Just wondering…
When does one stop to think of God?
Always been the philosophical type, I have looked around at people and came to this “equation” about people’s relationship with God.
It’s either:
a) The happier and easier one’s life = less thought and belief in God; the sadder and harder one’s life = more thought and belief in God.
b) The happier, easier one’s life = more thought and belief in God; sadder, harder one’s life = less thought and belief in God.
What do you think?
I think “or” is one of the most subtly powerful words in the language because of the nature of how it structures thought.
Which is to say that, in this instance, I think it’s a false dilemma.
I disagree; I don’t think that one’s level of happiness has a causal relationship with one’s belief in God… BUT
If it did I think that unhappiness would cause one to stray away from popular theism.
I don’t have much of an opinion on what, exactly, causes one to believe in some deity. I think it is mostly an intensely personal experience that is impossible to correctly share, and relgions have a definative answer for that.
This is an ancillary topic to what I’ll be covering in my Spiritual Suffering thread. After much prayer, meditation, and study, I have learned that God is not the source of happiness. He is the Source of Goodness, and Goodness makes some people miserable and some others happy. Thus, God, having granted us the unalienable right to pursue our own happiness in our own way, allows us to be happy even in our sins.
You can reject God and be happy or accept God and be happy. Hell is not hell because people there aren’t happy. They are happy; that’s why they chose hell. Hell is hell because there is no Goodness there.
I think I need to extrapolate a little on Libertarians obvious acumen regarding Happiness and Goodness.
I could not have said it any better. And I agree there is some sort of subservient emotion happening whilst first coming to the understanding that God has granted us the unalienable right to pursue our own happiness in our own way, and allows us to be happy even in our own sins. So free will and complete autonomy to make thine own decisions. Decisions regarding when to love God for what he has given or to hate God for what one has not received. Human reason and faith dictates when we ignore God for our own misfortunes, and when we embrass God for what we have.
‘People of Faith’ true faith that is, don’t question when God is with them or not. To them God is always there. To illustrate this great Post, look at this http://footstep.org/footstep.htm. It is a classic, wonderfull example of what this post may be saying.
I think it all depends on the person. Different people react differently to situations.
Some people when in a happy situation don’t feel the need for help or enlightenment. They are happy now, so what do they need God for?
Others (like myself) like giving what is due to those who they see as facilitating that happiness.