OK. Let me ask you all (and this is a serious question) [Archive]

Melisande

04-20-2007, 10:30 AM

OK, let me ask you all this; (and to the Moderators, I implore you to move this thread if it is in the wrong place).

How come "atheist" is being perceived as "believer"??

In Random House Webster's Dictionary it says that atheism is;

The doctrine that there is no god

And god is; (from the same source)

1. Creator and ruler of the universe - not capitalized (my note).
2. One of several immortal powers, esp a male deity, presiding over some portion of worldly affairs.
3. any defined person or object.
4. an exclamation of disappointment, disbelief, frustration or the like.

Simple as that!

As an atheist, (I may use that word about myself sometimes, even though I actually resent doing so), I do not believe in "a higher power", a "god", a "destiny" or whatnot.

I have no belief. I am a very down-to-Earth, not-so-imaginative, live-and-let-live kind of person. I also try my very utmost to respect people who have found comfort and happiness in some kind of belief-system.

I have read through a number of threads where "atheists" are being considered "anti-religious", "anti-church", "militant fundamentalists" and what have you. The common theme being "believer" in something I would call almost "Anti-Christ".

When the simple fact is that a lot of us, (and of course I am guilty of judging others after my own norm here, and apologize for that, if someone feels an urge not to agree), simply don't give a hoot.

Christ, no Christ, Allah or IHVH, it doesn't make a difference to me. In my mind I have concluded that I am a human being, an animal in fact, with a life-span of approx 65-85 years on this planet.

SO WHAT????

I refuse to inhibit my life because it might not give me a place in "Heaven". I also refuse to be scared because it might send me to "Hell".

I believe in life itself. I am grateful that I am born. Grateful that I have life. Grateful to have a Husband that loves me, that I feel free to love back as much as I want.

I have taken some beatings, it comes with life. Have given some too. That also comes with life. Do I call it "Karma"? Not only no, but Hell No!

WHY, all you people out there, is it so hard for you to comprehend that a true atheist simply does NOT believe???

In anything???

Zoombie

04-20-2007, 10:49 AM

It sounds to me like you do belive in one thing: Life. (Hey wait, you just said that at the very end) I've moved from a atheist view point to a more humanist mode of thought. But I'm sitll an atheist. I'm just an atheist humanist. Does that make sence?

But that dosn't matter. I see exactly where you're coming from. Fortunatly, I come from an almost cartoonishly nice nehiborhood so I have yet to deal with anyone discriminating aginst me because of my belifs. Becuase I do belive in humanity. We've done so many amazing things (Such as going to the moon, splitting the atom, understand the universe, extending our lives, built the pyramids and so on), is it really such a stretch to think we might be able to live next to one another and not kill each other?

The converse thing is we've also done a lot of horrible things. But I still belive that we can get better...and not so we get into heaven, not so we avoid hell...but for the future. Because that's the only immortality we're going to have, it's the future and our decendents.

You've got one life. Better make it a good one, right?

Sean D. Schaffer

04-20-2007, 10:50 AM

I think part of the problem, Melisande, is that believers have a need to define things in terms we can understand.

One of the ways many of us will define atheism in a way we can understand, is to say, rather than you have no belief, you rather have a belief that there is no god.

It's not intended in any way (at least not by me) to insult or to otherwise hurt you or anyone. It's rather a way we, as human beings, can understand your ideas in a way we can figure out. It's not easy for a lot of us to train ourselves not to call you a believer, in this case a believer in no god at all.

So when we say, "You believe there is no god" it's our way of understanding your ideas in a way we ourselves can 'get it'.

I'm certain there is no harm intended. I know there is no such intent on my own part.

:)

Melisande

04-20-2007, 11:12 AM

It's not intended in any way (at least not by me) to insult or to otherwise hurt you or anyone. It's rather a way we, as human beings, can understand your ideas in a way we can figure out. It's not easy for a lot of us to train ourselves not to call you a believer, in this case a believer in no god at all.

Yeah, I kind of get what you mean, but still have a hard time accepting the fact that so many people kind of apply their "other-side-of-the-coin-to-their-own-belief" to - atheism, (I prefer, rather than atheism, which to me has become almost "anti'Christian", the term 'non-believer').

I think that what I was trying to express was the fact that it surprises me that (especially) believers seem to think that I (and what I imagine other non-believers would agree with) would be in any way passionately "anti-religiois". Because that would be to admit that there was something there to oppose. And that, in turn, would look very much like recognition, wouldn't it???

Sean D. Schaffer

04-20-2007, 11:28 AM

Yeah, I kind of get what you mean, but still have a hard time accepting the fact that so many people kind of apply their "other-side-of-the-coin-to-their-own-belief" to - atheism, (I prefer, rather than atheism, which to me has become almost "anti'Christian", the term 'non-believer').

I think that what I was trying to express was the fact that it surprises me that (especially) believers seem to think that I (and what I imagine other non-believers would agree with) would be in any way passionately "anti-religiois". Because that would be to admit that there was something there to oppose. And that, in turn, would look very much like recognition, wouldn't it???

I think I see where you're coming from now. Sorry I didn't see it before.

A lot of people, especially within Big Religion, think that anyone who is not part of their religion is automatically against it. Sad to say, I used to be that way myself. I thought at one time that all people who did not accept the way I believed automatically were against me and my religion.

Part of this could be due to the teachings I received as a Big Christian (specifically Baptist) in my later years in my parents' house. There is a belief in the Christian circles that anyone who is not for Jesus is automatically against him. It's like there's no middle ground. When I converted to the faith I have now, it took me several months to realize that my new faith had less to do with enemies of the faith than it had to do with my living my own life in a righteous manner.

In a way, one might consider the way I was several months ago, when I was still a Christian, to be focused on other people and making them righteous; whereas now I'm focused on making myself righteous. I think that might be part of the problem, Melisande. A lot of people believe they have to make other people righteous according to their viewpoint, and thus if anyone does not accept their way, they become indignant and think the person who does not accept their way is against them and their faith.

I know it's hard to handle, because I've experienced this same kind of treatment repeatedly over the last several months (I converted in December) from the people I used to agree with. I've even had a couple people become overtly hostile because I didn't accept their god as mine anymore.

So there's a lot of animosity that I think some people have toward people who do not hold the same persuasions as they do. What I've actually had to do is just kind of shrug it off, but part of my ability to do that comes with the knowledge of how I was taught to be toward non-believers in my previous faith. The ability to see how the other half lives, as some would say, can many times give people a better tolerance for others and how they react to certain issues.

I hope this helps you out, and I wish you the very best life can offer.

:)

small axe

04-20-2007, 11:48 AM

Since you wrote "ask you all" ... may I answer without feeling anyone thinks I'm badgering? And may I ask that anyone who replies to MY comments, also respect the tone of the OP's sincere, serious, respectful discussion (only because we don't want to sidetrack the discussion) ???

OK, let me ask you all this; (and to the Moderators, I implore you to move this thread if it is in the wrong place).

How come "atheist" is being perceived as "believer"??

In Random House Webster's Dictionary it says that atheism is;
The doctrine that there is no god
In MY Random House Dictionary of the English Language (Unabridged, 1973):
atheism
1) The doctrine or belief that there is no God (God is capped)
2) disbelief in the existence of God or gods (capped, then lower case)
That's the whole definition (except from the Greek athe(os) godless +ism)

And god is; (from the same source)
1. Creator and ruler of the universe - not capitalized (my note).
2. One of several immortal powers, esp a male deity, presiding over some portion of worldly affairs.
3. any defined person or object.
4. an exclamation of disappointment, disbelief, frustration or the like.
(God) (same source)
1) the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe. (and it's capped)
2) the Supreme Being considered with reference to a particular attribute: the God of battles. (capped there too)
3) (l.c.) one of several deities ...
My dictionary has 10 definitions, but the others are lower case

Simple as that!

So: as simple as we have two different dictionary definitions. I'm sure anyone can find other definitions too.

As an atheist, (I may use that word about myself sometimes, even though I actually resent doing so), I do not believe in "a higher power", a "god", a "destiny" or whatnot.

I have no belief. I am a very down-to-Earth, not-so-imaginative, live-and-let-live kind of person. I also try my very utmost to respect people who have found comfort and happiness in some kind of belief-system.

Well, without meaning to argue, I suggest we live in a culture where you indeed do have a 'belief'

belief: (same source)
1. something believed; an opinion or conviction.
2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof

I've been here for over 100 posts. Many of those were over the issue: Can an "atheist" support their position or claims with SCIENCE or with EVIDENCE? (That's "susceptible to rigorous proof")

If you can, good. I've asked many people many times for just that ... it's never forthcoming. Please present it now.

If you cannot ... then you have the 'belief' of atheism, and you are a believer. (Please note: I respect believers)

BUT: we live in a culture, a civilization, where 'mere belief' is considered (by some) as being intellectually inferior to FACT.

When (or, here, let me say "IF") an atheist seeks to claim that atheism is not a "belief" ... the concern (from people like myself, holding my position) is that they are claiming they own the FACT and the rest of us are reduced to BELIEF.

We all value FACTS here. (or we should)
We all respect each others' BELIEFS here. (or we should)

It's perfectly LEGIT for anyone to argue "You have your FACTS wrong" ... while we can all agree to disagree about your (or each others', or my) BELIEFS.

I have read through a number of threads where "atheists" are being considered "anti-religious", "anti-church", "militant fundamentalists" and what have you. The common theme being "believer" in something I would call almost "Anti-Christ".

Not that it matters, but I don't know what that last part meant. If you care to clarify, I can respond ...

When the simple fact is that a lot of us, (and of course I am guilty of judging others after my own norm here, and apologize for that, if someone feels an urge not to agree), simply don't give a hoot.

And many people can agree to disagree, that you and I can both get along without "giving a hoot" about what our BELIEFS are ... while still correcting each others' FACTS.

Christ, no Christ, Allah or IHVH, it doesn't make a difference to me. In my mind I have concluded that I am a human being, an animal in fact, with a life-span of approx 65-85 years on this planet.

SO WHAT????

Okay by me. Don't try to tell my kids that's what THEY are (as I won't tell your kids what I think they are, little souls that could be more than human dust) ... but we both should feel free to FREELY EXPRESS whatever we believe.

I refuse to inhibit my life because it might not give me a place in "Heaven". I also refuse to be scared because it might send me to "Hell".

Okay. Acknowledged.

I believe in life itself. I am grateful that I am born. Grateful that I have life. Grateful to have a Husband that loves me, that I feel free to love back as much as I want.

I have taken some beatings, it comes with life. Have given some too. That also comes with life. Do I call it "Karma"? Not only no, but Hell No!

WHY, all you people out there, is it so hard for you to comprehend that a true atheist simply does NOT believe???

Because, in all due respect, by my dictionary (and others have different dictionaries, but we speak English, we have to agree on basic meanings, I think) you have, in fact, by definition, stated an untruth.

You do "believe" ...

I want to limit this to your question, so I'll stop there. We needn't discuss how our "beliefs" DIFFER.

But you believe something you cannot prove. Atheism isn't based on a FACT. It's a belief.

In anything???

Well ... 'in anything' is hyperbole, right?

My point would be: Why does it bother you that you are a believer?

small axe

04-20-2007, 12:10 PM

Now, I had my (lengthy) say, and I don't mean to put words in anyone's mouth: but allow me to suggest that the whole "You believe in pink unicorns, so you're a believer" versus "I simply have zero belief in pink unicorns, so I'm NOT a believer" debate may not work (um ... ever)

2) disbelief in the existence of God or gods (capped, then lower case)

Disbelief (in that example) wouldn't be "ignorance that belief exists" (you'd have a point there, imo) ...

Given even a theist claim "God exists" (and then let's say the Theist has no proof) an agnostic could say "I don't know, show me evidence before I believe or disbelieve"

An ATHEIST has already concluded "I disbelieve" ...

They don't just claim "I don't hold that belief" ... their "atheism" posits that NO GOD EXISTS.
"When we land on another planet, and we see the aliens worship a God unlike ours, even without knowing what sort of spirit-God they worship, even if their Science is a thousand centuries more advanced than Earth's science ... they will be superstitious aliens, because NO GOD EXISTS."

To which I ask (based on this def. of belief):
2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof

What is your atheist conclusion of FACT based on? What 'proof' ???

May I dare predict another popular reply?

Someone will protest: "You cannot 'prove a negative'

I will reply: that is why your atheism is seen (imo) as an invalid intellectual conclusion. You'd be concluding something that shouldn't be concluded because it cannot be proved.

Agnostics don't face that problem. (imo)

Atheists cannot overcome that problem. (imo)

That's just my POV, not an insult, not a fight ... and if I'm wrong, explain it to me. But only because explaining it will also be addressing the OP's question, I hope.

Devil Ledbetter

04-20-2007, 05:17 PM

How come "atheist" is being perceived as "believer"??

WHY, all you people out there, is it so hard for you to comprehend that a true atheist simply does NOT believe???

In anything???Because some people are stubborn.

I'm not saying whom. But I will say that you can't reason with them, so don't waste your precious blink of consciousness trying. Just rejoice that there is no eternal life where you will be stuck with them and their endless yammering.

lauram

04-20-2007, 06:14 PM

I think part of the problem is that there are atheists who are also anti-religion. Lots of Christians that I've met believe that most or all atheists are anti-religion based on mis-information.

I am agnostic, and I generally have to explain to people what that means. I am guilty of using the definition of atheism meaning one does not believe in god. It is the simplest definition I have had to provide. I can now use the non-belief definition as well.

A little off topic, but...

I saw a bumper sticker that I thought was pretty funny:

Militant Agnostic- I don't know and neither do you

I don't want that construed to mean that I think I am better than atheists or people of varying faiths; I just thought it was funny. :)

Higgins

04-20-2007, 07:41 PM

What is your atheist conclusion of FACT based on? What 'proof' ???

May I dare predict another popular reply?

Someone will protest: "You cannot 'prove a negative'

Atheists cannot overcome that problem. (imo)

Atheists cannot overcome that problem because there is no problem to overcome. If no one has ever seen even a trace of what is supposedly the most omnipresent thing that can be defined, then the very definition of the being in question ceases to have any plausibility. You cannot look for something that cannot be described. This is far more true than any possible fact or proof: an ominpresent thing that has never been anywhere is nowhere to be found. This is far, far less existential plausibility than simply not being somewhere, it is equivalent to never having been anywhere ever in any way at all.

Or to put it another way, since the absolute nature of the claim of God's existence would require that he is everywhere all the time, even one case of his non-appearance serves as an indicator of plausibility that is far more negative than a matter of mere fact or proof.

Melisande

04-20-2007, 09:15 PM

A lot of people, especially within Big Religion, think that anyone who is not part of their religion is automatically against it. Sad to say, I used to be that way myself. I thought at one time that all people who did not accept the way I believed automatically were against me and my religion.

Thank you for understanding, and for explaining so well. I am starting to realize that there is more to being religious than just believing in a god.

veinglory

04-20-2007, 09:30 PM

Devil Ledbetter

04-20-2007, 09:53 PM

Frankly, can we go back to what this forum is meant to be--a place to get away from all that crap. If we really don't have much to talk about in terms of NT writing maybe we don't need this subforum at all. Religious debate already has a place to occur in TIO.The easiest way to prevent debate on this forum would be to ask Small Axe to stop posting challenges on every thread. Although I think he's already been asked not to, he seems to believe that saying "this isn't an insult" right before insulting, or "this isn't meant to incite a fight" right before inciting one, or "this isn't to put words in anyone's mouth" right before stuffing words in one's mouth, or slapping some big smiley face after every nasty thing he says, somehow makes it all hunky-dory.

I think it would be a shame to shut this forum down because one loudmouth believer wants to come here with his capitalizations, underlines, bolds and dictionary definitions and demand we admit to "beliefs" we don't hold.

I find the posts from other believers thoughtful and insightful.

Melisande

04-20-2007, 09:58 PM

To small axe

I understand that you must have a belief in God, I guess that it is some kind of Christian faith you have, though you haven't really said so.

Well, without meaning to argue, I suggest we live in a culture where you indeed do have a 'belief'

belief: (same source)
1. something believed; an opinion or conviction.
2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof

No. I don't have a belief. I express an opinion that the concept of god is invented by man, and that I have made a choice not to recognize it.

I've been here for over 100 posts. Many of those were over the issue: Can an "atheist" support their position or claims with SCIENCE or with EVIDENCE? (That's "susceptible to rigorous proof")

If you can, good. I've asked many people many times for just that ... it's never forthcoming. Please present it now.

History shows, almost beyond reasonable doubt (in my opinion), when and where the various religious concepts were started by man, and how they have developed.

I don't feel a need to try and disprove the existence of a god. History has done that for me.

If you cannot ... then you have the 'belief' of atheism, and you are a believer. (Please note: I respect believers)

Atheism isn't a religion. It's lacking belief. It is not denying a god. It is being indifferent.

When (or, here, let me say "IF") an atheist seeks to claim that atheism is not a "belief" ... the concern (from people like myself, holding my position) is that they are claiming they own the FACT and the rest of us are reduced to BELIEF.

We all value FACTS here. (or we should)
We all respect each others' BELIEFS here. (or we should)

It's perfectly LEGIT for anyone to argue "You have your FACTS wrong" ... while we can all agree to disagree about your (or each others', or my) BELIEFS.

The FACT here is that you believe in God and I don't. I'm not saying that you are wrong, but you are claiming that I am. Who's got their facts wrong?

Because, in all due respect, by my dictionary (and others have different dictionaries, but we speak English, we have to agree on basic meanings, I think) you have, in fact, by definition, stated an untruth.

You do "believe" ...

No. I don't. I'm way to crass.

Oh, and according to my version of Random House Webster's Dictionay (Pocket, fourth edition, printed 2001)

belief
1. something believed; opinion; conviction
2. confidence, faith; trust
3. a religious creed or faith.

So I guess you are right. By expressing my opinion, I am a believer. And in my opinion pink elephants are cute!

Roger J Carlson

04-20-2007, 10:31 PM

Melisande

04-20-2007, 10:38 PM

So let me ask this of the atheists here. Are the following two statement equivalent? Or do they mean different things to you?

I do not believe there is a god.
I believe there is no god.Wow. Never thought of it before, but actually there is a difference, yes.

The second statement would apply best to me, and my POV, I guess, since the first statement sounds kind of, I don't know, disappointed somehow. As if it was said by someone who's been kicked in the b-tt. It also sounds doubtful. Guess I am making no sense at all here.

Devil Ledbetter

04-20-2007, 10:39 PM

So let me ask this of the atheists here. Are the following two statement equivalent? Or do they mean different things to you?
I do not believe there is a god.
I believe there is no god.
Note: This is not a semantic trap where I will pounce with a clever riposte. It's an honest question. My assumption was that they mean the same thing, but it got me to thinking that maybe they don't to some people.

1. I do not believe there is a god sounds agnositic, as in, there might be a god, but I don't believe it.

2. I believe there is no god sounds atheist, as in, well, there is no god.

I'm sorry you've used the word "believe" in those examples because now Small Axe is going to claim it's proof that atheism is merely a "belief." But, whatever. It's still an absence of belief.

I think there is no god.

Roger J Carlson

04-20-2007, 10:52 PM

I'm sorry you've used the word "believe" in those examples because now Small Axe is going to claim it's proof that atheism is merely a "belief." But, whatever. It's still an absence of belief.
But it seems to me this is the gist of the problem. Is the absence of belief in something the same as the belief in the absence of something? And if not, why?

Devil Ledbetter

04-20-2007, 11:02 PM

But it seems to me this is the gist of the problem. Is the absence of belief in something the same as the belief in the absence of something? And if not, why?I don't think they're the same, and for the same reason stated in my previous post. Absence of belief in something presupposes that the "something" exists. Belief in the absence of something is positive assertion that the "something" does not exist.

