I don’t see it. If you don’t think that said “first cause” has a cause in turn, then apparently you’re already okay with something existing with no cause — and, if you’re okay with one “first cause”, then I don’t get how you can rule out the idea of thirteen such causes or seventy-nine causes or whatever each causing stuff — sure as I don’t see why a “first cause” has to have a mind, at that.
I’m 100% non-religious. But I think it’s pretty facile and meaningless to treat all religions as being cut from the same cloth in conversations like this.
If you compare the number, quality, and essentiality of supernatural claims made by Evangelical Christianity vs. Catholicism vs various forms of Judaism vs Hindu vs Buddhism vs. Quakerism, etc, there’s enormous range and variation. Clumping all of the above together as just “religion” is, imho, just intellectually lazy.
Sure they do. They use it to describe someone who doesn’t believe the same things as they do. It’s a misleading term. Just because someone doesn’t believe in Christianity does not make them a non-believer.
I’m not sure I understand what you are getting at here. Why would someone think the term “non believer” extended to not believing in honesty (your earlier example)? If you mean that they think this way because, from their perspective, honesty comes from God, then you have exactly the same issue if you call yourself an atheist.
Because the term “non-believer” has been used many times that I have seen to describe someone who specifically doesn’t believe in the Christian god. Maybe you believe in Vishnu, but as far as Christians go, you’re a non-believer. I don’t think I’m making this up.
Specific to certain types of Christianity – what they are saying is that Hindus, for example, do not believe in Jesus Christ as lord and savior of the world. In that sense, and that sense only, all non-Christians are “non-believers”. It gets narrower from there – there are plenty of evangelicals who don’t think Catholics are Christians. Seriously.
There are Baptists who don’t think Methodists or Presbyterians are Christians. To be fair, a lot of them aren’t real sure about other Baptists either. Especially the ones from some other congregation.
Well either way, it would be of paramount importance that God reveals himself to everyone to clarify both that he exists and how powerful he is.
But, it turns out that revealing himself to everyone would affect free will or something. Only revealing himself to some people doesn’t affect free will 
This isn’t rational though. Look at if we attempt to formalize this argument:
Premise: There must be a first cause: we’re going to apriori rule out things like an eternal cosmos
Argument: The only first cause that I can think of, that makes sense to me, is god
Conclusion: Therefore god
Now, I am actually on board with existence itself being out of scope of our models right now.
I don’t believe that statements like “The universe just is” are meaningful. However, the rational, skeptical position to take is just to say I don’t know what the answer is to how there originally was a universe,
Not to throw in a Joker card that by definition is supposed to explain everything but in practice explains nothing.
Take a look at “The End of Everything” which I linked to earlier. It has several plausible means of the universe beginning without the need of any god.
The “god particle” by the way (the Higgs Boson) has absolutely nothing to do with either god or the beginning of the universe. Terrible name, not from Higgs for sure.
I don’t think all that many atheists agree with the kind of first cause you are positing. First, it may not be necessary. Second, it is special pleading - everything has a first cause except god.
Your argument is either an argument from ignorance (I don’t know what caused the universe, therefore god) or an argument from incredulity (I can’t believe the universe has a natural cause, therefore god). Neither are valid.
I don’t know about you, but Christians who use these arguments skip over the connection between the creator and their god. Maybe some god did create the universe, but if it was any supposed god of humans, how come he didn’t get the creation story right? Maybe the real god created the universe for the benefit of the inhabitants of a planet three galaxies over, and we randomly originated in the big universe this god created for them.
Personally, if some intelligence created the universe I think it was a grad student in some incredibly advanced lab. We’ve never seen any gods, but we have seen grad students.
All religions teach that it’s ok to snub to non-believers, as ones that do not believe in same scripture as them and furthermore be even more vehement against those who don’t hold any scripture being holy.
They teach this to young children and breed the most xenophobic persons there can be. Some don’t take to this indoctrination but that is not the reason to embrace religion.
And of course if you comb with very fine comb you’ll find this one sect in the middle of nowhere who absolutely do not preach violence, not even verbal, against fellow beings. But my question still is: Why do you need supernatural to teach that kind of tolerance? Humanism does that without any supernatural. So if you want a philosophy that is tolerant why not choose humanism?
