the basic problem of causality is summed up as chicken/egg. aristotle says: causality implies a first cause, and since this first cause is the origin of the entire universe let's go ahead and call it God. the atheist responds: but what about God? doesn't he need a cause too? causality implies it... the theologian responds: but God is outside space and time, and therefore not subject to causality. the atheist responds: but God needs to be inside space and time to be the first cause.

the atheist has it easy since he's responding to claims made by the theologian. so now we can turn on the atheist and ask: if there is no first cause, how does causality work? as far as i can see, there are three possible responses here. the first is to do away with causality altogether, and say that it implies an absurdity (regression ad infinitum) and hence should be abandoned. this causes some serious problems, since most of our thinking is based on causality. i would suggest that a thinking not based in causality would probably be enlightenment (because there is no past or future) or at least what meditation aims at. the second possibility is that causality is a closed loop, that the big bang is the result of a big crunch or some other such device. however, if we postulate a universe in which the beginning is the end (alpha=omega) which is eternal, and in which everything comes from and returns to a single point, isn't this basically the worldview most religions have sponsored? (specifically the tao te ching, the kaballah, and hinduism). the third possibility is an infinite (linear) sequence of causes and effects, but this raises the question of how a universe with no beginning and no end could generate cycles with beginnings and endings, and what force is counteracting entropy. buckminster fuller and teilhard de chardin have both postulated a force counteracting entropy, which bucky called syntropy. syntropy is the tendency of matter to crystallize (evolve) and form structures, the most "complex" or "evolved" of which is probably the human mind. hence, the human mind should be able to introduce new energy into the universe to counteract the energy lost by friction. and isn't this essentially the function of religion: to introduce a unifying principle (love) which undoes the differences between people that cause friction? and the structure of syntropy (something out of nothing) is essentially the paradox of love: the more you give away the more you have.

so, to go back to the conversation in the first paragraph, the theologian can now say: God is the first cause and final effect, which puts him inside of space and time. however, since any given moment apart from the singularity is either a movement away from or toward the singularity, God is also outside of space and time, as that which they are moving toward/away from.

ultimately, the atheist will hopefully find that rather than standing for a threat to their personal identity, God really stands for the unity which underlies all the processes in the universe which bring us joy: meaning (signifier=signified) love (self=other) beauty (permanence=impermanence) etc

To say God is the cause of events that occur naturally is what bothers me. Rational thought neglect is what bothers me.
I can see why it's comforting to have an entity control, create, and supervise everything in existance, but I just can't bring myself to believe it. Every time I argue about religion vs. atheism with my friends and I say something like "So God created us, then who created God? Because he can't exist without being created", they always say something along the lines of "God is beyond our understanding". Why is it easier to accept religion than common sense and science that is atleast provable on some level?
Just so people know, I don't deny the existance of a deity, I just think it's improbable.

^ i think the improbability lies in the fact that most people try to define God using the same means they use to define themselves and their body - the old man on a throne in the clouds effect.

i'm definitely with CA on this one. God isn't some dude, it's a state of being and awareness that transcends and permeates anything and everything, if you can get over yourself.

Fixed the typo in the thread title because it was starting to bug me.

I agree with this. I think our vision of a God needing our love and embodying a loving nature goes to show how man made many Godly figures really are. How would we know a God would need love? Giving an omnipotent being human qualities seems quite ridiculous to me.

@At Cardboard.
Don't you think it is possible that we can be unified with out a delusional sense of higher purpose or is it really useful for unifying the human race at all? I understand there are many benefits of security in feeling like you really believe, especially among a community. But this interpretation of things we cannot fully understand and making claims we cannot prove has separated people for a very long time. This is because people do not subject their beliefs to true criticism and non-superficial common ground cannot be made among people with very conflicting beliefs.

Also thanks Janszoon.