I will positively assert that gods do not exist, at the same time I respect the right of others to believe in whatever god or gods they can imagine, or their culture, religion or holy texts can describe for them.

Melisande

04-20-2007, 11:09 PM

I don't think they're the same, and for the same reason stated in my previous post. Absence of belief in something presupposes that the "something" exists. Belief in the absence of something is positive assertion that the "something" does not exist.

I will positively assert that gods do not exist, at the same time I respect the right of others to believe in whatever god or gods they can imagine, or their culture, religion or holy texts can describe for them.

I wish I had the ability to express myself as clearly. All I can do is agree.

Roger J Carlson

04-20-2007, 11:10 PM

I don't think they're the same, and for the same reason stated in my previous post. Absence of belief in something presupposes that the "something" exists. Belief in the absence of something is positive assertion that the "something" does not exist.
Wait a second. Are you sure you don't have these backwards? Because it seems to contradict your previous post. You said earlier that atheism is an absence of belief. If this presupposes that the object of the belief exists, then atheism is presupposing the existence of God? That doesn't sound right.

Devil Ledbetter

04-20-2007, 11:23 PM

Wait a second. Are you sure you don't have these backwards? Because it seems to contradict your previous post. You said earlier that atheism is an absence of belief. If this presupposes that the object of the belief exists, then atheism is presupposing the existence of God? That doesn't sound right.I think you're tripping over your own semantics there, partner. I've got a WIP to work on, so I'll leave you to chase your tail on your own.

Cheers.

Higgins

04-20-2007, 11:24 PM

Wait a second. Are you sure you don't have these backwards? Because it seems to contradict your previous post. You said earlier that atheism is an absence of belief. If this presupposes that the object of the belief exists, then atheism is presupposing the existence of God? That doesn't sound right.

As a strict CINO, all I can say is that there is something very odd about watching Big Christians and Atheists quibble over verbiage that makes no sense no matter how you read it. The strict CINO view is that God is not even a coherent concept and adding extra verbiage just makes it even more confusing.

Roger J Carlson

04-20-2007, 11:28 PM

I think you're tripping over your own semantics there, partner. I've got a WIP to work on, so I'll leave you to chase your tail on your own.

Cheers.Sorry. Just trying to understand.

Roger J Carlson

04-20-2007, 11:30 PM

As a strict CINO, all I can say is that there is something very odd about watching Big Christians and Atheists quibble over verbiage that makes no sense no matter how you read it. The strict CINO view is that God is not even a coherent concept and adding extra verbiage just makes it even more confusing.I'm a Big Christian? :Wha:

Zoombie

04-20-2007, 11:37 PM

Are they pirate ghosts, or ghost pirates? :D

Higgins

04-20-2007, 11:41 PM

I'm a Big Christian? :Wha:

If you aren't a CINO (Christian in Name Only) then you are a Big Christian.
So far the definitions for each are very crude. If you can define the small christian and his tiny god, that would be helpful.

Roger J Carlson

04-20-2007, 11:49 PM

If you aren't a CINO (Christian in Name Only) then you are a Big Christian.Seems a fairly black and white definition.
So far the definitions for each are very crude. If you can define the small christian and his tiny god, that would be helpful.No, no. It's your term. I'll leave the definitions to you.

Higgins

04-20-2007, 11:55 PM

Seems a fairly black and white definition.
No, no. It's your term. I'll leave the definitions to you.

You can always give up Big Christianity and go CINO, man. It's like drugs only without the substance abuse. Savor every unthinkable thought you've ever had...in the complete privacy of your own
ungodly head. Meet Jesus face-to-face in the Mayan Underworld of 738 AD. All in the comfort of your very own exclusively human brain.

davids

04-21-2007, 12:00 AM

I always thought hell was without God-but now I realize it is just living in Pittsburgh! Just an Athiotic thought-I believe you cannot have courage without fear-among other things. I believe that all religion without exeption is based on fear and the necessity for the human mind to justify and rationalize-this probably started thousands of years ago and has rumpled on up to the present-the photo above-now I believe in that for damn sure! Just one other belief all this BS about believe belief is just blah blah-substitue know if you like-don't care a jot!

Roger J Carlson

04-21-2007, 12:37 AM

You can always give up Big Christianity and go CINO, man. It's like drugs only without the substance abuse. Savor every unthinkable thought you've ever had...in the complete privacy of your own
ungodly head. Meet Jesus face-to-face in the Mayan Underworld of 738 AD. All in the comfort of your very own exclusively human brain.Hey no, man. I'm like...high on life.

loquax

04-21-2007, 01:43 AM

This was the topic for my "on labels" post. Basically it comes down to Roger's question:

So let me ask this of the atheists here. Are the following two statement equivalent? Or do they mean different things to you?
I do not believe there is a god.
I believe there is no god.
Note: This is not a semantic trap where I will pounce with a clever riposte. It's an honest question. My assumption was that they mean the same thing, but it got me to thinking that maybe they don't to some people.I'm the former. For me, atheistm is the lack of a belief, and I shouldn't be labelled by it, as it's a non-action (like how you shouldn't call me a "NonFrench", simply because I'm not french). To define people by all the things they are not is insanity.

The phrase "I believe there is no..." does not mean the person holds a belief. It's just a bending of the english language that allows these concepts to be phrased in this particular way. When talking logically, "I do not believe..." is the correct way to put it.

However, I'm willing to accept that the rejection of God may feel like an active belief. But this would be purely because Theism seems to be the "norm" in our world. In a neutral world, everything I have said above applies.

Devil Ledbetter

04-21-2007, 03:28 AM

For me, atheistm is the lack of a belief, and I shouldn't be labelled by it, as it's a non-action
Loquax, your take on this makes sense to me.

I don't believe Roger was sincere when he said his question wasn't a semantic game. I think that's exactly what it was. And from a mod, too.

But just because I say I don't believe he was sincere, doesn't mean I can prove it.

Cathy C

04-21-2007, 04:43 AM

Trust me, Devil. Roger wasn't being combative or playing games. He really is curious. Semantics are everything when discussing faith of anything--whether that faith is that the sun will rise in the morning (just because it has every other morning is no proof positive) or that there's a higher power overseeing our actions.

Personally, I don't see a difference between the terms Roger used, but that's not meant to say I can't acknowledge that HE didn't see a difference. To say that "I don't believe there is a god" merely acknowledges that OTHERS believe it and you hold the opposite opinion. To say that "I believe there is no god" turns the argument inward. It states (IMHO, of course) that you've considered the options and have come to a conclusion. But really . . . both statements imply a decision-making process where God (or Allah, or Jehovah, or Christ or Budda, etc., etc.) is one end, and a choice to reject those entities or people as having influence over me is on the other. I can't say for certain that Jesus existed and yet, to have faith, not only must I believe he existed as a living person, but that he spiritually or magicially created a new state of being for those who were born after him (being relieved of sin.)

I don't believe or disbelieve it. If it happened, so what? If it didn't happen, same thing. My life in 2007 is still the same.

I think one of the problems is that people with faith can't really grasp the concept of not having any. It's sort of like someone adoring the taste of anchovies on pizza--it's an either/or, no middle ground.

I realized after reading the original post, that I share Melisande's view. God (or god, or G-d or whatever) is a non-issue. Unlike anchovies on pizza, where there's a choice involved (I don't like salty fish mixed with tomato sauce), I simply don't care whether or not God or his messengers existed. They're outside the here and now and have ZERO impact on who and what I am. Now, those with faith will say that I'm merely deluded and it DOES have an impact on who and what I am. Maybe they're right. Maybe they're wrong. Don't care.

Nor do I care (and it doesn't make an impact on my life) if a meteor is barreling toward the Earth and will strike it in a hundred years, turning the planet into dust and ending all life. It's the same principle. One was before my time (if it even existed) and one will be after my time (if it ever happens.)

Does proving it matter to me? No. Does DISproving it matter to me? No. :Shrug: It's not even apathy, because SOME things matter to me. I prefer to be good and honest. I prefer to reach out to other humans to help make their life better. Does that change my Ka (to use an Egyptian term) or my Karma, or my Soul? Dunno. Again with the :Shrug:

But it's an interesting question. Please do continue on. However, small axe, (just so you know you're being spoken to), one more diatribe where you're combative and accusatory, where you fill your post with LOUD and annoying formatting (which is deemed to be yelling in an internet forum) you're going to be asked to leave this room . . . permanently. And we have ways of enforcing that. You've been warned for the second time. There won't be a third.

Devil Ledbetter

04-21-2007, 05:16 AM

Trust me, Devil. Roger wasn't being combative or playing games. He really is curious.You know, I'm actually glad you said that. I really hated thinking that the Christian mods were allowed to come here and toy with us. I'm a relative newbie at this board, so on your say so, I will happily give Roger the benefit of the doubt.

And yes, among writers especially, semantics matter. But even if a believer (intentionally or not) trips me up into stating somehow that my disbelief presuposes god's existence, I still don't believe in god. I don't get the little gotcha games. You'd think it would be beneath anyone who believes they have The Answer.

loquax

04-21-2007, 05:50 AM

Nah, it was a harmless question. And it's good Christians come here. Without them this area wouldn't exist.

Pat~

04-21-2007, 06:33 AM

It would seem that everyone operates within a belief system, no? (Everyone has an opinion about their world and their purpose/place in it.)And that system may or may not include a concept of God. It seems to me that that is what theists are referring to when they say that atheism is a "belief." I'm not sure I see what the problem with the word is...(unless it's the 'religious' connotation some people ascribe to it?)

Sean D. Schaffer

04-21-2007, 06:59 AM

Snipped ... It seems to me that that is what theists are referring to when they say that atheism is a "belief." I'm not sure I see what the problem with the word is...(unless it's the 'religious' connotation some people ascribe to it?)

I think that might be right, Pat. The religious connotation could provide some less-than-savory meanings to someone who lacks belief in a deity. Kind of similar, I think, to what some people say about "Not believing in organized religion". The idea of a religious connotation would be abhorrent to some people, because they don't want to be a part of religion, and for people to say "Such-and-such believes (insert subject here) does not exist" could possibly be translated as having religious implications.

Only recently, Pat, have I seen that many atheists are not anti-religion, nor are they pro-religion. They simply have no issue with it at all. Of course, not all atheists are like this, as like Veinglory pointed out, there would be many different stops along the way when it comes to how far someone goes in their persuasion.

McDuff

04-21-2007, 07:08 AM

Small axe, seriously, you're blinded by your prejudices when you talk about this, it's actually impossible to have a reasonable conversation with you. I know you think you're being totally reasonable, you're actually making no sense at all.

Everyone else might be interested in this blog post (http://philosophersplayground.blogspot.com/2007/03/democracy-atheism-and-reference.html), particularly the part discussing various kinds of atheism:
Epistemologically, there are several brands of atheism.

Negative inductive atheism, we can call the first stance, is exactly the sort of inference you describe here. Are the respondents on this blog aliens from another planet? There is no evidence in favor of this hypothesis (well, little evidence) and since there is no good reason to believe it, I don't. In the same way, one could argue as you do that there is someone making a claim of the existence of a being and therefore assumes the burden of proof for it and if they have not met that burden then rationally, one ought not believe in the existence claim.

Positive inductive atheism would be what we could term the position in which one argues that there is evidence to believe in the falsity of the magical, invisible man in the sky hypothesis. Folks with this view often point to the incredible successes of purely naturalistic explanations for phenomena that were thought at earlier times to be entirely unassailable by scientific methods. With all the things that had been thought to be the result of magic, spirits or supernatural causes that we now understand and can control by the use of science, there seems to be reason to be suspicious of claims that any part of the universe is beyond scientific understanding. This is an inductive argument based on the historical relation between science and religion, and judging that the successes that science has had in the past in realms like astronomy, biology, geology, and psychology will thus probably go all the way down to eliminating non-naturalistic elements in all our beliefs.

Deductive atheism would then be the name for those who claim to be able to show that the notion of an all-being is self-contradictory, that the Judeo-Christian God or any supernatural being could not exist. Those who champion arguments like the problem of evil are taking this line. A world which contains terrible suffering by innocent children, the argument goes, could not have been created by a being who is all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful because if He knew about it and could stop it, but didn't, then he would not be all-loving. This is a deductive argument to show that it is impossible for a particular type of god hypothesis to be true.

Linguistic atheism would be a name we could apply to those folks like the Logical Positivists of the first half of the 20th century who were atheists, not because of deductive arguments or the lack of evidence, but because, they contended, God talk -- indeed metaphysical talk of any sort -- was simply meaningless. It isn't, as Saint Anselm argued, that the atheist and the theist both agree on what is meant by God, they just disagree on whether one exists. According to Carnap and company, the whole question is really a pseudo-question. It looks like a question, it sounds like a question, but it really isn't. A question is a request for information, if there is no such information to be had, then the string of words is not a real question even if it is grammatically proper. If you and a friend were to get into a huge screaming battle over what color my sister's car is, you would be debating forever, not because it is a deep mystery of the cosmos, but because I don't have a sister. In the same way, the Logical Positivists argued that questions like the existence or non-existence of god were simply meaningless squabble, linguistic muddles that were the result of taking anything that looks like a question seriously.
Most people are in the first camp, the negative inductive. I'm pretty much in the Deductive camp, where I don't necessarily disbelieve in any possible God, just the various Gods that have been floated by religious types. Understanding that there are different flavours, and what they are, can, in theory, help the debate a little bit.

Devil Ledbetter

04-21-2007, 07:17 AM

There is a scale of belief, from firm disbelief, to firm belief, with all stops on the way.

I don't need anyone telling me what I believe, or disbelief or how, or that I should prove it. I don't need to conform to anyone's definition and I have no interest in defending my postion as the only one who has to occupy it is me.

Frankly, can we go back to what this forum is meant to be--a place to get away from all that crap. If we really don't have much to talk about in terms of NT writing maybe we don't need this subforum at all. Religious debate already has a place to occur in TIO. Small Axe, my comments -- which you quoted as though I were speaking to you -- were in answer to the preceding comments made by the highly respected mod, Veinglory.

You can claim I insult people ... I challenge you to quote where I 'insulted' anyone here on this thread. Back up your accusation or we know it's empty.

f the Mod wants to forbid civil disagreement here ... that's their choice as Mod, and you guys' loss of a worthwhile forum. I will gladly exit a forum where people are not allowed to disagree with error of fact or reasoning.

What a worthless circle-jerk such a forum would be.If "circle jerk" isn't an insult, what is? I guess because I'm not your brand of xian, I'm not familiar with your belief that "circle jerk" isn't insulting. Maybe to you it is not. Maybe at your church, a circle jerk is a sacrament. I mean, what would I know? You've never stated what religion you are. Maybe your a CircleJerklian Reform Christian or something.

I'm glad this is a forum where people can debate. I don't fear debate. And I don't expect people who disagree with me to be banned.I don't fear debate. I've been adminning my own religious debate board since 2002 and frankly, I've held back here because this isn't a debate forum.CathyC already told you as much, more than once, yet you keep coming back and declaring your right to debate here.

There is a word for your behavior. Obstreperous. Look it up in that handy dictionary of yours.

Sean D. Schaffer

04-21-2007, 07:24 AM

There is a word for your behavior. Ostreperous. Look it up in that handy dictionary of yours.

Ouch! I had to Google the definition as neither of my dictionaries contains the word. The individual you were referring to may have to do so too, unless his dictionary is one of those fancy unabridged kinds.

Devil Ledbetter

04-21-2007, 07:29 AM

Once again, I want to make the observation that if I were to go into the Christian writers' forum and demand that the Christians there provide proof of their beliefs, or that they conform to my definition of their belief, or back down on their beliefs if they couldn't prove to my satisfaction that they conformed to my dictionary's definitions, then stamp my feet and declare that I have every right to debate them on their turf, and then complain that without the benefit of my insights, their forum was nothing but a worthless circle jerk, how fast would I get banned from this site?

Pat~

04-21-2007, 07:30 AM

Ouch! I had to Google the definition as neither of my dictionaries contains the word. The individual you were referring to may have to do so too, unless his dictionary is one of those fancy unabridged kinds.

I think that's maybe because the "b" got left out... (obstreperous)

Devil Ledbetter

04-21-2007, 07:32 AM

Ouch! I had to Google the definition as neither of my dictionaries contains the word. The individual you were referring to may have to do so too, unless his dictionary is one of those fancy unabridged kinds.Because I left out a letter. Obstreperous (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Obstreperous).

veinglory

04-21-2007, 07:46 AM

As an interum measure I am re-acquainting myself with the handy-dandy 'ignore user' function.

Dawno

04-21-2007, 07:47 AM

small axe has been given a 10 day break from the boards. He's not here to defend himself - move the conversation forward as you wish, but let's move away from replying to his posts. Thank you.

Devil Ledbetter

04-21-2007, 07:52 AM

small axe has been given a 10 day break from the boards. He's not here to defend himself - move the conversation forward as you wish, but let's move away from replying to his posts. Thank you.Thank you, Dawno.

Devil Ledbetter

04-21-2007, 08:13 AM

Well, I feel that the mods here responded rapidly and fairly, and I appreciate it.

Lyxdeslic

04-21-2007, 08:31 AM

Going on the premise mentioned early on in this thread -- having no belief in God is a belief in itself -- what if someone were to say they don't have the balls/audacity to claim to have an answer one way or another? Is this a belief? I think not. Is it an opinion? No, more of a statement, I think.

This post is brought to you by your friendly neighborhood agnostic. :)

Lyx

Devil Ledbetter

04-21-2007, 08:33 AM

Lyxdeslic

04-21-2007, 08:44 AM

So, atheists are more audacious. I like the sound of that.
Ah, yes, true dat, my friend...true dat, yo! Nevertheless, under the context of my former post, so are "believers" of the Christia...hell, any faith, for that matter. :)

I'm not arguin' (cause I have no balls, remember). Besides...Chris and Ed are supposed to be on the same side, as I see it. :)

Lyx

Devil Ledbetter

04-21-2007, 09:03 AM

Ah, yes, true dat, my friend...true dat, yo! Nevertheless, under the context of my former post, so are "believers" of the Christia...hell, any faith, for that matter. :)

I'm not arguin' (cause I have no balls, remember). Besides...Chris and Ed are supposed to be on the same side, as I see it. :)

LyxAnd unlike the existence or non-existence of gods, we have proof Ed and Chris are on the same side.

http://www.pearljamonline.it/FOTO/firends/evcclift.jpg

Roger J Carlson

04-21-2007, 11:21 AM

You know, I'm actually glad you said that. I really hated thinking that the Christian mods were allowed to come here and toy with us. I'm a relative newbie at this board, so on your say so, I will happily give Roger the benefit of the doubt.

And yes, among writers especially, semantics matter. But even if a believer (intentionally or not) trips me up into stating somehow that my disbelief presupposes god's existence, I still don't believe in god. I don't get the little gotcha games. You'd think it would be beneath anyone who believes they have The Answer.Devil, I sincerely apologize. I was, of course, playing semantics. Semantics is the meaning of language. But it was not my intent to play a "gotcha game" or trip you into stating anything. I was actually trying to understand what you meant because you seemed to be contradicting yourself.

If I may clarify. In this post (http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1281133&postcount=17), you stated that atheism is an absence of belief. But in this post (http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1281203&postcount=19), you stated that an absence of belief presupposes the existence of something. That doesn't make sense to me because I can't see how either the absence of belief in God or the belief in the absence of God presupposes the existence of God.

The purpose for my question was this: I have always considered the absence of belief in God and the belief in the absence of God to be identical concepts. So by my way of thinking, atheism IS a belief. But it occurred to me that maybe everybody doesn't see it that way. Maybe athiests view those concepts as different. In that case, then athesim IS NOT a belief.

