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Do you believe in God?

  
  

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Lurid Archive
13:41 / 03.12.04
From my perspective Catholicism, at it's essence, isnt at all "supernatural".

I think that this would be at odds with most Catholics, then, who wouldn't use the word "supernatural", but do believe in miracles, both historically and presently. If miracles don't count as supernatural, then your point seems to become a rather semantic one.

Similarly, to equate the statement "Everything that is, is God" with the Alan Partridge-esque "God is, like, a gas...man..." is a pretty inane simplification of the concept.

I'm being a little dismissive, I realise, but I was trying to communicate how an atheist like me genuinely doesn't see much distinction between the two. The only real difference is that your deep seated beliefs require respect, because they are your deep seated beliefs, whereas Alan Partridge doesn't. But in terms of content, I find them equally vague, spurious and largely without meaning. Apologies if that causes offense, but I thought it'd help explain atheism, which is a mainly reactive position.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
13:44 / 03.12.04
Also fascinated by the notion that there is an immortal 'soul' while the body is transient and temporary...

Surely this is backwards? It's the body that's immortal...The stuff it's made of is, to all intents and purposes, completely indestructible. Best guess of modern science as to how long atoms actaully last is a many trillions of years...how much more immortality do 'you' want?

Just cause they move on to pastures new is neither here nor there...don't be selfish now!
 
 
Jack Fear
13:49 / 03.12.04
So the assumptions create the hunger, correct?

In about the same sense that water "creates" thirst.

Without the assumption that if there is no God then life is meaningless, the question and answer collapse into irreverence. And

I think you mean "irrelevance," and further think your notion of "assumption" is exactly backwards. To wit...

...still life is there. Full of its own meaning. It is. You are.

And that's God, right there.

See, I'm not operating from assumptions. I'm operating from evidence. Life is self-evidently not meaningless. It is full of mystery and beauty and wonder. The question is, from whence does that meaning, that glory, come?

Not baiting, just amazed.

Just as I'm amazed by hard materialism and doubt-free atheism. How can you deny what's right in front of your face? In the beauty and meaning of life and creation, I see the evidence of God all around me.

And so do you.

But for some reason inexplicable to me, you don't want to call it what it is.

Why not?
 
 
Lurid Archive
14:03 / 03.12.04
Jack, I think you are right that we have a God shaped hole, a need to understand and find meaning and a need to anthropomorphise that meaning. Absolutely. So I do see and am filled with wonder and awe at "life and creation". Completely with you. But if that is meant to justify "God", then all you are doing is taking "God" to mean my personal wonder and awe. But it is really quite clear that when people say God, they mean rather more than that. By your definition, atheism isn't at all at odds with God, since "God" doesn't refer to any theistic construct. As I said before, there is an equivocation going on here.

I don't feel as an atheist that I am bound to deny the value of art, music, love and compassion, and the rich tapestry of existence. But the connection to God, while perhaps emotionally appealing, isn't inevitable.
 
 
Jack Fear
14:06 / 03.12.04
It might not appear so from your end. But all things and all beings partake of God, whether they know it or not.
 
 
alas
14:10 / 03.12.04
Well, no. There's "true" in the sense of factual and then there's the Larger Truth, if you get my meaning. A thing doesn't have to be factually, literally true in order to be True in a larger sense.

I know this, and I know that there are many "believers" who know this, but what I said is that the institutions don't (typically) present this Larger Truth as sufficient. (Read the Creeds.) And, as Lurid says, MOST believers aren't willing to make this distinction: they believe that you really must believe that the explicitly supernatural events described in the Bible (the Sun stopping in the sky for a full day, Elijah being taken to the sky in a fiery chariot, Virgin Birth, etc.) Is the Revealed Truth From God; to say it's about the Larger Truth to these folks is to fool yourself.

The Greeks didn't look around and see "God" they saw, apparently, "gods." So why is it such a stretch to believe that some people today don't look around and see "God" but see complex systems working themselves out in complex, perhaps not wholly understood, but ultimately logical, natural ways with no controlling authority or purpose?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
14:10 / 03.12.04
In about the same sense that water "creates" thirst.

