the origins of biological information have all failed, and argues convincingly for intelligent design as the best explanation of life’s beginning.

As you stated, this is not science. However, it's not truly challenging the naturalistic basis of science. ID neither explains the origin of biotic life, nor what's lacking in materialistic scientific inquiry that makes it unable to account for this staggeringly unlikely event. ID is just a philosophical shell game, completely lacking in scientific merit.

Regards,

Istvan

[blazeofglory]

Everything around me, the Universe itself testifies for me that God exist and I do have to believe in His existence. Our Universe operates in accordance with exact scientific laws. Science leads to believe in God.
Can a person reasonably be expected to believe that these exacting requirements for life as we know it have been met “just by accident”? The Earth is exactly the right distance from the Sun; it is exactly the right distance from the Moon; it has exactly the right diameter; it has exactly the right atmospheric pressure; it has exactly the right tilt; it has exactly the right amount of oceanic water; it has exactly the right weight and mass; and so on.
Of course I have spiritual reasons to believe in my Lord but in this thread I just mentioned the logical perspective. There are many scientists who talk about the existence of God, without being religious persons.

This is really a good argument and convincing about the existence of God

[Virgil]

I have better things to do than to carry on this endless argument. I am not a fundementalist. I don't come to a literature forum and spend 80% of my time proseltizing.

All I have to say is look up Anthony Flew.

[Satan]

Everything around me, the Universe itself testifies for me that God exist and I do have to believe in His existence. Our Universe operates in accordance with exact scientific laws. Science leads to believe in God.
Can a person reasonably be expected to believe that these exacting requirements for life as we know it have been met “just by accident”? The Earth is exactly the right distance from the Sun; it is exactly the right distance from the Moon; it has exactly the right diameter; it has exactly the right atmospheric pressure; it has exactly the right tilt; it has exactly the right amount of oceanic water; it has exactly the right weight and mass; and so on.
Of course I have spiritual reasons to believe in my Lord but in this thread I just mentioned the logical perspective. There are many scientists who talk about the existence of God, without being religious persons.
The reason why there is only one Earth known to man is that it's an accidental presence--an exception among billions of uninhabitable planets circling around 400 billion stars in our galaxy alone. The odds of an intelligent designer creating billions upon billions of galaxies containing hundreds of billions of stars each and then putting life on one tiny and insignificant planet only to watch it destroy itself over and over again are astronomical on an almost comically multidimensional scale.

If every creation must have a creator, then one must inquire into the design of this creator, for he also cannot exist without having been conceived by an even more eloquent designer ...ad infinitum. Else, if the complexity of a creation can far surpass that of its designer, which is quite apparent in the process of evolution, then this creator is but an insignificant prehistoric artifact.

The need to believe and worship is more of a socio-psychological aspect of our evolution than a proof of divinity.

[Lacra]

The reason why there is only one Earth known to man is that it's an accidental presence--an exception among billions of uninhabitable planets circling around 400 billion stars in our galaxy alone. The odds of an intelligent designer creating billions upon billions of galaxies containing hundreds of billions of stars each and then putting life on one tiny and insignificant planet only to watch it destroy itself over and over again are astronomical on an almost comically multidimensional scale.

If every creation must have a creator, then one must inquire into the design of this creator, for he also cannot exist without having been conceived by an even more eloquent designer ...ad infinitum. Else, if the complexity of a creation can far surpass that of its designer, which is quite apparent in the process of evolution, then this creator is but an insignificant prehistoric artifact.

The need to believe and worship is more of a socio-psychological aspect of our evolution than a proof of divinity.

These arguments you are displaying have been debated before and one of the answers that I came across and has convinced me is that it makes logical sense that it has to be only one Creator at the beginning. Because if every creator has his creater then when we will stop? At some point there has to be a Creator, a starting point an uncreated Creater.
The main issue of this conversation is about the existence of God, and why do I belive in God, not how does God exist. I cannot tell you something I don't know, nobody knows. We have no knowledge of many things in the Universe... it is perfectly natural that we don't know how God exist. Any scientist will tell you that the more you study, the more you learn how much we don't know.

It has never been established that we are the only creatures in the Universe. Nobody knows! The argument that you made that our existence is an accidental one, because we may be the only ones in the Universe is a weak one.
I would agree that the need to worship is a socio-psychological aspect, however I would prefer to use the word "instinct".We need to ask ourselves where does this instinct come from and who placed it there?

