I see. No specific instance of theism is either correct or supportable, but theism as a whole is. 0 + 0 + 0 = 1. Got it.
Atheists may not totally agree on the exact definition (but lack of god belief seems to satisfy everyone, even if some of us go further) but do agree on the justification for not having a belief in any god. Theists agree on the definition of theism, but neither agree on the justification or offer any good reasons for believing.
I’m happy to be in the atheists corner myself.
I’ll disagree with DerTrihs about god belief fundamentally calling for killing unbelievers. In fact, before the exclusive monotheism meme got itself started, a tribal god might call for killing the tribe’s enemies, but seldom for religious reasons.
In fact, after Alexander the Great conquered Persia, he married a Persian princess under the laws of the Persian gods. Alexander was no atheist - he thought himself descended from gods, and was quite devout. I can just imagine a Rabbi or Catholic priest in a similar situation - they’d have a fit!
While I agree that the NT does not call for killing heathen, perhaps this is because Christians were in no position to kill anyone when it was written. In fact, they could hardly say that Christians were going to have better lives than pagans, with the example of the Romans all around them. They cleverly moved the punishment of those who did not accept Jesus to the afterlife, where they were safe from contradictory evidence. The early Christians might not have been able to do anything with the ungodly, but after the ungodly died Jesus would take care of it.
As for Judaism, the Shema is far more important than the 10 commandments. How you align “the Lord is your God, the Lord is One” with Hinduism or even the Trinity is way beyond me. Yeah, I know that this contradiction is a mystery.
Heh, I don’t know if this is addressed, but it’s missing the point about theism in a remarkably similar way that people misunderstand atheism.
The argument is not about ‘WHICH’ God to believe in, but about what God wants us to do and what God is like.
They are arguing about whether or not someone actually had a correct revelation, or whether they interpreted it correctly, or whether the leader who formed that particular sect had a right to interpret the revelation in the way that he did. They are calling into question each other’s powers of observation. Mainly it’s a power game. There are some remarkable similarities amongst all religions that many atheists choose to ignore in their arguments.
One agreement that I have found amongst all the religions I have studied at all is that there is a single Creator or Generative Principle that has absolute dominion over the spark of life. Whether that is Akhenaten, YHVH, God, Allah, The Druids’ Source, Shiva/Brahma/Vishnu, Uhura Mazd, etc… There is some pretty wide agreement on that one.
That is addressed by the notion of Henotheism. There are lots of Gods, but they are all manmade except for YHVH who is the creator.
One of the points of Christianity is that Christ came to put to rest all the pagan deities, that it was an attempt to universalize the one true deity.
As the Muslims say: There is no God but God.
If we don’t believe in a particular instance of a god, why the hell would we care what he wants us to do or what he’s like? Step 0 is giving evidence that the god you want us to follow exists.
As for your other point, it’s true, most religions have a single god create the universe - but sometimes, as in the case of Greek myths, not the main god. I can only respond that the ancients were not advanced enough to have invented design by committee.
That argument is lazy atheist tripe. You are in a discussion of the subject, and no one is arguing that you should believe in God. I am merely stating that there is a lot of agreement about the nature of God amongst world religions that gets ignored in arguments, usually by someone dropping the same cliche you just resorted to.
I could care less if you follow any God. The argument isn’t about whether theism is true or atheism is true, but about the level of agreement between theists.
As an aside about fair and balanced. I see a lot of atheists complaining that atheists don’t get a fair shake in the news because they’ll have like three or four theists piling on a single atheist. What I don’t think a lot of people examine is the type of theist they get on those shows. You think the atheist isn’t getting a fair shake, but what about theists who are being represented by the most flamboyant numbskull that the network could find? At least the atheists are being represented by a smart guy like Dawkins. I’d take one Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, Pope Benedict or Reza Eslan over the rabid mealy-mouthed assholes they usually put up there.