It occurs to me that you and smallaxe were using the same word (belief) to describe different very concepts. So that, in fact, both of your statements were true based on your individual understanding of the word.

But McDuff's post brings up another interesting possibility. It's possible that both of you are right because you have a different understanding about what atheism is. It sounds to me that positive inductive atheism could be considered a belief, whereas negative inductive atheism, would not.

loquax

04-21-2007, 04:38 PM

Agnostics still go to hell. And down there, they get picked on by the Atheists. Of course, we both group together to pick on the Sinners. Normal sinning isn't as hardcore as rejecting God Himself.

I'm talking seventh circle here, people.

McDuff

04-21-2007, 06:55 PM

There's flavours of agnosticism like there's flavours of atheism. Which one are you?

Devil Ledbetter

04-21-2007, 06:58 PM

Roger, the first statement is about belief in the existence of a being, the second statement is about belief in the being itself. Therefore, it is actually the second statement that presupposes the being's existence. It is easy to get tripped up on that, because I do not believe god exists and of course, since I don't believe he even exists it is quite impossible to believe in him.

Devil Ledbetter

04-21-2007, 07:30 PM

Everyone else might be interested in this blog post (http://philosophersplayground.blogspot.com/2007/03/democracy-atheism-and-reference.html), particularly the part discussing various kinds of atheism:

Most people are in the first camp, the negative inductive. I'm pretty much in the Deductive camp, where I don't necessarily disbelieve in any possible God, just the various Gods that have been floated by religious types. Understanding that there are different flavours, and what they are, can, in theory, help the debate a little bit.McDuff, I enjoyed that blog post and felt in agreement with all four descriptions, so I guess I am like a quadruple-dip icecream cone. My atheism path began at the Theologian's Dilemma (Deductive Atheism) and moved on to Conrad the Magical Talking Carp (Negative Inductive Atheism) and then onto the Incredible Shrinking God (Positive Inductive Atheism) and most recently evolved into the observation that all talk about god/s, heaven, hell, limbo and the supernatural is Yammering (Linguisitic Atheism).

I loved the example about the color of his sister's car.

In this morning's paper, a headline stated the pope has now declared the non-existence of original sin. Original Sin and Limbo are yammered theistic notions people have spent lifetimes fretting over; families have fought and split over whether infants should be baptized; or where those who weren't and died are spending eternity; bereaved mothers certain they'll spent their own eternity seperate from their dead infant ... and then the pope says "nevermind."

Real human anguish is caused by the yammering of Religious Thinkers.

McDuff

04-21-2007, 07:39 PM

DPTA: It's possible that both of you are right because you have a different understanding about what atheism is. It sounds to me that positive inductive atheism could be considered a belief, whereas negative inductive atheism, would not.
The two are more high-falootin ways of describing "weak" vs "strong" atheisms, which is the dichotomy most will be used to. I would say that what gets most atheists' goats is that they are, in fact, the negative inductive kind and are refusing to believe which is, of course, the opposite of belief, and then get constantly harrassed by people who insist that belief in something is equivalent to non-belief in it.

I'm a heretic, however, so I can quite clearly eludicate exactly that which I believe and that which I do not believe. I do not disbelieve in all possible gods in all possible universes, but I do believe strongly and positively that the mass of evidence indicates the opinion of religious types about such things is of no consequence, because they are equally or possibly less informed about it than I am. The only group whose beliefs in God seem to possibly correlate with the observed reality are psychopaths with stomach churning beliefs about the valueless nature of certain kinds of human being, but worship of such odious gods as they have holds no appeal for me. Everyone else makes claims in such broad opposition to reality that I have no problem expressing a large, strong, and positive belief that they are no kind of authority on anything, least of all a reasonable conception of metaphysics.

Melisande

04-21-2007, 07:59 PM

I thank you all for talking about this. I am reading, and learning a lot. :)

Cathy C

04-21-2007, 10:57 PM

If you and a friend were to get into a huge screaming battle over what color my sister's car is, you would be debating forever, not because it is a deep mystery of the cosmos, but because I don't have a sister.

:hooray: They actually have a NAME for my closest belief in the atheism range. Formally, I refer to myself as agnostic because I ALSO have no way of judging what my parents may or may not have done with each other or others before I came into being (or afterward, either.) So while, in this example, I don't have a sister--I MIGHT have a sister. Perhaps. Or not. I just find the question of both the car's color and the concept of having a non-existent sister fascinating. :D

Higgins

04-21-2007, 11:33 PM

Real human anguish is caused by the yammering of Religious Thinkers.

Very true, but real human anguish is caused by a vast range of things.

But not by the Zeros that lie at the base of the "yammering". Moreover the "Yammering" is highly structured. Why is that? Linguistic Atheism is entirely correct as far as establishing the incoherence of the concept of Big Gods (or post-neoplatonic gods anyway)...but Carnap and the Logical Positivists were wrong about how language and symbols and and science and signifiers work, for example in the structure of the "Yammering". For example, they were certainly wrong about how symbolically useful a non-existent thing can be. You can organize whole societies around the big Zero of a non-existent God. You can organize whole societies around a series of non-existent beings whose claim to existence is that they must have annihilated the previous cosmos since we are now in the new one: hence the monkeys you see (left over from that earlier world)...there's a Classic Mayan "argument" for you.
This gives us an interesting reverse "argument": we can tell there is no Big God because all the yammering about Him is structured, but in extremely arbitrary ways that derive from the needs of societies for particular kinds of relationships with the Big Zero. If Big God existed, then the yammering would have some structure related to something other than the needs of the societies producing the yammering.

Devil Ledbetter

04-22-2007, 02:31 AM

Higgins

04-22-2007, 04:05 AM

I agree Sokal, and have said before that the effects of belief can be very real, not only for the believer, but those around him. Certainly the beliefs of the five Catholic US supreme court justices, which led them to outlaw so-called PBA this week, has a real effect on believers and non-believers alike.

What you've said here makes me wonder how many of those Yammerists are in fact closet atheists who take up theistic yammering to control believers? This would explain the long held prejudice against out, honest atheists (agnositics, too) who have the temerity to say "hey, there is no pony in that pile of poo." Because if the believers start to realize it, they might escape the box of fear the Yammerists have them in. As long as atheists are held down, treated like second-class citizens and suspected of immorality, they remain a non-threat to those yammering up new fears to control people.

This has been a problem haunting Western Civ since at least the Renaisance and certainly since Late humanism: to what degree is religion only good insofar as it supports a certain social order? Of course the flip side is that if you don't like the social order, then you don't like its religion.
Various Protestant sects seem to have been the first to use this dynamic politically, but the people who inspired the Founders of the US (Locke for example) were closet Arians and public Trinitarians...Whiston, being the exception in that he was flat out Arian. The reason for being public Trinitarians or Latitudinarians or Arminians rather than public Arians or Socianians seems to have been that they feared some kind of social disorder if the Established (Nicenean/Trinitarian etc.) Church was seen to be less than Wholesome. The US took the more radical step of having no established church and allowing the social order to rest on more general social principles.
Now, of course, the Supreme Court is reverting to the early 18th century idea of a particularized social order ordained from above, to be adhered to in public while one's private views are to be excluded from public discourse. An odd turn of events...perhaps FDR's idea of expanding the Supreme court to 12 justices should be revived, but they should all be Aztec Sun Priests on some high quality halucinogens.

Melisande

04-22-2007, 05:12 AM

truelyana

04-22-2007, 05:17 AM

OK, let me ask you all this; (and to the Moderators, I implore you to move this thread if it is in the wrong place).

How come "atheist" is being perceived as "believer"??

In Random House Webster's Dictionary it says that atheism is;

And god is; (from the same source)

Simple as that!

As an atheist, (I may use that word about myself sometimes, even though I actually resent doing so), I do not believe in "a higher power", a "god", a "destiny" or whatnot.

I have no belief. I am a very down-to-Earth, not-so-imaginative, live-and-let-live kind of person. I also try my very utmost to respect people who have found comfort and happiness in some kind of belief-system.

I have read through a number of threads where "atheists" are being considered "anti-religious", "anti-church", "militant fundamentalists" and what have you. The common theme being "believer" in something I would call almost "Anti-Christ".

When the simple fact is that a lot of us, (and of course I am guilty of judging others after my own norm here, and apologize for that, if someone feels an urge not to agree), simply don't give a hoot.

Christ, no Christ, Allah or IHVH, it doesn't make a difference to me. In my mind I have concluded that I am a human being, an animal in fact, with a life-span of approx 65-85 years on this planet.

SO WHAT????

I refuse to inhibit my life because it might not give me a place in "Heaven". I also refuse to be scared because it might send me to "Hell".

I believe in life itself. I am grateful that I am born. Grateful that I have life. Grateful to have a Husband that loves me, that I feel free to love back as much as I want.

I have taken some beatings, it comes with life. Have given some too. That also comes with life. Do I call it "Karma"? Not only no, but Hell No!

WHY, all you people out there, is it so hard for you to comprehend that a true atheist simply does NOT believe???

In anything???

I vouch for that. I have never considered labelling myself as such, as i don't have an identity.

Devil Ledbetter

04-22-2007, 05:32 AM

You know, after having read the last couple of posts in this thread, I am starting to wonder if "belief" as a concept, not explicitly in a god, but in something - anything -, might be kind of a need within a lot of people. A way to "place" oneself into the order of things.

It is not for everyone to have an analytical mind, or to be able to, through schooling, expand that mind. Maybe, sometimes, it's just easier to go with the flow and say "Hey, everyone in this neighborhood are believers. Maybe it would be easier for me, in order to get along with them, if I started going to their church too.

This is a forum for writers who tend to take language very seriously. Maybe to writers (I am not at all sure I fit into the group [with only one manuscript finished], hence the slight hesitation), definition of words is more important than to the average person.

Maybe also the intellectual level has a role to play? I dare say that simply because I have no education at all, and sometimes feel very intimidated by those who have. Could it be so that people of a higher intellectual standard find it easier to question ancient beliefs? To find them out-of-date? Or to challenge a status quo?Millesande, I think the need to believe is more out of an emotional need than intellectual lack. Plenty of really smart people believe in a supernatural something, although they may have more of a struggle believing than simpler minds. It takes intellectual gymnastics to bend one's mind around obvious problems of belief (such as the theologian's dilemma). I don't think it takes smarts so much to reject theistic notions, but I believe it takes courage to buck the social norms and to face life knowing that this is it, there is no big, loving parent in the sky watching over you and making sure it will all be okay in the end.

My DH is at least the same intellectual level as I, and has six years of college to my four, yet he's a believer. I think it is too painful for him to contemplate never seeing his mother again (she died of a brain tumor). When what I'm saying makes too much sense in our discussions about theism, I can almost see him closing his mind. It gets very uncomfortale for him and he has to start doing the mental gymnastics to make his belief work.

It's sad in a way, but I don't think he'd be happier without belief, so I don't try to talk him out of it.

Melisande

04-22-2007, 05:41 AM

Millesande, I think the need to believe is more out of an emotional need than intellectual lack.

Yeah, that's kind of what I tried to say, though I sometimes find myself lacking in language. (English is the third language I learned, and I still haven't really begun to get it). I tried to say that maybe belief is an easy solution to a lot of (personal) problems, and maybe for the developed mind it is easier recognize the problem for what it is, and deal with it.
Sorry I wasn't clear enough.

Devil Ledbetter

04-22-2007, 05:48 AM

(English is the third language I learned, and I still haven't really begun to get it).Are you kidding? I think your English is great! I wouldn't have guessed it was your third language.

Sean D. Schaffer

04-22-2007, 07:29 AM

Millesande, I think the need to believe is more out of an emotional need than intellectual lack. Plenty of really smart people believe in a supernatural something, although they may have more of a struggle believing than simpler minds. It takes intellectual gymnastics to bend one's mind around obvious problems of belief (such as the theologian's dilemma). I don't think it takes smarts so much to reject theistic notions, but I believe it takes courage to buck the social norms and to face life knowing that this is it, there is no big, loving parent in the sky watching over you and making sure it will all be okay in the end.

...Snipped.

I don't know how most theists think, but for me the whole reason I believe in a particular deity has less to do with emotion or intellect, than it has to do with thinking there has to be something bigger than me in life. I can't explain it and I most certainly will not bore you all with my attempts. I just suffice it to say there's a sense within me that there is something out there, that is not mortal, that cannot be defined by Science or by natural means, that is more powerful than Humanity and is intelligent. Whether everything will be okay in the end or not, is irrelevant to me. What matters in my own mind is that the world around me is so huge and the universe beyond that so incomprehensible to me, something had to have put it together that is beyond human understanding.

This is not meant to prove Creationism or Young Earth Theory or any of that stuff. Rather, it is to explain my own experience and why I, as a theist, continue to believe in a particular deity. I don't believe necessarily in a lot of the things many Christians believe, even though I was one at one time, but I do believe there's something bigger than Humanity.

So it's neither all emotion nor all intellect. I think it's a combination of the two, regardless of what persuasion a person adheres to, that defines to the individual what they think about certain things.

That's about the best way I can explain it. Perhaps someone more eloquent than I will be able to find a more concise definition of what I'm trying to say.

Devil Ledbetter

04-22-2007, 07:54 AM

I don't know how most theists think, but for me the whole reason I believe in a particular deity has less to do with emotion or intellect, than it has to do with thinking there has to be something bigger than me in life. I can't explain it and I most certainly will not bore you all with my attempts. I just suffice it to say there's a sense within me that there is something out there, that is not mortal, that cannot be defined by Science or by natural means, that is more powerful than Humanity and is intelligent. Whether everything will be okay in the end or not, is irrelevant to me. What matters in my own mind is that the world around me is so huge and the universe beyond that so incomprehensible to me, something had to have put it together that is beyond human understanding.

This is not meant to prove Creationism or Young Earth Theory or any of that stuff. Rather, it is to explain my own experience and why I, as a theist, continue to believe in a particular deity. I don't believe necessarily in a lot of the things many Christians believe, even though I was one at one time, but I do believe there's something bigger than Humanity.

So it's neither all emotion nor all intellect. I think it's a combination of the two, regardless of what persuasion a person adheres to, that defines to the individual what they think about certain things.

That's about the best way I can explain it. Perhaps someone more eloquent than I will be able to find a more concise definition of what I'm trying to say.Why would non-belief in gods or the supernatural means one thinks there is "nothing bigger than humanity"? Humanity doesn't make a pimple on the rear-end of the universe, IMO. But to me, that doesn't mean the universe contains an intellect that needs my worship. Or that I need to worship.

I don't happen to believe in a universal conciousness or meaningful order. That doesn't mean I think humans are at the top-end of anything. We're pretty lame, actually, and no more highly evolved than the other mammals. We just happen to be good at organizing and building on our previous knowledge, kind of like an intellectual coral reef.

Zoombie

04-22-2007, 08:14 AM

But hey, if we're only slightly better than mammals...then we only have one place left to go, and that place is up.

McDuff

04-22-2007, 08:42 AM

For myself, grumpy ex-theist and metaphysical poseur extraordinaire, I find that religion isn't just one thing. It is a meme that fills distinct needs -- personal and social.

We need people, and we need a structure to put people in. How much of this is the result of genetics and how much is the result of conditioning I would not make too much of a guess at, but what matters is that it is non-negotiable. We simply do not function as full human beings without a society in which to exist, and this function is enhanced with ideas of people above, below and around ourselves. Religion as a concept appears to have been designed with this need in mind, but as with the genetic side of things it is infinitely more likely that the appearance of design is the result of a process of selection over time. Religion being such a simple and neat way of transmitting hierarchy, morality, social norms, learning and the rest of it between generations, societies with religious leanings would have had a structural advantage over their less imaginative adversaries. This ties directly with what Sokal was saying above, that religion is such a human construct that God seems something of a decorative element rather than a functional one.

But there is another side to religion, that of the personal spiritual development. We in the 21st century have become so used to the free transmission of information and ideas, and of the depth and complexity and understanding backing up those ideas, that we forget that we live in a most peculiar time when compared to the vast stretch of human history. It has only been for perhaps a hundred years that atheism could hope to be as intellectually complete and satisfying as theism. The increase in what we know as a species has been exponential, such that we can now construct a meaningful explanation of all reality from the birth to the death of the universe and never have to invoke God to fill in the gaps. For someone tending to atheism on moral or other grounds, this is a fine and rare luxury. While our knowledge of all that there is to know is by no means complete, we have at least now a framework on which to hang our disbelief. Even now, though, the construction of such a framework can be a matter of hard work and the intellectual acceptance of some things which seem at first blush to be counter-intuitive. Why, then, should the fact that many default to an idea of an easily comprehensible "something bigger" be of any surprise to us? We all have things which we do not understand. We all have experiences which defy our ability to explain them fully. Within the top down structure of religion there operates a counter-flow upwards (as has had to exist in every religion or it would have become brittle and snapped long ago) which enables people to question and challenge and grow within a safe and protected environment, and provides answers to incomprehensible things which can be of great comfort without the long sleepless nights and the philosophical introspection.

G K Chesterton in Orthodoxy described the "walls" of doctrine not as a prison, but as protection from the cliff edge beyond. Without their protection, in his view, people responsible for their own safety must tread carefully and soberly because the fall would kill them. But with a solid barrier in the way, one was free to leap and jump as one liked, because there was no danger that a slip would cause one to be dashed on the rocks below. As such religion has provided much assurance to those who wish to safely explore their place in the world without having to start from scratch and run the risk that it is not what they thought it was. Is it any wonder, because of this, that those within religion should be opposed to heretics like myself who would idly demolish their cliff-edge walls simply because I want to see if I can fly?

As it happens, although I found myself unable to stay within the walls I didn't fly, but rather slid scraping down the cliff edge and bashed myself to pieces on the rocks, proving in one sense that Chesterton was right. Nonetheless, the fall didn't kill me. There exist walls for me, out here, but they are more aligned with the paths that I wish to tread, and many are of my own construction, so they do not bother me.

Now, were the personal development the only aspect of religion, as it is for some spiritualists, my wandering around out here poking at that which they dare not touch, would not be a problem. But the social aspect cannot brook the violation of its walls. It maintains its power by requiring that I am a sinner, immoral, godless. It is with this aspect of religion that the violent conflict occurs, that which would force I and those others who live outside its walls to come back inside them, or who try and compromise by offering to extend the inner compound a little so I can get a bit more freedom but not challenge the authority by which they have constructed them in the first place. The more people drift out and down the cliff edge, or who sit inside and don't mind if the walls are there or not but don't want to scramble down to the rocks themselves, the more those for whom the walls are important feel under attack and take steps to defend themselves. And, as I said, who can blame them? We're the rebellious young outlaws here, not them. We're the ones with the fancy new ideas.

Nonetheless, I'm out here now, and the simple fact of the matter is that those left inside are there of their own choosing, not because the outside world is dangerous. If, because of what we heretics are doing, the walls on the clifftops eventually crumble, then I am afraid I cannot bring myself to shed many tears.

Melisande

04-22-2007, 09:13 AM

I don't know how most theists think, but for me the whole reason I believe in a particular deity has less to do with emotion or intellect, than it has to do with thinking there has to be something bigger than me in life. I can't explain it and I most certainly will not bore you all with my attempts. I just suffice it to say there's a sense within me that there is something out there, that is not mortal, that cannot be defined by Science or by natural means, that is more powerful than Humanity and is intelligent. Whether everything will be okay in the end or not, is irrelevant to me. What matters in my own mind is that the world around me is so huge and the universe beyond that so incomprehensible to me, something had to have put it together that is beyond human understanding.

