I’ve never bought the “suffering is a learning experience” idea, especially in the case of extreme suffering. Suffering doesn’t improve you, it hurts and warps you.
In my reading of the scriptures, Jesus considered all humans to be divine (or Gods) When accused of Blasphmey for calling God his father, he refered to the 82d or 81st psalm (depending on what version of the Bible you use). Don’t you know you are Gods, sons of the most high/ He said, " How is it you say I blaspheme because I call God my father, when your fathers did". He always said, My father and yours,he never seemed to think of himself as being anymore divine than any one else.
If Jesus and the Father were truly one and being God he died, then how could he ressurrect himself, as God would have been dead?
I believe it takes far more courage to live than to die, other wise people would not commit suicide. In a way Jesus commited suicide, because if one can prevent ones death and does not do so, it is a form of suicide (that is what
I was told by a religious person).
Monavis
Ah, so that’s your concern. Not to worry, because adding one more merely brings us to a false quatrotomy. There are, in fact, any number of possibilities to account for Him, His suffering, and His experience. Since you have not laid out the mathematics, I can only assume that your selection of what is and is not likely is an arbitrary choice of preference, and has nothing to do with actual odds.
Then your position has become even more mystical. There do exist, according to you, phenomena that are at once real but not empirical, as well as phenomena that are at once existential but not real. Yet somehow, here is a phenomenon that not only is not real but cannot have existed. Be honest: is it the case that you have formulated some sort of conclusive worldview, and that whatever data you might encounter is interpreted to fit it?
The intellectual whiplash of tossing out everyone from Ockahm to Augustine to Descartes to Kant to Plantinga is a bit too much to take axiomatically. Perhaps you could develop an argument that will convince rational people of the silliness of these men.
A wonderful question, and an insightful look into the nature of equivocation over life and death with respect to the natural versus the supernatural. It is, of course, beyond mysterious how a biological organism, whose lifehood is at least in part defined by cell replication, could continue to replicate cells once it has permanently stopped replicating them — a contradiction. However, an existential view is certainly not necessary, nor even desirable, with respect to supernatural things. If indeed there was essence before existence, then the death of God is the mere cessation of His existence. His essence remains. And (as discussed many times before) the nature of goodness and the essence of God compels God to exist. Thus, His resurrection is an unescapable logical consequence of His death.
Yes, but in perspective, an eternal spiritual being whose physical body is only tempoary, any physical event is much less drama. No more than the body we have in a dream. Again you’re placing god as the parent who is responsible for caring for his children.
Natural disasters and disease can seem cruel and unfair, but that’s because we see the physical as our primary reality. It’s how we deal with life’s situations that move us forward or not. It’s also about our intereaction with each other. How we deal with what the people around us are going through.
Sure, if we continue to see god as the parent responsible for his children. I understand rejecting that notion of god. I did.
Yeah I thought of that. There are differences but similarities as well. The son didn’t go off knowing that he could return at any time. He decided he didn’t need his family at all. Another difference, the son didn’t have a bunch of wack jobs giving him increibly distorted versions of what his father was like and how his father felt about him now.
One thing I like about the parable is that when the son went home the father and did beg forgiveness the father didn’t require anything like that. I see that as "he didn’t need to grovel and beg forgiveness, all he had to do was choose his direction.
There is a similar more detailed parable in Buddhism which I think offers other insights and possibilities. It’s on this website if your’e interested. The website appears to be christian and offers a less flattering critique of the buddhist version which I don’t agree with.
Extreme suffering is hard to understand. For me, so is extreme evil. It hasn’t led me to a place where I think it’s evidence God doesn’t exist. It has led me to reject certain concepts about the nature of God and made me keenly aware of how much more there is for me to learn and understand.
Eastern religions teach about how we cause ourselves needless suffering through attachment. Even without religious beliefs it’s easy to understand these principles. If a teenager decides that “I will just die” if I don’t get the new cool shoes, then when they can’t get those shoes their discomfort and frustration is of their own making and a product of distorted perspective which we hope they will grow out of.
Ever hear of Mattie Stepanek? Born with a rare MD he died last year just before his 14th birthday. Mattie spent his brief life writing peotry he called “heartsongs” and trying to teach people to focus on hope and loving each other. I can’t read much about him without feeling like a pussy for complaining about anything. He didn’t feel God was cruel to him. He treated his time here as a gift and an opportunity. His attitude has touched the lives of many in a postive way. Was God being mean, or is it possible Mattie’s condition was a part of his unique purpose?
Can you please give me a cite that shows me that I have received proof that God does not exist?
I can define God, just not for someone else. I can define God adequately for myself at any given moment, however, time being what it is, that definition would change between the time it left my lips and reached your ears.
