Why God is not real

[wynn]

Oh, if only Yazata and CC would take on Lightgigantic!
That would really be something!

 

[kx000]

Plenty of atheists are decent people who strive to better themselves and the world around them. In fact very few of them are the evil baby eating stereotype that is thrown around by theists to make themselves feel better about their faith.

I wouldn't want to make most of history's gods ideals anyway. Short of the vague deistic vision, most gods have human fallacies...because they are reflections of ourselves.

I tell you a lot of ancient gods were men, and women. Don't ask for the proof, if it was there you would have seen it. All I have to say is myth is derived from legend.

 

[markl323]

because there is no evidence of God. believing in things without proof is simply delusional and dangerous. "i don't have any proof that Obama is an alien, but i strongly believe in it because this book i read said so." insane? you'd bet.

not to mention believing in a God these days usually come with being taken advantage of (i.e donations, suicide bombers, etc.). all this for what? a place in heaven? it's greed vs. reasons.

 

[kx000]

because there is no evidence of God. believing in things without proof is simply delusional and dangerous. "i don't have any proof that Obama is an alien, but i strongly believe in it because this book i read said so." insane? you'd bet.

not to mention believing in a God these days usually come with being taken advantage of (i.e donations, suicide bombers, etc.). all this for what? a place in heaven? it's greed vs. reasons.

Well, not believeing in something because you haven't seen it is fine, but it doesn't make it not real what so ever. The men you speak of whos greed drives them, or whos fear drives them will not be permited in the gates.

 

[Dywyddyr]

Well, not believeing in something because you haven't seen it is fine, but it doesn't make it not real what so ever.

Strawman.
Read the post: because there is no evidence of God.

And, conversely, just because you do believe in something doesn't make it real.

 

[Arioch]

@mark --

Actually that's a fairly good litmus test for the sanity and rationality of any belief. If the belief were restricted to one person, would that person be locked up? If yes then the belief is clearly insane, regardless of how many share it.

 

[arfa brane]

I look at it this way:

Belief is a powerful moderator of experience. If you believe God isn't real and there's no evidence for the existence of God, then you don't believe you can see or hear God, or feel anything that you would accept is real evidence.
If you believe God is real and you can see and hear and feel this, then God does exist.

And it doesn't actually matter if one belief or the other can be "proven"; as far as anyone who believes either for whatever reason, the only proof is experience (God doesn't exist, it's just a method religions use to control people's lives, and religion is bad. Or, God does exist, religion is something you don't need in order to believe this).

If you believe there is no experience that corresponds to "God", then that's what you believe. Conversely if you believe there is such an experience, that's what you believe.
But you don't have to believe anything to experience being awake, or alive.
If you know you can experience something, you don't necessarily believe you're the only person who can. It follows that someone who believes God exists also believes that other people believe or know the same thing.
Likewise if you don't believe God exists, then you believe other people know "there is no evidence".

In fact, if you can experience something that may or may not correspond to what anyone believes is God, it doesn't matter either what you think it is. It's "just" an experience, like anything else is. There's nothing unnatural or unusual about experience. but as I said, belief is a powerful moderator. We tend to believe in believing, that we need to believe one thing or another. God doesn't really care about your beliefs, and nor does the world you live in.

We think beliefs are important because we also believe other people care about what we believe. But that's a social phenomenon, probably something that became more important to our species as we developed cooperative group behaviour. Society isn't the world, and think about it--does society really care about what you believe? Isn't society in general more concerned about whether you're a productive or useful member of it?

 

[Me-Ki-Gal]

wow that is kind of preachy . No I don't want to .

 

[arfa brane]

Interesting.

I suppose it's just as well none of the atheists or theists try to tell you what you should or shouldn't believe, huh?

 

[markl323]

Well, not believeing in something because you haven't seen it is fine, but it doesn't make it not real what so ever. The men you speak of whos greed drives them, or whos fear drives them will not be permited in the gates.

what if tomorrow we discover a book written 2000 years ago claiming that a giant space octopus created heaven and earth in 7 days. and of course the book lists a bunch of "witnesses" claiming to have seen this octopus. and many people believe in this story.

what are you going to tell these people? how is your God any more "real" than this stupid octopus?

