A fair observation. Perhaps I’m not really sure what I’m trying to say and I’m bouncing ideas off of other smart people. Clearly some people do not like this approach, however.
And how does that make you feel?..
I feel pumped, to be quite honest. And you?
It is the obligation of anyone who says they believe in God to define what God they believe in. The definitions I’ve seen range from the very specific (the inerrant Bible type) to the unfalsifiable (God created the universe and then disappeared) to the overloading of accepted terms like Life and the Universe and Love by calling them God.
As an atheist the only ones that annoy me are the ones which want to control my sex life without any definition at all except that God wants us to do whatever his self-proclaimed representative on earth wants us to do. Deists and pantheists don’t annoy me because they in general aren’t controlling.
The approach of bouncing ideas off of other people is a good one, so it’s a shame you haven’t tried it.
When you bounce ideas off of others, you do so in order to change your mind. Your goal in bouncing ideas off of others is to take their advice. Since you aren’t taking advice, it means you are simply rambling aimlessly with no meaning and no value. All the time. 100% of your posts in this thread are meaningless rambling.
I believe in God, but definitely not the kind of bible-God I grew up with. One might well ask how I would even know about God if it weren’t for the religion I grew up with and that would be a fair question. I know it’s woo to some of you, but I definitely feel that God to me is a life-force, the creative force behind everything, good or bad, that we experience. Some would say if God is a mere life force, then you don’t need the word god, which I tend to agree with. I also don’t see how it does any harm redefining god for myself if it helps me make sense of the world. That’s why I see a lot of merit in the God = Life hypothesis; I know it doesn’t match up perfectly, but it matches up good enough for my intents and purposes.
My purpose here is not to convert anybody. I don’t really care that much what anybody believes so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else and it gets them through the night. What annoys me are those who see no merit in what I have proposed, which is fine, but then go on to tell me how fucked up my interpretation is. The things is, no one has to agree with it. There’s nothing wrong with saying, I’d never considered that our universe rides on the back of a turtle, but great if that works for you. And why a turtle anyway? Because it moves slowly and deliberately? I AM interested in the thought process and historical evolution that goes into various belief systems, but it’s not my place to mock it. That would be about as kind as knocking Republicans for electing a dotard for a President. Politics and religion are just two subjects where the attacks get extremely vicious for no particular reason. maybe it’s because we can’t understand why other people don’t think the way we do.
As for atheism, I like it. Some of the most knowledgable people I know about religion are atheists. I studied a little about existentialism back in University and I found it fascinating. I like considering the absurdity of life while at the same time marvelling at the incredible beauty of it. I guess you could say my own philosophy is still evolving, which makes it hard sometimes to specify exactly which definitions I’m working with. I’m still thinking things through, and that’s what I have proudly on display here.
You start off well and you end with an insult. What makes you think I’m not listening to what others have to say? I may not agree with it, but at least I’m listening. I’ve got the balls to ask some big questions. One of the pieces of advice that comes through loud and clear is define your terms. So I did that. Doesn’t really clear up the confusion though, does it? Maybe it’s because I’m not really sure what I think. I’m still thinking. “100% of [my] posts are meaningless rambling” is pretty harsh and does not reflect my experience at all. I think you’ve got to get over your all-or-nothing thinking, David, and realize there is more than way to approach a question.
I think you make a good point here. You have the word live and the word alive, both derived from life, one a verb and one an adjective, and both (to me) suggesting a certain kind of energy. If God is a life force, a certain kind of energy, then the verb part makes a lot of sense to me.
You shouldn’t apologize for learning about God that way. The gods in religions either came from people having a religious experience, and writing it down, or from people creating a god for purposes of personal power. (If a real god contacted anyone, he did a piss poor job of providing convincing evidence of his godliness.) So your experience is at least as reliable as the standard one.
Of course without the social construct of a god you might have thought it something else.
Sometimes I think of God as more of a rationalization than anything else. Something must have created the universe, something must happen to us after we die, something must be responsible for creating the miracle of life.
Of course, something or someone is not really necessary at all; the universe could have just always existed, or the Big Bang could have happened spontaneously, like a volcano or a hurricane; we could become worm’s meat or ashes after we die; sperms and eggs just know what to do when they come together, much like seeds know when to sprout in the springtime. No God is necessary.
However, if one wishes to credit some unseen deity like the way we credit Santa with the presents on Christmas morning, what harm does it do? Maybe it’s all a big self-deception, but at least it’s a self-deception that makes you part of a big club of “believers.” As long as these club-members aren’t hellbent on death and destruction of nonbelievers, then what harm is there? Unfortunately, there ARE those who are hellbent on the death and destruction of nonbelievers, and the tend to give a bad name to all religious people.
Where am I going with this? I’m not really sure. I think it has something to do with the religious impulse toward storytelling being a universal impulse which exists in thousands of cultures in the history of this planet and thereby being a possible force for good in the world. At least on the mythological level.
I think some of us are built to believe this, and some are not. I have no problem with an uncreated universe and being just dead after you die, but I realize this disturbs a lot of people.
That’s just the problem. Some people - maybe many - make the unevidenced leap from “something must have created the universe” to “that something must have inspired my favorite holy book.” And it is not just killing unbelievers - it is also limiting the freedom of believers. Plus an inspired set of rules does not let for increasingly sophisticated morality. Believers who are moral get around this by reinterpreting some scriptures and ignoring others - or having wars about it.