No, Jack. Thirst is a function of your organism. Without water you will die within 72 hours, since you are made of water to the tune of about 75-80% of your mass. I fail to see how the two are in any way alike.

I think you mean "irrelevance," and further think your notion of "assumption" is exactly backwards. To wit...

Quite so! I did mean irrelevance! Cheers!

...still life is there. Full of its own meaning. It is. You are.

And that's God, right there.

I see...so God id life?

See, I'm not operating from assumptions. I'm operating from evidence. Life is self-evidently not meaningless. It is full of mystery and beauty and wonder. The question is, from whence does that meaning, that glory, come?

That may be your question, but it's not mine. Nobody knows. You don't, I don't. Your assumption is that it is knowable, and that is caused. Why do you assume this?



Not baiting, just amazed.

Just as I'm amazed by hard materialism and doubt-free atheism. How can you deny what's right in front of your face? In the beauty and meaning of life and creation, I see the evidence of God all around me.

I am not denying what's right in front of my face, but neither am I relating it to fanciful mentations and ideations.

And so do you.

But for some reason inexplicable to me, you don't want to call it what it is.

Why not?

Wow. What is it then Jack? Share your word.
 
 
Jack Fear
14:17 / 03.12.04
What's interesting here—as in every thread we've ever had about the existnce or non- of God, as in every meatspace conversation I've had about the subject—is that while we are all speaking from our biases, it appears to be incumbent only on the theists among us to acknowledge that, while atheists can maintain the fiction that they are speaking from a position of objectivity.

Does that seem right to you? Does it seem proper?

If so, why? What unexamined assumptions are at play here?

Frankly, I find it tiresome to constantly be on the defensive. Sometimes I think I should fight the atheonormative power and flip the script with the question "How could any intelligent, imaginative, perceptive person not believe in God?"
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
14:24 / 03.12.04
Objectivity and subjectivity - fictions. Only possible if there is a self acting as boundary condition between the two.

If I claim that my behaviour is dictated by and subject to the judgement of a 9 ft. invisible badger who floats above my head and creates the universe, then of course it's incument on me to justify that position when and if it is called into question.

Anyway, you don't have to defend anything. We were discussing it isall. If it's tiresome, no worries.
 
 
Sir Real
14:26 / 03.12.04
It's like someone who only likes landscape paintings looking at an abstract painting. Unless they do the work to understand the medium they aren't going to see anything.

It seems most atheists assume that a search for divinity is about the searcher trying to find something that they feel is lacking. That may well be the case for many, but for many others it begins from trying to understand something that they're already experiencing.

In general I find it pointless to have these kind of discusions with someone unless we already have some basis for mutual respect. People aren't going to see it if they don't want to.
 
 
iconoplast
14:32 / 03.12.04
This argument has the strangest inversion of deduction I've ever seen. On the one hand, there is a rationalist argument that a childlike reliance on superstition and bogeymen is a force for ruin in the world and is utterly silly and juvenile.

On the other hand there is an empiricist claim that people have had experiences of God.

And yet the rationalist response is "Don't be rediculous you couldn't possibly have."

I actually think that 'belief' and 'faith' constitute much larger portions of the athiest camp's position than of the deists. But the discussion is always rigged to invert this.

So I'm curious: Where do you get your faith that you are the be all and end all of creation? That there is nothing beyond your ken? Why do you believe the universe originated in an accident and is proceeding by happenstance? Why do you insist in the meaninglessness of our lives?

Those all seem like much more difficult pills to swallow than the realization that, jut maybe, there is an order and a meaning to all this, and that there is a loving and benevolent oganizing principle interested in each of our personal well beings.
 
 
Lurid Archive
14:43 / 03.12.04
Sometimes I think I should fight the atheonormative power and flip the script with the question "How could any intelligent, imaginative, perceptive person not believe in God?"