Because you are sticking with academic definitions of God, there isn’t really a whole lot I can say to it, because in some cases I don’t know what you mean by “God X” or “God Y” as I do not have the same philisophical background that you must be pulling your definitions from.
Saying so what is a far cry from saying “you’re an idiot for believing that”. Basically you all are coming up with a basic assertion and then only looking at the evidence that supports that. I believe in God, but I do not labor under the false dichotomies that you seem to. I do not think that explaining the order of the heavens scientifically somehow denies the existance of God. I don’t think that understanding how Neurons work, does anything but explain to me HOW God’s creation manifests.
Hardly, the assertion that God does not exist is simply that, an assertion. You have a particular bias toward God not existing, so you will bring up bad examples like moral equivalency, as though the highest morality is the lack of suffering of humanity. Humanity is simply a part of the whole, we ‘die’ during form changes such as Tsunamis. Your solipsistic view of suffering is not a compelling argument to me, and is hardly rational.
Ok, so then why do you identify your skull as part of you? How do you determine that which is “You”? Why is the brain so central to this identity? How is not the rest of the universe that you experience part of the consciousness?
Der Trihs: your arguments are like an inverted born again christian. You tell me that you don’t have to read books on a subject you’ve never read a book about because you already know it’s bullshit. That is hardly rational. Basically, you’re arguing against a subject for which you lack any education at all. You seem to define “mysticism” as ‘that which is bullshit’ and seem to lack any knowledge for what it means, yet I am the one accused of redefining terms. When you cease to be 100% ignorant on the subject matter that we are discussing, I would love to talk to you again and see where you stand now. For instance, when you know what the “Sephiroth” is, and can give me a nuanced discussion of why you think it’s bullshit, then we’ll talk and I’ll be far more engaged by what you are saying.
Voyager: Basically, I think that atheists are hypocrites by claiming a higher level of rationality. The arguments you make rely on an equivalency of understanding between the average bible thumper on the street who is using religion to gain social acceptance and find a peer group, and a serious theologian who has dedicated their lives to the study. If I judged Science by the same terms and used Der Trihs’ arguments to impugn Carl Sagan, I’d be laughed at.
There are a lot of people claiming to be Christians, but aren’t out there walking the walk. Would you judge every martial artist by the lack of prowess of a black belt who got their belt from a school that hands out belts too easily?
Believe what you want about God, but don’t try to pretend that your belief is rational. Your telling me that my experience with God isn’t proof, that I am deluded, that somehow aquiescing to what you tell me would make me more rational.
As for George Bush and Christianity I’d like to point you to a cute little word: Pandering.
Erek
What matters is how suffering feels when it happens, not how some cold, uncaring being who is not suffering feels about it. If a god exists, it has a obligation to help due to simple decency, parent or not.
If you can’t even communicate it, it’s not much of a definition.
The universe looks natural; not made. That’s evidence against a god. The existence of God explains nothing; postulating one makes no sense. Disasters are not “form changes”; they destroy things. And calling compassion for others “solipsistic” won’t make it true; nor will it make your view any less sociopathic.
I’m not going to waste years learning pure nonsense. I’m not immortal; I have to pick and choose what I do. Until someone produces evidence otherwise, I will continue to regard it as unworthy of attention.
I am not “100 % ignorant”; I know the important part - the results. The only good thing to come from mysticism is emotional comfort for some people, at the price of stupidity, irrationality, ignorance, wars, incompetence, brutality, oppression, bigotry, and just about every other bad thing that can happen. I prefer to learn about things that are useful or interesting, not malignant garbage.
Theologicans by nature are bad philosophers; by assuming a god they predetermine their conclusions. They may build impressive chains of reasoning, but it doesn’t mean much because it’s irrational at base.
A more ironic statement can hardly be conceived.
Der Trihs: Thank you for proving my original postulate about atheism better than I ever could.
I am so glad you can know what is important about mysticism without knowing what mysticism actually is.
Your atheist zealotry contains no logic, no critical thought, but I commend you on your demagoguery.
The impression you give me is not that you don’t believe in God, but that you are extremely angry at God, because God chose maintaining the whole order of the universe over saving you from suffering.
“The universe looks natural not made.” what does that statement even mean?
Oh, and I can communicate the nature of God to other people besides you and Voyager. Both of your arguments show an extreme sense of entitlement that unfortunately I cannot fulfill. However, you go on lacking critical thought and thinking that it’s rational, but hopefully one day you will learn the meaning of rational, and the meaning of God. Good luck.