Sometimes I stand completely awestruck as I look up at the stars, and ask myself questions. The vastness out there truly humbles me, and at the same time it exhilirates me. I don't understand the modern science that tries to explain it all with the Big Bang-theory, strings and the lot of it. I'm quite happy to admire the view and let my senses be filled with it.

Many a time have a dreamt about being able to go out there. Even If I was offered a one-way ticket I would, too. No hesitation at all. But I recognize that as nothing but my curiosity. Well, maybe also my lust for adventure.

For some reason I have also, in later years, been able to turn the picture around in my head, and see the Earth "from above", as in those amazing pictures taken by satellites and such. And this thought always hits me; "Look at that beautiful planet! That's your home. Think about how lucky you are to having been born there, and in this day and age too."

Without diminishing my sense of awe for the Universe, I have found that the simple fact that I've been this lucky to have life, on an absolutely wonderful planet, is enough. There is no need for explanation, or to complicate things with questions. I prefer to just enjoy the ride. And what a ride it is! :D

Higgins

04-22-2007, 09:14 AM

Religion being such a simple and neat way of transmitting hierarchy, morality, social norms, learning and the rest of it between generations, societies with religious leanings would have had a structural advantage over their less imaginative adversaries.

A functionalist argument and basically completely true, obviously, but my early training was in ethnohistory (almost literally since I was looking at small and splintered groups of American Indians) I'm inclined to think that while the function of religions are simple, their only "redeeming" qualities lie in their complexities, iconographies, myths and symbologies (not to mention, liturgies, ordeals, vision quests and son on)....I'm not really sure what these allow people to do. You can think of a lot of the better things about religion as attempts to escape from the confines of language and culture and into something more personal or direct or just better aesthetically....continual escapes that are continually re-incorporated more or less "cannibalistically" into the very socio-cultural and linguistic mechanisms that enforce the functionalities of language, culture and society....though the escape routes retain some of their original logic.
So these matters are extremely complex and have been ever-shifting since the beginning of language. You might call it all yammering and most of it is utterly wasted or at least misdirected and usually co-opted effort...well that's sad, but that's life.

McDuff

04-22-2007, 09:39 AM

A functionalist argument and basically completely true, obviously, but my early training was in ethnohistory (almost literally since I was looking at small and splintered groups of American Indians) I'm inclined to think that while the function of religions are simple, their only "redeeming" qualities lie in their complexities, iconographies, myths and symbologies (not to mention, liturgies, ordeals, vision quests and son on)....I'm not really sure what these allow people to do.
Obviously we on the outside can only speculate, but the use of myth, ceremony, symbology etc on both a social and personal level, for me, is not in doubt.

Most religions, I find, are like vegetables: they have a flavour that is tied to the soil in which they grew. The nature of the gods reflect the benevolent and malignant forces observable in nature, the wolves and jackals and bears, the antelopes and cattle, the rains and the droughts, the volcanoes, the oceans, the thunderstorms. The myths and symbols that grow up around the gods are there because they had explanatory power. The ceremonies we have are also tied to such things, in temperate Europe we celebrate fertility in spring, harvest in autumn and during the dark winter months we take the grain stored in our barns, light big fires, make lots of noise and get blind hammered drunk in a huge feast to take our minds off the deathly colds outside. That Christianity came in and adopted these festivals is of little consequence, they knew that they would have to because we would continue to do them anyway. Be the festivals Saturnalia, Easter or Carnival, the labels we put on them always strike me as post-facto justifications that the authorities put on so that they didn't have to admit there were times that the authority of society has to be loosened and the populace let off the leash, and that society will by and large set the date and time of these outbursts of its own accord.

As to the rest, our strength as social beings comes from our ability to weave narratives which explain the world and allow us to fit where we are inside it. The literal truth of Coyote or Queztacoatl or Yahweh pales in importance to the ease with which stories of such beings can slip morals and ideologies into our conceptions of reality. The liturgy or the vision quest is just a way of enabling an individual to feel a personal identity with the giant weaving narrative of the society in which he lives. Once an individual willingly commits to a society and identifies with it, both they and the society are the stronger for it.

Of course, things are more complicated now, hence why I idly sit on the outside and throw pebbles at godbotherers. But then, really, every religion needs an adversary... ;)

Melisande

04-22-2007, 10:06 AM

Most religions, I find, are like vegetables: they have a flavour that is tied to the soil in which they grew. The nature of the gods reflect the benevolent and malignant forces observable in nature, the wolves and jackals and bears, the antelopes and cattle, the rains and the droughts, the volcanoes, the oceans, the thunderstorms. The myths and symbols that grow up around the gods are there because they had explanatory power. The ceremonies we have are also tied to such things, in temperate Europe we celebrate fertility in spring, harvest in autumn and during the dark winter months we take the grain stored in our barns, light big fires, make lots of noise and get blind hammered drunk in a huge feast to take our minds off the deathly colds outside. That Christianity came in and adopted these festivals is of little consequence, they knew that they would have to because we would continue to do them anyway.

DANG! You really know how to express yourself (bowing and shaking head in admiration;) )

You are also right, of course, that religion and myths have had a social function throughout history. I guess it still has today.
But that has also lead to a social structure in most societies that has a hard time accepting the fact that there are people who, even though they obey laws and show the general considerations, aren't willing to conform to the ideas that are expected of them. And suddenly they become "suspicious", and are labelled in a negative way. Especially if they are audacious enough to claim complete absence of faith.

And now that I think about it, I come to wonder if the very word "atheism" might imply to the leaders of society a threat, because someone who isn't willing to bow to a god, might not be willing to bow to another, more worldly authority either.

Sean D. Schaffer

04-22-2007, 10:16 AM

Snipped...

And now that I think about it, I come to wonder if the very word "atheism" might imply to the leaders of society a threat, because someone who isn't willing to bow to a god, might not be willing to bow to another, more worldly authority either.

You might be right on that. An old story goes that in the early Christian Era, people were required to claim the Roman Emperor as the most divine of all the gods throughout the world. The story goes that Christians refused to worship Caesar as though he were equal with Jesus, and thus, though the majority of them were law-abiding people, one Emperor in particular (Nero) portrayed them as a threat to the people of Rome, saying they incited violence to set Rome on fire.

Or so that is how I remember what I read.

But the point I'm making here is, I think you are right in that not following the status quo or worshipping a particular deity that the people in power worship, could very well be seen as a threat ... or at least portrayed to the people of their society, as a threat by the society's leaders.

Interesting point. It makes some good sense.

Kentuk

04-22-2007, 10:48 PM

So let me ask this of the atheists here. Are the following two statement equivalent? Or do they mean different things to you?
I do not believe there is a god.
I believe there is no god.
Note: This is not a semantic trap where I will pounce with a clever riposte. It's an honest question. My assumption was that they mean the same thing, but it got me to thinking that maybe they don't to some people.

The difference is subjective. The word believe has a different meaning for Christians, it means faith while an athiest it means 'to the best of my knowledge. Christians believe faith rises above knowledge, they can say I don't know but I have faith although they usually turn it around and say that because they have faith in the absolute they know. I think the OP has a good point in not wanting to be classified as a believer or someone who has faith that there is no God.

Terry

McDuff

04-23-2007, 01:40 AM

No, I think that's wrong. Objectively and logically, the two are very different statements. I don't believe in invisible pink unicorns orbiting around Saturn or a complex society of gnomes living under my floorboards because such things are incredibly unlikely but, honestly, I haven't given a significant amount of thought to either concept. If I were to ask you if you believed in a God of my own devising, you would answer in the negative for precisely the same reason, that such a concept had not (and could not have) occurred to you. Lack of belief is a mainly passive concept.

I can say, though, that I have a positive and active belief in the non-existence of the Christian God as the Christians claim to understand it, and the same extends to other religious conceptions of God. To me, this is an active disbelief, distinct and separate in my head from the passive disbeliefs of things I have either never considered or simply dismissed out of hand as soon as I heard them.

zornhau

04-23-2007, 04:13 PM

The difference is subjective. The word believe has a different meaning for Christians, it means faith while an atheist it means 'to the best of my knowledge.

I'm beginning to think that:

Theists and atheists both have the same passive belief in the material world, mundane science etc.
Theists, however, have an extra active Belief in God(s).If so, do theists experience the difference?

(As a writerwannabe I find this fascinating because belief and Belief can exist in parallel. How do people convert?)

Melisande

04-23-2007, 08:48 PM

If so, do theists experience the difference?

I can't speak for anybody else, but as a non-believer I wouldn't have a clue. That question can only be answered by someone who believes in a god.

McDuff

04-23-2007, 09:33 PM

I'm beginning to think that:
Theists and atheists both have the same passive belief in the material world, mundane science etc.
Theists, however, have an extra active Belief in God(s).If so, do theists experience the difference?

(As a writerwannabe I find this fascinating because belief and Belief can exist in parallel. How do people convert?)
For a number of reasons, including those in the post above, I think this is barking up the wrong tree. There's no need for you to fiddle about with capitals, for example, because your small-b "belief" would be more accurately referred to as "knowledge". While I can believe in rocks and mountains, their permanence and solidity has nothing to do with my belief. I could be beaten to death with a baseball bat I didn't believe in.

There is a lot of semantic blurring between knowledge and belief, but I don't think that you can put all theistic belief into one category which is distinguished from everything on the atheistic kind by a mere depression of the shift key. There's much more to it than that.

Higgins

04-23-2007, 09:54 PM

You might be right on that. An old story goes that in the early Christian Era, people were required to claim the Roman Emperor as the most divine of all the gods throughout the world. The story goes that Christians refused to worship Caesar as though he were equal with Jesus, and thus, though the majority of them were law-abiding people, one Emperor in particular (Nero) portrayed them as a threat to the people of Rome, saying they incited violence to set Rome on fire.

At around AD 65 or so (when I think Nero was still running things), quite a number of people would have had trouble participating in the imperial cult and for that matter not sacrificing to other people's gods was not all that odd. Arabs would not have sacrificed to anything except their mysterious non-idolatrous objects, Zoroastrians would not have sacrificed anywhere except at a Fire Temple. Followers of Mithras or any number of mystery cults would have avoided sacrificing to anything outside their cults and so on. Moreover the Romans outlawed some mystery cults. The Imperial Cults were political cults and they were sustained by the towns and cities that wanted to show off their up-to-date qualities. There were also other political cults that could cause problems: the cults introduced by Hellenistic Monarchies and the cults of the Legionary Eagles, for example. The Christians were probably the very last bunch to get into trouble about such cults. After all the Judeans had fought and won several wars to keep their own cult of Yahweh pure and were doing okay until 70 AD. The Jews, Zoroastrians, Samaritans and Mandeans and so on seem to have held on for the last 2000 years with only occasional state support (Imperial Persia was Zoroastrian until it fell to the Arabs, no foreign images were ever brought into the Temple of Yahweh). So the intermittant persecutions of the Christians were definitely political and only connected to the Imperial cult at the local law-enforcement level and even then it could be an administrative nightmare since the "crime" of not sacrificing was pretty unusual as a crime, if not as a practice.

benbradley

04-23-2007, 10:40 PM

I'm beginning to think that:
Theists and atheists both have the same passive belief in the material world, mundane science etc.
Theists, however, have an extra active Belief in God(s).If so, do theists experience the difference?

I'm not sure there's a difference. The way I see it, we all believe what we believe because we think our beliefs most closely correspond with reality.

(As a writerwannabe I find this fascinating because belief and Belief can exist in parallel. How do people convert?)

From my experience (and not distinguishing between the capitalized and non-capitalized word), it's by being around people who have the belief one is being converted to. It can also happen through books, but the main thing is to be exposed to the belief and be "open" to it. This isn't limited to religious beliefs, it's also applies to political ideas and other 'memes' and such.

Maybe that's too simplistic, or not quite what you're asking, but that's my answer and I'm sticking to it!

Sean D. Schaffer

04-24-2007, 01:11 AM

At around AD 65 or so (when I think Nero was still running things), quite a number of people would have had trouble participating in the imperial cult and for that matter not sacrificing to other people's gods was not all that odd. Arabs would not have sacrificed to anything except their mysterious non-idolatrous objects, Zoroastrians would not have sacrificed anywhere except at a Fire Temple. Followers of Mithras or any number of mystery cults would have avoided sacrificing to anything outside their cults and so on. Moreover the Romans outlawed some mystery cults. The Imperial Cults were political cults and they were sustained by the towns and cities that wanted to show off their up-to-date qualities. There were also other political cults that could cause problems: the cults introduced by Hellenistic Monarchies and the cults of the Legionary Eagles, for example. The Christians were probably the very last bunch to get into trouble about such cults. After all the Judeans had fought and won several wars to keep their own cult of Yahweh pure and were doing okay until 70 AD. The Jews, Zoroastrians, Samaritans and Mandeans and so on seem to have held on for the last 2000 years with only occasional state support (Imperial Persia was Zoroastrian until it fell to the Arabs, no foreign images were ever brought into the Temple of Yahweh). So the intermittant persecutions of the Christians were definitely political and only connected to the Imperial cult at the local law-enforcement level and even then it could be an administrative nightmare since the "crime" of not sacrificing was pretty unusual as a crime, if not as a practice.

Now you see, that is something I never knew, because I had never been presented with this information. So it wasn't so much of a crime to not worship the Emperor as I had been told it was? Interesting.

And disturbing, if only because I've never been presented with the information you pointed out, before your above quoted post. I wonder just how many people even know about the groups you mentioned above and their successes with keeping their religions pure during Roman times?

Melisande

04-24-2007, 05:14 AM

And disturbing, if only because I've never been presented with the information you pointed out, before your above quoted post. I wonder just how many people even know about the groups you mentioned above and their successes with keeping their religions pure during Roman times?

I think that this is really the main issue within this thread. A lot of people are happily living their lives, not even giving a second thought to what others believe or not believe, or even the many different ideas that we can find across the globe, or throughout history. And then, when confronted with a "new" (new to them) set of ideas, they react by giving the holders of these other ideas labels that are not always positive. Perhaps because it's simply the easiest thing to do.

I somtimes compare organized religion to have the devotees living in a house with a lot of closed doors that are labelled, and under each label it says "Danger! Do not enter!". But the brave person that actually does open a door, will to his/her surprise find; not dragons and/or demons in there, but another person, locked into another building, staring at a similar sign. And they might talk, and realize that they aren't so different after all, and definitely no threat to each other.

Fear is a very powerful tool when a person, or organisation, sets out to control one, or a group of people, for whatever reason.

Higgins

04-24-2007, 05:45 AM

Now you see, that is something I never knew, because I had never been presented with this information. So it wasn't so much of a crime to not worship the Emperor as I had been told it was? Interesting.

And disturbing, if only because I've never been presented with the information you pointed out, before your above quoted post. I wonder just how many people even know about the groups you mentioned above and their successes with keeping their religions pure during Roman times?

Here's an article that discusses persecutions:

http://www.theologian.org.uk/churchhistory/persecution.html

Note that the basic accusation against the Christians is that they are deviant in some generalized way and that their persecutors could have leveled the same accusations against Jews or any other non-civic "mystery" cult.

It is important to note that the people you really offend when you do not sacrifice to the cults of the various emperors is the people who went to all the trouble to set up the Imperial cults. The Imperial cults were in no way a state religion in our sense, they were civic cults like most cults in the ancient world and they were developed independently in the various cities of the empire to gain or claim higher status for the city in question.

It also is worth noting that the Christians (and Manicheans) were persecuted by the Zoroastrian Persians and the Persians had no imperial cults. This must have been especially confusing for the Christians in Persia since the Zoroastrian Magi were supposed to have had some part in the Nativity.

ned

04-26-2007, 07:38 AM

I just read about half of the thread on Christian Fiction in the -- dang, where was I, anyhow? -- and congratulated myself that I resisted responding to the statement that Christian fiction shouldn't exist. Now I'm here, oh dear.

I'm not sure this poster's questions have been answered; it's turned into doctrine and apologetics.

Melisande, You wrote:
I refuse to inhibit my life because it might not give me a place in "Heaven". I also refuse to be scared because it might send me to "Hell".

All I can say about this is that few believers in a higher power feel inhibited in living the life they choose. Yes, religion forbids some behaviors and actions, but I've found (and this is my personal experience) that when I am in communion with God, I don't want those things. God never prohibits a thing that is good for a person. Quite the opposite.

Second, I don't live in fear of hell. That's the second point of belief: Christ overcame hell so we can live without fear.

I think it would help you understand if you actually knew more about it. Most of the things you dislike don't actually exist.

You also wrote:
WHY, all you people out there, is it so hard for you to comprehend that a true atheist simply does NOT believe???

In anything???

I don't know where you're coming from with this. Do all us people out here find that hard? What makes you say so? You say a lot, but don't give any examples of these conversations/events. I'd like to hear some in context rather than in generalized complaints and accusations.

How I feel:

I pity any atheist. Sorry if that offends you, but it seems you feel the same way about me, and that's OK.

I'm glad you came here with your concerns and your honest questions. I just wish you'd share more specific objections to how you are treated by Christians. Or is it just the words and definitions that upset you? Or the perception of what you are? Hmmm...

Here's a thought for you: I get cranky too when I hear people tell me what's wrong with the way I believe, assuming that the twelve things they've heard about Christians are things I believe.

Every atheist has a different definition of himself. So does every Christian. We all generalize. It's our nature.

McDuff

04-26-2007, 10:47 AM

I pity any atheist.
Why?

Devil Ledbetter

04-26-2007, 04:49 PM

Most of the things you dislike don't actually exist.
Oh, the irony is making my head swim.

Melisande

04-26-2007, 08:49 PM

I don't know where you're coming from with this. Do all us people out here find that hard? What makes you say so? You say a lot, but don't give any examples of these conversations/events. I'd like to hear some in context rather than in generalized complaints and accusations.

This is where I am "coming from"
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30712&page=4

I pity any atheist. Sorry if that offends you, but it seems you feel the same way about me, and that's OK.

I don't pity you, so please; Do not feel obliged to pity me.

I just wish you'd share more specific objections to how you are treated by Christians.

I thought I had been, but let me explain again. I am not against religion per se, but when I say that I am a non-believer I get jumped on, and accused of being "anti". I get treated as a threat, and labelled as such. That is the thing I resent.

Most of the things you dislike don't actually exist.

First; How can I dislike something that doesn't exist?
Second; What, in your opinion doesn't exist? God? Or the way I am being treated by religious people?
Third; I dislike, and with a passion too, pedofiles, and they DO exist.

aruna

04-26-2007, 11:17 PM

Interesting thread. Just posting now to subscribe to it, but in a nutshell, Melisande's brand of atheism, the way I see it, cannot be called a belief.

But there are some/many atheists who are "religious" in defending their position and seem to be waging a war against people of faith. I would say they DO have a belief.
However, Melisande, be assured that there are many people who believe in God (or whatever) who would not try to challenge you or talk you into their position! Just because they are silent doesn't mean they don't exist.

aruna

04-26-2007, 11:24 PM

I will positively assert that gods do not exist, at the same time I respect the right of others to believe in whatever god or gods they can imagine, or their culture, religion or holy texts can describe for them.

Are "imagining" a god or gods or God, or having such "described for one" by one's culture etc, the only alternatives you will allow?

Melisande

04-26-2007, 11:45 PM

But there are some/many atheists who are "religious" in defending their position and seem to be waging a war against people of faith. I would say they DO have a belief.

Yes, I am starting to realize that. Never really thought of it until lately. To me it's strange how someone who calls him/her-self an "atheist" (non-believer) can be so strongly opposed something that in their minds should be non-existing. It doesn't add up, and that's why I don't like being labelled as one.

However, Melisande, be assured that there are many people who believe in God (or whatever) who would not try to challenge you or talk you into their position! Just because they are silent doesn't mean they don't exist.