Take a minute to reflect, Jack. Theists outnumber athiests by far, globally, and your presumption was the default position in the West until very recently. I freely admit that I bring my biases to the table and that belief in something is a genuine human need. Would you accept this argument for the existence of Santa Claus? But what about all the wonder and joy of xmas and the beauty of gift giving? You probably think I am being dismissive again, which I am, but I'm not sure how else to communicate how unconvincing you sound to me, except by presenting an analogy with something I know you don't believe.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
14:48 / 03.12.04
I have a strange relationship with God. I was brought up (by a CofE vicar) as a fairly liberal Christian. Then when I was about 12 my dad died- or, to put it the way my 12-year-old self saw it- God fucked him over. At which point I figured one of two things had to be true- either God didn't exist, or he was the kind of deity I wanted nothing to do with ever again.

I've mellowed a lot on that over the last twenty years, and imagine I'm probably somewhere with Ganesh on the "farther shores of Christianity".

Basically, I'm not sure what God "is", exactly... but then, if I could properly get my head around the concept, then he wouldn't be God. Though I tend to like entertaining the notion that "God is Love" isn't too far off the mark.

Tired. Will attempt to articulate better later.
 
 
Jack Fear
14:51 / 03.12.04
Would you accept this argument for the existence of Santa Claus?

Barking up the wrong tree, there, Lurid, cos I do believe in Santa Claus. I did when I was a kid, then I didn't for a while, and now I do again.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
14:55 / 03.12.04
iconoplast - it's not clear to whom you are addressing your questions...moi? If so I'll respond.
 
 
Lurid Archive
15:15 / 03.12.04
Ahh, Jack. So there is no chance of offending you, right? Good. So do you think people who don't believe in Santa Claus are ignoring what is in front of their eyes? Probably you do, in which case I'm not sure we have enough common ground to have a discussion here. Which is a shame. If I can't explain how someone might disbelieve in something, even though that thing is comforting and positive in many ways, then I'm not sure where to go. Hmmm. What about, "your nation is the noblest and most moral nation that has ever existed"? That would be great to believe, and the news people present me with so much evidence which is literally in front of my eyes, that I think the analogy holds enough water.

I'm not trying to argue that atheism is the only way to see things - though it is a position that is so badly understood that one feels a duty to defend it sometimes - and I respect religious belief to a degree. Atheism really just extends some everyday reasoning which people accept in almost every other context except the religious. To say you don't believe in something unless you have a good reason to - all I'm saying is that I don't have a good reason to believe in God, factually - shouldn't be that controversial. All the stuff about certainty and arrogance and surety that man is everything is just straw people blowing in hot air.
 
 
iconoplast
15:15 / 03.12.04
Er. The rhetorical 'you', meaning 'people who think differently than me." Similar to the rhetorical 'they', no relation to the royal 'we'.
 
 
iconoplast
15:26 / 03.12.04
To say you don't believe in something unless you have a good reason to - all I'm saying is that I don't have a good reason to believe in God, factually - shouldn't be that controversial.

This would suggest that, without an experience of God, people would stay in the agnostic camp. Which is more or less how I got to where I'm at now, beliefs-wise. But believing in the absence of God, sans evidence, seems as farfetched as belief in God seemed, before I found evidence that persuaded me.

I'm okay with atheism in terms of its being another faith. But I have encountered atheism mainly clothed in reductionist and rationalist arguments against the existence of God. I guess my point is really just that - I claim that atheists do believe, and if you're going to spend the effort to believe, why would you choose to believe in nothing?
 
 
alas
15:32 / 03.12.04
Let me say up front that I love and respect people on both sides of this divide, as I think my story shows. I don't think Lurid, for instance, has ever claimed that he thinks or knows he's the be-all and end-all of existence. Nor have I. That's not a really fair statement of the atheist or non-theist position.

Ok, Money Shot has been a little snide, maybe, but so far as I can see, no one here is forcing a theist to become defensive--that's a choice that's being made by individuals. When I feel defensive it usually means I'm feeling compelled by the rough and tumble of debate to more strongly state my position than I actually feel and/or I'm not being as articulate as I want to be. Which is often!