[Satan]

How appropriate, convincing and convenient that there be a single creator of a creation mired with infinite intriguing possibilities! The point of my statement is to separate logical and rational arguments from the fallacy of faith--to annul the unholy marriage of belief and knowledge. If you are perfectly content with the idea of believing in an entity founded on a flawed a priori judgment, then your ontological arguments are already beyond any form of logical criticism.

Quit using lack of knowledge as a proof of verifiable existence. Your assumptions that life exists above and beyond this planet and that there must be a single point of failure, which you so affectionately call creator, are not a scientific validation by any stretch of imagination. It is also entirely possible that you and I are bio-mechanical bots in a simulated game of life, programmed by a handful of nerds from another dimension--in line with Nick Bostrom's simulation argument.

Schizophrenics were taken very seriously in ancient times.

[tailor STATELY]

I love this quote in support of your argument:


Schizophrenics were taken very seriously in ancient times.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, eh ?

The New Testament Apostle Paul was correct in saying (in his Second Epistle to Timothy in chapter 2) :
23 But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.
24 And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient,
25 In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;
26 And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.

Adieux.

[BienvenuJDC]

I have better things to do than to carry on this endless argument. I am not a fundementalist. I don't come to a literature forum and spend 80% of my time proseltizing.

All I have to say is look up Anthony Flew.

I saw a great debate between Anthony Flew and Thomas B Warren. Flew did not impress me that much. BTW...who are you posting this in response to?

I still don't understand why people cannot allow others to hold their beliefs. It is okay to comment to someone's opinion, but to sit and argue back and forth the way that some do...it's nonsense.

[JommiL]

"My suggeston is that you will step out from your hut in magnificient winter-night. And then, when you look up to the skies ans all those stars, try to say; "There´s no God." Without feelin´ yourself as a fool."

[Satan]

I love this quote in support of your argument:
And I love your reaction to it.

Replying to your post any further would be an attempt at offending the premises of this thread, since we are discussing the reasons of belief--or disbelief--not religions, occults or their less than convincing self-serving arguments.


"My suggeston is that you will step out from your hut in magnificient winter-night. And then, when you look up to the skies ans all those stars, try to say; "There´s no God." Without feelin´ yourself as a fool."

I'm not impressed.

[JommiL]

I understand why - perhaps it has something to do with your alias :smilewinkgrin:

But remember - there´s a lot on things, that cannot be found in atheists wordbook. Many people think, that believing in God is weakness. But it is not. If anyone really wants to check out, what bible will teach about moral etc. it is very obvious, that it creates lot of strenght.
There´s many paradoxes in life. One of them is that we must be weak - we must admit that we need each other - to be strong. Being just "strong" without mercy and hope and caring, we are doomed into loneliness, after all. But then we hit our nose into tall, hard wall: No-one can live just alone and survive mentally. For example - as well known fact is - our mental state of mind and ability grow as humans stops otherwise. This is just a basic information about psychology.

"Remembering betrays nature,
Because yesterday's nature is not nature,
What's past is nothing and remembering is not seeing."

- Sorry, but that´s a big, big lie. You see, if we live like that, we deny power of history. If we deny it, it has funny - and VERY painful - way to remember us about how small we are; It starts to repeat itself, if we are not going to listen and learn about it. If anyone argues, it simply means, that he says that there´s no results of our actions. And everyone knows, what truth about this is. There´s no any possible way to fight against this fact without 101% losing. Remembering means LEARNING & UNDERSTANDING what been happening before. Also that "remembering is not seeing" is saying - after all - that we should see in future. And do we? We are NOT. Same patterns in life will repeat day after day - it is a law of nature. It can´t be broked. If we deny that we don´t need learning and understanding, we are basically saying that we are complete persons - which we are not. Ever. Also it would mean that there´s no purpose about in our life, because life IS learning. If we don´t listen to the history, we are stupidly proud and we are going to pay for it, after all.

"Nature will not broke own laws."
- Albert Einstein.

Thanks.

[BienvenuJDC]

And I love your reaction to it.

Replying to your post any further would be an attempt at offending the premises of this thread, since we are discussing the reasons of belief--or disbelief--not religions, occults or their less than convincing self-serving arguments.

I appreciate your respect...
:thumbsup:

[Virgil]

I saw a great debate between Anthony Flew and Thomas B Warren. Flew did not impress me that much. BTW...who are you posting this in response to?


My only point about Anthony Flew was that he was a long time passionate atheist, a philosopher who argued in much the same way as the atheists here, but who was later convinced on the argument of intelligent design as I argue it (that universe has too much structure for it to have been a random creation), and is no longer an atheist. I've never heard of Thomas Warren, and was Flew an athiest or did he see the light when he was arguing with Warren?

