This I Believe There is / is not a God

**Janszoon** · 01-08-2011, 11:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RVCA

Anyone find any validity in this statement?

No. I think that comment displays a lack of understanding of what most people mean when they describe themselves as atheists.

Dr.Seussicide · 01-08-2011, 11:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SATCHMO

I'm taking a bit of a late stab at this one. I have to confess that I’ve never seen the movie, but the book of Genesis is easily one of my favorite books of the bible. It means a lot to me and I continue to glean new insight and wisdom each time I read it.

Firstly, I have to give my obligatory disclaimer and say that I’m not a conventional Christian, which in this case means that I probably believe that more of the supernatural events in this story are allegorical than the typical literalist Christian may believe. Having said that. the story of Moses and the great exodus out of Egypt is all about heeding God’s revelations and living in a state of faith that is not reflective of one’s immediate external circumstance.

You have Moses (in Hebrew, Moses, literally translated, means to draw out) who ironically, was benevolently abandoned by his Hebrew mother, adopted into Egyptian royalty, Sees the injustice of the brutality that is being inflicted on his people, and is chosen by God for a task that seems infinitely beyond his capacity, Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past, nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue... Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else - Exodus 3:10-13. Moses wrestling with his own faith over being chosen to lead an entire nation out of the bondage of slavery and into freedom is just one facet of the entire faith dynamic of this story.

You then have the Pharaoh Ramses, who after each round of Moses beseeching him with God’s command to let his people go and worship Him, The Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen to them - Exodus 7:13. It started out with the Pharaoh requesting a miracle of Moses so as to prove to him that he was really the ambassador of God’s word, to which Moses responded by throwing down his staff which turned into a snake, a rather innocuous sign. After each of the Pharaoh’s subsequent refusals, the consequences of dismissing Moses’ authority becomes more and more severe until finally the last plague results in the death of every one of Egypt’s first born. If you take this as being allegorical, like I do, the primary lesson here is that when one ignores the writing on the wall, so to speak, in favor of clinging to one’s one pride or particular wants, the consequences become more and more severe. I think that everyone has experienced this to a certain degree in their own life.

And Finally, the Jews who, after spending over 200 years in captivity, are led out of bondage and out of a country and a way of life that they’ve known for generations by a man that they do not fully trust, or trust at all. The estimated number of Jews following Moses range in number between 120,000 and and 600,000, regardless, that’s a huge caravan to be traipsing across the desert for what turned out to be 40 years. The Jews were required to trust God and subsequently Moses implicitly. All of their provisions were provided for through some seemingly supernatural act of god: The water pouring out from the rock, the Manna from heaven, the defeat of the enemies that they encountered along the way. They had to rely on their own faith that the veneer of the external circumstances that they perceived was not indicative of their ultimate fate. They had to have faith both in the man that was chosen to lead them and in God to provide what they needed on the journey and more often than not, they failed at displaying this level of faith they were dominated by their own fear, behaved rashly because of it, and this made the journey to the promised land all the more longer.

The ten commandments, which for most is the highlight and the main focal point of the story, to me does not carry the degree of importance as it does in most Christian’s eyes. I see it as God’s practical ground rules for living harmoniously within a society, which the Jews after spending over 200 years in captivity desperately needed, especially considering their numbers. Sure the first commandment Thou shalt not have any god before me seems to contradict that, but given the circumstances the Jews very existence depended on a very implicit faith in God to lead them to where they were going. I think that degree of faith is still necessary for some, including myself, as a guide on their own path.

I think some distinctions need to be made between a human killing another human and an act of God taking another or many lives. God’s discretion and judgment is not marred by human emotion. God does not have to live with the potential doubt or remorse regarding the justification, or lack thereof, of taking another life and God also does not have to deal with the societal complications that arise when taking another's life for one’s own self interests is condoned. Because of this, I don’t see the contradiction between the justification of God killing and the unjust act of humans committing murder. If one believes in God’s sovereignty, then any act that God commits is just. God does not have the weight of a regrettable crime weighing on his shoulders and eating away at his soul, whereas humans are very susceptible to that.

