Is there a God (revisited)?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
83

Why is monotheism more advanced than polytheism? If the reduction of entities matters, clearly believing in no gods at all wins out. You’d think the best answer is the right number of gods, not the least.

There are many things about the Greek gods which are more reasonable than the Western Jewish/Christian/Islamic god. We don’t have the omni problem, since they are powerful but not omnipotent and omniscient. They never pretend to be nice, so we don’t have the problem of evil. They divide up the work nicely. What’s not to like?

84

Then your point seems to be that you cannot distinguish between science and engineering.

I know that every generation thinks that it’s the first one to discover sex, but, really, can you actually believe that, in the late 60’s, the late 60’s, we knew nothing?

85

To be fair Feynman even acknowledged that technology (physical manifestation) was a second order signifier of the word “science” (joining the technical definitions of 1. the method of discovery and 2. the corpus of work derived from such a method).

That said, tmarcl acknowledges that science doesn’t need to encompass the totality of everyday experience, he’s just pointing out that previously unimagined things are now a daily occurrence. The God invoked to explain how Muhammad described the sea wouldn’t fly these days due to the advent of the internet. At some point in the future we may have a far greater understanding of questions such as “What then does Science have to say about ensuring a lifelong, happy marriage that does NOT end in divorce?”… Which is a post conflating the scientific method and the body of data that results from using that method that you didn’t address to my knowledge. Even if such a question is not answerable by science (either as a result of the inadequacy of the question or the scientific method), that doesn’t mean that the question is answerable in any satisfactory way for the majority of people that seek an answer, nor does that validate answers based on dogma.

The best method we’ve discovered so far for alighting on the truth (or at least obtaining reliable results) is providing the evidence wherever possible, using logic to extrapolate from the available evidence and reserving judgement or making individual choices in areas beyond where the evidence takes us.

We no longer hold the precepts of Deuteronomy 22 that a good way to ensure a successful relationship that doesn’t end in divorce is ensuring one’s father keeps the bloodied nuptial sheets so that if the husband accuses one of infidelity in a fit of caprice, that one isn’t stoned by a gleeful community. Perhaps, in part, due to collectively realising that we are not excluded from a blissful existence in the garden of Eden due to the avarice of our matriarch. Nor that women bear the pain of childbirth as a result of that original sin (and according to Timothy’s first letter to the Epistle, that doing so is a prerequisite to salvation), but instead that we share a common (and recent on an evolutionary timescale) ancestor with other great apes.

86

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?

I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question—such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read?—not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had.—C. P. Snow

It’s a poor atom blaster that doesn’t point both ways.Isaac Asimov

87

Ha.

Paul’s first epistle to Timothy.

Onto the content of the post perhaps?

88

Omni- is, in many ways used, a meaningless prefix. We take it far too literally when it is attached to words meaning knowledge or power.

89

Ok, obviously the point I’m trying to make is working quite well in my brain, but not so well when it gets to the keyboard. I will do my best to spell this out as simply as possible, and see if I can make it clear.

I am well aware that humans have known for a very long time that if you stick boy bits into girl bits, occasionally a baby will result. I am well aware that this knowledge existed 2 millenia ago in the province of Judea. I am not in any way claiming that this is new knowledge, or that Catholics don’t have this knowledge, or that they never had this knowledge.

What my point was is that specifically regarding Mary, the mother of Jesus, Catholic dogma holds that 1) Jesus was not conceived by any man putting his boy bits into Mary’s girl bits, and 2) even after Jesus was born, she never had any boy bits anywhere near her girl bits. (I can get more graphic, if you need me to).

For the last two thousand years, Catholic dogma has asserted this. Protestants don’t necessarily believe this (given other scriptures which suggest Jesus had siblings), but Catholics do, because it is dogma.

Dogma doesn’t change just because there are more likely scenarios (for example, the aforementioned scriptures saying that Christ had siblings). It stays the same because religion claims to have the answers already.
Marc

90

George Washington was the first president of the United States. Refute.

91

“The Hindu religion does have a massive diversity of supernatural uber-beings, but they’re all manifestations of the supreme being, Brahman. Historically, this allowed many differing religions to be brought under the umbrella of Hinduism, promoting social cohesion.”

Yes, Brahman is Atman, and 5 Lions make Voltron. Hinduism was merely one example of polytheism. It may have a syncretic tradition that wraps up everything and nothing in a nice pot of curry, but there are many other polytheistic religions that do not, or did not, have anything resembling a unity of the gods.

And India is not a very good example of social cohesion. Lots of sectarian violence over there. Especially the disagreement about whether the prophet and god of Islam is to be subordinate to Brahman.

Tweaking your monotheism so that you can convert various polytheists like the Norse, Germans, Greeks, Celts (etc) is, as you put it, a public relations move, and has no bearing on the truth. Except perhaps to make it clear that you want followers more than you want fidelity. These kinds of moves are what makes for things like the Thirty Years War, and other spasms of violent actions against perceived heretics.

“Starting with polytheism is the wrong end of the wedge in a discussion like this (multiplying unexplained entities unnecessarily)”

Those entities are very specifically described by the believers, and play necessary roles in their understanding of the nature of the universe. The Greeks knew much about the actions and personalities of their gods, and how one should behave with regard to their various temperaments and vanities. Same with Ra, Thor, the Moche Decapitator, Quetzalcoatl, and so on. In fact, there were usually specific people claiming that they were related to these gods, and would be happy to sit you down for several hours while their priests spake forth upon the entire chain of descendants from God X to King Y.

