Do atheists indocrinate their children into their belief system?

[lightgigantic]

I find it interesting that you fully acknowledge that the fruit of all of your practice and theory and expertise still only results in a subjective perception. And yet you still cling to it's validity and assign to it an aspect of reality.

I find it tiring how you presuppose that empiricism is capable of leading you out of such a mire ...

 

[lightgigantic]

I don't think of servants as poor saps. I think it is a class based, imbalanced relationship and people used these relationships as metaphors (along with things like war metaphors like surrender) to encapsulate a relationship. We treat God(s) like Kings and Masters. And that's a problem.

You'll have to define for me what you mean here. I do things out of love for the one's I love because I feel like doing them. I don't know where the usual ideas of service come into it. Unless you mean 'to help'. Then, sure, I help the ones I love and they help me. That word seems to have less bagage to it. In fact it would creep me out if my wife started talking about how she sees part of her relationship to me as service. Uggh.


I still have no idea what you mean by service.

basically the word love is meaningless unless it is tied down with practical examples of service - like everything that a mother does for a child or or a husband for a wife etc etc. To enter into a relationship of love with someone means that you enter into a relationship of service with them, since that is the very medium of reciprocation

 

[sowhatifit'sdark]

I find it interesting that you fully acknowledge that the fruit of all of your practice and theory and expertise still only results in a subjective perception. And yet you still cling to it's validity and assign to it an aspect of reality.

What would an objective perception be? How can a subject have one?

 

[sowhatifit'sdark]

basically the word love is meaningless unless it is tied down with practical examples of service - like everything that a mother does for a child or or a husband for a wife etc etc. To enter into a relationship of love with someone means that you enter into a relationship of service with them, since that is the very medium of reciprocation

There is nothing there to give meaning to the word 'service'.

 

[lightgigantic]

There is nothing there to give meaning to the word 'service'.

I'm not sure how you can conceive the notion of a loving relationship without calling upon issues of service ...

 

[sowhatifit'sdark]

I'm not sure how you can conceive the notion of a loving relationship without calling upon issues of service ...

Can you please define the word or give an example of a specific action that is service that other loving actions are not or do not emphasize as much.

Please read through your posts on this issue. There is nothing to say what the word means to you. I understand that you see it as critical and necessary. But that's it.

 

[lightgigantic]

Can you please define the word or give an example of a specific action that is service that other loving actions are not or do not emphasize as much.

Please read through your posts on this issue. There is nothing to say what the word means to you. I understand that you see it as critical and necessary. But that's it.

We express our love for someone else through service - there is a comedy sketch about a woman receiving mysterious love letters from a paramour. Eventually they meet up with a rendezvous, and the mysterious man reveals himself and continues speaking eloquent poetry - time passes on and he continues with the same diatribe. Eventually she storms off, understanding that he was only interested in finding some object of inspiration to leap into higher levels of poetic elaboration. IOW he was revealed by a complete lack of a service of attitude.
Zillions of egs are there.
What could you make of a woman who says she loves her child but doesn't express the least interest to serve it in any way?

 

[sowhatifit'sdark]

OK so service means to you not seeing the other as a means for yourself. I don't think many people use that word, but OK, I agree with you. I would not call that service and it falls neatly into love. Not like 'I love cookies' but when you love another person. Another word could be 'care'.

Service seems like a mirror reversal of seeing the other as means, in that one sees oneself or one is seen by others as a means.

I think this is unnecessary.

In practical terms, fine. She fell down, I am the means to get her to the bed. But I am not a servant. I certainly don't need to think something like 'now I will serve her'. *Oh, shit I'd better help her' might fly through my mind.

Another example: If my wife said she wanted to serve me - let's say I was tired after working hard - I would find that a little creepy unless she was using the verb in its mundane sense, like serve me some tea. Help, take care of, fuss over....ok. And likewise in return.

Serve seems very impersonal to me, and I have this sneaking suspicion there is something more impersonal about your notions of love.

 

[iceaura]

At the very least they are not basing their belief ONLY on hearsay.

If not hearsay, where did it come from ? Experiences don't explain and attribute themselves, normally. Everyone has experiences. What they believe in consequence is culture mediated.

And now that we are speaking in general, there are many theists who believe that there are number of routes to One God and that names are not so important. So for convenience speaking about it in their own culture's terms is convenience.

We weren't bothering about the names.

And even if this is not the case, their belief in God is based on experience and is distorted, filled out, added to by, or guided by the specific religion. This does not make it hearsay.