Your definition of God seems to depend upon what YOU need and what YOU want. That is what is solipsistic. I believe God would fulfill those things, the only requirement is your acknowledgement of God’s existence first. I hate to break it to you, but me throwing out my faith because some people got hurt by a natural disaster is not what makes one compassionate. Compassion is shown by action, not by a wishy washy idea of applying human moral judgement to the entire cosmos. I believe the cosmos is sentient, you do not, that is the crux of the argument. To me when you say that the universe isn’t sentient you are arguing that you yourself are not sentient, because how is your existence any less random/chaotic than the existence of anything else? How is the firing of synapses anything more than the happenstance of biochemical activity? Quite simply, I feel like your defintion of consciousness is arbitrary and self-centered. I do not share your definition of delineation. You say that I am redefining things, yet there are millions of people in the world who would share my opinion, just as there are millions who would share yours. I hate to break it to you, but atheists are the minority on this planet. (At least as far as claimed affiliations goes) I am not implying that you should bow to the understanding of the masses, only that when you claim someone is being dishonest in how they define words, you might want to take your head out of the sand and see how many others might share in such an opinion.
Erek
Who gets to define help?
Define beautiful for someone else.
Here you are giving it attention. Go figure.
So what version of god do you believe in? If god created us, directly or indirectly, then he must have some responsibility. If god was just there, and let any old thing evolve, then he has less responsibility. So, is got our parent/creator, just a pal, or a disinterested spectator?
I find it helps to stop thinking of God in an “other” sense. God is involved in everything, whenever I make a decision it is “God” making that decision. God is the creative force, the creative drive, the sentience. God is not a parent, not just a pal, not a disinterested spectator. Or else God is all of those things if you need God to be that at the moment.
Something that surprised me actually was to see Der Trihs talking about memes ruling the consciousness in another thread, because that is exactly how I view “spirits”, they are those memes that rule our consciousness, and that God is like the “uber-meme” or the word “meme” itself, the word made flesh. We were ‘created’ in that sentience brought us up out of the primordial ooze, it is the sense of purpose and identity that led us through the evolutionary steps from single celled organisms on up to the position we inhabit today. The act of creation isn’t something that “happened” but something that is continuously “happening”. We are an idea made corporeal.
Erek
If you had actually bothered to read what I wrote, you’d have seen that a general disproof is impossible. There is however, lots of evidence against. I can’t give you specifics, since you seem to be unwilling to talk about your particular god.
Well let’s start with a few questions. Is god distinct from the universe? Is god conscious? Is God good? Is God all-good. Can God change things in the universe? Is god all powerful?
If you can’t answer these questions, your thinking about god is very muddled. If you can, then we can eventually get to a partial definition, and test it.
This is part of rationality, something you seem to be dead set against, from your postings.
I see, you are wandering around in the dark? To channel Lib, you’re tossing out 2,000 years and more of theology.
If this is important to you, maybe you should read what others have said?
“So what” means that if you are putting the tag god on the universe, and ranting on about your god, you’re just wasting all our time. Lincoln asked some men “if you call the tail of a horse the leg, how many legs does it have?” When they answered five, he said wrong, calling a tail a log doesn’t make it one. Calling the universe god doesn’t make it god, not by any reasonable definition of god.
As for physics, all it does is explain how the universe evolved without the need for divine intervention. God may be possible, but is not necessary. We know the how pretty well - we don’t know the why, or even if there is a why.
You appear to understand neither the meaning of assertion or solipism. Caring about the suffering of others is about as far from solipism as you can get. I hardly claimed that lack of suffering is the highest moral good - in fact I specifically said the opposite. I’m not asserting anything, I’m giving arguments, which you don’t seem capable of understanding.
In fact, it appears you have no idea what your god is like, except for some fuzzy concept of all things being interconnected, which might come from watching too many Star Wars movies. And then you call us stupid. :rolleyes:
The definition of atheist allows someone to be one for no good reason. However when people in this thread give you good reasons, you don’t seem to even be able to understand them, let alone respond. Evidence: your nattering about proving things.
And I have never heard anyone say god doesn’t exist because some Christians are twits. The only argument there is that religion does not produce greater moral worth. That would be true whether or not god existed.
Um, that all things in the universe can be explained by physical laws, with no godly intervention required? Like that?
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Oh, and I can communicate the nature of God to other people besides you and Voyager.
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Excuse me if I do not believe this statement. Not in the case of someone with some reasoning ability, that is.
Entitlement? I have news for you, atheists don’t have a sense of entitlement. We’re a fluke of the universe, we have no right to be here. Humanity is not the inevitable outcome of evolution. People die in natural disasters because the earth does certain things, as part of geology, and those of us in the way get hurt.
