# Does God make sense? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 11, 2008, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916 "2008-04-11T17:20:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/61 "2008-04-14T20:27:11Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] The issue I see here is that there is a sort of obsessive need to reduce the idea of God to some little marginal token barely worth taking notice of. However, the power of God in people’s lives, be God a real entity or not, is immense. Generally it is filled by grandiose ideas like Communism. It’s not just a lucky token but a driving impulse within a culture. Whatever the cause celebre of a culture is, that’s their God. [/QUOTE] We’re all too aware of the power of God in people’s lives, and are frightened of it. If there is no “real” God, which is a question independent of the power of the idea of God, where does this power come from? Clearly from people, history, and, yes, culture. Removing the formal god from the equation won’t keep people from following, but it might help people to see that it is okay to question what these leaders are telling them. A godless moral system allows people to argue about it. A godful one allows the response of “did you create the universe, bub?” If you wish, in our secular political system the Constitution is god. But we can and have changed it without hiding the fact, and can and have changed what it means to us over the centuries. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/62 "2008-04-14T20:33:23Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] I understand exactly what you are getting at. I just don’t think it’s anything other than a desperate attempt to claim that most or all people will always believe in God. You are obviously one of those people who just can’t accept the idea that people can live perfectly happy, moral, satisfying lives without believing in some sort of God. [/QUOTE] I don’t think you get it. What is actually happening here is an overloading of the term “God.” Back on talk.atheism there was a guy who made the argument that gods exist because Augustus was considered to be a god; Augustus certainly existed; qed. But the fact that worship exists in no way means that the object of worship exists. Even if some sort of worship is built into many people, the elimination of the concept of the perfect God, arbiter of morality, might make people more critical of what they worship. ---
**Author:** ![SiXSwordS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/49beb7/32.png) [@SiXSwordS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiXSwordS)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/63 "2008-04-14T20:34:45Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] …Liberty in America. [/QUOTE] Interesting. In my own mind, I was considering the idea of Justice as a key element of culture. Using an analytic/ synthetic approach, Justice is not something that exists “out there.” There is no such thing, empirically, as Justice. It is incredibly important to a successful culture though. One society will likely disagree with the forms of Justice in another culture, but an inner consistency — even in laws that may be unjust — is necessary to build a culture of an appreciable size. I’m sure there is an almost natural connection between the ideas of Justice and Religion, but I think people more readily admit that Justice is a conceptual pursuit. I do not think people consider God to be a concept. Many people who do not believe in God will not even consider the concept of God to be worthwhile. I know Liberty and Justice are not synonymous, but I think you’re speaking in general terms. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/64 "2008-04-14T20:47:40Z")
I love my son. In many ways he is my “driving impulse” for doing things I might not do otherwise – such as prioritizing his wellbeing over mine. I call this “love.” And that’s exactly what it is. Nothing mystical about it. To a lesser degree I also try to help other human-beings in need as much and as often as I can. I call this “empathy.” And that’s exactly what it is. I could go on and list many of the things I do – or don’t – and I’m sure I can provide you with a perfectly logical reason for my actions that has nothing to do with Gods of any stripe. Of course, there are times when I get mad as hell and don’t act quite rationally. But that is easy to explain as well: I’m a Spaniard. That being said, [you might be right after all](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=434266&highlight=Javier+Solana). ~666 ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/65 "2008-04-14T20:51:34Z")
**Voyager** I am using an atheist bias in my descriptions. Implicit in my argument in this thread is that God is a human construct and as such exists and is as real as other abstractions such as ‘the state’ or ‘the economy’. The problem is that the meaning of God has lost all sense of a normative mainstream conceptualization, thus the, “I believe in one less God than you.”, argument. [QUOTE=SiXSwordS] Interesting. In my own mind, I was considering the idea of Justice as a key element of culture. Using an analytic/ synthetic approach, Justice is not something that exists “out there.” There is no such thing, empirically, as Justice. [/quote] Well there is an argument that the ancients didn’t believe their Gods were literal people either. Or that they were real people only to uneducated dirt farmers. If you act unjustly the Goddess of Justice will cease to favor you. That sort of thing. It was understood that the Gods as they represented these universal abstract concepts were in regular conflict, so you picked which deity you chose as your patron, or your tribe did so. The symbolic act of chopping off the head of the enemy’s Idol showed that your God had defeated theirs as represented by your victory. Just as Sam Waterston’s character can feel that he has struck a victory for Justice when he wins on ‘Law and Order’. > [@](#): > > It is incredibly important to a successful culture though. One society will likely disagree with the forms of Justice in another culture, but an inner consistency — even in laws that may be unjust — is necessary to build a culture of an appreciable size. Yes, that is clear. > [@](#): > > I’m sure there is an almost natural connection between the ideas of Justice and Religion, but I think people more readily admit that Justice is a conceptual pursuit. I do not think people consider God to be a concept. Many people who do not believe in God will not even consider the concept of God to be worthwhile. Well in a way you can say that the way we view ideologies in a secular culture is a form of polytheistic paganism. No centralizing Godhead, but individual universalized concepts that hold implicit power over our lives. > [@](#): > > I know Liberty and Justice are not synonymous, but I think you’re speaking in general terms. Yes, it appears that you understood what I was getting at. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/66 "2008-04-14T21:12:54Z")
[QUOTE=Voyager] Outliers in their moral education or their genetic moral sense? I think clearly the latter. Stalin went to seminary, after all, and it didn’t seem to make him think about what he was doing. [/quote] I don’t think that makes it clear that he didn’t think about it. Maybe he thought about it and clearly rejected it. That is possible to do, but reacting against something is still being influenced by it. That’s why people will call ‘Satanism’ a twisted form of Christianity, which is symbolized quite well by the ‘Black Mass’, which is a ritual perversion of the sacrament. > [@](#): > > On the other hand, most people would be reasonably moral without any formal moral education at all, at least not more than is automatically provided by parents. Right, I never said anything about formal. But parental moral education is education nonetheless. > [@](#): > > I agree that religion is part of culture, but so is secularism. I don’t think you can distinguish them that easily. But I disagree that something will always replace God, unless you consider social pressure a form of god. We have lots of social pressures, like etiquette, that have nothing to do with god and yet are followed as strongly as religious commands, if not more so. I don’t view secularism as being in opposition to religion, it’s just a division of responsibilities IMO. Religion itself is not a distinct entity. There are multiple religions, but not a monolithic entity called, ‘religion’. As a concept it contains certain universalized characteristics, but there is no corpus of people called, ‘religion’. This holds true for secularism too. Turning these categories into identifiers of groups of people is a mistake IMO because it turns secularism into a religion with doctrines. > [@](#): > > Religion, outside of theocracies, isn’t so monolithic either. Unitarians and Baptists are pretty far apart. Is the culture of a region dominated by one or the other a function of the tenets of the church, or are the tenets a function of the society. Since hardly anyone follows the Bible strictly any more, and God has not seen fit to pronounce his opinion on our morals lately, and because religious leaders are as much a prisoner of their culture as anyone else, I think there is a feedback loop between religion and culture. Two examples - the Mormon church changed its view on polygamy based on the culture, and many Southern churches changed their views on slavery based on the outcome of the Civil War. Well there are universals amongst Christian faith. Now for any of the peanut gallery I am not going to ‘prove’ that there are universals (in that I mean universal to Christians) for it is a different debate. Unitarians are not a form of Christians, you can be Muslim or a Buddhist and be a Unitarian, in theory anyway. I’d agree with you that there is a feedback loop between religion and culture. That’s a great way to describe it. Your example of Mormonism is a great one, but the slavery example isn’t as good because it was never religiously proscribed. At least not that I am aware of. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/67 "2008-04-14T21:35:11Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] Well there are universals amongst Christian faith. Now for any of the peanut gallery I am not going to ‘prove’ that there are universals (in that I mean universal to Christians) for it is a different debate. [/QUOTE] Then why did you bring it up ? It’s not a settled point. You do seem fond of simply refusing to argue with people. ---