Sam Harris as smart as he is is still an obnoxious bigoted c*nthole who just makes all athiests look like obnoxious bigoted c*ntholes. So many athiests act in such a smug way and choose guys like him and Richard Dawkins as their defacto messiah and then they wonder why more people don't join their cause? Pfft.

yes and no. i don't see why the omnipotent can't have emotions or qualities but that they would be on such a different scale and perspective than what we're used to considering. i don't think it's so much of an issue of why would God need love, but why would God not be affected by the same emotions that shape us?

Haha Don't worry I don't blindly follow him. He has his ups and downs. He is very unrealistic and very ignorant when it comes to the actual religious fundamentalism and religious moderates he is against. He still makes some good points however but are often overshadowed by his unrealistic outlook on the Muslim world. I think him mentioning 9/11 so much in his arguments really weakens them.

Why would something with the ability to manipulate everything including itself need petty mind tricks to keep it happy?

i don't think it's a matter of lower purpose or higher purpose, it's just... purpose. i have defined love in the most abstract terms possible, as the phenomena of two becoming one. when a bee unites with a flower to extract its nectar and pollinate it, that's love as much as it is love when you see someone begging for money and feel their distress and decide to help them out. it's a universal force, one that applies to all beings, and which ultimately is Being. because every thing that lives is dependent on all the other things that exist... often people look at nature and say how amazing it is that this species or that is so well adapted to another and in a sense it is amazing, but at the same time it is simply the miracle of existence: nothing exists on its own, everything has evolved interdependently with all other things. everything is connected because everything is energy redistributing itself and trying to find a state of equilibrium. socrates believed that the root of evil was ignorance (as did the buddha) because it is only out of ignorance that we believe that we are separate from the rest of existence, and strive for our own ends at the expense of others'. it is only by setting our sights to the whole, and recognizing that there is a unity underlying all this diversity that we can participate constructively in existence. this incredibly simple truth can manifest in many different ways to many different people based on their understanding of the universe, and it's only by focusing on this superficial diversity that we lose the utter simplicity of love that grounds it all. one person might see visions of angels and devils and another might think of it in terms of resonating geometries, but ultimately it's all the same. the sorts of things i'm discussing are only "incomprehensible" because it's like asking "what's the meaning of meaning?" it's only a problem because you've made it one, the meaning of meaning is meaning and we all know what that means :P

God can be a man because anything that empties itself of itself can be fully filled with love, and God can be an equilateral triangle because this symbolizes a state of perfect harmony in which all forces are fully themselves but also balanced and cancel each other out, and God can be a Void because this represents what cannot be represented, the paradox of existence: a no-thing that becomes everything in which somethings emerge only to return to the bliss of no-thing-ness. those last two are tricky to understand, and i think one of the models of hinduism makes it easier to intuit: they posit three gods, Brahma (creator), Vishnu (preserver), and Shiva (destroyer). these are the three manifestations of being itself, it has a beginning a middle and an end. because the three counterbalance each other perfectly, they imply a static nothingness which is at the same time a dynamic everythingness, and this is Brahman (the ultimate, the Godhead) who is the dreamer and the dream, the paradox which is forever beyond our reach and yet at the root of everything.

in hinduism these three Gods form the divine syllable, AUM (a is brahma, u is vishnu, m is shiva) and this parallels Genesis, in which God is accompanied in eternity by the Logos, the eternal word, which is creation--a mirror/manifestation of God, but nonetheless separate. hare krishna sects believe that buddha, christ, and krishna were all manifestations of vishnu, and this makes perfect sense since they all sustain creation while at the same time pointing beyond creation back to the source.

i think that perhaps the most important thing to remember is that ultimately it's a matter of your personal relationship with God, not about your relationship with this religious institution or that, or this political or religious conflict or that. those are all worldly matters that persist precisely because we keep trying to offer final solutions to them. when our primary concern is God we will learn to only be involved in the world to the extent that we can reasonably expect to bring love into it and so can truthfully say...

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.