Yes, I am sure of it. Every human has a right to choose whatever they wish to believe, and it's not really for anyone to challenge it, whatever it might be. It is not, however, OK to assume that "one label fits all".

McDuff

04-27-2007, 12:38 AM

Dear Aruna

See Page Two (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1282470&postcount=39)

Yrs &c.

Devil Ledbetter

04-27-2007, 12:39 AM

Are "imagining" a god or gods or God, or having such "described for one" by one's culture etc, the only alternatives you will allow?It's not up to me to "allow." People can believe whatever they wish, as long as they don't expect me to join in, I'm okay with it.

My understanding of consciousness doesn't rule out a person having a spiritual, religious or god-encounter experience that seems real to them. Our brains fill in a lot of gaps, and even make things up for us. For example, when my sister was three, she nearly drowned in the ocean. While she was underwater, she saw a mermaid who told her to stay calm, said everything would be okay and stayed with her until my dad rescued my sister. Neat experience, but that doesn't mean the mermaid was real.

What my sister saw was influenced by her family culture. We were not a religious family, but as children were read myths and fairytales frequently. So, where my sister saw a mermaid when under great stress, a child in a similar situation but raised by bible believers might have seen Jesus. The difference is, the bible-based family and community of that child would probably be convinced she in fact had seen Jesus, and said sighting would strengthen their faith. (Which is why stories like this are fodder for inspirational magazines).

This ties in with what McDuff said about religions being tied to the soil where they are grown. Likewise, religious/spiritual experiences are typically tied to the culture where they are grown.

Therefore, if a deity sits on the end of your bed every morning and tells you what to wear, I don't question that as your reality. That is not the same as saying I agree the deity is real in the scientific sense, or even that it might be.

In this sense, it isn't really "imagining" as the brain can serve the experience for us fully formed, like a waking dream.

aruna

04-27-2007, 10:25 AM

It's not up to me to "allow." People can believe whatever they wish, as long as they don't expect me to join in, I'm okay with it.

I simoply found your wording strange; respecting people's "right to believe" is not the same as "respecting believers". So I take it you respect their right, but no nore than that? You disrespect believers?

This ties in with what McDuff said about religions being tied to the soil where they are grown. Likewise, religious/spiritual experiences are typically tied to the culture where they are grown.

Therefore, if a deity sits on the end of your bed every morning and tells you what to wear, I don't question that as your reality. That is not the same as saying I agree the deity is real in the scientific sense, or even that it might be.

I agree with this. A Christian person might "see" jesus or Mary, a Hindu might "see" Krishna. The mind does create such visions, according to the culture one grew up in.

But there are experiences that do not involve visions or seeing things or even thought itself. Spiritual or religious experiences have to do with "seeing things".

As for me, I also would not deinfe myself as a believer. I don't believe in anything; that is far too vague and weak a term.

Devil Ledbetter

04-27-2007, 04:37 PM

I simoply found your wording strange; respecting people's "right to believe" is not the same as "respecting believers". So I take it you respect their right, but no nore than that? You disrespect believers?I don't know how you could read my saying I respect people's right to believe to mean that I then, therefore, reserve the right to disrespect them. I'm not couching insults in things that sound respectful. If I say I respect your right to post here, that doesn't have a secret, secondary meaning of "but I don't respect you." Really, I'm not that coy. I do respect you, and I respect believers. I must, I'm happily married to one. Twelve years next week.

The quick path to dull writing is qualifying everything: I respect people's right to believe what they wish, I respect the people who believe, I don't respect the way that some of them treat atheists and I don't respect the beliefs themselves because I don't feel that the beliefs themselves are worthy of respect. I completely disrespect the behavior of people who attempt to foist their beliefs on me, though I respect them as humans and respect the fact that their belief may tell them to evangelize me, even though I don't respect the evangelization behaviors. Hork!

But there are experiences that do not involve visions or seeing things or even thought itself. Spiritual or religious experiences have to do with "seeing things".I agree. There are experiences that are purely emotional. I've had those. They were strong enough that I could have hung beliefs on them, if I had so chosen. But that I felt something does not equate a specific reality to me.

If you're referring to something other than emotions when you speak of "experiences", you'll have to clue me in.

As for me, I also would not deinfe myself as a believer. I don't believe in anything; that is far too vague and weak a term.What do you do, then? Is there a word for what comes between believe and know?

aruna

04-27-2007, 05:11 PM

I don't know how you could read my saying I respect people's right to believe to mean that I then, therefore, reserve the right to disrespect them. I'm not couching insults in things that sound respectful. If I say I respect your right to post here, that doesn't have a secret, secondary meaning of "but I don't respect you." Really, I'm not that coy. I do respect you, and I respect believers. I must, I'm happily married to one. Twelve years next week.

Thanks for the explanation; it did sound coy to me!

I agree. There are experiences that are purely emotional. I've had those. They were strong enough that I could have hung beliefs on them, if I had so chosen. But that I felt something does not equate a specific reality to me.

The trouble with many atheists is that they really cannot understand what it is that forces a person to believe; yes, forces is the right word, an inner force. I was an atheist, and before "the change" it just was not possible for my mind to comprehend what that "it" really is. The intellect cannot grasp it, and the emotions are far too fleeting. It is larger than both.

What do you do, then? Is there a word for what comes between believe and know?

I personally would use the word "know". It's just not belief for me. But it's a different quality of knowledge, not like knowing facts but directly, as solidly and with the same truth that you know that YOU exist. It's not a knowledge you can prove to other people; so you perhaps would not count it as knowledge; but I do, and that's all that matters.

I think the baisc problem is that everyone is arguing using concepts they already know, and assume that others are using the same concepts; but they aren't.

It's always strange to me to converse with atheist Americans, since their concept of Christianity is based on an exposure so very different to my own. For instance, yesterday I spent the whole day with a group of about 20 women who are church leaders of all denominations throughout Germany ; I have been asked to give some workshops on Guyana in Germany in preparation for next year's World Day of Prayer.

At one point I was asked which church I belong to; I guess they assumed I was Christian, which I'm not. I was expecting this question, and was curious as to their response; I told them the truth, including the fact that I don't consider myself a Christian, and that I'd spent lots of time in an Indian ashram; but I'm not Hindu either; that I don't belong to any formal religion.

There was only acceptance and interest from these women, and not the least inclination to "convert" me or to reject me as a workshop presenter. And of course that whole business of Young World and Creationism is not part of Christian teaching outside the US.

We all form our biases through the experiences we have made in the past, and some of those Bible-thumpers would probably have kept me atheist much longer had they been my only exposure to Christianity. But sometimes I wish that atheists would really LISTEN to the experiences of others amd not reject everything as fantasy from the get-go. A mere fantasy could not have transformed me so thoroughly from inside out. And for that matter, my son as well.

I am certainly not interested in persuading or converting others. I just hate to have a label stuck on me, as per "imagines things".

Devil Ledbetter

04-27-2007, 06:18 PM

The trouble with many atheists is that they really cannot understand what it is that forces a person to believe; yes, forces is the right word, an inner force. I was an atheist, and before "the change" it just was not possible for my mind to comprehend what that "it" really is. The intellect cannot grasp it, and the emotions are far too fleeting. It is larger than both.
This is where we differ. I think spiritual beliefs are largely emotion-based. I hasten to add, not that there's anything wrong with that. Love is also emotion based, yet it is real to the lover and the loved.

I personally would use the word "know". It's just not belief for me. But it's a different quality of knowledge, not like knowing facts but directly, as solidly and with the same truth that you know that YOU exist. It's not a knowledge you can prove to other people; so you perhaps would not count it as knowledge; but I do, and that's all that matters.Like I know I love my husband, and I know he loves me, but you can't put that in a beaker and measure it. But it is something that can be known, by our actions.

It's always strange to me to converse with atheist Americans, since their concept of Christianity is based on an exposure so very different to my own. I don't have "a" concept of Christianity. I've observed it in many different forms ranging from wonderfully tolerant to downright ugly (Fred Phelps, anyone?) -- which is why I avoid making generalizations about Christians. Because I've adminned a religious debate board for five years, I've been exposed to every rationalization for Christianity imaginable (as well as lots of other beliefs, ranging from Odinism to ghosts). You can't debate without listening and weighing the arguments coming from the otherside.

On Monday, a Jehovah's Witness came to my door with her Watchtower magazine and wanted to discuss the bible with me. I politely told her I'm an atheist. From her reaction, you'd have thought I'd told her that I'm dying of cancer. Yes, that's offensive to me. Her reaction showed a gross lack of respect for my chosen path. ETA: Why should I have listened to her? Do you think she would have listened to me, had I been so rude as to try to talk her out of her belief system?

But sometimes I wish that atheists would really LISTEN to the experiences of others amd not reject everything as fantasy from the get-go. A mere fantasy could not have transformed me so thoroughly from inside out. And for that matter, my son as well.What does the believer gain from the atheist listening? What constitutes "listening" anyway? In my experience, believers equate "listening" with "buying into." Until we've bought into the belief, we've not really listened. Because if we really listened, we'd believe in it too, no?

I am certainly not interested in persuading or converting others. I just hate to have a label stuck on me, as per "imagines things".No label, Aruna. As I said earlier, I do respect you -- probably more than you realize. I've read your Crack of Death web site and thought it was awesome. You're doing good things. If it's your beliefs that make you do actual good in the world, then I respect them tremendously even if I don't share them.

aruna

04-27-2007, 07:06 PM

This is where we differ. I think spiritual beliefs are largely emotion-based. I hasten to add, not that there's anything wrong with that. Love is also emotion based, yet it is real to the lover and the loved.

.

You THINK... but you don;t know. What if there is something beyond emotion that you can't know about until you have been there yourself, and that is what spirituality is about? Because that is how I experience it,. I have no respect for emotion; emotion is simply a mood; it can swing back and forth, and there is no reliance on it. It can be this tomorrow, and that the day after. Spirituality is not a mood. It's not an emotion. It doesn't swing. It doesn't change. It's not a thought or a concept.

What does the believer gain from the atheist listening? What constitutes "listening" anyway? In my experience, believers equate "listening" with "buying into." Until we've bought into the belief, we've not really listened. Because if we really listened, we'd believe in it too, no?

This is a good point, and in a way you're right, and in a way you're not. My son went through an intensive period of spiritual searching; and even though he is not inclined to Christianity, he spoke to the Watchtower people, something I myself would never do. He actually invited the Watchtower man into his room and the two of them argued amiably for an hour or two every week; yes, Mr Watchtower did keep coming back! My son really listened to what the man had to say; he knew from the start that it was not from him, but he listened nevertheless.

But I do know what you mean. Getting people to listen is the way those dangerous cults find their members, right, and how people get swallowed.

I personally feel I have a good instinct for what is right and good and wholesome for me, and what not; a sort of inner compass I can trust, so I do listen to people of different faiths, and very often I can find a central truth I am comfortable with. In the past year I've gone to a Christian church, as well as Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist temples, all of which I felt in tune with while I was there, even if some of the peripheral messages were not really my thing. I felt no inclination to join any of these communities, or felt I had to join them; but I listened.

I am always extremely moved by a good Christian service - to the point of tears sometimes. And still I feel no need to become a Christian.

Roger J Carlson

04-27-2007, 07:21 PM

I personally would use the word "know". It's just not belief for me. But it's a different quality of knowledge, not like knowing facts but directly, as solidly and with the same truth that you know that YOU exist. It's not a knowledge you can prove to other people; so you perhaps would not count it as knowledge; but I do, and that's all that matters.I like this. I really should say "I know" rather than "I believe". I know that my Redeemer liveth just as surely as Devil knows that He doesn't. Neither of us can prove that knowledge to the other.

Melisande

04-27-2007, 07:49 PM

I hope you don't mind my responding to a couple of things.

I have no respect for emotion; emotion is simply a mood; it can swing back and forth, and there is no reliance on it. It can be this tomorrow, and that the day after.

I am always extremely moved by a good Christian service - to the point of tears sometimes.

You have no respect for emotion, you say, yet you use an emotion to describe your spirituality. I've read your posts here, and I really listened (if that word can be used about a written opinion).

I love my husband, I love life. Love is a very powerful emotion, and I know it's a lasting, deep and unchangeable emotion, because I recognize its truthfulness. I can watch a flower, and get so moved by it's beauty and need for life that it brings tears to my eyes. I can look at my husband, and be so moved by our love for each other that I feel a lump in my throat. Why should this emotion be lessened by believers because it's not felt in a tempel? The world is my tempel.

Spirituality is not a mood. It's not an emotion. It doesn't swing. It doesn't change. It's not a thought or a concept.

Being a non-believer (atheist if you prefer) is not a mood. It's not an emotion. It doesn't swing. It doesn't change. It's not a thought or a concept. I can only speak for myself when I say that to me it is the recognition of truth.

This is a good point, and in a way you're right, and in a way you're not. My son went through an intensive period of spiritual searching; and even though he is not inclined to Christianity, he spoke to the Watchtower people, something I myself would never do. He actually invited the Watchtower man into his room and the two of them argued amiably for an hour or two every week; yes, Mr Watchtower did keep coming back! My son really listened to what the man had to say; he knew from the start that it was not from him, but he listened nevertheless.

I can not even describe how many hours, days, weeks, I have listened to believers of various convictions, out of respect for their opinion and even out of interest. I have listened because I have felt that they need to talk about their beliefs. Sure, a couple have tried to convert me, and I have to say that it was rather fun. But more than anything I wanted to show them respect.

I am certainly not interested in persuading or converting others. I just hate to have a label stuck on me, as per "imagines things".

I totally agree. I too, hate being labelled.

McDuff

04-27-2007, 07:57 PM

I simply found your wording strange; respecting people's "right to believe" is not the same as "respecting believers". So I take it you respect their right, but no more than that? You disrespect believers?
Respect is something that individuals earn. I can no more "respect believers" than I can "respect unbelievers". You don't gain special points for having a particular belief system, you gain points for being a worthwhile human being to know and talk to.

aruna

04-27-2007, 09:55 PM

I love my husband, I love life. Love is a very powerful emotion, and I know it's a lasting, deep and unchangeable emotion, because I recognize its truthfulness. I can watch a flower, and get so moved by it's beauty and need for life that it brings tears to my eyes. I can look at my husband, and be so moved by our love for each other that I feel a lump in my throat. Why should this emotion be lessened by believers because it's not felt in a tempel? The world is my tempel.

That's beautiful! And I would in fact say that though you call yourself an atheist you are in fact a very spiritual person, by my definition; for spirituality IS love; love increased a hundred and thousandfold, just as you have described it here, and yet so much more you can't hold hold it; and I do have the utmost respect for it, and yes, indeed it is beautiful, and you KNOW it is there; you don't believe in that love, do you? You KNOW it.

Have you ever asked yourself where that love comes from? What is the source? You say it's your husband that causes it; I say no, it's not your husband, or the flower, or whatever. The love is in you, and your husband - or the beautiful flower or the beautiful music - has touched a spring in you that releases it. That is all; that for me is spirituality. I don't even have to give it the name God, though I don't mind doing so.

You call it an emotion, and in it's initial stages maybe it is; but the more you can access the source of that love directly, plug into it in a way, the more it ceases to be emotion and simply - just is.

Well, I;m sorry if I have kind of usurped your post and re-defined it into my own terms; I'm just trying to explain how close we really are.

Being a non-believer (atheist if you prefer) is not a mood. It's not an emotion. It doesn't swing. It doesn't change. It's not a thought or a concept. I can only speak for myself when I say that to me it is the recognition of truth.

I didn't say it was. I was answering Devil's assumption that spirituality is "only" emotion. It's not.

Devil Ledbetter

04-27-2007, 10:15 PM

You THINK... but you don;t know. What if there is something beyond emotion that you can't know about until you have been there yourself, and that is what spirituality is about? When you say this, you are asking me to buy into something that is every bit as nebulous and non-provable as Odin, Ghosts, the ressurected Jesus and Pink Unicorns.

Because that is how I experience it,. I have no respect for emotion; emotion is simply a mood; it can swing back and forth, and there is no reliance on it. It can be this tomorrow, and that the day after. Spirituality is not a mood. It's not an emotion. It doesn't swing. It doesn't change. It's not a thought or a concept.What IS it? You cannot define a thing by saying what it is not. This "spirituality" of which you speak seems as non-definable as the gods I don't believe in.

What you seem to be saying is that I won't know until I experience it. Well, I have experienced "spiritual feelings" at certain points in my life, and in my experience, those were emotional. They weren't quickly changing emotions, like mood, they were more like emotional certainties, like love. Nevertheless, they were emotional at their core and frankly, couldn't stand up to logic without the aid of mental gymnastics.

You can insist you have some spiritual thingy that I and all atheists lack and will never understand without experiencing it ourselves. Realize that it sounds a little arrogant to declare oneself so blessed, where nonbelievers are "lacking." To claim such (if that is what you are doing) is really little different than the believer who thinks his particular belief is the only right one, declaring that those who don't share his belief are lacking something, some ability to ziv "the truth" which he's been blessed with and they haven't.

Furthermore, the insistence that you possess a "spirituality" that I lack (or am denying) follows the same circular logic as viritually all theistic beliefs. If my previous spiritual experience didn't last, then it wasn't "real spirituality" to begin with: just as the person who is told if they pray a certain way, this or that will happen and when it doesn't, well, obviously they didn't pray right -- as circularly evidenced by the result.

This is a good point, and in a way you're right, and in a way you're not. My son went through an intensive period of spiritual searching; and even though he is not inclined to Christianity, he spoke to the Watchtower people, something I myself would never do. He actually invited the Watchtower man into his room and the two of them argued amiably for an hour or two every week; yes, Mr Watchtower did keep coming back! My son really listened to what the man had to say; he knew from the start that it was not from him, but he listened nevertheless. As I've mentioned, I've run a good-sized religious debate board for years and probably spent many more hours than your son "listening" to various heartfelt arguments for belief. So, as I see it, me "just not listening" isn't the problem. The problem is that beliefs are rife with flaws, jumps in logic and other weaknesses that render them incredible under close scrutiny.

I like what atheist Julia Sweeney said in her book "God Said Ha!" She likes atheism because it is the only thing that doesn't get ruined if you look at it too closely.

But I do know what you mean. Getting people to listen is the way those dangerous cults find their members, right, and how people get swallowed. Only those who are looking to fill some void get swallowed. Realize also that those Jehovah Witnesses are no weaker in the "rightness" of their "spiritual certainty" than you are.

I personally feel I have a good instinct for what is right and good and wholesome for me, and what not; a sort of inner compass I can trust,So do most atheists. I know I do.

aruna

04-27-2007, 10:41 PM

You can insist you have som spiritual thingy that I and all atheists lack and will never understand without experiencing it ourselves. Realize that it sounds a little arrogant to declare oneself so blessed, where nonbelievers are "lacking."

Furthermore, the insistence that you possess a "spirituality" that I lack (or am denying) follows the same circular logic as viritually all theistic beliefs. do.

I don't possess any "spirituality" that you lack. In my eyes we all have exactly the same amount, no less and no more. We are all equally "blessed".

I think, though, that the spiritual emotions you have had are really just that - fleeting emotions. Otherwise you would react differently.

To claim such (if that is what you are doing) is really little different than the believer who thinks his particular belief is the only right one, declaring that those who don't share his belief are lacking something, some ability to ziv "the truth" which he's been blessed with and they haven't.

On the contrary - I believe that everyone is just exactly where they need to be - the atheist and the Christian and the Hindu. If you do not feel a hunger for spirituality, then you will not seek it - that's fine.

I felt a hunger, I sought, and I found. That's the only difference. I never said mine is the only right way. I do say that I KNOW for myself that it is there, and that it's right for me. And what "it" is - I really can't describe, sorry!