By the way, this is Flew: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Flew

[OrphanPip]

As long as they keep ID out of the biology classroom, because they don't know biology from their left hand.

[Virgil]

As long as they keep ID out of the biology classroom, because they don't know biology from their left hand.

OP, intelligent design is a generic philosophic argument, and has nothing to do with the specifics of any science. It is a way of looking at the science and coming to a conclusion. I agree, it does not belong in a scientific classroom, but I argue it's a legitamate philosophic argument.

My form of ID does not argue for creationism. That is where ID has gotten a bad rap, because some have expanded it to beyond what is justifiable. I only argue for the existence of God. I cannot find any support for a specific type of God. That goes from philosophy to theology.

[BienvenuJDC]

My only point about Anthony Flew was that he was a long time passionate atheist, a philosopher who argued in much the same way as the atheists here, but who was later convinced on the argument of intelligent design as I argue it (that universe has too much structure for it to have been a random creation), and is no longer an atheist. I've never heard of Thomas Warren, and was Flew an atheist or did he see the light when he was arguing with Warren?

By the way, this is Flew: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Flew

Warren may have likely convinced him of the fallacy of his position.


As long as they keep ID out of the biology classroom, because they don't know biology from their left hand.

I can agree with that, but they also need to keep evolution out of biology and stick with mere classifications of the creatures that we know we have.

[OrphanPip]

OP, intelligent design is a generic philosophic argument, and has nothing to do with the specifics of any science. It is a way of looking at the science and coming to a conclusion. I agree, it does not belong in a scientific classroom, but I argue it's a legitamate philosophic argument.

My form of ID does not argue for creationism. That is where ID has gotten a bad rap, because some have expanded it to beyond what is justifiable. I only argue for the existence of God. I cannot find any support for a specific type of God. That goes from philosophy to theology.

Sadly, I think the bad rap is well deserved. The problem is that organizations like the Discovery Institute have clear political motivations and insist on the scientific nature of their work. I would have much less problems with ID if most of its major proponents would admit they are not doing science.

At the least it's better than the creation "museums" that put up displays of humans and dinosaurs living side by side.



I can agree with that, but they also need to keep evolution out of biology and stick with mere classifications of the creatures that we know we have.

That's just silly, we're not here for "stamp collecting" as Haldane put it. Evolution is vital to the understanding of modern biology.

[BienvenuJDC]

That's just silly, we're not here for "stamp collecting" as Haldane put it. Evolution is vital to the understanding of modern biology.

This is where I will just agree to disagree. I don't think that Evolution has anything to do with Modern Biology. It is a theory without much real supporting evidence. I will not argue this topic any further.

[DanielBenoit]

I can agree with that, but they also need to keep evolution out of biology and stick with mere classifications of the creatures that we know we have.

To do so would be to take away virtually over one-hundred years of biology. Pretty much all biology today is based on evolution (OP correct me if I'm wrong). Genes, DNA and the cell are all impossible to understand without evolution. Take evolution out of the picture, you're left with mere zoology.


This is where I will just agree to disagree. I don't think that Evolution has anything to do with Modern Biology. It is a theory without much real supporting evidence. I will not argue this topic any further.

Since you insist on not arguing any further, I will not engage you. But as a statement of the facts, evolution has everything to do with Modern Biology. And as far as the mere theory argument which arises out of ignorance of the philosophy of science. A theory is not a hypothesis nor is it a propostitional idea, it may begin that way, but in order to be regarded as a theory it needs a great gathering of facts and evidence to encompass a full scientific narrative in whatever field of study it is in. A theory is better than a fact, just as the whole is better than the parts.

[OrphanPip]

This is where I will just agree to disagree. I don't think that Evolution has anything to do with Modern Biology. It is a theory without much real supporting evidence. I will not argue this topic any further.

It has mounds of evidence.

Apparently evolution has nothing to do with the emergence of new resistance to antibiotics, to the emergence of resistance within insects to pesticides, to the development of new enzymes for nylon digestion in bacteria, to explaining the emergence of new species as we see it in the fossil record, to understanding why current behaviors are emerge over others.

The fact of the matter is that the theory of evolution has a lot of evidence, has stood the test against attempts to falsify it, and is the most important theory in biology.

[tailor STATELY]

By the way, this is Flew: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Flew

Interesting link. I was amused by a few lines that stood out for me which I highlight below and cite below from the same wikipedia link to keep the context intact.