What I find myself wanting to emphasize is that all beliefs are historically situated, including theism, atheism or non-theism. They are not "objective" and they all do rely to some degree on the evidence of others, they arise in historical contexts.

Individually we can come along and say, "To me, God means x," but it's a little naive to use the word "God" as if--unlike, say, the word "Stop" on a stop sign--it's a word that has no communally-defined meaning, no social existence prior to my claim.

All beliefs require an extension of empirical observations to places where there can be no firm empirical data: we cannot prove or disprove the existence of God conclusively. And it's always hard to prove a negative. (Even "There are no WMD in Iraq.") That doesn't mean that some truth claims can't be judged as better accounting for the evidence, or that we can't use Occam's razor, for instance, to find some claims more reasonable or likely. We do this every day.
 
 
Jack Fear
15:44 / 03.12.04
Mm. I'd take it further, and posit that atheism is often presented (by atheists) not as belief, but as a fact... with the implication that the atheist has knowledge (gnosis) that the rest of us, poor bastards that we are, don't.

The existence of God is an unknown, and an unknowable. In the face of that, I think agnosticism—literally, to profess no knowledge—is the only intellectually-honest response.

And obviously there are hugely vary degrees of agnosticism. Even deep conventional piety can properly be called agnosticism, since it is manifestly based not on any claims of irrefutable knowledge, but on faith.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
15:47 / 03.12.04
I claim that atheists do believe, and if you're going to spend the effort to believe, why would you choose to believe in nothing?

I think you're confusing atheism with nihilism. While atheism and humanism aren't technically the same thing, there is a lot of overlap in what people call themselves. It's not for me, but I don't see why having faith in humanity is any less, well, "faithy" than having faith in God.
 
 
Lurid Archive
15:49 / 03.12.04
Fairies orbiting Neptune with the face of William Hague,

Unicorns created by Anne Rice to be her captive audience as she recites from the collection of vampire books that are well written, yet not released to the public,

WMD in Iraq.

No, I can't *prove* that these things don't exist. But no one would give me a hard time for saying I don't believe in them. The "agnostic" move is used reflexively, however, in religious argument. Now, one might be able to justify such a move but it isn't transparent how one would do so and given that such attempts are rarely made, one suspects it is because people are working on the *assumption* that there is a deity. So what the argument comes down to saying is that, on the assumption that there is a deity, atheism doesn't make sense. Which is true.

OK, to be fair, there is more going on. There is also an assumption that the majority can't be wrong and that when something is self evident to the speaker it must also be self evident to the listener. In a sense, although these are fallacies, they do have some merit in the establishment of a common framework of understanding the world. But you can't use the fact that you accept a framework in order to justify that framework to others, on the whole. The last point is also true of atheism, of course, which is why many atheists point to the special pleading afforded religion. We aren't trying to convince you that our way is right, we think that you already agree except for a special case.
 
 
Sekhmet
16:10 / 03.12.04
The existence of God is an unknown, and an unknowable. In the face of that, I think agnosticism—literally, to profess no knowledge—is the only intellectually-honest response.

Jack's precisely correct. Agnosticism is the default position, the one that requires no evidence, defense or explanation.

Atheism assumes that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, which is an indefensible position. To assume that because you haven't seen it, it's not there, is arrogant in the extreme, and closes off many potential avenues of intellectual exploration. Science would never progress anywhere if the entire field practiced this sort of blind dogmatism. Atheism is a religious belief, just as much as any professed faith is.
 
 
Jack Fear
16:14 / 03.12.04
Okay—other consideration aside—just wanted to clarify my position and put these worms back in the can before it's too late...

no one here is forcing a theist to become defensive--that's a choice that's being made by individuals.

100% agreed. I just thought that, given statements like Tezcatlipoca's "the state of non-belief in any higher or divine entity seems to me to be an utterly natural one," it might be an interesting intellectual exercise to, as I said, flip the script—to shift the burden of proof to the atheist side of the fence, for a change.

As to the rest of it—later, maybe.
 