As far as the supernatural is concerned, I think it is a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing as a supernatural occurrence, only an occurrence that lies beyond our capacity for understanding. Everything happens within nature. It is our lack of true understanding of nature which causes things to appear to be supernatural, but also I think that the more we discredit the miraculous, write it off as coincidence, or laugh at the naivete of those who believe in things that cannot be empirically deduced, the more we lose our capacity to see the hand of the divine working throughout our life. We lose the spiritual lens which affords us our perception of the seemingly supernatural events that occur everyday in our lives.

Firstly, not to undermine your post in any way, but the first six paragraphs seems irrelevant. The stories are indeed open to vast interpretation, and whether we care to take them literally, or choose to only understand some of it, or use it as a guide, the Bible is supposed be filled with actual events. Events that supposedly happened many a millennia ago. Therefore, as a believer of the Christian faith, it is an assumption that Christians not only take the stories in their own figurative manner, but also literally. If not, then the Bible should just be a story book. Simply endeavouring to teach us about the ways of life.

Your last two paragraphs also bewilder me a bit. Firstly, your penultimate paragraph. I am going to take a very simplistic approach to this rebuttle. If God were to manifest himself before you, and murder your entire family, what difference would it make it to you whether it was actually God, or whether it was a human? What if, every crime committed was God manifesting himself in human form, simply to test our faith. Would these crimes be just simply because God did it? I completely disagree with that statement, the one that I've bolded. It just seems like blind faith.

Secondly, your last paragraph, that approach you took to distinguish between supernatural events and events we cannot understand, once again, seems like a blind argument. An argument, that obviously science cannot justify unless empirical proof is provided. As if to say, God exists, simply because we cannot disprove it. I just can't bring myself to agree with your last two paragraphs.

Guybrush · 01-08-2011, 11:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RVCA

Anyone find any validity in this statement?

No, the original author of that quotation has obviously not learned anything about optimality criterions and critical thinking.

SATCHMO, thank you for your thorough answer! I wasn't necessarily looking to discuss, but was interested in an honest answer to the questions which you have definetly provided

SATCHMO · 01-08-2011, 12:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RVCA

Quote:

Atheism itself must therefore be considered a form of blind faith, in that it adopts a belief system that cannot be defended on the basis of pure reason. - Francis Collins

Anyone find any validity in this statement?

I see it as a very flawed statement, not because I don't believe that atheism is every bit as much a belief system and a form of faith, (albeit, perhaps not blind faith, but a bit myopic nonetheless), but because it puts one's faith in the human capacity for accurate reasoning regarding what our senses perceive, our mental deductions, and what we subsequently arrive at being the nature of absolute reality.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr.Seussicide

Firstly, not to undermine your post in any way, but the first six paragraphs seems irrelevant. The stories are indeed open to vast interpretation, and whether we care to take them literally, or choose to only understand some of it, or use it as a guide, the Bible is supposed be filled with actual events. Events that supposedly happened many a millennia ago. Therefore, as a believer of the Christian faith, it is an assumption that Christians not only take the stories in their own figurative manner, but also literally. If not, then the Bible should just be a story book. Simply endeavouring to teach us about the ways of life.

I did preface my statement with the disclaimer that I'm not a conventional Christian and that I do not take the story of the exodus and its events as literally as the majority of fundamentalist Christians would. In truth, I'm being very inaccurate about my belief system by referring to myself as a Christian. I'm not. I am a pantheist, which is to say that I identify God as being The Whole that is greater than the sum of all of its parts, The Universe, and my faith is the dynamic between what my ego perceives to be my self and this whole of all being.

Having said that, the foundation of my own faith is greatly informed by the Judeo/Christian/Islamic tradition, as well as other faiths. I'm a believer in all, subscriber to none. And Yes, I do "pick and choose", I do make the discernment between what is a literal account of history, what is didactic, and what is both, and rarely, what is neither. I'm a great believer in story books. I think the scriptures of all faiths have great value to humankind, but the Bible is not uniformly history or His story and I believe it is up to each individual believer to extricate the wisdom inherent in a sacred text from the vehicle which is used to convey it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr.Seussicide

If God were to manifest himself before you, and murder your entire family, what difference would it make it to you whether it was actuallyGod, or whether it was a human? What if, every crime committed was God manifesting himself in human form, simply to test our faith. Would these crimes be just simply because God did it?