At the very most, I could make suggestions as to how to find "it" yourself - but you don't want to, so why should I? Because if I do believe anything, it's that "it" is in you too. I am as sure of that, as you are sure that there is no "it"! So we're quit!;)

To sum up: I KNOW it's in me; I have no need to prove it, and don't care if you BELIEVE me or not.
I also BELIEVE it's in you, in equal measure; but that it's up to you to KNOW.

Devil Ledbetter

04-27-2007, 11:17 PM

I think, though, that the spiritual emotions you have had are really just that - fleeting emotions. Otherwise you would react differently.This is exactly the kind of circular reasoning I was talking about when I said:If my previous spiritual experience didn't last, then it wasn't "real spirituality" to begin with: just as the person who is told if they pray a certain way, this or that will happen and when it doesn't, well, obviously they didn't pray right -- as circularly evidenced by the result.
Regarding "fleeting emotions," is seven years fleeting? Because that is how long I held a spiritual belief.

Like it or not, you are applying circular reasoning.

aruna

04-27-2007, 11:34 PM

Regarding "fleeting emotions," is seven years fleeting? Because that is how long I held a spiritual belief.

Like it or not, you are applying circular reasoning.

I'm not talking about a belief. I'm talking about an experience.
As for circular reasoning: I suppose you could say it is like love; if it lasts, and the marriage holds, it was real love. If it diminishes with time, then it wasn't love to start with. And some people do confuse lust and being-in-love and attraction with love - they talk themselves into it, even though outsiders can tell it's not really love. But time tells.
So yes, it may be circular; doesn't make love, when it's real, any less true!
You really do recognise it by its permanence.

Devil Ledbetter

04-27-2007, 11:56 PM

As for circular reasoning: I suppose you could say it is like love; if it lasts, and the marriage holds, it was real love. If it diminishes with time, then it wasn't love to start with. That is circular reasoning. I appreciate you being so honest that that is exactly what you are doing when you judge other people's spiritual experiences as valid or not, based on how long they last. If you'd have talked to me five years into my believing, no doubt you would have been absolutely convinced my spirituality was as true and valid for me as yours is for you.

You cannot know, based on the length of time love, or spirituality lasted, whether or not it was in fact real for that person at the time. None of us can know. It is self-serving for you to jump to the conclusion that a marriage that fails, fails because there was never true love, only mistaken lust, to begin with. For all you really know, the love that started that failed marriage was greater and more profound than any you yourself will ever know. For all you really know.

What do you think about a person who suffers head trauma and their personality undergoes profound changes? Do you think that their old personality was never "really" their personality to begin with? Because if it changed, it must not have been real. What if their beliefs changed as a result? Does that mean their beliefs were never "real" to begin with?

To you, does "real" equal unchanging? Because the earth changes all the time. People change all the time. I am profoundly different than I was 40 years ago -- does that make me unreal?

I believe that nothing is unchanging. I believe only in the unchanging. Therefore, I believe in nothing.

McDuff

04-28-2007, 12:16 AM

As for circular reasoning: I suppose you could say it is like love; if it lasts, and the marriage holds, it was real love. If it diminishes with time, then it wasn't love to start with. And some people do confuse lust and being-in-love and attraction with love - they talk themselves into it, even though outsiders can tell it's not really love. But time tells.
Aside from any spiritual factor, this is absolute balderdash, frankly. It taking a tiny subset of the myriad states of being that come under the banner "love" and saying that it's the only "true" platonic ideal. It also comes with a built-in factor of superiority -- bless you poor ignorant fools, but you weren't *really* in love, you were just fooling yourself. There is, of course, no appreciation of the fact that those with whom love lasts may just have been fooling themselves until they died, because we are given no way of distinguishing "genuine" love from "false" love except that the false love doesn't last. If two people fall in lust and then get hit by a truck a week later, how do we know that it wasn't "real" love? It lasted as long as they did.

In Varieties of Religious Experience, James documented many "conversion" experiences, and noted particularly that a conversion experience from religion was similar in many important ways to a conversion experience to religion. Incorporating the sheer variance of others' experience into ones own belief becomes distinctly cumbersome if we are holding onto some supra-natural influence which it is good to be in line with. Eventually, belief in a given religion can get so ecumenical as to turn it into a pleasing diversion rather than a useful aspect of one's life experience. I'd rather treat religion as an eye into the souls of human beings than into the soul of God, frankly.

Melisande

04-28-2007, 02:18 AM

You say it's your husband that causes it;

No I do not. I just stated that this is the kind of love I feel for him. The same kind of love I feel for life itself.

Have you ever asked yourself where that love comes from? What is the source?

Yes, many times. And every time the answer appears; "From within myself". Because I love them/it/who, I let my senses be filled with a feeling of similar response. I also believe that it is very hard to love without getting some kind of response in turn. Hence it is really, when you look at it closely enough, quite an egoistic feeling. ((Sorry, but that's how I perceive it) (DANG! Shouldn't have said that, should I???)) I honestly think, that there would be a lot fewer believers out there, had they not had the notion that they are not only on the "giving" end, but also on the "receiving" end. I wish to emphasize, however, that this opinion is entirely subjective, and can NOT be applied to anyone other than myself.

that for me is spirituality

Call it what you wish. I do not consider this feeling to be anything other than my, oh so very, personal opinion/feeling/experience.

oscuridad

04-28-2007, 03:20 AM

This is wild. God is dead, and we killed him. Who am I to argue with a man who kisses a horse? Religion is big business grown out of a mechanism designed to control the proletariate, long before the term proletariate existed. God is a useful tool of statecraft. Always has been, always will be. The effects of a God existing are apparent as long as people think such a being exists. I am confident in the proposition that there is no such being. You can call it a belief, or not. Who cares? I know what I mean, you can think what ever you want. its a free world (alright, I know it isn't)

aruna

04-28-2007, 11:16 AM

You cannot know, based on the length of time love, or spirituality lasted, whether or not it was in fact real for that person at the time.

.........
Do you think that their old personality was never "really" their personality to begin with? Because if it changed, it must not have been real. What if their beliefs changed as a result? Does that mean their beliefs were never "real" to begin with?
..............

To you, does "real" equal unchanging? Because the earth changes all the time. People change all the time. I am profoundly different than I was 40 years ago -- does that make me unreal?

I believe that nothing is unchanging. I believe only in the unchanging. Therefore, I believe in nothing.

My Bold.

At last! Yes, it is the UNCHANGING aspect that makes a thing real or not. And that brings us to what, for me, is the crux of the matter. Guess what - we agree 100% in the sentence I have bolded!

Because I also believe only in the unchanging.

Only that in me that is unchanging is real.

You are right: my personality is not real, because it is changing all the time. Every year I am a completely different person to the one I was last year; that is becuase I am growing and changing all the time.

Yet there is something in me that is unchanging. Something that is in the depth of my soul, the foundation, as it were, on to which my personality is superimposed. Think of "that"as clear water, whereas my personality is the colour added to it, which can alter as I grow.

Carrying on the metaphor, I know that that clear water - which never ever changes - is the only reality of myself; it is that I seek. In it is love and happiness; it is my very being.

And I KNOW it is there. That alone in all the world is unchanging.

So I think you are right not to put your faith in the changing, but you are wrong to believe that nothing is unchanging.

You cannot know, based on the length of time love, or spirituality lasted, whether or not it was in fact real for that person at the time. None of us can know. It is self-serving for you to jump to the conclusion that a marriage that fails, fails because there was never true love, only mistaken lust, to begin with. For all you really know, the love that started that failed marriage was greater and more profound than any you yourself will ever know. For all you really know.

I guess the problem is in the word love itself. It is used for the most fleeting emotions, as well as for the most profound states of being; and you and I and others here are using it interchangably.

I do indeed prefer to reserve the word love for its highest, purest, permanent version, and in fact I use it exclusively for that. So, for me, and using my definition of the word, it is indeed unchanging, permanent, and indestructible. And even if two people who once loved part company, love (using my definition) would remain unchanged.

I guess this is going to make some people mad, but I don't equate passion with love; passion can indeed be extremely striong, overriding everything else; but it is not the same of love, which by my definition simply cannot die. That's just the way I am. Maybe I'm the one who should use a diferent word for love, at least in conversations such as this.

It's the same for spirituality. Yes, I do claim that a spirituality that comes and goes could not have been strong; it was a mere dabbling with spiritual ideas - which is not the same thing at all. And it could have been very passionate, and very convincing at the time, but the only real criteria is the result. If it disappeared, it was just a nice idea. I have had those nice ideas myself, long ago. I was totally into this and that "spirituality" when I was 19 and 20. All that changed a year or two later.

(McDuff) In Varieties of Religious Experience, James documented many "conversion" experiences,

Sorry, but what James documented is of no consequence in this conversation. We are not discussing conversion to or from a particular religion. That is a totally different topic. Religion and spirituality are not synonymous.

Anyway, thanks to you all for the interesting exchange. I am leaving in an hour or two and have to go and pack - off to South Gremany, and France - no computers, no internet; what am I to do????? For a whole week!

Devil Ledbetter

04-28-2007, 06:22 PM

I was being facetious when I said this:
I believe that nothing is unchanging. I believe only in the unchanging. Therefore, I believe in nothing.
Have a safe trip!

oscuridad

04-28-2007, 08:18 PM

Sean D. Schaffer

04-28-2007, 08:32 PM

extraordinary proposition that reality is related to a lack of change, if you substitute change with dynamics you have reality defined by stagnation - that sums up the medieval hypocracies practiced by most modern churches quite nicely.

I think part of the reason this is true, Oscuridad, is the commonality of "You will obey me" as part of many of these churches' theology. From all the things I remember of Christianity, the one constant within all the churches I went to in my later years, was "Obey G-d only if it suits the Pastor". It didn't matter so much whether someone loved G-d or served Him; what mattered was toeing the church's line. That always bothered me.

The thing is, I think part of the stagnation is caused by people refusing to let their Deity be the authority and instead want to make themselves the ultimate authority in a church setting. The desire to control others is very much a part of some forms of Christianity -- I can't say all, as I've not experienced them all. The most vibrant, alive churches are the ones that don't try to control the people and that are willing to change. I find them to be few and far between.

I don't think most churches today would survive if they believed what their Bible says instead of reading into it what they want it to say.

Of course, this is semi-off-topic for this thread, but I thought your comment was interesting and thought a comment appropriate.

I hope you have a good day today.

:)

oscuridad

04-28-2007, 08:51 PM

I think part of the reason this is true, Oscuridad, is the commonality of "You will obey me" as part of many of these churches' theology. From all the things I remember of Christianity, the one constant within all the churches I went to in my later years, was "Obey G-d only if it suits the Pastor". It didn't matter so much whether someone loved G-d or served Him; what mattered was toeing the church's line. That always bothered me.

The thing is, I think part of the stagnation is caused by people refusing to let their Deity be the authority and instead want to make themselves the ultimate authority in a church setting. The desire to control others is very much a part of some forms of Christianity -- I can't say all, as I've not experienced them all. The most vibrant, alive churches are the ones that don't try to control the people and that are willing to change. I find them to be few and far between.

I don't think most churches today would survive if they believed what their Bible says instead of reading into it what they want it to say.

Of course, this is semi-off-topic for this thread, but I thought your comment was interesting and thought a comment appropriate.

I hope you have a good day today.

:)

interesting thoughts - as someone without a christian belief set I feel it is important to distiguish between the beliefs of individuals and the actions and manners of religious organisations - and more meaningful

McDuff

04-29-2007, 12:15 AM

Well, sure, I guess if we just redefine words in the English language to only mean what we want them to mean, that sure does make us right about everything. Well spotted!

However, as DL noted, you pretty much just defined everything about my entire existence into the category of "unreal", so if you don't mind I'm going to stick with the definitions I know and love in order to work out where I left my keys or whether it's a good or bad thing to be shot in the face with a 12-bore shotgun. I know, dull, boring and far too practical to be "spiritual", but I kinda like my version of reality on accounta I can talk to people about it without appearing to be drifting around on an entirely inconsequential cloud of loveliness.

I'm really happy for you, Aruna, in that whatever transcendental experience you're continually having is totally working out for you. But I'm sitting here right now with dirt under my nails because I just planted a cherry tree. Neither the dirt nor the tree, by your definition, are real, wheras to me dirt is probably the realest thing in the world. Fact is, I don't give a single solitary shit whether my dirty, harsh, sticky, smelly reality is, like, really really really real for evar and evar. It gets me cherries. It works. It functions. I don't know that there's anything your reality, should I suddenly find myself in contact with it, would actually do other than sit there and look pretty and maybe make me feel like I was sorta stoned.

Devil Ledbetter

04-29-2007, 12:25 AM

But I'm sitting here right now with dirt under my nails because I just planted a cherry tree. Neither the dirt nor the tree, by your definition, are real, wheras to me dirt is probably the realest thing in the world. Fact is, I don't give a single solitary shit whether my dirty, harsh, sticky, smelly reality is, like, really really really real for evar and evar. It gets me cherries. It works. It functions. Halleluia and amen, brother McDuff. :Hail:

SpookyWriter

04-29-2007, 02:33 AM

Halleluia and amen, brother McDuff. :Hail:
Amen! The dude is righteous. I'm actually becoming a true believer.

Cathy C

05-02-2007, 10:43 PM

I believe that nothing is unchanging. I believe only in the unchanging. Therefore, I believe in nothing.

Whether or not you meant this to be facetious, Devil, it was actually quite profound and made me consider a number of things. I'm one of those annoying "nature" types in the "nature vs. nurture" eternal debate. IMHO, there ARE some things in each person that are unchanging. In me, the one thing that has followed me all of my days---from the moment I had a conscious thought that was mine alone---is that I am complete within myself. Always have been. I required little nurturing, no accolades for achievements, was always a Type A "self-starter," am a control freak, etc., etc. My grandmother called me one of the "old souls" because I had knowledge beyond my years---even as a toddler (where I walked and talked before six months old.) I knew things I couldn't possibly have learned from my family (and before the internet.) Whether you call it "independent" or "savant" or "solitary," the simple fact is that I require little outside stimuli. I ENJOY outside stimuli but then I enjoy television too. But the television might stay off in my house for weeks or months on end. Some months I pay the satellite bill and realize I haven't watched it for the entire previous month. I think I drive Nielsen (we're a survey family) a little nuts and probably really skew their results. LOL!

If push came to shove, and I was locked in solitary confinement for years, I'd be just fine. I'd come out with my sanity intact and my nerves steady.

However, nature prevails, unchanging and unending, in more than just me. There are men (and women) who are incapable of the act of rape. They will never do so even if intoxicated or drugged. Others find enjoyment in torturing an animal or child. They will find a way to feed the need, whether or not therapy or punishment is applied. And there are many, MANY others who MUST seek something larger in the universe. The thought that nothing might exist beyond skin and sweat is beyond comprehension. Now, in the seeking, they might look at every single religion until something resonates inside. The more a person changes through experience, the more likely that one religion will no longer satisfy, so they will be forced to go look again.

My experience was complete at my forming, so I'm forced to look for nothing.

As McDuff said, the dirt is the most real thing in his life at that moment. To others, a connection with a higher power is even MORE real than dirt. It surrounds . . . imbues . . . completes.

It is truth. It is bigger than life.

But to me, all that is bigger than life is our planet. The Earth came before humanity. It will continue after humanity expires and I believe . . . I KNOW just as certainly as those who believe in a god, that we lowly humans are deluded if we believe we can impact its existence. But that knowing doesn't make me a Pagan. It doesn't make me Wiccan, nor any other tag. Nor can I consider Aruna's suggestion that the knowledge that the Earth will live on beyond me, that there's beauty in its immensity, to be an acceptance of something larger that is within me or somehow outside that influences me. Belief, no matter how strong or powerful, isn't automatically religious in nature.

So, I guess I believe only in unchanging, except for those things that change. ;)

McDuff

05-03-2007, 04:48 AM

Dude, 128 years at the absolute outside is a way limited view of "eternity". Just sayin'.

aruna

05-08-2007, 12:09 PM

I know, dull, boring and far too practical to be "spiritual", but I kinda like my version of reality on accounta I can talk to people about it without appearing to be .

Definitions really are everything; for me, drifting around on an entirely inconsequential cloud of loveliness actually has little to do with spirituality.

I'm really happy for you, Aruna, in that whatever transcendental experience you're continually having is totally working out for you. But I'm sitting here right now with dirt under my nails because I just planted a cherry tree.

And I've been working with dirt for the last week or so, helping my 98-year-old friend in her garden!:)

See how easy it is to misunderstand a person? You think that I just want to sit here in a cloud of beauty or wahtever. It's not that.

I believe that there is nothing tougher or harder than spirituality - in my experience it is actually facing the dirt - the dirt out there, and the dirt in me. That's why when it acme to choosing a profession I chose a really tough one (working in prsions), and why my life has never ceased being full of challenges only few people would want to face.

My fiend of 98 years is the living example for me. She has lived through two world wars; she can remember the bombs falling as she was a child. Her mother was Jewish and was imprisoned by the Nazis - she herself had to hide from the nazis. She gave birth during a bomb attack! The stories she can tell!

I met her in India 35 years ago, and she is a living example of spirituality. At 98, she lives alone in a lovely big house in the Alsace hills of France - in the country, no neighbours, summer and winter - inthe forest, on a hill.

She looks after herself - cooks, makes her bed, washes dishes everything except cleaning and shopping (she stopped driving six months ago). Even in winter, she is all alone. Visiting her is an joy and in inspiration - always was. She has always has visitors, especially in summer, and usually much younger persons than herself - fiends of her daughter, mostly, burnt out form life, go there for regeneration.

She is active in every way. And she has an inner contentment that is palpable. And yet - she is in constant pain. She suffers from a disease whose name I don't know in English - an incurable virus that is so painful many sufferers commit suicide. She was on morphium for years, but gave it up last year. When she gets up in the morning her face is distorted withg the pain of it. She comes to the kitchen and is almost in tears with the pain. One such morning, she disapperaed, and I went to find her. I found her staring at the clematis growing up her house wall - it had just bloomed. She was ecstatic with the beauty of it - inspite of the pain. Later that day we went to a buy some new plants for her garden, and when we got back she spent a couple of house digging and planting flowers, and I helped her. Her hands got dirty, and her mind was with her plants, full of love for that beauty. One thing she told me: she has never prayed for God to take the pain for her. It has always been: give me the strength to bear it.

In her younger days she travelled a lot on her own, especially in India, where her brother worked as an engineer - I met her in an ashram there. She attributes her good condition to the yoga she did as a young woman, and to her spiritual practice.

So whatever you say, please, please don't confuse spirituality with an escape from the dirt and the challenges and the hardships of life. In my view, it is the very opposite of that. It is learning to stay as calm as a rock no matter what happens. To accept the bad along with the good, and to grow through it; stoicism and courage are the direct results. That has been the way it is all through my life. Right now, the difficulties I face are worse than they have ever been, and it is only becuase I can hold on to something solid and unchanging within myself that I find the strenth to face the future.

I am not floating on cloud nine. I do not expect life to be full of pleasantries and pink clouds and flowers.
But I know there is a source of strength and joy inside me, and I will hold on to that no matter what. And the harder life gets (and believe me it is getting harder year by year!) the stronger my spiritual muscles grow.

There has not been a single period in my life that has been without "dirt". And I am always on my hands and knees, facing it as best I can.

aruna

05-08-2007, 12:30 PM

PS Her disease is shingles, or herpes zoster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingles)

Shingles incidence is high in the elderly (over 60), as well as in any age group of immunocompromised patients. It affects some 1 million people per year in the United States and can involve excruciating pain. Many patients develop a painful condition called postherpetic neuralgia, which is often difficult to manage. In some patients, herpes zoster can reactivate subclinically, with pain in a dermatomal distribution without rash.