Well the ‘main’ God is the God that the particular tribe venerated as their patron. For the Trojans it was Apollo. In the Greek tradition the further you go back before the lineage of the Olympians the Gods are more remote and less personable. Uranus and Gaia are hard deities for people to wrap their minds around. Chaos and Matter. In each successive iteration they resembled people more. So it’s not really about social status in that way, but about which God that tribe convinced itself cared about them.
Well, it’s another long thread on Atheism/Theism. I have read some but not all of this thread but I only want to add one thing.
Jim Jones’ and Fred Phelps’ ideas of religion are PRECISELY as valid as anyone else’s views of religion. The Pope, Rabbi Goldstein down the block and those nutty kids who discovered the Church of the Flying Spaghetti monster also have valid views on religion. None of their views are ANY different from any others in terms of their validity as religious points of view.
That is why the Invisible Pink Unicorn and its ilk irritates theists so much. They know it is a silly invention, but they also know that there is no way to establish that it’s any more silly of an invention than the Catholic Church (for example).
What do you mean by “validity”?
There are good reasons for the very basic agreement you describe that don’t include the existence of any god. All religions had explanations for the rain, the sun, and the wind. Does that mean that gods are truly responsible for these things? Yeah, all religions have explanations for the creation of the universe by some God, but they are all mutually contradictory. There are three choices. First, the god who did it, and who talked to us, didn’t feel like keeping his story straight. Second, a god did it, and never talked to us. Third, no god did it. Cases two and three are equivalent in telling us how to live our lives - God gives us no clue. In case 1 the God who tells the correct story might be worth listening to. Too bad none of them did. And, in line with the OP, since they can’t all be right, and since there is no reason to believe any one of them is right in particular, the conclusion is that none of them is right.
Different cities, countries, and classes had gods they thought cared about them in particular. But Zeus was pretty much the main man in all cases - and he did not create the universe. And I wonder if the gods resembed people less as time went on. Our Western God certainly did.
Some may, but some don’t give a flying cross about what is so important to you (or me).
A friend and I once had a discussion on this topic, a little like this:
“You know that the Bible is a collection of myths and the very existance of Jesus, let alone any supernatual powers he once may have had, is in serious doubt, don’t you?”
My Christian friend: “So what? Even if the whole book is bullshit, we can use the good parts to our advantage, and ignore the crap. It doesn’t matter whether Jesus lived or died, I can still help out in a pancake breakfast and raise money to help needy families. God might not exist, but it gives many people a good feeling to pray to Him. Why try to take that away?”
I suspect your panel of differing religious leaders, if pressed, might say something similar.
You’re not playing by the rules. The point is about agreement between different types of theists and you are moving back to relying on cliche arguments about atheist logic. You haven’t addressed the main point regarding similarities of core tenets, such as the dominion over the spark of life. Many people have different explanations for rain. The Mectaway people of Zoombaloomba may believe that it rains when Shectahan flushes his toilet, whereas the the Phomapawow people of Seroquat believe that rain is the tears of Smooshkonish crying over her lost lover Arapmanic. That’s hardly relevant at all, and is a digression from the point that there is a tremendous amount of agreement on certain key features of Deity that is agreed upon by disparate cultures far and wide.
What you are talking about is a socio-political hierarchy as it pertains to worship. One of the problems with the atheist cliche of expecting us to justify our existance by ancient religions is that often what we are expected to justify is the vulgar traditions of the hoi polloi, and does little to address the views held by the priestly elect.
In effect what you are doing is equivalent to me expecting you to justify an argument Der Trihs has made on another forum, even if you’ve never even seen Der Trihs argument.
Of course it is quite difficult for us to know what the priestly elect of different cultures believed, but in the case of the Greeks, a lot of the logic that you are employing in your arguments was developed by their priestly elect. There is also a lot of evidence that the intellectual traditions of ancient cultures had a great deal of intertribal commerce of ideas.
The political relationship to deity in past cultures was oftentimes much like we relate to a flag. It was a source of unique tribal identity that during wartime could be placed above the enemy in a position of dominion.