(This whole line of questioning rings of the book of Job from the old testament, which is another great biblical story.)

I would be as grief-stricken and outraged as you would be if you were to witness the same events happen to your own family, but God is incapable of committing a crime, especially murder. Crime, in general and, Murder specifically are acts that are motivated by lower vibratory states of human emotion, namely fear, but also greed, jealousy, anger, or a false sense of power, and the effect that these states have upon one's judgment. And although some of these qualities, mainly anger and jealousy are imposed on God in the Bible by some of its authors, they really are exclusive to the human experience, therefor asking, "What if, every crime committed was God manifesting himself in human form, simply to test our faith. Would these crimes be just simply because God did it?" presents me with a conundrum, because every crime committed IS committed by God manifesting Himself in human form, but the crime is being committed by an individual who is, in a sense, acting apart from and perceiving themselves as separate from their own intrinsic divinity. As it regards the individual, the crimes would not be just, because the crimes would be motivated by human emotion and judgment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr.Seussicide

Secondly, your last paragraph, that approach you took to distinguish between supernatural events and events we cannot understand, once again, seems like a blind argument. An argument, that obviously science cannot justify unless empirical proof is provided. As if to say, God exists, simply because we cannot disprove it. I just can't bring myself to agree with your last two paragraphs.

I actually made the opposite argument, that the term supernatural is contradictory in and of itself, and that I define what we perceive as being supernatural as being something that simply contradicts our current understanding of the nature of reality.

I am in no way saying that "God exists, simply because we cannot disprove it". I am saying, in the words of Lao-tzu:

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnameable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

.

Dotoar · 01-11-2011, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SATCHMO

I actually made the opposite argument, that the term supernatural is contradictory in and of itself, and that I define what we perceive as being supernatural as being something that simply contradicts our current understanding of the nature of reality.

I'd go even further and claim that the term 'supernatural' is self-contradictory simply because it refers to a phenomenom that exceeds the natural laws, i.e. the laws of existence, i.e. existence itself, and thus something that simply cannot be, by definition. That is not to say, though, that there are things we as humans yet cannot explain and even seemingly contradict our current understanding of the laws of nature. But they are not supernatural, because obviously they occured and there is a nature-bound explanation to them as well.

Furthermore, and this is by no means directed particularily to you but rather a general statement, I as an atheist can't help but feel ever so slightly offended by the quite common notion of both theists and agnostics, that 'atheism is a belief as well'. Atheism is by definition the absence of belief in a higher divinity and thus calling it a belief (or even worse, a religion, which happens) is nothing but a cheap trick to try to discredit the 'opponent' (in lack of a better word for the moment) by dragging the discussion onto a field on which the atheist simply cannot win, i.e. where the possibility of a prevalent divinity is assumed. For an atheist no such assumption can be made, by definition. Of course, the reasons for why one is claiming to be an atheist may vary, and some may be less thought over than others and some may even by close examination contradict the definition of atheism. That's a whole different story though, and subject to argumentation on basis of the assumtions behind those reasons.

SATCHMO · 01-11-2011, 10:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dotoar

I'd go even further and claim that the term 'supernatural' is self-contradictory simply because it refers to a phenomenom that exceeds the natural laws, i.e. the laws of existence, i.e. existence itself, and thus something that simply cannot be, by definition. That is not to say, though, that there are things we as humans yet cannot explain and even seemingly contradict our current understanding of the laws of nature. But they are not supernatural, because obviously they occured and there is a nature-bound explanation to them as well.