 

[wynn]

Agnostics like myself don't just absorb a religious tradition through an accident of birth or whatever, and then commence our thinking from within that context of a-priori faith. So, as a result, a whole galaxy of questions about this 'God' concept present themselves to us that Christians, Muslims or whatever will typically just shrug off and ignore. They already have their God concept, as far as they are concerned the only true and legitimate one, the one that's native to their own strand of tradition.

Exactly.
I am not against theists expressing their ideas; I am not even against preaching as such.

Most theists I have seen seem to approach communication with non-theists on assumptions that would be justified in a monocultural, monoreligious setting.
The others tend to take a relativistic position that does not allow for any definitive answer.

As such, neither of them presents a viable path of conversion - even though both want that people would convert.

 

[wynn]

I look at it this way:

Belief is a powerful moderator of experience. If you believe God isn't real and there's no evidence for the existence of God, then you don't believe you can see or hear God, or feel anything that you would accept is real evidence.
If you believe God is real and you can see and hear and feel this, then God does exist.

And it doesn't actually matter if one belief or the other can be "proven"; as far as anyone who believes either for whatever reason, the only proof is experience (God doesn't exist, it's just a method religions use to control people's lives, and religion is bad. Or, God does exist, religion is something you don't need in order to believe this).

If you believe there is no experience that corresponds to "God", then that's what you believe. Conversely if you believe there is such an experience, that's what you believe.
But you don't have to believe anything to experience being awake, or alive.
If you know you can experience something, you don't necessarily believe you're the only person who can. It follows that someone who believes God exists also believes that other people believe or know the same thing.
Likewise if you don't believe God exists, then you believe other people know "there is no evidence".

In fact, if you can experience something that may or may not correspond to what anyone believes is God, it doesn't matter either what you think it is. It's "just" an experience, like anything else is. There's nothing unnatural or unusual about experience. but as I said, belief is a powerful moderator. We tend to believe in believing, that we need to believe one thing or another. God doesn't really care about your beliefs, and nor does the world you live in.

These are all truisms. But they do not explain how a person comes to believe a particular proposition (and the implications of doing so or failing to do so).

We think beliefs are important because we also believe other people care about what we believe. But that's a social phenomenon, probably something that became more important to our species as we developed cooperative group behaviour. Society isn't the world, and think about it--does society really care about what you believe? Isn't society in general more concerned about whether you're a productive or useful member of it?

Not caring about what others believe and not caring about what others think about one's beliefs is the door to solipsism, though.

 

[Techne]

@Techne --



But it's not on us to define god, it's on those who posit god's existence. We can only discuss what has been defined by believers, so any failure to give a "proper" understanding of god(whatever the fuck that means) is really a reflection on the theist's failure to properly define god.

I disagree. I think it is important for all parties involved in exchanging ideas, a conversation or a debate to have at least a proper definition of the concept or idea you are talking about.

Let's for arguments sake take the example of the "Colobniabtrimmel".
Let's now say I don't have a proper definition for it.

I can't rationally and logically claim the following:
1) There is no evidence for Colobniabtrimmel.
2) There is no objective proof for the existence of Colobniabtrimmel.
3) If anyone believe in the existence of Colobniabtrimmel then they are crazy.
4) People that don't believe in Colobniabtrimmel are more rational than those who do believe in it.

The point being that if the people in a conversation (on both sides) do not have a proper definition or understanding of the concept they are talking, then they are likely to talk passed each other.

People can have their own understanding and definition of a concept while their respective logic surrounding the concept may be sound. This of course is a problem. If people cannot settle on a proper definition before engaging in an argument or a debate or even a normal conversation, then there is no way any matter is going to be resolved. Each party will say the other is being illogical when in fact it is possible that both are logical, they just differ about the definition and thus talk passed each other without actually resolving anything. One such example is a conversation between people debating whether something can come from nothing without an external influence. If a person is using the "scientific definition" then sure, it looks it can happen. If a person is using the logical/philosophical definition then it is logically impossible.

Coming back to the "Colobniabtrimmel". It is possible that a person can have a perfectly sound definition of "Colobniabtrimmel" that makes it possible that it can exist, in other words, there is no internal logical contradiction in the concept and that there is nothing preventing it from existing from a logical point of view unlike say the concept of a married bachelor.