Book with Varghese

In 2007, Flew published a book titled There is a God, which was listed as having Roy Abraham Varghese as its co-author. Shortly after the book was released, the New York Times published an article by religious historian Mark Oppenheimer, who stated that Varghese had been almost entirely responsible for writing the book, and that Flew was in a serious state of mental decline, having great difficulty remembering key figures, ideas, and events relating to the debate covered in the book.[4] His book praises several philosophers (like Brian Leftow, John Leslie and Paul Davies), but Flew failed to remember their work during Oppenheimer's interview. The article provoked a public outcry, in which atheist PZ Myers called Varghese "a contemptible manipulator."[23]

A further article by Anthony Gottlieb noted a strong difference in style between the passages giving Flew's biography, and those laying out the case for a god, with the latter including Americanisms such as "beverages", "vacation" and "candy". He came to the same conclusion as Oppenheimer, and stated that "Far from strengthening the case for the existence of God, [the book] rather weakens the case for the existence of Antony Flew". Varghese replied with a letter disputing this view.[25] Flew released a statement through his publisher stating that although Varghese did the actual writing, the book belonged to him and represented his thinking.[26] An audio commentary by William Lane Craig[27] concurs with this position, but Richard Carrier disputes this view.[29] In June 2008, Flew stated his position once again, in a letter to a fellow of the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship.[6]

It must be weird to have to defend one's existence, and/or state of mind, when philosophically joisting in the public arena.

re: Evolution, ID, Creationism; I find it fascinating to have these topics to discuss and ponder. For me it speaks as a testimony for each one of us to come to grips with our mortality and reaffirm that spark of uniqueness that each of us possesses. If nothing else, one lesson we can well learn is tolerance for those of opposing views; with the hope that someday we may all know everything. This reaffirms my faith all the more.

Adieux.

[tailor STATELY]

by tailor STATELY: I love this quote in support of your argument:

Quote:Schizophrenics were taken very seriously in ancient times.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, eh ?


And I love your reaction to it.

Thank you. My response was to highlight a logical slip on your part - I find the logical progression for your views usually less salient.

re:
The New Testament Apostle Paul was correct in saying (in his Second Epistle to Timothy in chapter 2) :
Quote:23 But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.
24 And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient,
25 In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;
26 And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.
Adieux.

Your reply: Replying to your post any further would be an attempt at offending the premises of this thread, since we are discussing the reasons of belief--or disbelief--not religions, occults or their less than convincing self-serving arguments.

Forgive me for being obtuse in quoting the Biblical text - it was for mine own admonishment.

[heethar73]

I believe firmly in God. I will not argue with anyone about my belief, because I know it is futile to argue with someone who firmly believes the opposite! I believe in Him for several reasons, but one is that I refuse to believe the world is completely random and happened by chance. That makes my life meaningless - I would have no purpose if there was no purpose for me being here in the first place. By that standard, I should live my life with no regard for anyone. Only my own desires and wants. So if you don't believe in God, I understand why you don't. If you do, to God be the glory!

[Babbalanja]

OP, intelligent design is a generic philosophic argument, and has nothing to do with the specifics of any science. It is a way of looking at the science and coming to a conclusion. I agree, it does not belong in a scientific classroom, but I argue it's a legitamate philosophic argument.From the time of Hume to the present day, the Argument of Design has been repeatedly shown to be nonsensical. You may be unaware of the fallacy of Affirming the Consequent (http://www.fallacyfiles.org/afthecon.html), and that's why people like Stephen Meyer and Michael Behe can sell so many books. However, that's no excuse for dragging this argument out after it's been refuted so many times.

For the millionth time, you can't use your conclusion as the validation for your major premise. That is, using "only intelligent design could account for the such-and-such natural phenomenon" as your major premise assumes what you're trying to prove. Since Darwin, humans have discovered many natural mechanisms that could account for such-and-such natural phenomenon that don't involve the intentional activity of an intelligent designer. Even if logic hadn't already gutted the Argument from Design, what we've discovered about the biosphere would have made it obsolete.


This is where I will just agree to disagree. I don't think that Evolution has anything to do with Modern Biology. It is a theory without much real supporting evidence. Like I said before, scientific endeavor isn't like religious belief: you don't just make something true by claiming to believe it. Dan Benoit made the point in his post: evolution by natural selection is the foundation of modern biology, and it's just plain wrong to deny that fact.

Regards,

Istvan

[Virgil]

From the time of Hume to the present day, the Argument of Design has been repeatedly shown to be nonsensical. You may be unaware of the fallacy of Affirming the Consequent (http://www.fallacyfiles.org/afthecon.html), and that's why people like Stephen Meyer and Michael Behe can sell so many books. However, that's no excuse for dragging this argument out after it's been refuted so many times.

