Originally Posted by Unbeliever
Better to think too much than not enough, perhaps.
There is no thinking too much, only thinking badly.
Better to think too much than not enough, perhaps.
There is no thinking too much, only thinking badly.
Thanks for clarifying this. I don't necessarily think that it is only the believers who are willing to cling to their notions "fanatically", but it is simply human nature that motivates us to defend that which we hold to be the truth; to fight for a greater cause is a concept known to humanity throughout its existence. Sometimes this urge has been self-destructive, but that goes for both the believers and the non-believers. People have been willing to die defending the Nazi Germany, the communist regimes, secularism (see Turkey's example today) and the democracy. Clinging to an ideology is not a "curse" of the believers, but a manifestation of our human nature. Just as there were people willing to die for democracy, there are people who are willing to die for what they consider to be God's law.Apologies for not having expressed myself clearly. I meant to say that I DO have a need to disabuse those who hold what appear to me to be chimerical notions, especially when those notions are clung to fanatically and sometimes lead to war.
This is not a measure of someone's integrity, but the measure of integrity of the values themselves. A value is not good or bad in itself, but the absolute criteria that it is measured by is whether it is in accordance to God's law (which makes it good) or in opposition to it (which would make it bad). This is how a believer constructs his or her value system. As an atheist, I suppose, you have a different criteria by which you measure the goodness of a value, which could be derived by the consensus of the majority of people at a certain time and place. If you believe for this to be the valid criteria, then it must be assumed that ethical values are innate and not acquired. Only then can the concensus be trusted to be good in an absolute sense, because if the values are acquired and the process of acquisition is influenced by many different, changeable variables, then the values are bound to be changeable; sometimes to the point where they would at one point be considered good and at another point utterly wrong. If you believe the values to be innate, then you have to explain how human beings arrived at a conclusion that cannibalism or gasing each other is morally good.The true measure of your integrity as a free agent is whether you would live by the values you now hold if there were no God or indeed there were one who held contrary values?
May I say, first, that your reply is wonderfully articulate and well-reasoned, given your premises
Indeed, it is not, and elsewhere I have proposed that the real debate is not so much between the believers and the doubters but, rather, between the loud and the quiet in each group. I see myself, at times, as being virtually religious in my antipathy to religion.
“[I]f man is wicked enough to have invented religion for himself he is surely wicked enough to have found alternative ways of making mischief.” “Why do they hate Him?” by Anthony Gottlieb, The New Yorker, May 21, 2007
What is the integrity of a value if it is ascribed to an unknowable God, of whose nature and wishes we have only the very fallible texts that were written by men and/or women living in a very different time in very different conditions, whose words have been interpreted variously at other times by other men and women having a vested interest in their interpretations?
What is the worth or value of our individual consciences if we are expected to live cookie-cutter lives according to maps that were set out a long time ago?
First, I have described myself elsewhere as a "lapsed atheist," and yes, I would prefer the consensis pf a majority of the people than that of a self-appointed corporation of priests or ministers.
It is indeed innate in me to value life, love and freedom, and therefore to assume unless proven otherwise that the same is innate in other men and women.
Because their particular tribal gods sanctioned - and even I dare say demanded - such practices.
Right - but if I'm wrong, then I've lived a moral life and benefitted those around me. If I'm right, I live eternally. If you're right - what is the benefit of that? (We already know the downside of your being wrong).
You speak as if morality is a seperate entity from God; it's not. Morality is the reflection of God's character. Without God, there is no need or good reason for morality to exist; a God of contrary morality? What's that? That's a god who is not God.
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." - C.S. Lewis
Prove that an individual has the urge to 'believe in something'. I don't know why so many irrelevant philosophical questions have such a large impact on people's life. Who cares what happens when you die? Religion (and most philosophy) = deus ex machina.