What you have is some people claiming one entity exists, with a body of literature derived from older oral traditions backing it up, and other people claiming that multiple entities exist, with a body of literature derived from oral traditions backing it up. All of them are explained to about the same degree and upon the same types of evidence.

And what you want is to get the monotheists to stop acting like the existence of the universe=the existence of one god, when there is no evidence of that. To borrow from the intelligent design crowd for the nonce, if you found a watch, you would think there was a watchmaker. You would also, however, think there were miners, raw metal smiths and glass makers, fine-tool machiners, merchants, food suppliers, and so on.

Why not assume that creation involved an entire community of gods since there are vastly different known entities? We know that complex human-made things are almost never designed and produced by a single person, so why think the complex variety in the natural world could be produced by one being?

Even if you think the universe was divinely created, there is no reason at all to assume that there was only one divine creator.

And no evidence of a single universe anyway.

92

I would not be alive right now if there was no God. God gave me the will to live when I thought I could not go on.

93

Omni- is not a meaningless prefix at all. It’s a perfectly valid prefix when attached to words meaning knowledge or power. It’s just that omniscience and omnipotence are not words humanity can use to describe itself.

94

Or you gave yourself the will and are just attributing it to god.

That’s why this assertion and any subsequent discussion of it are so utterly meaningless as proof in any sense of the term.

95

I believe there is a Creator or a “Deity.” What has me convinced is listening to people who have had those “near death experiences” describe what they saw and, more to the point, “Who” they saw as well as the feelings of pure love that overwhelmed them at the time.

All of those people cannot be fabricating their experiences - not even for money - because I’ve had two people tell me their experiences which alligned with the stories told by those via the media (“I Survived…Beyond and Back,” etc.) and there was no money to be gained in their sharing their experiences with me.

96

If the word God means the first cause,that is one thing,but if It means a supreme being then I would like to have my question answered,(Who or what created the place for God to be)?

A being needs to be in a place, so place would come first, unless God was both being and place? The discriptions of God are varied, so to some God is a good father,but the writings that human’s have given it, doesn’t show a good father, but a monster, a human father would be put in jail if he/she acted like that towards it’s children.A good father doesn’t just expect the child believe he/she exists, but proves it every day. Belief isn’t fact, unless it can be proven? A good father doesn’t punish it’s children because they seek the truth,or know the difference between good and evil.

The belief in a God or gods all came from the human mind,so believing is a choice, not a proof.

97

A person need not be deliberately fabricating an “experience” for it to be a mental construct framed by popular culture and beliefs from society. It is entirely possible there is a different explanation for various effects that are only being given one interpretation.

98

Wow. A sample size of 2. Who parroted back what the media told them. I suspect that they were also both adult English-speaking American Christians.

You seem to be exceptionally gullible and have a poor grasp of causation. Could it be possible that those people saw the same media stories you did, and these stories influenced the content of their near-death experiences?

Perhaps similarity of content in near-death experiences reflects the similarity of the perceptual and emotional systems of human brains undergoing a particular kind of stress.

And what does money have to do with it? People share experiences all the time without getting paid to. It’s what people do. How many times have you had to pay someone to share their experiences with you? Most people crave attention, but most people can’t charge for it. You’ve got a bunch of people right here sharing experiences and knowledge with you without getting paid.

In fact, I myself have experienced on far more than two occasions, people telling me of the wonderful beings that they saw and the pure love they experienced, that were very similar to media reports, and not at all for any financial gain, during Grateful Dead concerts. So many times. So very annoying.

Coincidentally, they also could not convert me. Nor could the Phish fans. Or the Twihards. Sox fans (either of them). Trekkies or Trekkers, can’t remember which is the “proper” term.

Being part of a community that thinks that their shared object of desire is super awesome and super intense and super real and super meaningful and you really want to tell other people just how super awesome and super intense and super real and super meaningful the object of your worship is, is pretty much what it means to be a die-hard fan.

And no matter how awesome you think it would be, vampires don’t exist, or elves, or Batman, or god.

99

Patrick Stewart does though! :smiley:

100

No, he only plays one on TV.

101

So, the main point of the article is that a god can exist, but the traditional definition of existence of such a god is questionable. Perhaps, a god does exist, but its existence has a definition or argument that we do not have yet.

You know, Cecil Adams may be on to something. On Wikipedia, I read that he went to a Catholic school, so he might have some concept of a personal god. However, being a Christian himself, as he examines the arguments for the existence of this god with the current, modern knowledgebase, he realizes that the traditional definition of this existence of this god is questionable and that a god can exist but is undefined yet.

102

Being selective about your examples helps a lot too. Nobody trying to defend NDEs as a “spiritual” experience is going to want to hear about how you floated through a tunnel made of television sets and met Bugs Bunny; they want something that fits the mythology.

That makes little sense. There’s no evidence of a god, we can’t point at anything and say “That’s a god”; our human-made definition of a god is all there is. It’s like claiming that some creature you just discovered with three hornless heads & tentacles is a unicorn.