So when people claim something is real or not real then they should at least have some sort of definition of the concept and then ask what one would expect if it is real or not. The applies to an understanding of the concept of God.

 

[Techne]

The problem with the word 'God' isn't so much that it doesn't have any meaning. It's that 'God' has too wide a range of meanings.

True, and that is a problem for both sides IMO. If a person says that "God does exist" or "God does not exist" then you better be sure what kind of definition you have in mind.

There's the polytheism/monotheism question.

Leaving that aside for the purposes of his thread and just restricting our attention to monotheism, there's the mythical Yahweh of the Biblical Old Testament and the mythical Allah of the Quran. There's the Vishnu and Siva from Hindu theistic mythology. There's Advaita's impersonal Brahman and Neoplatonism's ineffable One.

All of these are supposed to be the single, unique, one-and-only divine principle. So what's the relationship between all of the very divergent names and stories?

Is only one of them supposed to be real and true? If so, how can we know which one? Or are they all supposed to be true, just different mythical personas worn by a single ineffable power? Theists disagree, often violently, about those questions.

How does this hypothetical One God manifest in human history? How does God reveal "him"-self to human beings like us? How can finite human human beings, from their end and given all of their limitations, ever be sure that they have been touched by a God? How can we distinguish between true revelations and false delusions?

These are important question but I think it is important to differentiate between the religious aspects and the philosophical aspect with regards to the existence of God. Proving the existence of God won't prove a particular religion to be true.

Must this God be omni-everything? Omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent?

That depends how these concepts are defined I would say. If these concepts themselves are illogical or unintelligible then it is a bit silly. Of course these properties may just logically follow from other arguments and make sense logically without having to define them as intrinsically nonsensical or illogical.

Must this hypothetical divine power be a person like we are? Most theistic religions seem to insist very strongly on that element of their myths. But how could we know that? And given all the divine attributes that tradition tries to load onto the God concept, how is human-style personality even possible? What about all the problems that arise from trying to imagine a "person" who is absolutely unique, one of a kind, and alone? Can personality even exist outside a social context? Would emotions like love have any purpose or meaning to a One without a second? What about the conceptual problems that arise from trying to imagine a "person" that conforms to all the omnis in logically consistent fashion while "living" outside time entirely? How could a timeless being react to temporal events or discover anything new?

Or is God a set of abstract philosophical functions? Is God whatever the first-cause of the universe's flow of causation might be? The foundation of being itself? The universe's hypothetical designer? The goal towards which everything supposedly proceeds and evolves? Even if all of these philosophical functions make sense, which isn't clear, how can we be sure that there's one single being that ties them all together and somehow embodies all of them? And what, in turn, connects and identifies all of these philosophical functions to the tales of the personal deities from the historical religious myths?

This is another important question and it is important to understand the differences between classical theism and say theistic personalism or process theology.

Of course simply by definition, a classical theist is already embedded in his or her religio-mythical context. He or she is already a Christian, Jew, Hindu, Sikh or Muslim and has already embraced most of the presuppositions that are native to his or her version of one of those traditions.

This in not necessarily true.

Agnostics like myself don't just absorb a religious tradition through an accident of birth or whatever, and then commence our thinking from within that context of a-priori faith. So, as a result, a whole galaxy of questions about this 'God' concept present themselves to us that Christians, Muslims or whatever will typically just shrug off and ignore. They already have their God concept, as far as they are concerned the only true and legitimate one, the one that's native to their own strand of tradition.

Again, this is not necessarily true in all cases. it might be true for some Christians or Muslims or agnostics but definitely not all.

 

[kx000]

what if tomorrow we discover a book written 2000 years ago claiming that a giant space octopus created heaven and earth in 7 days. and of course the book lists a bunch of "witnesses" claiming to have seen this octopus. and many people believe in this story.

what are you going to tell these people? how is your God any more "real" than this stupid octopus?

I would say cool, you go pray to your octopus, my faith is with YHWH.

 

[LIGHTBEING]

I would say cool, you go pray to your octopus, my faith is with YHWH.

But what if the Octopus had three heads and sent a squid to die on a skewer? What then??? :shrug: