# Even if God exists, it is not important whether you believe in God or not **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 3, 2009, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-if-god-exists-it-is-not-important-whether-you-believe-in-god-or-not/484190 "2009-02-03T01:14:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![not\_alice](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/not_alice/32/7283_2.png) [@not\_alice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/not_alice)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2009, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-if-god-exists-it-is-not-important-whether-you-believe-in-god-or-not/484190/101 "2009-02-06T02:30:37Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > It’s just the Cafeterian atheism I find odd. ‘I don’t believe in the Christian God, but if he exists then he’s a bastard.’ But then it could equally be said that all theism, including atheism, is a Cafeterian Zen (to use your term). “I don’t have time to find the real truth of things, but luckily there is this book here that purports to tell me and that is good enough for me” ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2009, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-if-god-exists-it-is-not-important-whether-you-believe-in-god-or-not/484190/102 "2009-02-06T02:36:04Z")
> [@not\_alice](#): > > But then it could equally be said that all theism, including atheism, is a Cafeterian Zen (to use your term). “I don’t have time to find the real truth of things, but luckily there is this book here that purports to tell me and that is good enough for me” Oh because Zen is the real truth and so everything else is just some bargain basement version? Zen is just Cafeterian Tao. ;p ---
**Author:** ![not\_alice](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/not_alice/32/7283_2.png) [@not\_alice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/not_alice)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2009, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-if-god-exists-it-is-not-important-whether-you-believe-in-god-or-not/484190/103 "2009-02-06T02:47:04Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > The newspaper doesn’t prove that the things it describes are unjust just because it says they are unjust. But Zen woudl say just/unjust are only words like everything else. There is no reason for things to be so labeled, that they are is only of convenience and due to the exceptions and consequences doesn’t work all that well anyway. None of this would depend on a deity, multiple deities or no deities. It just is. Words is all, nothing more. Certainly whether something is “just” to me or not is not related to the idea of existence of a deity or not. I think I can get along as well as anyone else on the quality of being “just” just fine (no pun intended). > [@](#): > > Why is raping children unjust? What makes it unjust? Because most of us agree that it is, and generally but not always we cede power to those who agree. But it is relative, not evidence for or against a god. Could be a good way divide “us” from “them” which theistic religions seem to be excellent at devising tools for though. > [@](#): > > Why shouldn’t I proliferate my seed into as many 14 year old girls as I can? Be my guest, but the consequences that keep you from doing it are wholly on this earth and not due to your religious beliefs, I would venture to bet. > [@](#): > > Is it unjust to have your house demolished by a hurricane? Is it unjust to be eaten by another species while your flesh wraps a piece of rice and is bound by seaweed? My understanding of “just” in this sense is if one act perpetrated transitively by one actor on another is the subject. And it is judged not by those actors but by third party observers in retrospect. Who is the perpetrating actor in your examples? God? Who are the third parties? Still just word games though. > [@](#): > > Sure any character in any story can have any characteristics you want them to have if you are given carte blanche to change essential premises. > > Emperor Palpatine was the messiah saving people from the evil rule of the Jedi who tortured Puppies and Fucked kittens! See how I just did that? I added something to the story, and now I expect you to debate the plot of Star Wars based on stuff I just wholly made up? Or what about the time that Palpatine saved Alderan from the rebel plot to murder its people and use Alderan as a forward base? > > Or how about in Anna Karrenina when someone date raped her after slipping some Mickeys into her drink in a rave in St. Petersburg (Florida)? > > If you’re going to look at it from a literary standpoint you can’t just eliminate accepted premises in order to make a rhetorical point about the character you’re trying to judge. But there is no set of accepted premises regarding God. Each group of believers has there own set, and they are not so much premises as assertions. They overlap somewhat, but not enough to keep hundreds if not thousands of groups to splinter off regularly. Which is why one should question if any of the premises or assiertions apply at all. And if they don’t apply, what are you left with but either no god at all, or a god that hasn’t revealed him/her/itself, or many gods not yet revealed, or some other level of abstraction that describes what one yearns to have described. ---
**Author:** ![not\_alice](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/not_alice/32/7283_2.png) [@not\_alice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/not_alice)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2009, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-if-god-exists-it-is-not-important-whether-you-believe-in-god-or-not/484190/104 "2009-02-06T02:50:47Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Oh because Zen is the real truth and so everything else is just some bargain basement version? hey if you don’t want people to use your clever rhetoric, then don’t share. Like Rabbi Hillel said upthread, treat people who you want to be treated. > [@](#): > > Zen is just Cafeterian Tao. ;p Sure, I mentioned something similar in my first mention of Zen in this thread - what ties them together is that they both reject the use of language to describe them. There is a lineage connection, so what? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2009, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-if-god-exists-it-is-not-important-whether-you-believe-in-god-or-not/484190/105 "2009-02-06T02:51:27Z")
**not\_alice** Well then I guess I can’t really accept the premise here, because there is an implicit assumption in the question that if God exists then he is impersonal. Maybe there is a God maybe there isn’t, maybe God is a personal God, maybe he isn’t. As for the ‘just words’ stuff, yeah, I get it I don’t go in for Zen for that reason. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2009, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-if-god-exists-it-is-not-important-whether-you-believe-in-god-or-not/484190/106 "2009-02-06T02:55:28Z")
> [@not\_alice](#): > > hey if you don’t want people to use your clever rhetoric, then don’t share. Like Rabbi Hillel said upthread, treat people who you want to be treated. I did actually. I didn’t say not to use my clever rhetoric, I just threw it back at you when you tossed the ball to me. Thing is you didn’t really respond to what I was saying. The bit about Zen was a fun non-sequitur that I chose to follow, but not actually a response to what I was saying. > [@](#): > > Sure, I mentioned something similar in my first mention of Zen in this thread - what ties them together is that they both reject the use of language to describe them. There is a lineage connection, so what? I am not rejecting the use of language, I am asking for the basis that one justifies ones views. Saying that God is ‘evil’ is as silly as saying a Hurricane is ‘evil’. The Judeo-Christian God, if being viewed from a purely literary standpoint cannot be evil, as the terms Good and Evil are defined by their relationship to God. God is not defined by his relationship to Good and Evil. God is the a priori basis for judgement. So the analogy wouldn’t be that God is incapable of relating to us, as we are incapable of relating to ants. It’s the exact opposite of that, we are incapable of understanding God’s motives, just as an ant is incapable of understanding ours. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2009, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-if-god-exists-it-is-not-important-whether-you-believe-in-god-or-not/484190/107 "2009-02-06T03:38:09Z")
> [@not\_alice](#): > > There is a difference between the deed doers not recognizing it, and the God not keeping score. > > To me, solely on the evidence presented here, the Rabbi Hillel anecdote is the latter, the NT quote is the former. Lost me. Care to explain. ---
**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:** [February 6, 2009, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-if-god-exists-it-is-not-important-whether-you-believe-in-god-or-not/484190/108 "2009-02-06T17:01:49Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Nah, it doesn’t even fly as literary critique. Because it’s not taking the whole thing into account. It eliminates free-will and salvation from the critique. That’s like talking about Palpatine but eliminating the Sith Lord part. You’re taking essential characteristics of the character, throwing them out the window so you can make a value judgment without having to think about those things. > > As for the reading a newspaper thing, that’s just a non-sequitur. The newspaper doesn’t prove that the things it describes are unjust just because it says they are unjust. Why is raping children unjust? What makes it unjust? Why shouldn’t I proliferate my seed into as many 14 year old girls as I can? I know why from the sociological perspectives, but the character of God is NOT A HUMAN BEING, so from a literary perspective he is not bound by human moral constraints. > > Is it unjust to have your house demolished by a hurricane? Is it unjust to be eaten by another species while your flesh wraps a piece of rice and is bound by seaweed? > > Sure any character in any story can have any characteristics you want them to have if you are given carte blanche to change essential premises. > > Emperor Palpatine was the messiah saving people from the evil rule of the Jedi who tortured Puppies and Fucked kittens! See how I just did that? I added something to the story, and now I expect you to debate the plot of Star Wars based on stuff I just wholly made up? Or