That’s not the case here in Finland per se but neither was the n-word. Still they banned the n-word from finnish language. I want to ban atheist from all languages as it is used as an epiteth and a reason to hunt ones labeled by it in other societies.
In US it is very hard to get elected to any govermental postion being it communal, state or federal if one is labeled as an atheitst. In India they might even kill you.
But Santa Claus exists. Not as a person, but like justice, a metphorical consept where adullts play pretend for the joyment of children. Justice is the one where adults play pretend in benefit of other adults.
In same sense Jesus exist and when ever I see one of those magnificient cathedrals in Central Europe I’m convinced that builders did have somekind of image for a god or otherwise they would not have built those. But to say that their god is relevant to me today is stupidity.
But Santa Claus, Easter Bunny and justice are relevant today, so I play pretend.
“Have you found Jesus?”
"No I have not, but why ask me isn’t missing persons a police matter?
That is not clear at all. A case has not been made for a theistic or deistic first cause that cannot be more simply made for a purely natural one.
As a theist do you think your first cause has a creator or has always existed?
I just don’t get that has anything to do with your original comment about still believing in honesty, truth, etc. It seemed you were saying that people thought “non believer” meant you didn’t believe in anything at all. Now it seems you are saying that they think “non believer” means they only think you don’t believe in their specific god. Which is it?
Emo Phillips - Golden Gate Bridge - YouTube
From 1987
I’ve shown this to a congregation, and preached on it.
I guess the point is that all religions are human constructs; I’m not sufficiently attached to mine to want to push somebody off the bridge, or even to convince them that I’m right and they’re wrong.
Me? I’m an Anglican. Church of England, which is associated with Episcopalian Churches all over the world. It doesn’t have any difficulty accommodating somebody as uncommitted as me.
Do I believe in God?
I had that conversation with our Vicar (Parish Priest, Minister, Rector, etc, etc) some years ago.
I said: before I can answer that, I need you to tell me three things.
- What do you mean by ‘God’?
- What do you mean by ‘believe in’?
- What do you mean by ‘you’?
The last one is because I don’t think I’m necessarily the same person, in the same mind, every day or every minute.
Laqter, the Vicar’s husband said "That’s all just a cop-out. Just get on with the job, and believe. But it led to a useful discussion about the meaning of ‘belief’.
You can look up your own dictionary definition. But it seems to me to mean 'intellectual consent to something presented to us (in a book, by a preacher, etc)"
This is a modern meaning. When the early texts were written, intellectual consent was irrelevant, and belief essentially meant ‘trust’.
So can I trust in God without believing in him? Possibly.
Here’s Max Ehrmann: from Desiderata,
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
The last thing the Vicar asked me in that conversation was “Don’t you think other people have the same kind of doubts as you do?”
“I’m absolutely certain they do” I said.
This is not true. As can be repeated to infinity, what is true of evangelical Christianity is not true of 1. most Christian denominations. 2. most non-Christian religions.
It is true that the most fundamentalist branches of many religions have a foundation of xenophobia and sense of persecution – that’s true of a wide swath of all super-conservative groups, not merely religious ones.
And many religions very much prefer their young people to ‘marry in the faith’. But that is quite different than hating outsiders. Please, there is plenty to mock and despise without making shit up.
There’s a difference between God and Religion. It’s Organised Religion that I dislike, have no respect for, am irrationally angry about, as I can see it’s all created to manipulate, intimidate, and maintain power, obscuring its true intent behind absurd ritual and barely veiled threats.
On the other hand, God is clearly a myth, a story made up to explain the inexplicable, to comfort the confused, and to provide answers for the big questions of life. Nothing about Him and his purported omniscient abilities is required for the universe to exist, as science has the answers - not all of them quite yet, but a lot of them, and the rest will be solved too, some day.
If there is anywhere that a god-like power exists at all, that I may concede is some kind of conscious effector, it’s in the motivation that Life has to maintain its existence. It seems to have a drive to be, protections in place to avoid not being, and they manifest in what seems like a mysterious consciousness of a conceptual idea.
