Where, please, do you see evidence that A is A? Can you prove that you exist without any tautological reference? For what reason do you accept the Induction Axiom as true?
AynRandLover:
As a fellow Objectivist (please don’t hit me), I would like to say, “kudos to you!” You have said in a few words what I have been trying to say for months. I have met God. Personally. I am “in Heaven” right now, right along with Gaudere and many other atheists, theists, deists, and whateverists of every stripe. Therefore, I know that He exists, and the faith I have in Him is the same type of faith that I have in science or deduction. That is, the ontological truth is verified by my own experience.
What I think Xeno, Spiritus, and others are trying to tell me is the same as what I told Brian Bunnyhurt. My subjective experience, occurring as it does in a closed reference frame, cannot be projected onto the experience of anyone else. I think I always knew this intellectually, but am of late coming actually to comprehend it.
Lib, that’s okay, I’m a Discordian. We’ve all got our axe to grind, I suppose.
I don’t know your story, however. If you’d care to email me a link or post one in this thread I’d be much obliged.
At any rate, I think I’m gonna take brian’s side and say that faith is something that can’t be learned… it is probably more of a default approach to understanding.
The trust/faith thing is interesting, as which is a prerequisite for which? If you trust someone, you have faith in them…but if you have faith in someone, it is because you trust them…!!! Chicken and egg indeed.
Been thinking about this whole faith mess some more (it has been on my mind for years now in the form of faith vs axioms) and I think that faith is an axiom with no conclusion. If you assert an axiom, say, it leads to a testable, repeatable conclusion. If you assert an object of faith, it is merely a stepping stone for something. There is no testable, repeatable conclusion. That is, I could surely test the existence of an afterlife my killing myself right now, but that is hardly repeatable, so that fails as an axiom to state: there is an afterlife. You may choose to make it an axiom, a postulation, an assumption, whatever, but it isn’t an axiom in the way axioms are understood (at least by me). I think this is how I would draw the line.
In this way, faith isn’t something to be learned but abandoned if one feels it is more correct to live one’s life based on axiomatic reasoning over faith-based arguments-from-authority. Needless to say, I think, both styles of living do work; we see evidence of this by looking at the population of the world.
If I may jump in here, this quote, more than your language or anything else, is what people are not understanding (or, less charitably, understanding but not buying), here or in the “why sacrifice” thread. For most of us for most cases, our subjective experiences can in fact be projected onto the experience of others. All it takes is shared knowledge and experience and an agreed-upon way to describe that knowledge and experience.
Take the phrase “At the Met game, the guy next to me bopped me on the head with a red beach ball.” Every one on the board knows exactly what happened, even though they may visualize it a slightly different way, even though details may be lacking, and even if they have never been to Shea or been hit by a beach ball. We could translate the sentence into Inuit, and with a short description of “Met game” and “beach ball,” (with all those words for snow, they ought to have a good direct translation for “bopped” :D) even a person with a very different background would have a basic understanding of the event I’ve described. Certainly my seatmate on the other side from the bopper would agree with the statement.
In more complex situations, this can work for “the earth is round” and even subjective things like “Timothy McVeigh is evil.” With enough practice, we can even understand things which prior to a description have no subjective or objective meaning to us at all, such as the concept of a singularity, at least in the sense of the “understanding” required to communicate with others about something on a common basis.
Above, you are saying that you, Gaudere, and some others are “in heaven” have eternal souls fired by goodness, that you are certain of an eternity beyond the physical universe, etc. Yet I’ll just bet if one asks Gaudere, apparently right there in heaven with you, one would find that she claims that she is not in heaven, does not believe that her soul is eternal, does not have some “goodness” that transcends the physical plane of the universe, etc. In short, she would contradict every single thing you say about the nature of existence except that you and she are basically good people.
Can you understand why to those of us who are not there in heaven with you, or who are there but don’t know it, this sounds like nonsense? It’s as if you are saying that you got bopped by a red beach ball, your seatmate says that there was no beach ball and it was a Jet game and yet another person, reporting on the very same event, says that you were in the library the whole time.
To sum, it seems as if you have extrapolated a silly philosophical curiosity that we can’t prove that A=A into a belief that no one can possibly prove anything. No offense, but that is garbage. A does in fact equal A, every sentient being knows it even in absence of a formal, non-recursive proof, and from it and other “unprovable” axioms, we somehow manage to agree on very large parts of the world around us. Most of us have very little difficulty separating what “needs” to be proven from what does not need a proof and from that for which proof is impossible. Care to join us? We’re having a blast!