Very well said, and I agree completely.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dotoar

Furthermore, and this is by no means directed particularly to you but rather a general statement, I as an atheist can't help but feel ever so slightly offended by the quite common notion of both theists and agnostics, that 'atheism is a belief as well'. Atheism is by definition the absence of belief in a higher divinity and thus calling it a belief (or even worse, a religion, which happens) is nothing but a cheap trick to try to discredit the 'opponent' (in lack of a better word for the moment) by dragging the discussion onto a field on which the atheist simply cannot win, i.e. where the possibility of a prevalent divinity is assumed. For an atheist no such assumption can be made, by definition. Of course, the reasons for why one is claiming to be an atheist may vary, and some may be less thought over than others and some may even by close examination contradict the definition of atheism. That's a whole different story though, and subject to argumentation on basis of the assumptions behind those reasons.

There's really no way around it. The lack of belief in God is the belief that God does not exist. That's atheism, pure and simple. It's not so much the point that you're believing in something, but that every human being has a mythology with which they orient themselves to existence, and simply because your mythology is grounded strictly in what can be empirically proven, does not mean you do not have a belief system regarding absolute reality. I would not go so far as to call atheism a religion. Religion is a sociological construct, but science, and subsequently atheism, is not the antithesis of spirituality, it's simply a more physical, materialistic way of explaining and orienting oneself toward the phenomenon of existence.

**Janszoon** · 01-11-2011, 10:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SATCHMO

There's really no way around it. The lack of belief in God is the belief that God does not exist. That's atheism, pure and simple.

No, it isn't. Just like "not guilty" doesn't mean the same thing as "innocent", lack of a belief in god is not the same as belief in a lack of god.

RVCA · 01-11-2011, 11:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Janszoon

No, it isn't. Just like "not guilty" doesn't mean the same thing as "innocent", lack of a belief in god is not the same as belief in a lack of god.

I haven't read anyone's response to my question yet, but I did want to comment on this before I went to bed. I agree with Janszoon.

Saying "atheism is the non-belief in god as well as the active refutation of god's existence" has certain consequences that I think most people find undesirable.

I'm sure most of you have heard this point beaten to death. I don't believe in god. But I also don't believe there is a gold teapot orbiting Earth somewhere in space. Does that make me an ateapot-ist? No, it just makes me skeptical of something that certainly could exist but which I find has very little (or none at all_ proof, evidence, or reason to exist.

Dotoar · 01-11-2011, 11:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SATCHMO

There's really no way around it. The lack of belief in God is the belief that God does not exist. That's atheism, pure and simple.

Well, Janszoon has already replied on this part.

Actually, I suspected that that would come up since the whole issue seems to revolve around this misunderstanding. If you look at what you've written above, you'll notice how you state that "The lack of belief[...]is the belief[...]" which obviously is a contradiction.

This in turn, makes all of your following arguments invalid, since you base them all on the assumption that I carry a belief (in the absence of a divinity) and this is exactly the type of argument I implied in my original post:

Quote:

Originally Posted by SATCHMO

It's not so much the point that you're believing in something, but that every human being has a mythology with which they orient themselves to existence, and simply because your mythology is grounded strictly in what can be empirically proven,[...]

Thus not a mythology.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SATCHMO

[...]does not mean you do not have a belief system regarding absolute reality. I would not go so far as to call atheism a religion. Religion is a sociological construct, but science, and subsequently atheism, is not the antithesis of spirituality, it's simply a more physical, materialistic way of explaining and orienting oneself toward the phenomenon of existence.

Not so much a more physical as a physical way of explaining (if we allow ourselves to use the word 'physical' in its broadest sense). You're right in that science doesn't exclude spirituality (depending on what you mean by 'spirituality', that is) as a subjective experience, but only so because science doesn't set out for explain phenomena that are allegedly spiritual.

To crank the nitpicking up one notch: I'd claim that science as a method, is about understanding the nature of phenomena in and around us through concepts, whose significance to our experience we as humans must acknowledge in order to gain knowledge about them.

Dotoar · 01-11-2011, 11:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RVCA

But I also don't believe there is a gold teapot orbiting Earth somewhere in space. Does that make me a teapot-ist?

Nyiet. That makes you an ateapotist.