**Author:** ![SiXSwordS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/49beb7/32.png) [@SiXSwordS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiXSwordS)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/68 "2008-04-14T21:37:03Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] [T]he slavery example isn’t as good because it was never religiously proscribed. At least not that I am aware of. [/QUOTE] Slavery was [defended based on biblical verse](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mdrunknoah2.html) though. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/69 "2008-04-14T21:40:30Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] Then why did you bring it up ? It’s not a settled point. [/quote] Because in arguments one discusses many concepts that can be tangentalized. This one is relevant, though moving into the tangent is not. Is this concept really that difficult for you to grasp? > [@](#): > > You do seem fond of simply refusing to argue with people. It’s an useful way to innoculate oneself against people who have no desire to debate the topic as presented and want to turn every debate into their own little private piquefest. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/70 "2008-04-14T21:42:23Z")
[QUOTE=SiXSwordS] Slavery was [defended based on biblical verse](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mdrunknoah2.html) though. [/QUOTE] interesting topic, but too much of a digression from the point. Start a thread if you like, I’ll check it out, but don’t want to hijack this one. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/71 "2008-04-14T22:46:05Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] Right, I never said anything about formal. But parental moral education is education nonetheless. [/quote] It is going to be hard to find someone not influenced by parental education - or culture. > [@](#): > > Well there are universals amongst Christian faith. Now for any of the peanut gallery I am not going to ‘prove’ that there are universals (in that I mean universal to Christians) for it is a different debate. Unitarians are not a form of Christians, you can be Muslim or a Buddhist and be a Unitarian, in theory anyway. I’d agree with you that there is a feedback loop between religion and culture. That’s a great way to describe it. Your example of Mormonism is a great one, but the slavery example isn’t as good because it was never religiously proscribed. At least not that I am aware of. I’ve never been a Christian, and in fact grew up in a place where Christians were the minority - at least in my classes and among my friends. I doubt that my morality was that far from the standard. I’m curious what you consider to be Christian universals. There do indeed seem to be a set of human universals, independent of religion; I believe Dennet listed them in his book. As for slavery, I doubt you’d find too many if any churches in the US today who would dispute the notion that God is against slavery. Sometime between 1865 and today the pro-slavery churches became anti-slavery churches, which had to be from cultural pressure. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/72 "2008-04-14T22:57:26Z")
[QUOTE=Voyager] It is going to be hard to find someone not influenced by parental education - or culture. [/quote] That’s the point of arguing that religion is intrinsic to culture. > [@](#): > > I’ve never been a Christian, and in fact grew up in a place where Christians were the minority - at least in my classes and among my friends. I doubt that my morality was that far from the standard. I’m curious what you consider to be Christian universals. There do indeed seem to be a set of human universals, independent of religion; I believe Dennet listed them in his book. If I recall you are ethnically Jewish no? You would have gained Jewish values from that upbringing. I can’t go into the Christian universals here otherwise I’ll have a horde of flies asking me to prove it, and that would require its own thread. > [@](#): > > As for slavery, I doubt you’d find too many if any churches in the US today who would dispute the notion that God is against slavery. Sometime between 1865 and today the pro-slavery churches became anti-slavery churches, which had to be from cultural pressure. Right, obviously, but part of that cultural pressure came from co-religionists. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/73 "2008-04-14T23:02:25Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] That’s the point of arguing that religion is intrinsic to culture. If I recall you are ethnically Jewish no? You would have gained Jewish values from that upbringing. I can’t go into the Christian universals here otherwise I’ll have a horde of flies asking me to prove it, and that would require its own thread. [/QUOTE] Supposing, just for the sake of argument, that there were _no_ Universal christian values - how would that effect your argument? Supposing that a culture is exposed to more than one religion - do _any_ two religions share intrinsic values? If not, wouldn’t “religion” being intrisnic to the culture impart no consistent set of values? ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/74 "2008-04-14T23:08:35Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] …Well there are universals amongst Christian faith. Now for any of the peanut gallery I am not going to ‘prove’ that there are universals (in that I mean universal to Christians) for it is a different debate. [/QUOTE] Christian universals? Surely you jest, for you’ve had the better part of 2,000 years to put forth some sort of ecumenical dogma that would suit all your followers – and at least have some sort of consistent narrative for those of us in the peanut gallery. Instead all you’ve done is splinter like dry-wood into who knows how many sects. And that’s not even taking into account “personal gods.” Please don’t pee on my leg and tell it’s raining. Fuck, you’re still arguing amongst yourselves who’s a “real Christian and who’s not.” :rolleyes: Hard to make sense out of nonsense. No matter which thread it’s in… ---