What you are saying about Zeus isn’t totally true though, in ancient times, the top God was often in dispute between different tribes. Zeus representing ‘power’ is however an ideal God to be at the top of the food chain in terms of power hierarchies. The problem with this argument is that I don’t have, and I doubt you do either, the knowledge to discuss the relationship ancient Hellenic states had to which deity and in which order. The Egyptians for instance were always fighting over which God was ascendant, Sometimes Ra, sometimes Amon, some times Amun-Re (a combo), sometimes Osiris, sometimes Horus. One fairly universal characteristic of Pagan deities is that through the application of attributes they are not universal deities. They have dominions over fairly specific areas.
In most of the mystic traditions I have studied, and I am of course an amateur, there seems to be a direct correlation to status within the spiritual hierarchy of a culture and how much one applies direct personified attributes to a deity. A qabbalist Rabbi is not as likely to see God as a bearded man living in a Castle in the Clouds as a Blacksmith.
:rolleyes: No, I’m not. I’m discussing anything that isn’t just in your own mind. “White-Haired Old Man”, seven headed dragon, the Force, Cosmic Oneness; anything that isn’t purely internal to the mind, purely subjective.
I’m afraid it is. All the evidence we have is that thought is a physical process withoin our brains, and nothing more.
If I’m just casually thinking about it, as either a timeline or a calender. If I’m thinking more about time itself rather than scheduling, I tend to think of a diagram showing worldlines. .
That’s not what I meant. I was just pointing out that not all religion does or has held to the allegedly universal “treat your fellow humans well” standard that Quiddity Glomfuster claimed.
Because one of the original reasons/excuses for religion was to serve as an explanation for things people didn’t understand, life being one of those things. And people seem to like the idea of a single life maker god; such are predominant in the pantheons made up for the fantasy fiction I’ve read. Are you going to claim that the near universality of single life makers in fantasy is evidence of God ? There’s just as much evidence for them as for any other god, after all.
Truth.
my bolding:
Akhenaten was a historic Pharaoh, he wasn’t the “Generative Principle” of jack.
I’d love a cite for that one about The Druid’s “Source”, please. I was of the understanding that we know very little facts about historic Druidic practice, and even Caesar, our main authority, mostly uses Roman equivalents. He said The Gauls considered themselves to descend from Dis Pater (Pluto, more or less), and He certainly wasn’t no Creator. But he may have misheard and really the Gauls meant some variant of PIE Dyeus(Irish equivalent - Dagda), and he certainly ain’t the Generative Principle. The Celts had a Mother Goddess (Danu) for that, like sensible folks. How you equate bountiful Danu and tightarsed Yaweh is an exercise best left to the reader.
You wouldn’t want to be the second person in this thread trying to shoehorn a religion they know next to nothing about a pattern they didn’t fit, would you? I certainly don’t buy your bona fides on “religions [you] have studied” when you can make such an elementary mistake as mixing Akhenaten and Aten up.
No, I am arguing that there is widespread agreement among theists regarding a particular idea of God.
Because one of the original reasons/excuses for religion was to serve as an explanation for things people didn’t understand, life being one of those things. <----You can replace the word religion with science and this statement would be equally true.
Well, as I said, I am an ‘amateur’. I hate to tarnish your superiority and all. I will remove my comment about the Druids as I know very little about them. As far as Akhenaten and Aten I know the difference. I saw the King Tut exhibit at the Field Museum. ;p
Except science works.
:dubious:
I hope it gets paid well.
I would leave off the quotes if I were you.
Now you’re just trying to poison the well. You were wrong, and you should just admit it with good grace.
Yet you saw fit to use them as an example in your theory anyway. What does this say about the honesty level of your side of the debate?
More importantly than the difference between a man and his artificially-elevated God - why pick on one isolated blip in all the rich tapestry of Egyptian mythology? Do you see how that naturally leads to accusations of cherry-picking? Can you say “confirmation bias”?
Do you have any legs left to stand on?