Not according to the Gnostics who believe in reincarnation. It certainly would be repeatable. However, someone who commits suicide will immediately reincarnate to face the same circumstances, so that isn’t the correct method.
To get Biblical, which I really intended this thread to be anyway, one of God’s laws and indeed the supposed reason we exist is to love one another and God. I for one, cannot love or even like someone just because I’m told to. I really find it hard to believe there are people out there whom I’ve never met that love me, as is the law of God.
Love is an emotion, you cannot tell me to love you even if you put a gun to my head. I might tell you I love you but for you to believe me would take Faith. Do you believe I love you because I told you I do? That would either be very trusting or very stupid. I’d opt for the latter, the former being too hard to fathom. It goes beyond reason to think anyone could “Love On Demand”.(Please don’t get into defining or debating “reason”)
Thank-you for telling me you love me but I don’t have a mustard seed of faith that you do (Mat.17:20).
Faith like Love is an enigma we probably will never agree on.
I can only speak for myself, trickie, and offer what my current understanding is. God instructs us to love one another, but whether or not we do is our choice (freewill). To me this means to care about each other and the recognition of our spirit being a piece of His (Quaker). Whether or not I believe that you love me is not really important; what is, is whether or not I follow His instruction. I try to do so because I have faith (trust) in His guidance, as any father would give to his child that he loves. Failing to follow good advise always leads to consequences of its own, but there’s no gun to my head. I couldn’t “Love On Demand” either. Whether I love or not is my choice.
Let me just inject one little thing. Yes, we use reason to figure things out. But where did the brains that we use to reason with come from? They are not platonic intellects, they were constructed through a multi-billion year process of natural selection. They are not perfect, they are not designed to solve general problems, but rather the specific problems of how to survive and reproduce on this planet at this time and in this environment (well, the iterated summed environments of our ancestors).
So, we do not start from the point of having no knowledge, then attempting to formally deduce existance from a few axioms. Rather, most of our knowledge of the universe (actually the small subset of the universe that we inhabit) is hard-wired into us. Those are the axioms that we build our perceptions of the universe on. And our natural selection designed brains are amazingly good at figuring out certain types of problems.
But as neuropsychologists have discovered, our brains and sensorium has some pretty amazing gaps that we ordinarily never notice. See Daniel Dennett or Oliver Sacks for some of these examples.
One might say that we have faith that our existance is real. But this is irrelevant, since we have no choice but to accept it. Even the most dedicated solipsist cannot bring himself to act on the consequences of what he supposedly believes. People who believe that they create their own reality don’t stop bothering to eat, they still avoid muggers, they don’t walk off cliffs, they still talk to (to them non-existant) people. I mean, what does a solipsist think he’s doing when he tells you he’s a solipsist? Makes no sense, but he can’t help but to accept the premises hard-coded into him by natural selection, no matter how much his reason tells him to reject them.
So, a recognition of what human nature is shows us that we cannot “start at the beginning” and cleanly derive an epistemology. We are compelled to start in the middle and work our way forward and backward at the same time. Welcome to the human condition.
Yes, I can understand that. Thanks for explaining.
Let’s go with the beach ball because that is an excellent example of exactly what I’m talking about. I’m going to try to take Xeno’s advice and express myself more coherently. I’ll try to be short and to the point. Wish me luck. Here we go:
On the face of it, what happened here is that one electromagnetic field (the ball) slammed into another (your head). I’m saying that something much deeper, and much more significant, happened here, and we cannot determine what that was without intimate knowledge of the spir… (sorry) the essential motivation of all those people involved.
Did the guy bop you by accident? If so, was he horsing around despite knowing better? Because he was drunk? Because he was a child? Because he was mentally disturbed and ignorant of social consequences? Because the ball bounced off his knee while someone else was horsing around? Something else? And if not, was he responding to your pestering him? Was he defending himself from your attack? Was he deliberately mean? Was he a friend trying to get your attention? Were the two of you playing with the ball together, sort of rough housing? Something else?
All I’m saying is that the moral significance here is not to be found in what transpired between the two electromagnetic fields (forgive me, the atoms). The moral significance is to be found in the hearts (the essences) of those people involved.
And now here’s the conclusion: since the space-time event (the bop) occurred within the moral context (the decisions), and not the other way around, it is the moral context that is the greater reality.
In my opinion, faith is a decision — specifically, a decision to trust, believe, or rely. There might be any number of reasons for that decision, moral, immoral, and/or amoral.