**Author:** ![Anomalous\_Reading](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b3f665/32.png) [@Anomalous\_Reading](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anomalous_Reading)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/75 "2008-04-14T23:46:10Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] I don’t know that it would arise without training. A feral person is just as likely to kill their own species over competition regarding a needed resource as any animal. I simply think that for the feral the notion of morality is irrelevant. [/QUOTE] It would be remarkably novel to have a surviving feral child, no? I mean… they’d have to get to a certain age and then lose contact… or be raised by say… chimps. Either way a surviving child is in a social setting. And there are certain things I think are default settings in the human mind. Given a single generation I think SOME language would arise, as would simple morality, spirituality… and I’m sure there are others. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/76 "2008-04-15T00:07:33Z")
[QUOTE=Anomalous Reading] And there are certain things I think are default settings in the human mind. Given a single generation I think SOME language would arise, as would simple morality, **spirituality** … and I’m sure there are others. [/QUOTE] (emphasis mine) - don’t the existence of lifelong atheists _explicitly_ disprove this, as a universal statement? ---
**Author:** ![Eben](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a8b319/32.png) [@Eben](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eben)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/77 "2008-04-15T00:34:14Z")
[QUOTE=begbert2] (emphasis mine) - don’t the existence of lifelong atheists _explicitly_ disprove this, as a universal statement? [/QUOTE] No more than blind people disprove sight. Which is to say, yes it’s not universal but that doesn’t make the general statement untrue. -Eben ---
**Author:** ![Anomalous\_Reading](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b3f665/32.png) [@Anomalous\_Reading](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anomalous_Reading)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/78 "2008-04-15T00:43:17Z")
[QUOTE=begbert2] (emphasis mine) - don’t the existence of lifelong atheists _explicitly_ disprove this, as a universal statement? [/QUOTE] Maybe. But I should elaborate. (Don’t most kids have a supernatural fascination? Magic and the like?) We’re intuitive creatures. Generally those intuitions serve us really very well. Even so, it’s hard not to slip into some superstitious thought at some point. A hot deck. A hot seat. Hot dice. Some routine that if we don’t do it, things don’t feel quite right. Whatever. If nothing else, we all personify stuff every day. A computer, a car, a plastic fork that snaps just as you are about to take your first bite - we personify stuff. Add in that we just KNOW that things have causes and well… sometimes the physics/reasoning/dynamics are too hard to keep straight, or think about, or we just don’t _get_ “it.” But we need a cause. A reason why justice seems to exist. A reason we have this innate knowledge of right and wrong. I don’t think atheism is the default setting for people. In fact, I’d submit it’s sometimes like swimming against the current. Then for jollies, let me say that even reasonably respectable and remarkable people have the occasional bout with mental health. And how to explain that? Spirits? Did they see something real? Was that REALLY Jesus?? In short, it’s easier to end up a theist than an atheist, imo. But I really prefer being an atheist. A LOT. (Short answer: We find intent and purpose where there is none.) ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/79 "2008-04-15T00:45:48Z")
[QUOTE=Eben] No more than blind people disprove sight. Which is to say, yes it’s not universal but that doesn’t make the general statement untrue. -Eben [/QUOTE] Sure; you just want to watch out for universals creeping in where they’re unjustified. Now, keeping in mind that a need for spiritualism is definitely not universal, and noting that many people are exposed to religion at an early age, or even from their own parents…is there any reason to believe that were have a widespread need for spiritualism _beyond_ that with is trained into many of us from an early age? Occam’s razor, and all that. We know that there’s a lot of religion in our child-rearing and culture(though I dispute that religion is central to _all_ culture); why invent a species-wide inclination to explain the prevalence of religion when those other known factors already do a good job of explaining it on their own? Edit - having seen **Anomalous Reading** ’s post, I can _totally_ get behind it - we don’t necessarily have an inborn _need_ for religion, but we sure as heck have a habit of misattributing things and guessing wrong about stuff. _Definitely._ ---
**Author:** ![Eben](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a8b319/32.png) [@Eben](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eben)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916/80 "2008-04-15T01:00:14Z")
[QUOTE=begbert2] Sure; you just want to watch out for universals creeping in where they’re unjustified. [/QUOTE] Well, I _am_ a philosopher. 😃 I also agree with **Anomalous Reading**. So does God make sense? In the sense of people believing in God as they demonstrably do, yes. In the sense of them continuing to believe after some period of education, no. -Eben [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-god-make-sense/444916.md?page=5)