Inky

05-08-2007, 12:38 PM

Me? Pagan & Budhist. I'll leave it at that, as it's too complicated to explain the why of it. I've been baptised. I believe there's something...problem is, I believe there's more than one. I also, from intense research, am amused and disgusted that religion is nothing more than two super powers-- the same super powers that have been fighting for over 3500 hundred years yet some arrogant politicians think by 2008, we'll have ended this (hysterical giggling commences here)--that have a need to control all peoples, dominate/obliterate all other religions, have nothing to do with peace an unity.
If Christianity is so wonderful, why all the secrets? Why the hidden doctranes?
If Islam is so peaceful, why all the death? Why are all non-subscribers infidels?

As for being Atheist: if you walk up to a frog, no matter how much you bomb the area, burn it at the stake, tie stones to it and toss it in the water, it will not change into anything you deem simply because you're the strong arm of the day/era--okay, maybe a pulvarized mess...but it's still a frog..just a little water logged, crispy, or obliterated.

So why would any walk up to an Atheist and think: poof, you're now a religious fanatic? I've saved you. Oh, please. Where Christians (various denominations) missionaries get off going into foreign countries and converting people and convincing them that their tribal god is somehow an abomination is disturbing.

Actually, an Atheist probably has the best kept secret. They dare to put a stop sign up in the middle of the religious road.

Me? Hope there is something in the afterlife. Have had a few incidences in life that leave no doubt something exists..something profound. But I don't worship anything on Sunday, and poop on my neighbor come Monday, all the while under the pretext that all I need do is repent and everything is rosy again.
I don't believe in repenting. I don't apologize. I simply do my damnest not to screw up in the first place. Gather the kindling...

Lady Esther

05-10-2007, 04:09 AM

This is a very interesting and informative topic, and is being handled very well.

But to throw in my 2 cents on the topic...

The phrase "I believe there is no..." does not mean the person holds a belief. It's just a bending of the english language that allows these concepts to be phrased in this particular way. When talking logically, "I do not believe..." is the correct way to put it.

IMHO, I think everyone has a belief. To say that "I do not believe in [object]" is the same as saying "I believe there is no [object]."

For instance, I can say, "I think there is no such thing as the Boogyman," which means that I believe there is no Boogyman.

For me, atheistm is the lack of a belief, and I shouldn't be labelled by it, as it's a non-action ...

IMO, there is no such thing as "non-action". Even sitting is an action. If I'm not awake, I'm sleeping, which is also an action. As long as you're alive you're doing some type of action.

So, life, action, and belief coincide, to me.

Lady Esther

05-10-2007, 04:29 AM

...I can't see how either the absence of belief in God or the belief in the absence of God presupposes the existence of God.

I can. The key word is "in". For instance, I'll say "I don't believe in premarital sex." That doesn't mean I believe there's no such thing as premarital sex.

It's like someone saying: I believe there is a God, but I don't believe in God(put my faith/trust in Him).

Meaning: He doesn't think God can do anything for him.

Lady Esther

05-10-2007, 05:18 AM

I sat for a few minutes and thought about all I had read from this thread. It has opened my eyes to things I didn't know I didn't understand.

Someone mentioned (too lazy to search the board for it) that it might be hard for Christians to understand "non-belief". Being a Christian myself, I think that's true.

First, I had to take God out of the situation, and come up with a totally different situation. I thought: What if people didn't believe in the God I know, but, say, The Flying Spaghetti Monster. And what if people believed that when you die your soul will stay inside a turtle for eternity.

Because I don't believe in those things, that made me realize that I would say, "There isn't a Flying Spaghetti Monster. My soul won't be inside a turtle when I die. I don't believe in any religious idea. Therefore, I have no belief."

Which means that "belief" does equal "religion" (to society in general).

I think I've seen life through an Atheist's eyes, if only slightly.

Maybe I did contradict what I've posted earlier, but I'll leave it to show that people do and can change thier minds;)

McDuff

05-10-2007, 07:42 PM

aruna:
It is learning to stay as calm as a rock no matter what happens. To accept the bad along with the good, and to grow through it; stoicism and courage are the direct results. That has been the way it is all through my life. Right now, the difficulties I face are worse than they have ever been, and it is only becuase I can hold on to something solid and unchanging within myself that I find the strenth to face the future.
Fair enough, that's your approach to it. To me, that's a luxury and an invention. You are able to face the hardships in life because you believe that it's not as real as some mostly intangible and hard to describe in human language thing, that you can let this tangible society slide and take second place to something you consider more important. If it gets you through the night, Aruna, I'll not lift a finger to tell you to stop. People have used worse for that goal.

But you do not come and tell me that because I don't, that because I struggle with dirt because it is dirt, that I do not dismiss it because it is not eternal, that I in fact do not even bother with the questions of the eternal and the fundamentally if intangibly real, that my life is somehow less rich than yours. I don't know if my difficulties are less or more than yours, but I do know that whatever they turn out to be I'm not going to be able to rely on "the eternal", or on a fundamentally real part of my soul. I have to rely on the hope that this weak and fragile thing that is the whole of me will be strong enough to cope.

To you the dirt is something to be dealt with, coped with, remained calm through. To me, whether it's good or bad, it's everything. There just isn't anything else, and even if there is it's so inconsequential to me as to be practically the same as it not existing. I can't subsume my conception of reality under a spirituality that makes no damn sense to me just because it would feel nicer or enable me to cope. I'm not the right kind of mindset to just make some shit up because I want to feel better about being sick. If I'm sick I'm sick, if I die I die, either I deal with that or I don't. The universe isn't going to care, there isn't some big fat pat on the back afterwards for being such a trooper. There's just me, and this dirt, hand to ground with the shovel and trowel, eye to eye with the cancers, toe to toe with the utterly dispassionate fates that don't even have a conception of my existence. I know it's going to win eventually, but for now, I stand. And fuck me, that feels good.

So don't you say that what you've got is more real than what I have, just because you believe you've tapped into the bit that lasts forever. To you I'm probably scrapping my way through this life half blind like a stray terrier with one eye thinking that the garbage can I found my dinner in is the best that life gets. But I can deal with that. I couldn't deal with imaginary realities. I just need my universe to make sense, thanks. No unicorns allowed.

aruna

05-10-2007, 08:22 PM

But you do not come and tell me that because I don't, that because I struggle with dirt because it is dirt, ..... that my life is somehow less rich than yours.

McDuff, I have never, ever said this to you or anyone else.

May everyone find contentment wherever and however they
can.

The only reason I said a word about myself is that you seem to think I sit in a pink-lined cloud all day dreaming with a big smile on my face.That is certainly not the case.

I have no desire or need to defend what I do or to convince anyone of its value. I don't talk about these things even to my closest friends here in my home town. I prefer it that way. And I love and treasure them just the way they are.

It's just not an issue.

So don't you say that what you've got is more real than what I have, just because you believe you've tapped into the bit that lasts forever.

Where did I say this?

McDuff

05-11-2007, 07:31 PM

At last! Yes, it is the UNCHANGING aspect that makes a thing real or not. And that brings us to what, for me, is the crux of the matter. Guess what - we agree 100% in the sentence I have bolded!

Because I also believe only in the unchanging.

Only that in me that is unchanging is real. ...

Carrying on the metaphor, I know that that clear water - which never ever changes - is the only reality of myself; it is that I seek. In it is love and happiness; it is my very being.

And I KNOW it is there. That alone in all the world is unchanging.

So I think you are right not to put your faith in the changing, but you are wrong to believe that nothing is unchanging.

....

I do indeed prefer to reserve the word love for its highest, purest, permanent version, and in fact I use it exclusively for that. So, for me, and using my definition of the word, it is indeed unchanging, permanent, and indestructible. And even if two people who once loved part company, love (using my definition) would remain unchanged.

I guess this is going to make some people mad, but I don't equate passion with love; passion can indeed be extremely striong, overriding everything else; but it is not the same of love, which by my definition simply cannot die. That's just the way I am. Maybe I'm the one who should use a diferent word for love, at least in conversations such as this.

It's the same for spirituality. Yes, I do claim that a spirituality that comes and goes could not have been strong; it was a mere dabbling with spiritual ideas - which is not the same thing at all. And it could have been very passionate, and very convincing at the time, but the only real criteria is the result. If it disappeared, it was just a nice idea. I have had those nice ideas myself, long ago. I was totally into this and that "spirituality" when I was 19 and 20. All that changed a year or two later.
You say, there, that what you have is more real than any of us poor people who don't have this eternal thing, who in fact reject notions of "the eternal" because for someone who has a hundred years at the outside to exist to concern themselves with whatever fragment of their life is "eternal" is to concern ourselves with irrelevances. You say that if I had an emotion for a week I never really had it, that if I believed something for seven years I never really believed it. If your intention is not to diminish that experience, what cause would you have for saying things like that? "Just a nice idea"? You're talking about people's lives, people's experiences, which are the foundations of our personalities. It's very easy for you to dismiss that kind of thing for others because you yourself don't find that kind of concern important, but others do.

veinglory

05-11-2007, 07:43 PM

Although I not mderator of this area I would like to to remind everyone that from the very beginning we did *not* want this to be any area devoted to discussing the relative merits of being theist/NT with the inevitable emotions this produces. The area for that kind of discussion is called 'Take it Outside'.

Cathy C

05-11-2007, 08:22 PM

Thanks, veinglory. What she said, folks. I am finding the discussion interesting, but we need to draw the line at pointing fingers or making even veiled accusatory statements. In other words, no "you said this" or "I took your statement to mean this, and can't believe you'd say that" stuff. I'd really rather not have to close another thread or move it to TIO. :)

McDuff

05-11-2007, 09:37 PM

Sorry. It's just that I get the feeling Aruna didn't actually know why what she was saying was likely to rub people up the wrong way, or why it can be considered insulting by folks like me. The more you know, and all that.

Cathy C

05-12-2007, 03:03 AM

I do understand, but it might be better to move it to PMs for further discussion of the issue if you're both willing. (NICE PMs, of course. :) )

aruna

05-25-2007, 08:51 AM

Hi, I'm back! Sorry for rubbing folks the wrong way.
But thanks for the discussion anyway

StephanieFox

03-04-2008, 10:52 AM

If I'm not going to believe in God I might as well not believe in a lot of them.

V.W. Singer

03-10-2008, 10:10 AM

What I don't see is the relationship between belief in god or gods and the necessity of worship, obedience and to subscribe to a set of rules. Even if I could see a gigantic bearded old guy wearing a nappie sitting on a cloud above my house, so long as I am unable to directly interact with him, it still means nothing to me as a human being. I was not born with a user's manual attached to my toe and somehow every organised religion boils down to me having to believe what some humans tell me is the truth. If I am going to cut off pieces of my anatomy or have or not have a hundred wives, I want the decision to be based on more than a warm feeling in my tummy or hearsay.

As far as I can see, religion (as opposed to the verifiable existence of one or more superbeings) is an expression of human ego, needs and frailties and has nothing to do with god(s). In fact, I would bet that most people would find it really annoying if one day a god decided to become proactive and started micromanaging our lives. "STOP THINKING THAT, IT DOES NOT PLEASE ME" or "ACCORDING TO MY MASTER PLAN YOUR CHILD IS SCHEDULED TO DIE IN 15 MINUTES. PLEASE HAVE HIM WAIT AT THE DOORSTEP WHILE I MAKE THE NECESSARY ARRANGEMENTS" or how about "THE WOMAN IS NOW PREGNANT. FURTHER SEXUAL ACTIVITY IS NOT REQUIRED. RETURN TO YOUR WORSHIP OF ME UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE"

The above may sound irreverent but it is the logical consequence of a real, in your face god. If, on the other hand, the god acts according to its own plan and takes no notice whatsoever of human actions and needs, then where is the requirement for a religion? The god just becomes another fact of life like living on the edge of a volcano.

I don't need someone to convince me of the existence of god(s). I need to be convinced that it has any relevance to the way I live my life.

Tobin Erebusan

03-10-2008, 11:14 AM

As a random note regarding the start of this thread (on why an atheist is regarded as a believer,) maybe it could be interpreted THIS way...

Atheists believe in God's existence as a CONCEPT, but it stops there.

Theists believe in God's existence as an external reality.

So, maybe, you can (along with everyone else) be called a believer in that your personal doctrine is that there is no external deity, because in fact you cannot know anything absolutely beyond that you can think. So, that can constitute a belief as a response to the belief proposed, in that it is a dismissal. If they dismissal was forgotten, you'd have to make the decision over again to disbelieve. But typically, you remember that you declined the idea. So, it is a belief of disbelief. Paradoxical, but like I said, you believe God exists, but in a very limited way.

Technically, if these people believe they have Jesus in them, they have Jesus in their mind. Existentially speaking, scientifically speaking, that can be all it takes to make something a reality to a receptive mind. A person can say they have a soul, which is invisible. Jesus is also invisible, and so, when Jesus touches their heart, how can you disprove the invisible?

I am an atheist of Zen beliefs, myself. I don't consider any kind of God a reality, unless you mean the mind, which gives meaning to the universe. In my eyes, Christians and atheists and whoever else is a Buddha in some stage of being. May we all walk our path to truth.

aruna

03-10-2008, 12:44 PM

How come "atheist" is being perceived as "believer"??

The trouble is that some atheists DO behave exactly like the believers they repudiate. They are fanatic in their desire to prove religion wrong, idiotic, childish, and whatever, and try to lecture/sermonise whenever they can. Beat others over the head with their "better knowledge".
I don't see any difference between that kind of behaviour, and a Bible thumper. (And I know because my father was one of the former. A nice man, but a fanatical atheist.) It is the behaviour of a "True Believer".

As far as I can see, religion (as opposed to the verifiable existence of one or more superbeings) is an expression of human ego, needs and frailties and has nothing to do with god(s). In fact, I would bet that most people would find it really annoying if one day a god decided to become proactive and started micromanaging our lives. . etc etc.

You might be surprised to know that in practically every religion, this is exactly what happens, and the faithful submit willingly, or at least try to. They WANT God to micromanage their lives, as they believe that God knows better what is better for them than they themselves. The basic practice of just about every sincere Christian, Hindu, Muslim I know is "Not my will, oh Lord, but Thine."
As such, religion is actually exactly the very opposite as you describe: it is the submission of the human ego to God--whether a personal God, as in Christianity and Islam, or a more abstract oneness as in Buddhism and Hinduism. In every case, the ego has to recede if that religion is to be practiced properly. The idea that God is a Santa Claus there to fulfill every desire and do one's will is not part of any religious teaching that I know; that is a misunderstanding.

I remember a Christian prayer I learned in school as a child:

Teach us Good Lord to serve thee as thou deservest;
To give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labour and not to ask for any reward
save the joy of knowing that we do thy will.

So you see, people of faith do in fact accept that their life will not be any the easier, but a constant struggle.

Religion being "an expression of human ego, needs and frailties" is only true insofar as a recognition of one's ego, needs and frailties can be the start of a yearning for something greater than, beyond oneself. Whether there is indeed such a "something": well, that's what we all have to decide for ourselves.

V.W. Singer

03-10-2008, 05:19 PM

You might be surprised to know that in practically every religion, this is exactly what happens, and the faithful submit willingly, or at least try to. They WANT God to micromanage their lives, as they believe that God knows better what is better for them than they themselves. The basic practice of just about every sincere Christian, Hindu, Muslim I know is "Not my will, oh Lord, but Thine."
As such, religion is actually exactly the very opposite as you describe: it is the submission of the human ego to God--whether a personal God, as in Christianity and Islam, or a more abstract oneness as in Buddhism and Hinduism. In every case, the ego has to recede if that religion is to be practiced properly. The idea that God is a Santa Claus there to fulfill every desire and do one's will is not part of any religious teaching that I know; that is a misunderstanding.

I remember a Christian prayer I learned in school as a child:

Teach us Good Lord to serve thee as thou deservest;
To give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labour and not to ask for any reward
save the joy of knowing that we do thy will.

So you see, people of faith do in fact accept that their life will not be any the easier, but a constant struggle.

Religion being "an expression of human ego, needs and frailties" is only true insofar as a recognition of one's ego, needs and frailties can be the start of a yearning for something greater than, beyond oneself. Whether there is indeed such a "something": well, that's what we all have to decide for ourselves.

"Not my will, oh Lord, but Thine." is easy to say when your god is distant and invisible (not His (Her?) works but the actual being). Would it be so desirable to the majority of believers if the deity was actually there constantly looking over you shoulder giving commands, feedback, rewards and punishment 24/7 x 365 for every thought and action? I highly doubt it. Most people would go insane. For most people, "doing Gods will" is a transfer of responsibility and blame for the results of that person's actions and choices, to a God that they know will not respond, at least not during the physical lifetime.

Also implicit in the concept of religion as a human activity is that God(s) is benign and (ultimately) fair. Absolute proof of the existence of God(s) does not in any way require this. We may be a failed experiment. We may be plankton in the universal food chain. We may have lost out in the prayer stakes to an alien race who were more devout, more obedient. Unless there is direct communication with the deity, all the rest is still human supposition and wishful thinking. It is human ego that makes us think that we matter in the deity's scheme of things. It is human ego that makes us think that we have any chance of understanding a deity's intentions or thoughts. It is like a microbe saying it knows what a Supercomputer thinks or wants. How can you do the will of something that you cannot comprehend?

aruna

03-10-2008, 06:41 PM

Most people would go insane. For most people, "doing Gods will" is a transfer of responsibility and blame for the results of that person's actions and choices, to a God that they know will not respond, at least not during the physical lifetime.
Well, yes, That can happen. No sincere believer would deny that it is easy to know God's will, or discern it from the ego's. The rule of thumb is that if it;s the easy thing, it's the ego. It takes a whole lot of practice and patience and honesty to learn such discernment, and even ten it is tricky.

HeronW

03-10-2008, 06:46 PM

Rabid believers are incapable of thinking that anyone can truly be an atheist--which is worlds apart from a non-believer. Anyone not in religion A but in B, C, etc is a non-believer in A. An atheist doesn't believe in any omniscient being, period. I think this frightens zealot believers because they can't equate non-belief with living a moral ethical life. This despite the immoral unethical acts done all over by so-called believers. If these rabid religious freaks can't give glory to the good side and damn the bad, aka passing the buck of responsible action from the self to the other, then their salvation is a self-delusional myth built on sand.

'True' pieces of the original Cross were sold in such quantity you could make a forest let alone two beams. Pig bones were sold as the relics of Saints. You can still buy your way out of the Catholic purgatory if enough people pray for your soul for a long enough time, and that gets bumped to the head of the line if you make a donation. Snake-oil revival tent salvation is huge and oh yes, the more you pay--er place in the collection cup, the better off you'll be. Then there's the abuses by clergy and hide the pedophiles or ship them off to another unsuspecting parish. Or the 'women don't have souls, good enough souls so they can't be priests/rabbis/ministers/imans' etc. Gotta love organized religion and true believers.

That said, my partner is Jewish, my oldest friend is Catholic, I'm pagan and we're all assured of each other's love and respect and we'll all be with our pets who have gone before us--or we're not going. :}

deathwizard

03-12-2008, 11:51 PM

So let me ask this of the atheists here. Are the following two statement equivalent? Or do they mean different things to you?

I do not believe there is a god.
I believe there is no god.
Note: This is not a semantic trap where I will pounce with a clever riposte. It's an honest question. My assumption was that they mean the same thing, but it got me to thinking that maybe they don't to some people.

I would not post this in the Christian forum, but it should be okay here. I believe that all religions were created by human beings because of our conscious and subconscious fear of death. As we all know, human beings are the only animals on Earth that are aware of their own imminent, unavoidable demise. And it's a subtle, yet maddening awareness. So we create religions to deal with it. Agnostics and atheists see this more clearly than others.