So it isn’t god which is the problem - it is the idea of a personal god who makes rules.
I mean, shit, you just answered your own question!
There is no such thing as an innocent lie you tell yourself. Because when you lie to yourself, you are poisoning your epistemology. You are damaging the tool you use to know things. You are teaching yourself to think the wrong ways. You are accepting that others can think the wrong way. And the consequence of that…
One of my favorite quotes, by Matt Dillahunty: “If the president said he spoke to god through a hairdryer, we’d think he’s crazy. I think removing the hairdryer doesn’t improve things.”
Well, can you imagine voting for a president who believes in Santa Claus? Can you imagine living in a society where most people wouldn’t vote for a president who didn’t believe in Santa Claus, and where “the president thinks Santa’s favorite cookies are ginger snaps” is a real scandal? That’s basically the country you live in. Where belief in irrational, borderline insane fantasies is not only accepted, but expected and rewarded.
And you ask what the harm is in self-deception.
You seem to get that what you believe is nonsense. And yet you insist on believing it anyways. What other absurdities can we make you believe simply because you like believing them?
Correction: this is a Sam Harris quote.
“The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.”
But the point still stands. You seem to get that what you believe isn’t true. But then you turn around and say, “but believing it makes me feel good”. It’s belief in belief. Consider reading the “fake beliefs” sequence, particularly the Belief in Belief article.
I dunno. That Donald Trump will bring peace to the two Koreas?
Okay, now do you see how this belief could get you into big fucking trouble if enough people believed it and acted on that belief? Because the dirty little secret about belief in belief is that people will not infrequently act on belief in belief, even though they know full well that belief isn’t reasonable.
Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq comes to mind.
So you get my point that belief in belief can be quite harmful, right?
I do. I think it largely depends on what the belief is though. I can’t see too many ways that a belief in Santa Claus causes too much harm. You’ve heard of the temporary suspension of disbelief? It’s what allows us to believe there’s a wise old Jedi named Yoda that lives in the planet Dahobah while we’re watching a Moviefilm. It’s what allows us to believe in an advanced society in Wakanda that is obscured by mountain and rainforest. We KNOW these things don’t really exist, but believing in them temporarily (or believing in the ideal they represent) is absolutely essential to storytelling.
Convincing the bulk of the American population that WMD’s in Iraq were real was essential to the war effort. Unfortunately, the casualties that came from that lie were no fiction.
First and foremost: you’ve broken some part of the apparatus you use to evaluate whether or not something is true in order to accept a belief. You may not have a conscious understanding of what you’ve broken, but you are now more susceptible to believe false things and disbelieve true things.
Have you heard of “crank magnetism”? Basically, people who believe one conspiracy theory tend to believe in multiple conspiracy theories. If you meet someone who believes that 9/11 was an inside job, they are disproportionately likely to believe in conspiracies surrounding JFK, or vaccines, or HIV. The reason for this? Simple - many of these theories rely on the same failures in logic and reasoning. If you’ve got the thought processes that lead you to believe that 9/11 was a controlled demolition, you’ve almost certainly already got all the mental frameworks in place necessary to believe, well, <insert conspiracy theory here>.
Think for a moment about all the things you have to not just not know but actively ignore or rationalize in order to believe in Santa Claus. The north pole doesn’t have solid ice on it. We have satellite photos that should show a workshop but don’t. It’s impossible to visit every house on earth in one night. All documented cases of “christmas presents” have come from normal people giving gifts. And so on and so forth. What does this do to your brain? Either you learn that doublethink and constant cognitive dissonance is fine, at which point you can just believe whatever you want, or you learn to rationalize away true things in an incredibly efficient manner, at which point you can also just believe whatever you want.
And if the things you believe are incredibly harmful? Well, maybe you’d rather believe they weren’t. Maybe you’d rather believe you’re one of the good guys. See also: John Bolton, who not only hasn’t learned his lesson from Iraq, but clearly wants to make the same mistake in Iran.
…But you don’t actually come away from it believing that these people exist. At no point while watching Black Panther did I think, “Yep, Wakanda is a real place”. Temporary suspension of disbelief is very much a separate topic of discussion from things we actually believe.
To get back to the “God = Life” discussion (stop groaning everybody!) -
If I’m inferring your meaning correctly, your current definition of “God” is some sort of life-force.
Out of curiosity, what’s a life-force? (Is is sentient? Is it eternal? Is it omnipresent? Is it invisible? Is it physical? Is it emotional? Is it a brony?)
You say it’s a “creative force”, and that it’s “behind our experiences”.
Were these clauses meant to be connected - is the creativity driving our experiences? Or was the “creative” part just a throwaway nod to the fact you’re using this force as a First Cause in addition to whatever else it does.
And what do you mean when you say it’s behind our experiences? For example, consider when I experience stubbing my toe - a moment of extreme pain. Are you crediting the life-force with causing the stub to happen (ie: controlling events), or for causing me to experience the pain (ie: being my brain)?
For the record I don’t think that gods generally help with the first cause thing, and I tend to assume that my brain handles job of reacting to stubbed toes, as is indicated by current medical knowledge. But that’s just me.
Before I can decide whether postulating about gods or life forces imparts any insight to me, I need to know precisely what sort of god or life forces are in question. After I know that, then I can say with confidence that they do nothing for me.