We think there is no god, so this problem doesn’t bother us. If you think that god is just and merciful, then it should bother you. cosmosdan at least understands the issue. You don’t seem to even do that.
Right in one. But complexity can be built out of simple things. The operating system running the computer you’re reading this on is basically a bunch of electric charges stored in combinations of transistors, and transistors turning on or off based on physics. Yet there is complexity. And to head off the next argument, the programmer of our brains is evolution and our environment, not some clown in Redmond. 
Please give some evidence that the cosmos is sentient. You might start with the problem of communicating between parts of it which are billions of light years apart. And we’re local islands of conscousness in a sea of non-consciousness. I haven’t gotten one message from Sirius.
So you have no responsibility for your actions, it is god? Just to let you know, that won’t stand up in a court of law.
Well, I agree that evolution is continuing. But memes live inside minds - they do not have an independent existence, except as a meta-meme of the concept of memes.
Sorry, but this makes no sense to me at all. The only essence would be in the mind of the believers, and they couldn’t raise this God.
Was the essence of God in existence before there was a place for Him to exist? Where did the place come from? Super natural things can only be in the imagination of the believer,there is no microscope to use, so there can be no proof of anything being Super natural.
Monavis
I’d start by confessing to a limited understanding. Being one who struugles with the attachment to the physical finite world how do I grasp and explain the infinite? As Paul said, “Now I know in part and see through a dark glass, but I look forward to the time when I will know as fully as I am known.”
As I mentioned before, if god is eternal spirit and we are of the same stuff then that really changes our perspective on the physical world. As physical beings the preservation and success of our physical bodies is our primary focus. As spiritual beings what happens in this brief physical life, or in several lives, is much less dramatic. Its comaparable to how we view a dream. Pleasent or otherwise it’s not that serious when we wake up.
Two analogies come to mind when thinking about our relationship with god. Both incomplete but useful. Buddhism uses the drop of water and the ocean analogy. We being the drops and god is the ocean. Are we seperate?
The other was in the Bible where Jesus or god is the head and we are the body? Are we seperate or one? While we are still in the physical we will probably see ourselves as both. This is the kind of thing Jesus was talking about when he advised that we not place our value on the temporary but the eternal qualities, and that the truth will set us free.
Is god directly involved in our affairs? Harder question. I tend to see us as peers or adult children. We have free will and can choose. We are connected to god and each other so we when we access our spiritual resources we become gods agents in a manner of speaking.That’s an internal process of belief and surrender . Is God actively involved as a seperate intereactive being? I don’t think so. I tend to see it as detrimental to our growth when religious folks want to see it that way and themsleves in the role of child who can only supplicate to a parental God.
In last few months I have been working on another concept. It’s always bugged me whan any religious group elevated themselves as if they were god’s favorites. The term Christian values disturbs me. Is love, honor, truth, compassion, courage, mercy, any different when we put the word christian in front of it. I think not. I have a sister who is an atheist and a very kind thoughtful person who spends time doing for others and even volunteers to give of herself to strangers. Is her giving any less becuase she is an atheist? Of course not.
Apart from science that explains the physical we all have some belief system that moves us to make whatever choices we make and how we interact and effect each others lives. Those beliefs are far less tangible than an cannot be addressed by science. The thought process and the foundation of those beliefs may vary but what matters is the action that results. In other words, neither atheism or belief in God is superior. The choices we make that effect others are subject to scrutiny and challenge.
All legitimate questions. As in science there are areas where we have more theories than hard fact and that affects our ability to answer definitivly. The spirit may indeed lead us into all truth but we ain’t there yet.
Question one; I would say yes.
2; as in a seperate consciousness? Hard to say. If the ocean were conscious and yet each drop believed it was a seperate entity how would you explain that?
3; Yes, God is good.
4: God is the well from which all love is drawn.
5: Hint, Omnipotent. The better question is does God change things and how. Independently, through our choices, or both?
6: already answered
A fair statement when considering the physical.
I think religion has provided lots of good reasons for people to be atheists by promoting myth and tradition as sacred truth.
Also true.
At most, it changes the amount of time we expect to be around; it doesn’t lessen the pain and misery people experience in the here and now. As I’ve said elsewhere, this belief in an afterlife promotes sociopathic behavior; if you don’t belief death is the end, why not kill whomever you feel like ?
Where’s the evidence we are part of some larger being ? I don’t feel like a Borg.
Either atheism or theism is correct; not both. The correct one is superior.
Evidence ?
Now this is just silly. Emotions are not something that can be pumped around like oil; they are emotional states, not substances. It’s also insulting to claim that people can’t feel love with a god for a crutch.
Neither God nor anything else is omnipotent, as that produces logical contradictions. “Can God create a rock he can’t lift” and so on.