Don't take this wrong; trying to emulate literature, say the Bible, is fine. There's a lot of good things in the Bible. Art sees through ideology, the true curse. I'd like to be Poldy, but pretending that a single collection of art accurately sums up the entirety of life is far-fetched. To many exceptions - what about gay people? What about other religions, native americans? What about cave men and albatrosses? What about the end of A Farewell to Arms? Technology? Satan is a cop-out. Salvation is a cop-out. Both are an attempt to avoid thinking.
Hedge your bets, by all means, rather than making moral choices according to the best of your character. The "moral" God of whom you speak engaged in a wager with Satan that Job's faithfulness would survive the death of his family, the loss of his wordly goods, boils, &c., and when God via the agency of Job had won that wager, Job was rewarded with a new family &c., only.... his original family had already paid the price.
You might retort that his original family were rewarded with eternal life & that Job was eventually re-united with them, but it all smacks of a crap-shoot or playground taunting.
i don't know what are you talking about , we are discussing "believing in something " not "who is wrong or right"
and i said maybe oneday...
But the two are not unrelated. I would conjecture that the need to believe in something is part and parcel of our desire to firm up our identities. Once we've hit on a belief, ego has a further role to play in defending that belief (often by proving others/ beliefs to be wrong) just about as urgently as we might seek to defend our body if it was attacked.
maybe. but I'd rather not go through that road .
and i said maybe oneday...
You make assumptions about my moral motivations that you ought not - you don't know me and your flippant comments are offensive. First, the "best" of anybody's character is due to the presence of God within him/her; as well, since God is the source of all that is right, moral and good, any right, moral or good choice is a reflection of the character of God and His presence in our hearts - that goes for you and me both (as well as everybody else in the world). It is only God's presence in us that allows us to even possess the desire to do good.
You can put moral in quotations about God if you wish, but if He is as the Bible describes Him, then you are completely wrong in questioning His morality in favor of flawed and ultimately self-serving human morality. As far as Job is concerned, what occurred between God and Satan was less a "wager" than a court case - a single example of what Satan has been trying to do from the beginning: claim that God is unfair. Satan's charge was that God "bought" Job's loyalty - that Job didn't love God for who He was, but for what He could give Job. God's faith in His servant prompted Him to allow Satan to test Job in order to vindicate His character. Even Job understood God's prerogative to take what He originally gave - why are you so bugged about it?
You are free to have issues with God's choices, but if He is all-knowing, and all-powerful, and good, and just, and righteous and merciful and loving as the Bible says - why would you doubt? Are you telling me you trust people more than a supreme being?
Perhaps; or maybe you just aren't clear on the cosmic nature of the battle between good and evil. Your finite view of God cannot help but produce this incorrect evaluation.
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." - C.S. Lewis
I know only what you have said about your moral choices: that they are predicated on the reality of a God as described in Scripture. That seems to me to be the product of just one choice - though I suspect it was made out of need or fear - to accept the whole of God's commandments. I submitthat to be moral is to assume that you have free will and to act in accordance with it.
Call it a "court case" if you will but what had Job done to deserve being put on trial? What sort of God, or father, is this who submits his children to be tested? What can God hope for from this test other than the buttressing of his own ego?
I note that you say "if.." and at the risk of being accused again of flippancy, I quote this suggestion I heard that over the door to very Church Synagogue or Mosque there ought to be a banner proclaiming: "Important information - if true."
No, indeed I am not clear about the cosmic nature of it. It seems rather to me that there are numerous tribal, national and individual battles going on, often between two sides who are equally dogmatic in their beliefs and just possibly equally wrong. The evil that I see is in anyone trying to impose their views on anyone else.
To believe in Christianity is to decide what is 'right and wrong'. It's the first commandment.
If you were raised as a Christian, no doubt, or you fell under the spell of a Christian missionary. But if you were raised a Jew, or a Muslim? Is it beyond your comprehension that their God may be as true or valid as yours?
also to believe in christianity is to know that you are not in a place to judge other people.
and i said maybe oneday...
Insofar as I understand Christianity (or the spirit of transcending ego that I assume to be an ideal of all religions), your statement strikes me as a far more Christian one than those whose latent text often seems to be Die, infidel!
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