For the millionth time, you can't use your conclusion as the validation for your major premise. That is, using "only intelligent design could account for the such-and-such natural phenomenon" as your major premise assumes what you're trying to prove. Since Darwin, humans have discovered many natural mechanisms that could account for such-and-such natural phenomenon that don't involve the intentional activity of an intelligent designer. Even if logic hadn't already gutted the Argument from Design, what we've discovered about the biosphere would have made it obsolete.


Get lost. The argument sticks because it has validity. Argue with Einstein and Newton.

The problem I have with you personally Babbalanja (or whatever your name is) is that you refuse to give resoect to other people's opinions. It has not been shown to be nonsensical.

Every scientist discovering any scientific revelation is affirming the consequence. Using the "affirming the consequence" as a de facto fallacy rules out by definition any cause. And not just as a proof of God but for any event. If I were to trip over a wire and found me dead on the floor beside it, you would have to rule out my tripping over that wire as a consequence by affirmation, even though the overwhelming probablility shows it to be the fact.. Your argument is in itself a fallacy. You're argument is the fallacious one.

[BienvenuJDC]

Get lost. The argument sticks because it has validity. Argue with Einstein and Newton.

The problem I have with you personally Babbalanja (or whatever your name is) is that you refuse to give resoect to other people's opinions. It has not been shown to be nonsensical.

Every scientist discovering any scientific revelation is affirming the consequence. Using the "affirming the consequence" as a de facto fallacy rules out by definition any cause. And not just as a proof of God but for any event. If I were to trip over a wire and found me dead on the floor beside it, you would have to rule out my tripping over that wire as a consequence by affirmation, even though the overwhelming probablility shows it to be the fact.. Your argument is in itself a fallacy. You're argument is the fallacious one.

Hear, hear!!

I'm looking for the uprave button, but I didn't see one!!

[DanielBenoit]

Get lost. The argument sticks because it has validity. Argue with Einstein and Newton.


Man, I really dislike it when either sides of the theist/atheist spectrum use what these men said as spokesmen for their own beliefs. But what I dislike even more is when they use these men's personal beliefs as arguments against a certain scientific theory they happen to dislike.

First off, Newton did not believe in evolution because he lived almost 200 years before Darwin, and thus is a meaningless point. I having read Einstein's biography can state as a clear fact that he most obviously accepted the theory of evolution as almost any reasonable scientist did. Also, based on Einstein's personal and philosophical writings, he was most likely somewhere between an agnostic and a pantheist (the latter very definite in his later years), and though he was no longer an observant Jew, he greatly respected and embraced the culture in his later life.

Besides, what ever happened to faith? Why must the existence of God come down to a little puzzle so that it can compete with evolution?



Every scientist discovering any scientific revelation is affirming the consequence. Using the "affirming the consequence" as a de facto fallacy rules out by definition any cause. And not just as a proof of God but for any event. If I were to trip over a wire and found me dead on the floor beside it, you would have to rule out my tripping over that wire as a consequence by affirmation, even though the overwhelming probablility shows it to be the fact.. Your argument is in itself a fallacy. You're argument is the fallacious one.

Leaving aside criticisms of causality itself in both philosophy and quantum physics, I would like to simple point out that in your analogy of the dead body and the wire, you forcibly inject God into it. If I were a police officer at a crime scene, I would conclude that the dead body was caused by the wire because I saw it right there and made inductive conclusions. This example is ridiculous when compared to the existence of a supernatural entity. No one is denying the existence of the wire because it is perceivable through the senses. The unmoved mover (to use the Aristililean term) is no where in the picture in scientific revelation, He is merely semantically injected into it as the definition of the cause of the revelation a priori. To summarize it, you are assuming that God is even there, and thus the cause. The wire is there and thus can reasonably be concluded to be the cause.

Now I'm not even an empiricist when it comes to these deep philosophical questions of the universe, but I am as almost everyone else is when it comes to everyday life. This is why I've disliked these analogies which are so simplistic and hardly match the question at hand.

[Drkshadow03]

Besides, what ever happened to faith? Why must the existence of God come down to a little puzzle so that it can compete with evolution?



You know, anything and everything that has ever needed to be said about the debate between atheists and theists has already been said by South Park (http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155374/?searchterm=Go+God+Go).

[BienvenuJDC]

as almost any reasonable scientist did.

Why the generalization that ALL scientist accept the hypothesis of evolution? And for those scientist who may not....well, they must just be 'unreasonable'?