what about the time that Palpatine saved Alderan from the rebel plot to murder its people and use Alderan as a forward base? > > Or how about in Anna Karrenina when someone date raped her after slipping some Mickeys into her drink in a rave in St. Petersburg (Florida)? > > If you’re going to look at it from a literary standpoint you can’t just eliminate accepted premises in order to make a rhetorical point about the character you’re trying to judge. Taking into account free will and salvation, [the Christian] God is a bastard, because he’s railroaded us into making decisions based on incomplete information and will happily shovel us into a torturous burning hell (or, with the _best_ interpretaion, annihilate us) if we don’t happen to blindly stumble down the nrrow path that will allow us to escape the punishments he’s laid out for us. Or did I just make up hell and final judgement? Is that non-canonical? Which is not to say that torturing us on earth is okay even if he does give us all ivory palaces in heaven later to pacify us (if he doesn’t damn us, that is) - a person who is not a bastard does not use the promise of later rewards as an excuse to act like a bastard in the meantime. And the God of the old testament quite definitely acts like a bastard, rather a lot. Non-bastards don’t do that even if there _is_ free will and eventual salvation in play. So unless there is some “premise” I’m missing which says “when you talk about god you have to ignore everything he does except the good bits” :rolleyes: then it’s perfectly reasonable to determine that the character of God as described by the bible and most (all?) sects of Christianity is a bastard of the highest order. By the way, were you aware that the word “unjust” has a definition? Regardless, the point wasn’t that the world is “unjust”, the point is that it is, in places, _a really crappy place_. Whether or not it’s “just” to beat your children regularly without reason, or whether it’s “just” to stand at the sidelines nodding happily as they beat the crap out of each other, if this is your parenting style you are a crappy steward of your children. Even if you do pick your favorites among them at the end of the day and give them candy. ---
**Author:** ![wsbenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b38774/32.png) [@wsbenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wsbenge)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2009, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-if-god-exists-it-is-not-important-whether-you-believe-in-god-or-not/484190/109 "2009-02-07T02:40:33Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Taking into account free will and salvation, [the Christian] God is a bastard, because he’s railroaded us into making decisions based on incomplete information and will happily shovel us into a torturous burning hell (or, with the _best_ interpretaion, annihilate us) if we don’t happen to blindly stumble down the nrrow path that will allow us to escape the punishments he’s laid out for us. Heavy on the incomplete information, and double talk. The famous “Christian exclusion” clause … “I am the way, and the truth, and the life … no one comes to the Father but my me” is the ultimate in salvation by behavior based on intent. Not Christianity. Christ is, after all, King of the Jews, and remains so. It doesn’t matter whether one believes in God, or not. Each of us has a firm understanding of what we think is correct behavior … and can validly be held accountable, based upon that. Classic major religions give a firm foundation for moral evaluation. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2009, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-if-god-exists-it-is-not-important-whether-you-believe-in-god-or-not/484190/110 "2009-02-07T03:11:31Z")
> [@wsbenge](#): > > Heavy on the incomplete information, and double talk. The famous “Christian exclusion” clause … “I am the way, and the truth, and the life … no one comes to the Father but my me” is the ultimate in salvation by behavior based on intent. Not Christianity. Christ is, after all, King of the Jews, and remains so. > > It doesn’t matter whether one believes in God, or not. Each of us has a firm understanding of what we think is correct behavior … and can validly be held accountable, based upon that. > > Classic major religions give a firm foundation for moral evaluation. Actually the Golden Rule does. ---
**Author:** ![wsbenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b38774/32.png) [@wsbenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wsbenge)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2009, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-if-god-exists-it-is-not-important-whether-you-believe-in-god-or-not/484190/111 "2009-02-07T05:40:43Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > Actually the Golden Rule does. You are correct. It just has to be morality based on one’s own convictions. Actually, I have had the Golden Rule shoved down my throat a few times. People don’t actually want to be treated the way I would rather be treated. They want to be treated the way they themselves would prefer to be treated, but I felt was … wrong. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-if-god-exists-it-is-not-important-whether-you-believe-in-god-or-not/484190.md?page=5)