It’s not something I can rationalise to my own satisfaction, but I think there may be more to it than meets the eye. I may have to force myself to ascribe a God-like influence to that process.
Clarification: The way is not in the religion itself, but in the seeking God (this is the pathway that is correct, the only one). So you are correct in saying:
In many ways, the religion itself is not necessary, and in all ways irrelevant, but for many helpful to get them started, and later to get them questioning the religion and decide which way they will handle such contradictions that often arise in religions in their seeking. God does help those who seek in breaking away from the religious teachings in their journey of faith to the degree needed for that person (but God may keep some people in religion to help and guide those who seek -God does as He pleases).
As I said above I can’t offer proof, as the finding God is not evidence based by God’s design, but a relationship. But I will offer this, on a ‘poetic’ logical point of view. If you discredit someone’s faith as wrong, you discredit your own, if you honor it, you honor your own, as we are all human and equal when it comes to our faith, no one is an authority over another, only oneself.
In all faiths I try to honor any faith regardless of religion (or non religion if you must), as that is their journey to God, after all in the end religion is meaningless and must die in the heart of the person of faith, but the relationship is what will remain forever. In myself though I believe this, I know that I have some religious aspects to my faith that will too die over time but may need them for now, I know I have them as do others.
The way I ‘know this’ is in my journey and the relationship I developed with God, I have found this to be true and also very satisfying. It does tend to answer some stumpers that are asked of people of faith, such as what if a person is in an isolated population without access to let’s say Christianity or a Bible (as that is how it’s typically presented), how can they be saved? Isn’t this unfair and proves an unfair God?
Certainly not! The simple answer is that all they need to do is seek God (this is in the Christian Bible btw), and if they have no concept of God in their society, seek for answers to questions in their life that don’t seem to have answers (like why does ‘this’ always happen to me?). The answers of someone who gives up everything to ‘find’ will have that person find God in a form they need for their journey. IMHO Buddha was one such notable example of someone who overcame death (from a christian perspective), yet had no or little access to Christianity and overcame the teachings of his upbringing, seemed out answers for the suffering he observed. Many of Buddha’s teachings are very similar and ‘like in spirit’ to those of Christ as the teachings are the same but just explained by different humans with human understanding of what God is and with the limitations of human language and cultures.
Likewise it answers the questions about people dying in Old Testament times, and the discrepancy that seems to arise of how they are saved, answer is the way to God always existed and is/was/will be always the same. IMHO Enoch (pre biblical flood times) is the first person mentioned in the Bible to achieve this.
Personally, I am a Hindu Atheist. Atheism is a perfectly valid path in life in Hinduism. I was born in a Hindu family, went to a Roman Catholic School from kindergarden to High School (14 years) and have self studied a few religions like Buddhism, Sikhism and Islam.
I describe myself as an Hindu Atheist, more as a way to distinguish the logic/thinking system from the western (Greek ) logic/thinking system.
Hinduism is pretty SHITTY, but it is Shitty in its own way. There is some ignorance on Hinduism and I’d like address them :
Agreed.
Definitely not true with Hinduism and the majority of Hindus.
Not sure what you are talking about. Bhagwad Gita describes Krishna and his prowess as “God”. But this is not the only book for describing God or Gods or Goddesses to Hindus. There are other religious books describing the presence/absence of Gods/Goddesses.
I am trying to make sense of what you are trying to say.
[quote=“Ulfreida, post:190, topic:943328”]
Specific to certain types of Christianity – what they are saying is that Hindus, for example, do not believe in Jesus Christ as lord and savior of the world.[/quote]
Again - I think you are making this up. Lets not forget that a Hindu (St Casper), (of Biblical Magi repute), was there to welcome baby Jesus and gave gifts to Mother Mary.
Growing up in India, I’d see my mom have a picture of Jesus amongst her pictures / idols of other representations of worship-worthiness. Many other Hindus do this too. In fact many of the early converts to Christianity do this too, much to the chagrin of Christian religious leaders. So, the pet peeve to worship any other “God” than Jesus Christ is amongst Christians, Hindus don’t have this problem.