There are many scientists...as well as doctors...who do not buy into the sketchy evidences that are forced together to create the illusion that one species could possible change so much as to become something else. The only thing that we can observe is viruses and simple adaptations. Why are there not primates that are continuing to 'evolve'? It's not the LINK that is missing, it is the whole chain. But evolutionists look at ME as the absurd one...really, I tire of the arrogance that is used that drives people to diminish believers of faith, when they themselves have their own faith in their 'so-called' science. It is NOT science, it is speculation. Nothing more...

[DanielBenoit]

Why the generalization that ALL scientist accept the hypothesis of evolution? And for those scientist who may not....well, they must just be 'unreasonable'?

I like how you ignored my entire argument and focused on only one unimportant aspect.

Yes they would be, because of the mounds of evidence presented in the past one-hundred years. Also, I find it funny that you have stopped using the word 'theory' and lowered it down to 'hypothesis.'



There are many scientists...as well as doctors...who do not buy into the sketchy evidences that are forced together to create the illusion that one species could possible change so much as to become something else. The only thing that we can observe is viruses and simple adaptations. Why are there not primates that are continuing to 'evolve'? It's not the LINK that is missing, it is the whole chain. But evolutionists look at ME as the absurd one...really, I tire of the arrogance that is used that drives people to diminish believers of faith, when they themselves have their own faith in their 'so-called' science. It is NOT science, it is speculation. Nothing more...

I think the reasons for most of the opposition to evolution by the general public (besides its supposed incompatibility with religion) is because of the many misconceptions, misunderstandings, and just plain ignorance of the theory.

A primate didn't just give birth to a human and volla we have homo sapiens! It took many conditions in the environment (changes in climate, natural disasters, etc.) for natural selection to even come about. And then, slow, at first hardly noticable changes happened over long periods of time. Please, I beg you to at least have some understanding of evolution and the history of the theory before engaging in a debate. Sketchy evidence? Come on. In all the fields of science, evolution is the theory in the past 100 some years which has probably recieved the greatest amount of evidence.

If you want to start arguing evidence, then present us with some evidence on your side of the matter. Why is it that you are allowed to make the claim to reason when criticizing evolution, but then run into the safe-hold of faith when your beliefs are criticized?

[OrphanPip]

Why the generalization that ALL scientist accept the hypothesis of evolution? And for those scientist who may not....well, they must just be 'unreasonable'?

There are many scientists...as well as doctors...who do not buy into the sketchy evidences that are forced together to create the illusion that one species could possible change so much as to become something else. The only thing that we can observe is viruses and simple adaptations. Why are there not primates that are continuing to 'evolve'? It's not the LINK that is missing, it is the whole chain. But evolutionists look at ME as the absurd one...really, I tire of the arrogance that is used that drives people to diminish believers of faith, when they themselves have their own faith in their 'so-called' science. It is NOT science, it is speculation. Nothing more...

The vast majority do accept the THEORY of evolution, not the hypothesis. You display several misunderstanding of evolutionary theory in your post alone.

For one, if simple adaptations aren't evolution, what do you suppose they are?

Secondly, apes are continuing to evolve, no life is static and there is continual change in frequency of alleles within populations.

It is nonsense to dismiss all the evidence for evolution as "speculation". There is phylogenetic evidence, geographical genetic difference, comparative anatomy, fossil record, comparative genetics, embryology, genetics, it all supports evolution.

Let's take a single example like snakes. From the fossil records and comparative examination of the skeleton scientist first concluded that they evolved from a family of lizards. Then we found that genetically it seemed there were two mutations that resulted in the loss of the limbs at two separate points. Finally, after we found the genetic evidence pointing to loss of the front and back limbs at different periods we found a transitional fossil of a species of proto-snake which had two limbs. This is just one of several examples of clear evolutionary progression due to progressive genetic change we know of.

Then we have things like ring species which point to how species diversification can occur.

I can't even begin to scratch the surface of the evidence that exists for evolution. If I exhausted every bit of evidence I know of, I could go out and find twice as much.

"Evolutionist" look at you like you're absurd, because when you say things like this about evolution, you look absurd.

Seriously, if you think no species can change into something else, what do you think of fossils. I'm honestly bewildered by that.

[BienvenuJDC]

I find it funny that you have stopped using the word 'theory' and lowered it down to 'hypothesis.'

It is what it is...




A primate didn't just give birth to a human
At what point did the ape become a human? Heavy question...so then, where are all the species that you speak about in the chain that no longer exists? You speak about ignoring arguments....answer that simple question.

And stop insulting my intelligence...