 
HCE
16:48 / 03.12.04
"Atheism assumes that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, which is an indefensible position. To assume that because you haven't seen it, it's not there, is arrogant in the extreme, and closes off many potential avenues of intellectual exploration. Science would never progress anywhere if the entire field practiced this sort of blind dogmatism. Atheism is a religious belief, just as much as any professed faith is. "

I disagree. I am atheist -- the word describes what I think, not what I can prove. I don't think that, "maybe there is a creator and maybe there isn't, but so long as I can't prove it either way, I just don't know". I simply don't think there's a creator, and that's the end of it. Whether I am right or wrong is another matter.

I do not assume that there is no god simply because I haven't seen one. I haven't seen, for example, the bottom of the ocean, and yet I think it exists.

Let's put science, and whether intellectual exploration is more benefical to it than experimentation, observation, and measurement, in another thread.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
17:12 / 03.12.04
If the answer "Because there is a God who made everything and cares about us" were a valid and useful answer to any question, then the question would no longer exist...A problem/question with a valid solution/answer is a zero sum game. So, for example, the question "Why do I see the mast of a ship appearing over the horizon before the vessel itself" is usefully negated by the answer "Because the planet is a spheroid". No more question. Solved! Next!

But all the questions pertaining to the answer "Because there is a God who made everything and cares about us" continue to rage unabated in spite of nearly 2,000 years of social experiment to find some useful and practical means of helping everybody get along on this planet. The holy business (it is a business is it not? A marketplace, full of second rate salesmen selling shoddy goods) has spectacularly failed to achieve any of its stated missions and goals. It has singularly failed to solve one damn thing, or answer any of the questions it presupposes. It is divisive, it creates schisms and presents for culture the model of a perfect human being into which frame all the rich diversity of nature's unique human specimens is supposed to fit. Doesn't work. Like a car sold as seen that turns out to be a real stinker. It is a product of thought, a second hand, dead thing, passed down generation after generation, unoriginal, old. Maybe Jesus knew what he was on about, but what are you on about? "Basically the same as Jesus?" or "What the Buddha said?" What have you discovered for yourself? Really, on your own, without culture or someone else telling you? Absolutely nothing. Everything you know has been given to you (and me) without exception.

Every war waged in the 20th century has seen both sides claiming to have God on their side, in the grand movement towards something better. That is the purpose of the holy business, is it not...to make things 'better'...To get from this state to that state, which is more pure, holier, less painful and miserable, more meaningful, and so on and so forth. But all of this is a wild assumption - that things are not supposed to be this way, that there is some other purpose, and it is loftier, better.

The most tangible product of belief in God that can be detected from any casual glance through history is war, murder & violence. That ain't an opinion, it's really obvious - unlike the existence of a supreme being who suffers bouts of jealousy if he is not having arse licked constantly and hates shrimp and gay people.

Something rotten there, methinks. Something not quite clicking in the holy business, and it's already manifest in this thread.
 
 
Sekhmet
17:16 / 03.12.04
Fair enough, though I don't think we really disagree; my point is that belief in either the existence or non-existence of God comes down to just that: belief. It's a philosophical position, not a defensible certainty. Just as you said: "what I think, not what I can prove."

However, it's standard practice to debate and defend philosophical positions, no? Otherwise the belief goes unexamined, and intellectual engagement with the question is replaced by a dogmatic insistence that one knows The Answer.
 
 
Sekhmet
17:19 / 03.12.04
That last post in response to dwight's, obviously.

Money Shot - am I to understand that you don't believe in God because people are greedy and mean to each other?
 
 
Jack Fear
17:27 / 03.12.04
And who said anything about religion? We were talking about God.
 
 
Spaniel
17:33 / 03.12.04
Money, I'm sure you'd be hard pressed to find a historian who would be prepared to argue that religious belief has only led to divisiveness, war, wotnot - basically that there has been no good along with the bad.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
17:37 / 03.12.04
Also, from it comes the notion that mankind is special and above the rest of nature, that man alone is chosen and can do as he willeth with all of natures bounty. Better than mosquitoes and slugs, better than caribou and mountain sloths, special and selected for greatness, the paragon of animals! What a piece of work is a man....

That, and that alone, is directly responsible for the ecological disaster which we are apparently now facing, looming up ahead, speeding towards us all aided by Fundie Christian Do Gooders like Geirge W. Bush (no doubt one of the 144,000). That is the thought structure out of which all of the extinction and destruction due to man and his mission has stemmed.

To be fair, I would convert tomorrow if I saw one shred effectiveness in changing a persons life for the better (for themselves and society at large) that stems from a belief in God.

I visited my sis down in Baaaaaath at Easter and took my son to the Eucharist at Bath Cathedral on Easter Sunday, with the Bishop of Bath and Welles presiding. Beatiful building, fantastic choir, great acoustics and my son loves a bit of singing (only 2). So there we were, amidst hundreds of practising devout Christians.

My son got restless, so I left and outside got chatting to a homeless guy, in a sleeping bag, begging for a roll-up. So I chatted with him, listening to the music, and gave him a load of baccy and skins.

The service finished, and maybe 700-800 devoiut Christains filed out ogf that Cathedral, having duly praised there magnanimous Lord. Praise to the Highest! So homeless chappie, he's asking for change. Just spare change. I mean, 1p each and the dude would have habe nearly a tenner for whatever was his pleasure.

NISH. Not one poxy penny. No change, no words, no eye contact, no notice. I mean, wasn't Jesus' choice of chums prostitutes, thieves and beggars and tax collectors? The dregs and most reviled in society? Didn't he choose these types as friends and company? They all gave money to the church though!

Isn't that a little skewed? Even assuming the church do anything useful with it, what's the mentality? Let the church distribute your 'charity', cos that way you don't have to grubby your day talking to lowlife?

I call hypocrisy. Even the homeless guy (his name was Joe) had to laugh about it. I mean, what better spot to pick if your living on the streets and hoping for a hand out? Outside Bath Cathedral on Easter Sunday!

Not a sausage mate.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
17:45 / 03.12.04
Oops, italics alert.

Money, I'm sure you'd be hard pressed to find a historian who would be prepared to argue that religious belief has only led to divisiveness, war, wotnot

I don't think I said as much. 'Only' is not in my point at all.

Tell you what : The Crusades, The Spanish Inquisition, The Salem Witch Hunts, all other Witch Hunts, World War I and II (both sides claimed divine providence), Kashmir, and the present Middle East Conflict.

Those are my examples of the holy business gone awry. Lets hear the historical examples which even up the balance a bit to demonstrate that it's not all violence and division. I'm sure they exist, and I'm interested.

Jack : come on : are you seriously suggesting that discussing religion in a thread about the existence of God somehow represents threadrot or straying from the point? Is it reasonable to expect the subject of religion to be kept for a seperate discussion?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
17:49 / 03.12.04
Sorry, must stop double and triple posting, but - silly me - I forgot Slavery, the Genocide of the Native American nation, 9/11, nerve gas on the Tokyo Underground, and oh why carry on?

Blimey, must stop grinding this axe before it disappears altogether
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
17:58 / 03.12.04
SORRY!

Money Shot - am I to understand that you don't believe in God because people are greedy and mean to each other?

I'm sorry, I don't get your meaning? I neither believe nor disbelieve in God, the question itself is utterly irrelevant to me. My words above are not realting to people but religious people...You know, 'people' that believe in God? I don't see hyenas and marmosets and capuchin monkeys worshipping, as a rule, so i guess we are kind of tied to discussing religion and God in relation to the 'people' who have invented it all, and continue to blow seven shades of sheesh kebab out of each other at what seems like every possible opportunity.
 
 
Sekhmet
18:03 / 03.12.04
But the thread topic is not, "Why do you think religion is bad or good?" It's "Do you believe in God?"

You say you're an atheist. By definition, that means you don't believe there is a God.

I don't see why your beef with organized religion is relevant to that question, unless your argument is that if there WAS a God he surely wouldn't let his believers be so awful...
 
  

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