We find in practice their experience is not merely amended, but identified, by the local religion. For example:

If I get knocked down on a dark street and I hear someone's footsteps running away and I later hear from another witness who says a man ran out of the alley - God often being male - my sense that there was someone who pushed me down is not hearsay, even if I start telling the story to others where I assert a man pushed me down.

But if your sense that it was an entity that pushed you down, rather than an epileptic fit, depends completely on a stranger's account of what the stranger did not even witness, but heard themselves from others, I will consider evidence - and if it looks like a fit, rather than an assault, I will keep in mind that the stranger's account - and therefore your own - was hearsay.

I actually think very few theists will say 'Yes, I have told you there is a God, I am convinced so therefore you should be.'

That is not the common form of the argument from sincerity, no.

But as I said above, in most cases I think you will find that they are defending their own belief and not saying that you should believe because they are sincere.

Commonly, they are defending their own belief from what they regard as too casual dismissal or disrespect, and claiming that it should be taken very, very seriously, and receive lots of respect and deference in its content, because they and all these other sacrificing people are sincere. Commonly, they are claiming (in various ways) that the sincerity and strengh of their beliefs makes them more likely to be true - not so much that I should believe, but that I should acknowledge the much greater plausibility so created.

 

[S.A.M.]

Serve seems very impersonal to me, and I have this sneaking suspicion there is something more impersonal about your notions of love.

Thats a cultural divide, service is the highest form of devotion there is.

To serve selflessly without expectation of reward or gratitude is an achievement of the spirit.

 

[greenberg]

I find it interesting that you fully acknowledge that the fruit of all of your practice and theory and expertise still only results in a subjective perception. And yet you still cling to it's validity and assign to it an aspect of reality.

There is something called "realization". I think it is a concept that is quite distant, underestimated, rare and little appreciated in so-called "Western thought". The closest notion we might have might be "holistic insight" or "holistic breakthrough".

Not so in the "East", though. It can require some intensive study and practice though to begin to appreciate the notion of realization.

 

[greenberg]

I'm not sure how you can conceive the notion of a loving relationship without calling upon issues of service ...

By the other person claiming that it is a loving relationship and that if you don't see that, you are a bad person or delusional.

 

[greenberg]

Serve seems very impersonal to me, and I have this sneaking suspicion there is something more impersonal about your notions of love.

To me, the notion of "service" brings up notions that it is about something that is unilaterally imposed, that the party who serves is at a loss but they must be happy with that - "Give, and never ask, expect or hope for anything in return, from anyone, not even from God. If, after a life of service, God send you to eternal hell because your service wasn't good enough, you should accept your punishment willingly."

 

[greenberg]

Lightgigantic,

Ha! Good point. This also speaks to the trivialization of god that many christians engage in. The Almighty, Unfathomable, Creator of the Cosmos is really concerned with the petty struggles of humanity? Really? And they oooh and ahhh over the trite little miracles presented in the bible. Pretty silly.

What do you think of this? Do you agree that many Christians trivialize God?

 

[greenberg]

What would they accept as evidence?

You will have noticed that I have put no qualifier in front of the word "evidence", ie. I didn't say "empirical evidence" for example. I left it open as to what kind of evidence precisely it might be that is necessary to know God. However, some kind of evidence is apparently necessary, otherwise one cannot say one has knowledge of God.

It might be necessary to first gain special qualification to gather that kind of evidence - say, with specific practices, studies. Just like one needs a special training in various other fields before one learns to recognize and collect the evidence relevant for it.

Theists have a long history of not taking atheists seriously. But they should, given that it is the theists who claim to know God, the Creator of the Universe, the Creator of each and every being. In this regard, theists are superior to atheists.
I do not think theists are taking enough responsibility for the claims they make about God, for the way they present themselves.

You are generalising.
Your presets are destuctive to discussion.

Destructive to discussion in what way?

Many atheists do not want to know or serve God, by their own admission.

True, but not all people are the same.

Tere are atheists who are willing to know God, willing to know God in the sense that they want to know the Creator of the Universe, the Creator of each and every being. I personally have found that many theists simply do not give us the credit for that.

Then do so. What is stopping you?

Several reasons:

One, I am afraid that I would give my whole life to the search of and what I thought service to God, but at the end find out that there is no God. This is a disappointment that I do not think I will be able to bear within a foreseeable time.

Two, I am afraid that I would give my whole life to the search of and what I thought service to God, but at the end God would reject me, send me to eternal hell. This is a rejection that I do not think I will be able to bear within a foreseeable time.

Three, I am afraid that the path of looking for God could turn out to be more lonely than I would be able to bear, and that as a result, I would turn back, give up, or do something horrible.

Four, I am afraid that if I would take the path of such rigorous inquiry, I might become insane. I have good reason to suspect this, because the path so far hasn't gone well at all.

Five, I could say that inside, I am one part Christian and one part Hindu. And they fight most of the time, other than when they -and I- are too tired to continue, or when one or the other wins. My inner Christian keeps telling my inner Hindu that rebirth and karma and cycles and kalpas and problems of selfhood are just nonsense, evasion, philosophical sham, overintellectualizing, pretended angst and such. And of course that eternal hell is perfectly real and that I will go into it unless I make a decision to properly believe in God this instant, the way all the good Christians tell me to. The inner Hindu sometimes argues with that, sometimes just takes it.
But I am exhausted from all this.

Moreover, and hence a lot of atheist frustrations, the instructions many theists give to people on what they should do in order to arrive at knowledge of God - those instructions are often impossible to carry out, full of contradictions, or even contain immoral requests.

Such as?

E.g.
"If you want to know God, you first need to accept the consequences that knowing God will bring" - But it is impossible to know in advance what the consequences of knowing something will be before one knows it.

"Be honest. Look into your heart. There you wull find your true desires" - Would be nice, if already had a unified mind - but I don't.

"If you want to know God, don't trust yourself. Trust the Bible." - Impossible to do because in trusting the Bible, one still trusts oneself to trust the Bible.

"If you want to know God, don't trust yourself. Trust God. God will lead you to himself." - Illicitly presuming the very thing one is trying to become sure of.

"You must love God and you must love God freely." - "Must" and "freely" are mutually exclusive.

Atheists cannot be exclusively blamed that over time, there accumulates in them a hatred and disgust for theism and theists, given the patronizing, manipulation, and most of all, poor reasoning that the theists are giving them and expect them to accept without question.

Which atheists are you referring to?

I should have been more specific, I apologize.

I mean the typical Western atheists who grew up under or in relation to fire and brimstone Christianity.
I don't think there are any other kind of atheists at this forum, are they? At least I've never come across any in all this time.

But again, I should have been more specific. I haven't thought of possible Hindu and Muslim atheists, for example.

 

[lightgigantic]

Lightgigantic,




What do you think of this? Do you agree that many Christians trivialize God?

I think religion without philosophy is simply sentimentalism

 

[lightgigantic]

By the other person claiming that it is a loving relationship and that if you don't see that, you are a bad person or delusional.

hence an important element of service is reciprocation - that is especially what is lacking when, say, a teenage girl falls in "love" with a poster on her wall.

 

[superluminal]

There is something called "realization". I think it is a concept that is quite distant, underestimated, rare and little appreciated in so-called "Western thought". The closest notion we might have might be "holistic insight" or "holistic breakthrough".

Not so in the "East", though. It can require some intensive study and practice though to begin to appreciate the notion of realization.

But it is nothing more than a notion, correct? In essence, the intensive study and practice results in the ability to self-induce alternative and uncommon (subjective) mental states.

It appears that due to the esoteric nature of this practice we in the west have given it a level of mystical reverence that it does not deserve.

I have practiced zen meditation and adopted many buddhist attitudes, not because they have mystical import, but because they appear to make sense for my own well being and that of those around me. All from a purely neurochemical and neuropsychological point of view.

 

[greenberg]

But it is nothing more than a notion, correct? In essence, the intensive study and practice results in the ability to self-induce alternative and uncommon (subjective) mental states.

It appears that due to the esoteric nature of this practice we in the west have given it a level of mystical reverence that it does not deserve.

I think it all depends on how much attainment one has accomplished.

One could be practising meditation for twenty years, but attain next to nothing because one had done almost nothing but zone out. Zoning out feels good, provides some calm, sure, but it doesn't amount to much.

Individuals have different karma so the effects of meditation can vary vastly.

I have practiced zen meditation and adopted many buddhist attitudes, not because they have mystical import, but because they appear to make sense for my own well being and that of those around me. All from a purely neurochemical and neuropsychological point of view.

In that case, you seem to be giving the neurochemical and neuropsychological point of view the upper hand.

 

[superluminal]

I think it all depends on how much attainment one has accomplished.

One could be practising meditation for twenty years, but attain next to nothing because one had done almost nothing but zone out. Zoning out feels good, provides some calm, sure, but it doesn't amount to much.

Individuals have different karma so the effects of meditation can vary vastly.

What effects? What does it have to do with the objective existence of god(s)? Is it a purely internal mental state? Or does it cause measurable phenomena to manifest in the world at large? If not, does it carry any more weight than the claims of a mental patient who, through a pure accident of neurochemistry, lives in such a state?