How can God not exist?
- Thread starter Jan Ardena
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Ah, I'm being too nice.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
The atheist assertion (which I agree with) was that the concept of "God" originated down here among us humans. That's in distinction to Jan's (and your?) idea that only God could have given us the concept of 'God', that we humans could never have generated it by ourselves.
I don't think that the atheists are suggesting that every single person somehow recreates the concept of 'God' all over again for themselves. People typically absorb their religious ideas from the cultures in which they live.
That observation applies not only to the concept itself, but to belief in the concept as well. People absorb many of their beliefs from their surrounding culture and most people don't really devote a great deal of effort to critiquing them.
That's why children born in Christian countries tend to grow up Christian (or perhaps as atheists whose atheism consists of the rejection of Christianity), why children in Muslim countries grow up Muslim, and so on. It's easier for me to believe in the effects of different cultures than it is for me to believe that divine grace is that fickle.
As I just suggested, I don't think that it is a matter of people coming to believe all on their own.
Why does religious socialization fail in some cases? Why do some people fail to believe?
Some people are raised in secular homes and in communities where religiosity and resulting religious socialization is weak. Other people have personal crises that cause them to question their previous faith. Others might be swayed by a different religion's evangelism. Still others possess the intelligence and a philososophical impulse that makes them more thoughtful, inquiring and consequently skeptical than most of their fellows.
I don't think that follows. I have a (poorly-defined) concept of God, derived not from any divine source or from my own free imagination, but rather from Judeo-Christian mythology. I have some concept of Vishnu and Shiva too, to say nothing of Thor, Odin, Zeus, Apollo, and all of that ancient crowd.
That's kind of the principle of schizophrenic delusions, I guess. If the psychotic is motivated by whatever their internal belief-formation process is to believe something, then presumably they don't require any additional justification, be it logic, evidence or sanity.
Ideally we don't just believe whatever we might feel like believing. There needs to be a justification process that assesses the credibility of our prospective beliefs. That in turn calls for things like evidencial support and logical consistency.
What you seem to be thinking about there is Christian theology. Theology does typically operate from some kind of presuppositional background. Theologians argue about what those presuppositions should be and this is a major issue that divides theologically 'liberal' and 'conservative' denominations. Evangelical Christian colleges often have long lists of doctrines that professors must agree to in writing before they are considered for teaching posts.
But the philosophy of religion needn't be bound quite so tightly to theistic doctrine. Especially when assertions are being made that an existing God must be the source of mankind's concept of 'God', or that all human beings share some fundamental intuition of this deity, it makes perfect sense to inquire into the breadth and variety of concepts of divinity that are actually circulating out there in real life. An a-priori restriction of consideration only to mainstream Judeo-Christian concepts would render our consideration of these issues circular.
That's a theological assertion, I guess. If a theist wants to believe that, I don't really care. I don't believe it myself.
More importantly, I don't see any convincing reason why I should believe it. Arguing that the conclusion follows from how the theists define the word 'God' is just a rather circular way of saying that it's something to be accepted by definition.
That looks like another example of the same thing.
There are very real epistemological issues concerning whether natural and finite human beings can ever know what are supposedly supernatural, infinite or transcendental things.
The ultimate result of that line of reasoning is very likely agnosticism.
Maybe not. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to accept the truth of the theist's presuppositions just in order to converse with him.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
No, silly, I put them there just like that.
So what is your point? Jan didn't put religion between quotes..
Atheists, as a group, do not consider themselves "Gods" or "the highest authority".
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No, their memory span is too short. :bawl:
So you seriously think secular humanism is a religion? Like 100% serious?
No more than ''theism'' is a religion.
There are religions that ''I'' don't think are God-centred religions.
But ultimately, it's not what I think.
jan.
well you'll never know what stories they be telling y'all at the prayer house.
Let's get something straight.
You're the liar, not me.
You said the dictionary definition I used to show the religiosity of
some (if not all explicit) atheists, was a colloquial term.
Prove it?
jan.
Mod Note;
Sorry Jan, but you were given (more than) fair warning.
Only in your mind have you sufficiently supported your claim.
Enjoy your holiday.
Yes of course it is. They have churches and preachers. There are unitarian humanists, spiritual humanists, syncretic humanists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_humanism
I think the Church of Reality is currently one of the bigger organisations in this denomination, but I could be mistaken
http://www.churchofreality.org/wisdom/humanism/
There is also CASH or the Church of American Secular Humanism
As well as
Justification as such is ultimately circular, self-referential.
It is not like we would possess and use a neutral, objective metasystem with which we could measure everything, from distance between towns to the rightness of a moral notion.
It's not Judeo-Christian. As far as I know, all major religious traditions are based on the idea of revealed scripture, that God Himself spoke to people and let them know the truth about Himself.
Any field of science functions in such a self-referential way.
Why use such an approach only with theists?
Why not also with biologists, historians, ...?
lol thats funny...
do you know what secular means?
do you know what secular means?
Bit of a stretch there SAM.
While it's true that, as you point out, some people feel free to use terminology in unorthodox ways, it doesn't follow that they're correct...
...
The first thing that we need to do is to stop stuttering or stammering every time we use the word "religion." I recognize that responses to the word are often problematic, to say the least. Religion, for many, conjures up images of things dogmatic, doctrinaire, moralistic, evangelical, and fundamental. It conjures up images of the church, the synagogue, or the mosque on the corner. It is seen as a path to zealotry or a path to irrelevance. It is perceived as a present and immediate danger. It is perceived as an anachronism in contemporary life.
Furthermore, many, many of our families, even in schools that are religious, are either nominally religious only or non-observant of any faith tradition, and many others are either skeptical of or openly hostile to any effort by a school to address what is perceived as religion in any form.
The consequence, in our secular culture, is that we are dealing with a high level of religious illiteracy, misinformation, and misperception. We are often dealing out of fear and ignorance.
The truth is that our own religious literacy isn't so hot.
...
http://www.nais.org/publications/ismagazinearticle.cfm?ItemNumber=144312
In light of what has been presented to you;
Do you accept that there are atheists who are religious?
And they want they want their worldview to be accepted as a ''religion''?
jan.
My point wasn't to show the legality of it, although the push
for it is in favour of my point.
jan.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Do you have a point then?
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