[DanielBenoit]

It is what it is...



At what point did the ape become a human? Heavy question...so then, where are all the species that you speak about in the chain that no longer exists? You speak about ignoring arguments....answer that simple question.

Was about to reply, but thankfully OrphanPip supplied a lucid and intelligent answer.



And stop insulting my intelligence...

Stop insulting the scientist's.

End-note: I find it funny how creationists when engaging in a debate, always seem to have very little understanding of the simple basics of evolution.

[OrphanPip]

At what point did the ape become a human? Heavy question...so then, where are all the species that you speak about in the chain that no longer exists? You speak about ignoring arguments....answer that simple question.

And stop insulting my intelligence...

They went extinct...

None of the contemporaries of the most recent common ancestor of chimps and humans are alive either.

There are around 15 species of hominid identified in the fossil record that lie between us and the MRCA of chimps and humans.

Greater than 99.9% of species found in the fossil record are extinct.

[BienvenuJDC]

The vast majority do accept the THEORY of evolution, not the hypothesis.

At one time, the vast majority of the world actually believed that the world was flat. At one time, the vast majority believed that the earth of the center of the universe. All of this under the authority of THE CHURCH. Well, this current hypothesis is CALLED a theory, so therefore, everyone just accepts it.

I'm not going to address every little point of your arguments, because they are diversionary in nature.

Where is the chain of evolution? Don't tell me that every link has died off. I don't buy that. We aren't just talking about every link from primate to human, but also in every species on the earth. We witness all species only reproducing within its own species. Nothing is crawling up onto the shore. No one is walking around dragging their knuckles. Please don't open up any new arguments until you answer this one.

[BienvenuJDC]

They went extinct...

.........

Greater than 99.9% of species found in the fossil record are extinct.

Oh...really! THAT is a new one...

Then there should be PLENTY of WHOLE fossils......but we never find WHOLE fossils of the evolutionary links. The evidence doesn't exist. Show me pictures that are not just drawings.

[DanielBenoit]

At one time, the vast majority of the world actually believed that the world was flat. At one time, the vast majority believed that the earth of the center of the universe. All of this under the authority of THE CHURCH. Well, this current hypothesis is CALLED a theory, so therefore, everyone just accepts it.

That's because they were indoctrinated by religious dogma. As a matter of fact, the ancient Greek mathematically proved that the earth was round over 2500 years before Columbus. People just didn't buy it because of religious dogma set up by the church. I wonder if that still happens today? :rolleyes:

Science changes dude. We don't have all the answers nor do we pretend to. Science does not present itself as the absolute truth as religion does. Evolution is merely the best theory we have right now. Understand, science has no way at coming to absolute conclusions. That does not discredit evolution, because right now we have every reason to believe that it is true, just as we have every reason to believe in Copernicean astronomy.



I'm not going to address every little point of your arguments, because they are diversionary in nature.


If you refuse to engage us, we refuse to engage back. Address our points and we will address yours

[BienvenuJDC]

That's because they were indoctrinated by religious dogma. As a matter of fact, the ancient Greek mathematically proved that the earth was round over 2500 years before Columbus. People just didn't buy it because of religious dogma set up by the church. I wonder if that still happens today? :rolleyes:


Yes...but now it's called scientific dogma...

I only wish that you would STOP engaging my statements of faith and truth. But you seem to love to try to prove my thoughts and opinions to be wrong. If you wish to have faith the the hypothesis and 'theories' of those who advocate evolutionary processes, you are more than welcome to do that. If you wish to believe that all things just came about with no direction or guidance, by forces that came from no where, and that all things are an accident...that is your prerogative.


I wish to believe the evidence that the earth is about 6,000 years old and designed by a supernatural Being that is greater and more intelligent that what we see around us.

[OrphanPip]

Where is the chain of evolution? Don't tell me that every link has died off. I don't buy that. We aren't just talking about every link from primate to human, but also in every species on the earth. We witness all species only reproducing within its own species. Nothing is crawling up onto the shore. No one is walking around dragging their knuckles. Please don't open up any new arguments until you answer this one.

This notion of a chain is a bit misleading to begin with. Evolution is better thought of in terms of clades, with branches.

I can address every one of these points.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by having a problem with every species on Earth. We have transitional fossils and species from all sorts of genuses and orders. It is just a fact of life that the species extant in one period are not the same as those extant in others, for one genetic drift alone would result in new structures and breeding isolation if geographic isolation occured.