An axiom is also an axiom with no conclusion until you extraplote your axiom set through a series of derived premises that follow logically from one another. Your final premise is your conclusion. So long as your conclusion is not the same as one of your axioms, your conclusion is true. (If your conclusions is the same as one of your axioms, your entire argument is tautological.)
With faith, same same.
But the test of killing yourself is repeatable unless you attach some a priori significance to yourself. The same is true of any such test.
Take a balloon, for example.
You could assert that sticking a pin in a particular balloon might verify your object of faith (that it will pop). But then, if you attach some special significance to that balloon, you might call your experiment unrepeatable. Once you’ve popped that balloon, you can’t pop it again.
If, however, you are willing to accept the testing of any arbitrary balloon, and your assertion applies to balloons in general, then you will accept popping some other balloon as equally valid toward your demonstration.
Likewise, the test of physical “death” is repeated all the time. Unless you are somehow more significant than the rest of us, you can test your hypothesis easily.
Of course I would attach special significance to me; I’m the one doing the test and the one who would like to repeat it! The arbitrary balloon test on people is what tells me that there is no return from death; whether there is something after death is something I would require some evidence of, and the only way for me to get that is to test it. But, then I could not report my findings, confirm them with you, etc, etc.
I am not at all confortable with saying “with faith, same same.” No, not same same. It is faith. It has a different meaning, it is a different word. There can be ideas-about-reality based on both, but that is largely the extent of their similarity.
One does not draw a logical conclusion from faith; one simply believes it. You may, as I said, make a faith based belief into an axiom in an attempt to reason about it, but they are not the same animal.
“Return from death” or “afterlife”? I don’t believe in ghosts either. Maybe we should nail down what is being discussed. At any rate, you will have your evidence, one way or the other, soon enough.
But the life that continues after death has nothing to do with DNA.
When I assert A, and draw the conclusion, B, implied by A, am I not drawing a logical conclusion? Upon what basis have you selected arbitrary exclusions for A?
If reality is that, and only that, which we perceive with our senses, then I would submit that there are many unreal things that you presume to exist: ultraviolet light, black holes, and quarks, to name a few. Ah, but you can see evidence of these (again with your senses) by examining things (like spectrometer graphs) that your senses can detect that you believe those things have influenced.
And yes, you can reproduce those things provided your equipment and conditions are identical. But therein lies the rub. My consciousness, which I am convinced has experienced God, is closed to you. My faith in God is based on my experience, and is every bit as reasonable to me as your faith that a pricked balloon will pop. You can experience what I have experienced by becoming me.
That is what is not reproducable. You cannot become me. Nor can you become anyone else who believes in God. Just as you cannot test an hypothesis about the afterlife without dying, neither can you test whether God is real without believing in Him. Your will always trumps His.
God is testible in the same way that a subatomic particle is. People are the instruments. Do the scientists who man the superconducters sit there pondering whether quarks exist, or do they “flip the switch”? I submit that you are like the astronomer who, having heard that other people have seen planets, sits by his telescope waiting for it to show him something. You must take a leap of faith and put your eye to the thing.
One caveat: be certain what you are looking for. You won’t look through a telescope and see Minerva.
That is, the assumption is the conclusion. To believe in God, I need evidence. To gather that evidence, I must believe in God.
Now, perhaps I can beat you to the punch here and say something like: but for a mathematical axiom, you must believe in it (use the rules it provides) in order to “test” it. Same same? Perhaps, some say. Some say so and argue very stongly for such an analogy; in fact, some assert that this analogy is so strong that it ceases to be an analogy and is actually some sort of semantic prrof that axioms and faith are really the same thing. Perhaps this is what you are getting at.
But again, I would seperate them. That is, I may argue about the properties real numbers have based on their axioms. I may argue about the properties God has by creating an axiom stating that God exists. In neither case have I “believed” in either. I have simply said, “If…then.”
Now, in so far as axioms can be tested, we build a “model” of reality or whatever off these axioms and see how well it corresponds to our view of reality. In so far as the predictions match the evidence we can say, “This is how things are.” When they don’t, the error was either in the reasoning used or the axiom itself.
I guess I don’t see how faith in the existence in God is an axiom in this way. I am sometimes stunningly dense, so please don’t hesitate to explain away. Talk down to me, whatever you feel is necessary to get the point across. But so far you have continued to show me how faith is different from axioms, not how they are the same thing. I have never read a math book or a science book that required one person to be another to collect the same data.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying that “faith and axioms are the same”. I’m not using them as synonyms, but as terms that are relational. Faith is belief in something unprovable. Axioms are unprovable assertions. Therefore, axioms are taken on faith.
Science doesn’t require that one person be another to gather data because science doesn’t study closed universes (with the possible exception of pseudosciences like psychology). My consciousness is closed to you, and yours to me, but the moon is open to both of us to observe.
Faith that God is God is different from faith that A is A if, and only if, you have sufficient experience that one is true, but not the other. You likely have experiences that I cannot perceive in the same way you do. I don’t know what it’s like to have a baby, to jump out of a plane, or to make the winning dunk at the buzzer. I have heard people claim inimate comprehension of these things, and I have even seen them done. But perceptually, they mean nothing to me because they and I do not share a common frame of reference.
You might watch me pray. You might observe while I listen quietly for the voice of God. You might witness my incredible high after meditating on a saying by Jesus. But these things will mean nothing to you. You aren’t dense; you just don’t share my frame of reference, i.e., my consciousness.
Related food for thought about reference frames: who here will intimately comprehend the meaning you and I evoke with the phrase “same same”?
Yeah, actually, a lot. At least for me, that was the first time I really think I understood where you’re going. Thank you. Lemme see if I can do as well responding.
First, on the physical moment: Yeah, I suppose technically you can think of it as a collision of a couple of pieces of matter which may or may not turn out to be entirely comprised of electromagnetism oriented in certain ways (I think the jury’s still out on whether matter is particles or uncertainty fields, e=mc[sup]2[/sup] notwithstanding).
But here’s what I’m trying to communicate here: Everything in the physical universe need not be reduced to it’s component parts, and doing so impedes the common understanding that makes us so special. It’s a ball. And it’s my head. Just labels? Yep. But they’re labels that everyone can agree on, so we can reach an understanding and move on.
The bigger part, of course, is your question about the physical context and the moral context. Well, unfortunately my rejoinder to you is a big, fat, wishy-washy “it depends.” In most of the cases you describe, I don’t think there is a moral context, or at least not one worth worrying about. In cases where the ball was thrown with malice, I’d agree that the moral context outweighs the physical. But that agreement is at least partly because the chances of doing any lasting physical damage with a beach ball are slight. If I were blinded by a beach ball thrown in good faith, I’d argue that the physical context is more important. I say that knowing that that opinion is informed by my unprovable belief that our existence ends at death.
Thank you, by the way, for taking what I thought was actually kind of a weak example on my part and transforming it into a good one.
But the key here is that I don’t believe, and many others don’t believe, that even the moral context of the described act has eternal consequences. That’s the “leap” required that you have made and which others have not, as you acknowledge.
To the interesting conversation you are having with aynrandlover, I would only add this: An axiom, at least as I understand it, is something so self-evident to all observers that it doesn’t need proving. That’s the distinction I’d make from faith. If one have to spend a ton of time trying to convince people that a proposed axiom is true, perhaps it’s not really an axiom.
Only IF you “believe” in the axioms, yeah? I would agree, then. But my problem here is twofold: one, i is not necessary to believe in axioms to use them to one’s advantage in some way; two, you may test axioms based on their conclusions (and this being the case, then they are no longer faith by definition: they have been validated [sub]if you are in for using one system for evaluating another’s axioms by testing an axiom’s conclusions[/sub]).
If we stick to material sciences strictly. If we move into mathematics then we are faced with either my “if…then” form of axiom usage or a platonic belief in numbers. That is, we can calculate the mathematical properties of a Klein Bottle, though we may never construct one. And you still don’t need to be me to experience it.
Are you saying that you don’t believe in an external world? Or that I’m taking that on faith? Neither? Both? Hmmm.
Well, both are probably true We also don’t share penises (and I’m assuming you are male here, pardon me if that’s wrong) yet we may discuss over a beer the finer points of sex with females.
Manny, if I may call you that…
You said, “An axiom, at least as I understand it, is something so self-evident to all observers that it doesn’t need proving.” Interesting. I’ve also heard it said by my namesake that an axiom is so self-evident that disproving it involves using it (hence assuming it is valid, though not in the same way as a reducto ad absurdum, of course).
So you mean ‘faith in God,’ then, in regards to the veracity of His love?
If this is so, let me know.
Also, you mentioned you “intended this topic to be a ‘biblical’ discussion”–do you want some biblical perspective (ie, references) on faith and its origin, and how man comes by it?
If so, again, let me know–I am sure there are others who would oblige as well–but at your behest, not out of inherent proselytization mania…
I believe you’ve drawn the correct line. Why the moral consequences are indeed eternal is a whole 'nother topic.
I’m glad that now you understand what I’m saying, and I thank you for seeking clarity in the civil manner that you did. It is all too easy to say, “Oh, Lib, you talk funny, so therefore, you’re full of shit.”
Well, now, I agree that an axiom is self-evidently true, but that again falls into the context of reference frames. What is self-evidently true in the perspective of one observer might be self-evidently false in the perspective of another. Who, for example, sees the “true” speed of a tossed ball on a glass-walled train between two observers, one of whom is on the train, and another of whom is outside? One will take as axiomatic that the ball is going X mph, where X is the acceleration of the ball; whereas the other will take as axiomatic that the ball is going X + Y mph, where Y is the acceleration of the train.
But physics is not the proprietor of reference frames. A poor man will take as axiomatic that he must work for a living; a rich man will not. In fact, I take the whole idea of universality of reference frames itself to be axiomatic, as I see evidence of it everywhere. This idea of reference frames is critical to spiritology since God’s reference frame is the absolute one. We might argue over whether God exists, but surely you will concede that, if He does exist, then His reference frame, owing to His very nature, is absolute.
Ayn:
As to your number one, I’m not saying it is necessary to believe in axioms in the general sense of axioms as an idea, but that it is necessary to believe in the truth of some particular axiom. As to your number two, those of us who believe in God have done exactly that. Our conclusion has been validated by our experience.
A particularly famous futile exercise is to glare at the heavens and go, “Okay, God. I believe in you, now show me a sign.” Who on earth does the person think he is fooling? Faith in God is expressed from a loving heart. Calling out to a genie to grant a wish is an expression of faith in something else. It is looking through a telescope to find Minerva.
Well, if…then is not a form of axiom, but a form of implication whose truth or falsity can be determined by the truth table. For example, “If A then B” is true if (1) A is true and B is true or if (2) A is false and B is true. An example of (1) is “If the earth is billions of years old, then natural selection is a tenable mechanism for evolution.” An example of (2) is “If the earth is six thousand years old, then natural selection is an untenable mechanism for evolution.”
Again, mathematics is a universe available to both of us, whereas our respective consciousnesses are not. They are closed.
Neither. I am saying that the external world is a common frame of reference for both you and me. Our consciousnesses are closed reference frames, thus both you and I take our own existence on faith. Any attempt to prove your own existence by deduction will result in a tautology.
Here’s why: in order to do anything at all, like proving your existence, you must first exist. That makes your existence axiomatic. Since your conclusion — that you exist — will be the same as your axiom — that you exist — your argument will be circle.
And yet, you will be discussing yours and I mine. One of us might be distressing the other, waxing lustily over the joys of toe sucking; while the other might be sickening the one with epic tales of varieties and experiences in cunnilingus. Or perhaps, one of us might be lusting for the other one’s penis even while that other is talking about women.
Mutual comprehension cannot be facilitated without a common frame of reference. Thus, whatever I might tell you about God will be as incomprehensible to you as the joys of a Playboy spread would be to my brother, Esprix. I can tell you all day long about what God has done for me, but from your reference frame, you will be either searching for what you consider to be a reasonable explanation of what you consider to be a psychological phenomenon, or else, if we are friends, you might just shrug your shoulders and go, “Yeah, well, it looks good on you, though.” (Apologies to Rodney Dangerfield).
Hence, the axiom that is clearly self-evident to me (God exists) is not to you. Our common reference frame of reason will help you understand this. You might not believe that God exists based on your experience, but you ought to concede that I might not be crazy, but rather might have a different experience from yours in the context of my closed consciousness.
And yet, there is at work here an important third reference frame, namely His. You might believe that He does not exist, and I might believe that He does. But outside both our reference frames is the one that matters. If He does exist, then I am right. If He does not, then you are. If His reference frame is absolute, then we might both be right, just as both observers are right in two diverging physical reference frames. In other words, it might be the case that He allows us to decide for ourselves, and that He will manifest Himself solely within reference frames that accomodate Him.
That would be one way to implement free will. The intrinsic inability to provide ontological proof of His existence (due not to the nature of existence, but to the nature of proof), combined with His yielding His will to yours, allows you to decide for yourself and go on your moral way.
Things are getting clearer all the time. Thanks again.
Lemme revisit some of you post and see if I can gain a greater understanding.
On your train analogy: I would assert that neither person would take it the speed of the ball as axiomatic; axioms are simpler than that, to me. But much more importantly, if the two were to meet up at the depot and exchange stories, if one or both had taken the speed as axiomatic, they would abandon it following the conversation. Again, this goes to my theme of shared experiences being part of seeing an objective reality.
I hate to keep harping on that, but I really do think of that as what binds us as a species and makes us special. One might loosely call that my religion. Alone, each of us is useless for objective or subjective purposes.
Which point leads directly to my next one, about our consciousness being a closed frame of reference. I hope I’m misunderstanding you again. Because while in a certain limited sense you are right, I happen to believe that in a larger, more glorious sense, you are exactly wrong. Given a common means of communication and a (fairly small) set of shared experiences, I believe that we can and do routinely share what lives up there. I can imagine no sadder fate than to be unable to experience what one’s neighbor feels or to communicate one’s own.
By way of example, when a traditional believer of God tells me of his beliefs, I think I can understand exactly what they are talking about, even if I cannot share the belief that leads to the state of their consciousness.
That’s as good a place to leave off for now. Even though I do not share your belief in the events being commemorated this weekend, I hope you have the most joyous of Easters.
Faith consists not of labeling a series of propositions “true” or “false”, but rather the term “faith” refers to a relationship of trust. For instance, think of what it means when two people are in a romantic relationship and one is “unfaithful”–the true meaning of that accusation is that the unfaithful person has abused the other’s trust. Therefore, people are very confused when they say that faith in God depends on whether you say “true” or “false” to such statements as:
The Earth was created in six 24 hour days.
All people mentioned in the Bible were real people, with flesh and blood, and none were mere literary characters.
All events mentioned in the Bible were actual historical occurrences, and the textual accounts match precisely what happened.
Nothing in the Bible contradicts anything else in the Bible.
I have my opinion as to the truth or falsity of these statements, but really, the truth or falsity of these statements is totally irrelevant to the question of whether one has faith in God. “Faith” is a meaningless concept if not viewed in the context of a relationship of trust.
Do you find that your potential is realized if you trust in God’s providence and sovereignty? Do you find that you will help others realize their potential, and thus make this a better world, if you can encourage people to trust in God’s providence and sovereignty? Is a passive form of trust sufficient to a healthy relationship with God, or do you believe that human actions (and your actions) would actually matter to God?
People sometimes behave as if modern science and biblical criticism cast doubt upon God’s existence, but really these are just peripheral issues of intellectual curiosity. Even though people sometimes cast the debate in terms of science or literary criticism, it all boils down to the same age old dilemmas of theodicy: Can we trust God after the Holocaust, Crusades, countless murderers and child molestors, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, lynchings in America’s deep South, horrific famines and pestilence, etc.? It’s not a war between the Darwin fish and the Christ fish, but rather it’s modern man asking God the same questions that Job asked. When were talking about faith, we might consider the possibilities:
Trust in God, never ask any questions, passively wait for God to straighten this mess out.
Trust in God, but protest against the evils we see, work hard to promote a better world, with the hope that our talents were given to us by God so that we could assist in the realization of God’s plan.
Trust that God is all good, but perhaps not all powerful. Perhaps there are other gods and demons who are teamed up in all sorts of alliances, and we just have to put our money on the winning God or gods–kind of like a roulette or craps table. We can trust in God and just hope that it all pans out in the end.
Trust that God is all powerful, but also believe that God has the personality of a little boy who burns ants with a microscope, and that it’s just a matter of time until we’re all doomed. God would abuse our trust no matter what.
Trust that God is all good and all powerful, but in spite of being “all good”, God only really cares about a small portion of the human race, and is getting ready to toss almost everyone else into the Lake of Fire. (i.e. Five point Calvinism limited atonement, an assumption also shared by racist Christian Identity movement.)
There is no God, therefore, there is no one to trust in but ourselves.
I’m sure that there are other possibilities. My personal choice is #2, and my least favorite options are #4 and #5. I mean, if option #4 is true, what are we going to do anyway? Option #5 is morally depraved to the core, and very popular among fundamentalists. Options #3 and #6 are a bit too pessimistic (though better than #4), and option #1 is a bit cowardly. People who are inclined to a passive trust are probably the type who would obey the experimenter to the high voltage level in the Milgram electic shock experiments.
We also don’t share penises (and I’m assuming you are male here, pardon me if that’s wrong) yet we may discuss over a beer the finer points of sex with females.