The Atheist Corner

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Originally Posted by The Atheist

Can I direct you to your own post where you do exactly that?

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I am editing my original reply because as I stated before I sort of just want out of this conversation.

You're right. It was a poor choice of words.

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Originally Posted by Jozanny

In my case, it is not a matter of simple labeling, in that as an anti-theist god is bad and as an atheist god *isn't*.

I find Drk's position of Communism being extreme atheism untenable, for reasons already stated, but again, atheism is not an ideology. There may be atheists who are zealous, and occasionally unpleasant, (Dawkins, Hitchens, me)--but being against religious doctrine is not being anti-god, even though critical examination of Yahweh and Jesus is certainly a negation of them as acceptable representations.

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Let me refine myself by saying I agree that anti-theism is untenable, because if one declares that "God is bad," this doesn't leave one with much if that same God operates outside the constraints of natural law. If I see no evidence for divine benevolence, I also see no evidence for deliberate malevolence either.

My original point though, was that I got from A (believer) to B (atheist) by initially examining deity as a character and deciding deities operate a lot like spoiled kids who want better toys. The theology surrounding the Christ isn't as reducible, which perhaps accounts for its success, but the martyr complex is a known psychological phenomenon.

My question for Richard is this: If God isn't a super-attenuated projection of a human agency, then what is it?

Genesis declares that God created man in his own image--and I've always been struck by that--that the ancient Hebrews weren't the least bit suspicious that maybe they defined a deity in their image, instead.

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Originally Posted by Jozanny

Genesis declares that God created man in his own image--and I've always been struck by that--that the ancient Hebrews weren't the least bit suspicious that maybe they defined a deity in their image, instead.

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“It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on the contrary, man created God in his own image.”

Ludwig Feuerbach

And another quote which fits nicely into the discussion on faith:

"We may define "faith" as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith." We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence."

Bertrand Russell

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Originally Posted by Jozanny

1)
I don't know if I am entirely confortable defining faith on this basis, although jgweed's rebuttal is stronger than anything I might add, I will still add, at this point, that we stray into the problem of defining epistemological aquisition. Is *knowing* how to use my joystick on my power chair the same thing as believing this figure called Christ is a manifestation of the Hebrew deity?

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A couple of other things: My pathway to non-belief started when the characterization of the Judeo-Christian god began not to make much sense to me. I have read rational theists who rebut this by saying it is the fault of our limited understanding, but my reply would be you cannot have it both ways. If biblical authors were *divinely* inspired it seems they aspired to a curiously human persona: One who is insecure, demands attention, and seems to think killing pagans is perfectly acceptable because of their ignorance of who the "true" deity" is--but a few centuries later he comes down in human form and says "hey, only hypocrites who mouth niceties about me being the son of god will be stuck dead, aren't I merciful?"

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So I reached atheism from the starting point that our gods are manifestly superlative human characters which cannot and do not exist or have powers, because, as Atheist said, there is absolutely no evidence for this.
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These are well-thought out remarks. I will try to do them justice.

1) I deliberately put forth a definition of faith that I felt was value neutral. The difficulty with definitions of faith, such as Russell's quoted by someone else in the thread, is that it attempts to "stack the deck" instead of define the term.

I think 'faith' as I have defined it here is stripped to its barest essentials and does not require acceptance of anything intrinsically spiritual. The definition merely draws attention to the fact that a lot of what we claim to 'know' really relies on our believing what others tell us.

I would say, given the definition, that the experience of the joystick gives knowledge of it. The only way that acceptance of Jesus as the Hebrew deity would qualify as knowledge rather than faith is if one had personal experience of Jesus in that way. (I claim no such experience.) I will also point out that by this definition one does not know that one's parents are indeed one's parents for what I hope is an obvious biological reason.

2) I think you describe very well a process by which many of us come to a change in our view of the world. I would suggest that when something does not make much sense that this occurs not so much from a failure in logic but because the person does not find the position to be in tune with his or her feeling of how the world is. The logic comes later. As I said before this process is non-rational (which is very different from irrational!!!) and turns our minds in a new direction from which we seek our evidence.

3) The only problem with the point here is that I think that the most you can really say here is that there is no evidence for a god that is a superlative human character. This does not exclude the possibility that there is a god who is not a superlative human character.

Given that modification, I agree with you completely. A god who was simply a very powerful (or even infinitely powerful) human being is an untenable concept, given the other attributes a god would have to possess to be a god. Such a god fails on logical grounds. Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, and Aquinas also would agree on that position.

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Originally Posted by Jozanny

My original point though, was that I got from A (believer) to B (atheist) by initially examining deity as a character and deciding deities operate a lot like spoiled kids who want better toys. The theology surrounding the Christ isn't as reducible, which perhaps accounts for its success, but the martyr complex is a known psychological phenomenon.

My question for Richard is this: If God isn't a super-attenuated projection of a human agency, then what is it?

Genesis declares that God created man in his own image--and I've always been struck by that--that the ancient Hebrews weren't the least bit suspicious that maybe they defined a deity in their image, instead.

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That is the perfect question to ask in this discussion!

If god does exist, god can not possibly be a spoiled child, or even just a very powerful human. You are 100% right here, and if you like I would be able to draw on several Church Fathers who have constructed proofs of this very thing to show this. God is, in orthodox Christian theology, not of the same substance as his creation.

Orthodox thought also advises us that we can not know what god is. Our knowledge (in the sense of experience, as discussed earlier) is not of god in his essence but rather only of his activity ('energeia' in Greek). Much of Christian theology is based on this so-called via negativa, this knowing by knowing what is NOT true.

One problem that occurs when one considers the Fundamentalists is that they generally ignore all of both Jewish and Christian tradition in interpreting the Bible. Augustine 1600 years ago pointed out that the Bible has to be interpeted in terms of allegory, and Jewish scholars nearly 1000 years BEFORE Augustine said virtually the same thing. To be ignorant of one's tradition or even worse to reject it as irrelevant is something that is, to me, incomprehensible.

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Originally Posted by RichardHresko

That is the perfect question to ask in this discussion!

If god does exist, god can not possibly be a spoiled child, or even just a very powerful human. You are 100% right here, and if you like I would be able to draw on several Church Fathers who have constructed proofs of this very thing to show this. God is, in orthodox Christian theology, not of the same substance as his creation.

Orthodox thought also advises us that we can not know what god is.

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Fair enough. Richard, we may not agree, but I admire your ability to sustain an argument as well as you do. Keep trucking.

[deleted due to expressing frustration]

Hi, thanks for starting such an interesting thread. I'm an atheist and to sum it up, gods are not part of my personal or public life. I don't believe in them or against them. I do, however have a problem when religions try to push their ways in my life. Unfortunately for those who would just like to have their own personal spiritual experience however they understand it, religious institutions often, very often, do try to force their beliefs on others.
I think there are some good things to read that may be interesting for everyone to read, one would be Mircea Eliade's The Sacred & The Profane, another might be the chapter in Brothers Karamazov where they have a debate on the role of religion in civil society (sorry I can't remember off the top of my head which part of the book that is, hopefully someone else can and informs us)

You are absolutely right. As a matter of fact religions or subjects about religions should not be forced or imposed on any people. People should be at their options to reject or accept it according to their choice.

Particularly small kids were indoctrinated when they could not discriminate between good and bad and in their formative years whatever is imposed coercively will leave negative marks or influences on their later lives. We know schools of fundamentalism that produces fundamentalists in massive numbers. Is not it religions that instigated or motivated people to destroy the twin towers?

But still I am not an atheist nor speak against religions at all. All I mean to say is we must be liberally minded.

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

Is not it religions that instigated or motivated people to destroy the twin towers?

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No.

Religion was perverted to motivate gullible young men into committing atrocity by claiming that heaven would favour their actions, but religion didn't instigate it in any way.

What religion is responsible for is creating a climate of general belief in fairies/gods/heavens which allow the perversions to flourish.

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Originally Posted by The Atheist

No.

Religion was perverted to motivate gullible young men into committing atrocity by claiming that heaven would favour their actions, but religion didn't instigate it in any way.

What religion is responsible for is creating a climate of general belief in fairies/gods/heavens which allow the perversions to flourish.

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Here I agree with the Atheist,,,,his deduction is fair enough.

The guys who blasted the twin towers were highly educated professional men raised/educated in the US. There is least reason to believe they were instigated by religion or anyone except by some cult having deadly political aims!

Blasting "religion" is a pretty easy thing to do because there are so many of them, with so many conflicting/contradicting views/beliefs that critics essentially create this massive target composed of all the worst of the world's religions and then they congragulated themselves for hitting a bullseye that they pretty much call the entire target.

You won't get any arguments from me defending radical Islam - or radical Christianity, for that matter. Every system of belief has its lunatic fringe (even atheists - consult the fallacy-ridden works of Hitchens, Dawkens, Harris, for example).

What these critics can't do is put out a system of belief that has had a flawless history. Even atheism has a checkered history (cf. Stalin's Russia, for one).

What I'd like to hear is how atheistic belief makes this world better, makes people better? Simply responding that eliminating religion will make people better only says that the absence of religion improves people - but does it? What can you offer by way of evidence, example, etc that dispensing with the belief in a spiritual world improves the lot of humanity here on this earth?

I'd be interested in reading about that - because generally what I read is lots of criticism of organized religion (criticism is pretty easy to do); what I rarely read are the positive aspects - on a personal, as well as social, level - of atheism.

In fact all I mean to is religion is used as a tool for wrongful acts. When some people follow a religion irrationally and they choose to follow it word by word what is written in the book of religions or in scriptures it is likely to misguide people.

In some scriptures in Hinduism it is written that if a Suddra hears any Mantra his ears should be filled with lead.

We must therefore have an ideas of discrimination, that means we must say good from bad and that leads to knowledge.

But more often than not people choose to take religions like the way fundamentalists or fanatics do.

Religions need sifting or screening

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

In fact all I mean to is religion is used as a tool for wrongful acts. When some people follow a religion irrationally and they choose to follow it word by word what is written in the book of religions or in scriptures it is likely to misguide people.

In some scriptures in Hinduism it is written that if a Suddra hears any Mantra his ears should be filled with lead.

We must therefore have an ideas of discrimination, that means we must say good from bad and that leads to knowledge.

But more often than not people choose to take religions like the way fundamentalists or fanatics do.

Religions need sifting or screening

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Not Religions, mon ami. Beliefs. What religion you follow has nothing to do with what you actually believe. People in these parts have been known to handle poisonous snakes in the name of Christianity but that doesn't mean I have to believe that.

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Originally Posted by Pendragon

Not Religions, mon ami. Beliefs. What religion you follow has nothing to do with what you actually believe. People in these parts have been known to handle poisonous snakes in the name of Christianity but that doesn't mean I have to believe that.

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Yes you are right, it is beliefs that sully our minds. But it is religions that breed beliefs as a matter of fact. There are schools of religions or ideologies that indoctrinate highly gullible innocents into fundamentalist ideas. As such I am at times very critical of religions, and as a matter if fact seeing that most religious people are doing something wrongful in the name of religions I have grown tired of religious beleifs.

I have read in newspapers that bishops and clergymen are homosexuals and and we are not unaware of the fact that there were cases of molestations and rapes in churuces and as such I can not easily digest the idea of religions.