The problem with why one may think they observe that species only breed within themselves is mostly because the common public is only familiar with the "biological species" definition of species. This is the definition of a species based on breeding isolation. However, if one looks closely at living things you'll find this isn't really an adequate definition of species. Lion and tigers can breed, but aren't the same species. So can horses and donkeys. Interbreeding amongst different plant species is even more common.

Although, the reason why different looking organisms so often can't breed with each other is because breeding isolation is often a major cause for evolutionary diversification. Genetic drift in isolated population results in significant enough change in the receptors of the sperm, eggs, and chemoattractants that two populations geographically separated can become breeding isolates. This can be seen in ring species.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Rings_species_example.png

In this example of Atlantic sea gulls arrows represent populations capable of interbreeding. You can see how geographical isolation and genetic drift can result in breeding isolation.

As to why we don't often see fish evolving into amphibians as must of happened once in the past. Well for one the niche is now sadly filled by an abundance of land animals that it would not be evolutionarily advantageous. Moreover, we do see fish species that are on this cusp. There are air breathing fish in low oxygen rivers like the Amazon.

I don't see why you would expect people to be dragging their arms. You seem not to understand how gradual speciesation occurs. It doesn't happen with just a single individual, an entire isolated population changes gradually over time.


Oh...really! THAT is a new one...

Then there should be PLENTY of WHOLE fossils......but we never find WHOLE fossils of the evolutionary links. The evidence doesn't exist. Show me pictures that are not just drawings.

Fossilization is a very rare event, most species that have existed only ever existed in populations of a couple hundred at a time, we will likely never know of every species that ever existed.

Besides that point, there are complete fossils of H. erectus (dear old lucy) as well as ergaster, habilis, heidelbergensis.

[DanielBenoit]

I wish to believe the evidence that the earth is about 6,000 years old and designed by a supernatural Being that is greater and more intelligent that what we see around us.

That's totally cool. Have at it. Just don't expect to not be criticized when you say that. I'll speak for myself, but those who attack statements like that aren't attacking you or demanding that you change your mind, but rather as a means of presenting an opposition for those reading or listening. If I were to make a thread and announce "Copernicean astronomy is nonsense and the earth is the center of the universe!" one would expect our fellow intellectuals to discredit such a statement, not for the sake of the one who stated it, but for those who are being fed non-facts.

You may keep your faith, and we may be allowed to criticize it.

[BienvenuJDC]

Lion and tigers can breed, but aren't the same species. So can horses and donkeys. Interbreeding amongst different plant species is even more common.



A lot of words, but really nothing...

Lions and tigers...both cats...let's try a...Wolf and a Lion...what happens?

Horse and donkey....BAD example....mules which result are sterile...the end of the line in that "evolution"...

[OrphanPip]

A lot of words, but really nothing...

Lions and tigers...both cats...let's try a...Wolf and a Lion...what happens?

Horse and donkey....BAD example....mules which result are sterile...the end of the line in that "evolution"...

Evolution doesn't occur via hybridization, I don't see your point.

I was just pointing out that the notion that species are perfect breeding isolates is not as true as is thought by the general public. Like I said before, speciesation occurs out of a breeding group isolated from it's parent group.

e.g.

You have a group of wombats who live happily in a field, then a rift in the Earth opens up in the middle of the group. The group has now been divided in two, you now have two breeding groups. Just by genetic drift alone there is a chance that these two groups will become biological breeding isolates. Over time both groups are likely to change and become two new separate species. Where one or the other might go extinct, they might both live on, or they might both go extinct.

[BienvenuJDC]

You have a group of wombats who live happily in a field, then a rift in the Earth opens up in the middle of the group. The group has now been divided in two, you now have two breeding groups. Just by genetic drift alone there is a chance that these two groups will become biological breeding isolates. Over time both groups are likely to change and become two new separate species. Where one or the other might go extinct, they might both live on, or they might both go extinct.

Likely?

But we have never witnessed anything like this...therefore it is NOT science... and no better than something based on religious faith. Your ideas are based more on faith than what I base my beliefs on...

So....EVERY evolutionary link...has gone extinct...and you think that my faith is far fetched...

[OrphanPip]

Likely?

But we have never witnessed anything like this...therefore it is NOT science... and no better than something based on religious faith. Your ideas are based more on faith than what I base my beliefs on...

So....EVERY evolutionary link...has gone extinct...and you think that my faith is far fetched...

Organisms change constantly, life isn't static, it is not possible for species that existed 1 million years ago to be identical today.

We may not see this today because it takes millions of years. However, you are ignoring the evidence we have of this occurring. The fossil record and phylogenetics both support this happening. Moreover, you're ignoring the fact of ring species, which is an example of this in process today.