Sarpedon

03-13-2008, 12:34 AM

First, I had to take God out of the situation, and come up with a totally different situation. I thought: What if people didn't believe in the God I know, but, say, The Flying Spaghetti Monster. And what if people believed that when you die your soul will stay inside a turtle for eternity.

No you don't have to take God out of the situation. God isn't in the situation. He never communicates, he never answers prayers. He's entirely inert. There is no REAL situation where god is a factor. How can you tell the difference between a god who does nothing and no god at all? You can always claim that god does something, but you could just as easily claim that it is Apollo, or indeed, the Flying Spaghetti Monster who is doing it. If you have no evidence that says 'god' is doing it, then you have no reasonable justification for saying so. That means, in a very real since, its a lie to attribute those things to god.

And there is no soul. Why do you assume there is one? The concept of 'soul' was invented by primitive people to explain how people think and feel. This was before they understood what the brain was for. The idea of the soul is as obsolete as the theory of the Four Humours, or the idea that people see by shooting rays from their eyes.

The point is that these concepts, god and soul, are superfluous. Life changes remarkably little when you discard them. When I need to tighten a bolt, and I don't have my wrench with me, I say 'darn it, I need a wrench for this job. I wish I had a wrench.' There's no situation I've ever been in where I have said 'hmmm, this would be a good job for a SOUL, too bad I haven't got one.' A wrench is a real thing, with a use. The soul is imaginary, and has no use. The brain is what thinks, and feels, and watches, and loves, and hates. There is no difference between the body and the mind. The mind is of the body. All evidence points to that.

In short, there is no difference between a situation with an inert god, and a situation without a god at all, just as the presence or absense of pigeons on the next building over has no effect on what I am doing here.

aruna

03-13-2008, 02:22 AM

No you don't have to take God out of the situation. God isn't in the situation. He never communicates, he never answers prayers. ...................

And there is no soul.

How do you know this?

Sarpedon

03-13-2008, 03:17 AM

aruna

03-13-2008, 11:35 AM

Did you read my entire post? I know there is no soul because the soul is an obsolete medical theory like the four humours. An even more useless theory than that, because the four humours actually exist, they just don't do what was supposed.

Everything that the soul once supposedly did has now been found to be done by the brain and endocrine system. Remember; there isn't and never has been any evidence for the soul. It was ASSUMED to exist in order to explain certain phenomenon. Now these phenomenon have been PROVEN to be caused by other, decidedly non mystical things. No evidence, no function, no need, no existence. Occams Razor.

__________

prayer; what you do when you don't care enough to do something useful.

Yes, I read your post.
All you are saying is that there is no scientific evidence that proves the existence of a soul.

By your reasoning, atoms did not exist before their existence was proven by science.

Also, the earth was only round from the moment science proved it to be round.

Also, the earth only rotated the sun from the moment this was proved by science.

Roger J Carlson

03-13-2008, 06:00 PM

Everything that the soul once supposedly did has now been found to be done by the brain and endocrine system. Remember; there isn't and never has been any evidence for the soul. It was ASSUMED to exist in order to explain certain phenomenon. Now these phenomenon have been PROVEN to be caused by other, decidedly non mystical things. No evidence, no function, no need, no existence. Occams Razor.Really? What is the exact neuro-chemical process that accounts for self-awareness? What neuro-chemical process make one person a "believer" and another person a "skeptic". What neuro-chemical process makes one person a rule-follower and another a sociopath?

You're simply trading one assumption (the brain and endocrine system does it) for another (the soul does it).

oneblindmouse

03-13-2008, 06:48 PM

Really? What is the exact neuro-chemical process that accounts for self-awareness? What neuro-chemical process make one person a "believer" and another person a "skeptic". What neuro-chemical process makes one person a rule-follower and another a sociopath?

You're simply trading one assumption (the brain and endocrine system does it) for another (the soul does it).

Exactly. Reductionists are trying to push the currently trendy 'scientific' idea that ALL human behaviour is caused by chemical processes within the human brain, but other psychologists are increasingly studying concepts like self awareness, consciousness, etc, that do not fit in neatly with neuro-chemical explanations yet whose existence cannot be denied.

Though, having said that, it's a giant step from self-awareness (something only humans possess) to believing in gods and following a man-made organised religion.

Roger J Carlson

03-13-2008, 06:59 PM

Though, having said that, it's a giant step from self-awareness (something only humans possess) to believing in gods and following a man-made organised religion.Absolutely. I would never try to use science to prove the existance of God. By the same token, I object to people trying to use science to disprove the existance of God. Science in incapable of doing either.

That said, I have no objection to people not believing in God because His existance cannot be proven by scientific means. This is everyone's right.

Sarpedon

03-13-2008, 07:05 PM

We'll never know everything. We know enough to draw certain reasonable conclusions. If the soul is the seat of the personality, why do people's personality change when they suffer brain damage? We might not know the exact neurochemical process that defines personality, but we can say with certainty that it is one, because if the 'personhood' or whatever you want to call it were lodged in an immortal 'soul' rather than a lump of flesh called the brain, then how could mere brain damage cause someone's personality to change?

Heck, how would anyone ever get drunk? If I am who I am because of an immaterial, immortal soul, why would the mere introduction of chemicals to my body change my behavior?

Answer me that, cultists.

Brain damage alters behavior and personality, ergo, the brain controls behavior and personality.
Chemicals introduced into the body alter behavior, ergo behavior is controlled by some chemical process. It is unnecessary to know the exact chemical process.

Ha, you people make me laugh. Every time science disproves one of your cherished beliefs, you point at something and say 'Look at this! you haven't figured this out! There's still hope for my beliefs to be right! Look! Look!' And five or so years from now, they'll figure that out, and you'll find another gap to stick your worthless faith into.

Pathetic.

Its so amusing to watch your god shrink. 1000 years ago he did everything, and intervened daily in people's lives, he controlled the weather, and smote sinners with natural disasters.

100 years ago, he was seen as a watchmaker or mechanic, who set the world running then withdrew to watch.

Now he's cringing in whatever gap science has allowed to remain.

Roger J Carlson

03-13-2008, 07:11 PM

Answer me that, cultists...

Ha, you people make me laugh...

Pathetic... I hardly think belittling people is in the spirit of this board.

writin52

03-13-2008, 07:12 PM

OK, let me ask you all this; (and to the Moderators, I implore you to move this thread if it is in the wrong place).

How come "atheist" is being perceived as "believer"??

In Random House Webster's Dictionary it says that atheism is;

And god is; (from the same source)

Simple as that!

As an atheist, (I may use that word about myself sometimes, even though I actually resent doing so), I do not believe in "a higher power", a "god", a "destiny" or whatnot.

I have no belief. I am a very down-to-Earth, not-so-imaginative, live-and-let-live kind of person. I also try my very utmost to respect people who have found comfort and happiness in some kind of belief-system.

I have read through a number of threads where "atheists" are being considered "anti-religious", "anti-church", "militant fundamentalists" and what have you. The common theme being "believer" in something I would call almost "Anti-Christ".

When the simple fact is that a lot of us, (and of course I am guilty of judging others after my own norm here, and apologize for that, if someone feels an urge not to agree), simply don't give a hoot.

Christ, no Christ, Allah or IHVH, it doesn't make a difference to me. In my mind I have concluded that I am a human being, an animal in fact, with a life-span of approx 65-85 years on this planet.

SO WHAT????

I refuse to inhibit my life because it might not give me a place in "Heaven". I also refuse to be scared because it might send me to "Hell".

I believe in life itself. I am grateful that I am born. Grateful that I have life. Grateful to have a Husband that loves me, that I feel free to love back as much as I want.

I have taken some beatings, it comes with life. Have given some too. That also comes with life. Do I call it "Karma"? Not only no, but Hell No!

WHY, all you people out there, is it so hard for you to comprehend that a true atheist simply does NOT believe???

In anything???

From what you are saying, I'm seeing a belief. A belief in nothing or in life itself is still a belief. So you are a believer, just not in the traditional sense.

aruna

03-13-2008, 07:19 PM

Absolutely. I would never try to use science to prove the existance of God. By the same token, I object to people trying to use science to disprove the existance of God. Science in incapable of doing either.

That said, I have no objection to people not believing in God because His existance cannot be proven by scientific means. This is everyone's right.

To draw an analogy, suitable to a writers' board:

So many of us speak of "playing god" and "creating worlds" when we write in certain genres.

For a human to use science to "prove" God, if there is a God, is the equivalent of one of the characters we create in a novel using the methods we have given them in that world we created, to prove the author's existence.

How can the creature ever prove its creator's existence, considering how enormous the gap in intelligence must be?

I also have no problem with someone being an atheist. Heck, I was one myself once.

I only find the concept of trying to use science to prove God ridiculous.

Not that I have a problem with science. But I see no contradiction whatsoever between science and religion. Indeed, they complement each other.

Sarpedon

03-13-2008, 07:23 PM

aruna

03-13-2008, 07:30 PM

Heck, how would anyone ever get drunk? If I am who I am because of an immaterial, immortal soul, why would the mere introduction of chemicals to my body change my behavior?

Brain damage alters behavior and personality, ergo, the brain controls behavior and personality.
Chemicals introduced into the body alter behavior, ergo behavior is controlled by some chemical process. It is unnecessary to know the exact chemical process.

Perhaps, according to your definition of soul. My understanding of soul is something beyond personality, subtler even than brain. You have created a concept; insist that this concept is what others believe (which it isn't); then try to disprove your own concept.

Answer me that, cultists. Ha, you people make me laugh. Pathetic.

Respect, please. This is coming close to name calling.

Its so amusing to watch your god shrink. 1000 years ago he did everything, and intervened daily in people's lives, he controlled the weather, and smote sinners with natural disasters.

If there is a God then it is obvious that human perception and understanding of what he/She/It is would change over time. It does not mean that He/She/It has changed.

The fact remains: you do not know.

aruna

03-13-2008, 07:37 PM

davids

03-13-2008, 07:44 PM

Well mornin' everybody! I have read the first page and this last one but since Melisande is so sweet and nice and smart and I like her I thought I would just drop in an set a spell, listen and maybe even have a jaw-so I am.

I am with Sarpedon here one hundred procent and I understand his anger and such. Me? I don't much go in for science-kinda enjoy it but am not obviously a scientist as those of you who kinda know me around here are well aware of.

What do I believe?

Hell that might be my next book-long and funny like this thread. Anyway religion, and all of em in my book are based on fear and not much else. Fear that the ancients had about not knowing what the hell was going on. Gotta justify and rationalize-science comes along and throws a wrench in what have become companys that need to control us because as most things it is a profit oriented game and not much else.

Now this profit is not only financial profit-hell it is more the pirateering of power and control based on fear. Simplistic you say? Yup I suppose but it is the way I see it not believe it to be. Proof of the puddin is in the eatin for me.

One can argue till their bums start to bleed and it is all kinda pointless. I have my own damn dictionary and the definitions fit my life and frankly Scarlet-well you know the rest-I am with you on this Melisande. You to Sarpedon--yeah I know you folks don't need my support but I am with you.

I will tell you that as far as fear goes-my fears got nothing to do with superstition but with folks-and one more little thing-my old Burtrand Russel Terrier that passed a while back-well if that little bastardo did not know who the hell he was and did not recognize himself and was not aware of himself-then damn-maybe I am not as well-hell maybe I need to BELIEVE that because I loved him so much and do not like the idea that he is just dead and gone and in no way exists other than in my mind-hell maybe I am a believer!!

He lives on in my mind and my heart and those two things live in the same place and probably that might be the whole yah God or no God problem-chemicals-damn chemicals-I have enjoyed a few in my youth-suppose that might be why most will read this and believe I am still on something-then again-maybe not!

Roger J Carlson

03-13-2008, 07:51 PM

Didn't you just say that I was merely trading one assumption for another, in spite of the fact that I have evidence and you have NONE. How is that not belittling? You want me to believe in a soul? Show it to me. You can't. Because it doesn't exist. I can show you how chemicals affect the brain, how brain damage affects behavior, what do you have? What can you show me?Presenting an opposing viewpoint is not belittling. However, calling people "cultists" and "pathetic" certainly is. The rule throughout these boards is to respect others and you are certainly not doing that.

I don't want to believe in anything. However, the fact that chemicals affect the brain does not disprove the existance of a soul. I can't show you my soul, but I know I have one. I don't insist you believe in it.

Your double standards are insulting. People who believe as you do are given a pass. People who believe otherwise must present evidence to counter every trivial objection you can produce. You said that every function of the soul has been shown to be done by the brain and endocrine system. I questioned that. That is neither a double standard, nor insulting.

Don't insult me by waving your hand and sneering at my evidence. I'm offended by your arrogance. My evidence isn't good enough, your 'faith' is superior, eh? Faith means believing whatever you are told to believe. I figured that out when I was teaching sunday school. I think you've got the "arrogance" thing backwards. Arrogance is when you won't admit the possiblility of you being wrong. I fully admit I may be wrong, but I nonetheless have a right to my opinion.

What is compelling you people to come and proselytize at us, when all we were doing was discussing a philosophical and semantic point? Do I go to the Christian writing forums and hassle people? How is what you are doing 'in the spirit of the board?' Proselytize? I'm doing nothing of the sort. Actually, my participaton is very much in the spirit of this board. The Non Theist board is not an atheist enclave any more than the Christian Board is a Christian enclave. Many non-believers (including member who started this thread) have participated in respectful discussions on the Christian Board. It is open to all. I don't see any reason why a Christian can't have a part in discussing a philosophical and sematic point. Perhaps by respectfully considering each other's viewpoints, we can build understanding rather than simply insulting each other.

Sarpedon

03-13-2008, 07:55 PM

Actually, I do have evidence. My evidence is clearer and more compelling that anything you or anyone could prove or disprove to me. But since it is interior, it is nothing I can prove or care to prove. I could help you find evidence yourself, if you wanted me to, but it will never be something visible.
I don't think anyone here said they wanted you to believe anything. The only thing people have said is that your proof is none.

Oh really, you have evidence, but you can't show it to me? What does 'evidence' mean? If you can't show it to someone, it isn't evidence.

And I can't see your evidence unless I have the right attitude? Since when does the truth rely on attitude? 1 + 1 = 2, whether you have the right attitude or not. Only mystical frauds selling charms and snake oil pretend otherwise. Why? So when their miracle cure doesn't work, they can say your faith wasn't strong enough.

Guess what. I have an exquisite diamond worth 20 million dollars. But I can't show it to you.

No wait, I'm a liar, I don't have a diamond. I don't believe your 'internal evidence'. How can I tell the difference between your 'internal evidence' and your imagination? How can you?

Do I go around pretending that 'I know in my heart there is no god' and expecting other people to believe it? No, because I'm honest. I don't know, but I have a good idea based on the available evidence. You don't know, so you make it up.

aruna

03-13-2008, 08:06 PM

[QUOTE]Oh really, you have evidence, but you can't show it to me? What does 'evidence' mean? If you can't show it to someone, it isn't evidence.

Because it is of no consequence whatsoever to me if you or anybody else believes me or not.

It matters only to me. It is relevant only to me.

You are sneering and contemptuous; very well. But still my conviction stands.

Do I go around pretending that 'I know in my heart there is no god' and expecting other people to believe it? No, because I'm honest. I don't know, but I have a good idea based on the available evidence. You don't know, so you make it up.

You cannot see inside me so really, you do not know if I am making it up or not. Nor does it matter. This is again only an opinion, a belief.

aruna

03-13-2008, 08:09 PM

And actually, I agree with Einstein in this:

In an attempt to define why and in what way he was "religious, " Einstein said, "Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious."

The point is, our means of trying to prove spiritual concepts by empirical method is ridiculous from the start.

dpaterso

03-13-2008, 08:26 PM

Sarpedon, you need to back away from this discussion NOW.

"Atheism and Non-Theistic Spiritual Writing" does not mean you have a free hand to bash believers over the head with a set of snotty belittling comments.

Regard this as a final warning.

-Derek

Sarpedon

03-13-2008, 08:29 PM

Ok, I'll back off, I posted that last before I read yours. I think it should be more acceptable anyway. I tend to start out aggressive and become more reasonable as I begin to perceive common ground. Sorry for that.

dpaterso

03-13-2008, 08:33 PM

Sorry is nice but let that be your last post in this thread, I'm not prepared to have a repeat of the above or wait for you to "become more reasonable." Please cease & desist.

-Derek

Angelinity

03-13-2008, 10:07 PM

i've seen both, strict believers and inveterate atheists make great mistakes on their life's journies.

ultimately does believing make a difference in the ways of the world? believers have always been greater in numbers -- the majority seek guidance, parameters; it is easier to conform and focus on a 'greater goal'. hence believers maybe have wrought the greatest harm on civilizations. to date, anyway. could be the Athiest's turn now.

as a concept, Atheism is potentially as dangereous as Religion in my mind -- as seen above, Athiests can hold views as limiting as those inherent to the Medieval Inquisition.

how about taking responsibility individually -- must we join one rank or the other? are we not strong enough to stand up to bullies on either side?

one way or another each and everyone of us will sooner or later have the answer -- we are mortal and once we cross the (real or symbolic) Styx, we will learn the truth... or maybe only part of the truth?

what if, when we die, we merely jump into a parallel universe, asking the same questions in a different language and a different form?

maybe we've been doing this for all eternity -- a never-ending hell of near-sameness, all along hoping there was someone in charge; someone who could save us, put an end to the nightmare; reward the believers and punish the heathens.

everything seems to point to chemical reactions in the brain, doesn't it. more detailed maps of the brain are emerging, as have more detailed maps of the Earth, Solar System and Universe. do we yet understand all of it? does it all fit in? does dark matter exist or not?

scientific observation is subject to the observer's 'altitute'... what is altitute, how high is high?
in space, is there height and breadth? where is center of space and what is the 'sea level' by which one can determine 'altitude'?

is there a 'creator'?

something did create what is -- a conjecture of elements and environmental specifics. does this 'creator' have a brain, purpose, a hidden agenda? maybe. maybe not. how can one judge one way or the other? where is the 'evidence' -- if so, where does the 'observer' view the so-called evidence from, what vantage point?

meanwhile, every one of us is on some kind of train -- destination: Rome. can we all get along?

rugcat

03-13-2008, 10:22 PM

The point is, our means of trying to prove spiritual concepts by empirical method is ridiculous from the start.Truer words were never spoken. (Of course, I can't prove that.)

otterman

03-13-2008, 11:09 PM

The very nature of truths - spiritual or otherwise - is that they can be proven. It is the only reliable foundation upon which answers to questions can be confirmed. Having said that, there are some who will never accept proof (no matter how sound) and are therefore impossible to communicate with in an unbiased and honest fashion.
At this point in our (humanity's) infancy as organisms inhabiting a tiny planet somewhere in the middle of a mind-bogglingly expansive universe, it is apparent that we just don't have the capacity or haven't developed the means to tackle the "God" question. Is this to suggest the answer will never come? No. But, from where I stand, to say one has the answer is disingenuous. I view "faith" in God as an indefensible argument based on wishful thinking and/or fear. I also see absolute declarations that God doesn't/can't exist as combative and premature. Is there a God? I don't know. Anyone who suggests that he knows the answer to that question should be disregarded, unless he is able to provide me with evidence that is sound.

Angelinity

03-13-2008, 11:20 PM

you can prove a spiritual truth?

i'm willing to listen.

deathwizard

03-13-2008, 11:34 PM

Here's an interesting quote from a Buddhist teacher that plays to a lot of what has been discussed here (I have shortened and paraphrased):

"A person of intelligence does not believe in anything and does not disbelieve in anything. A person of intelligence is open to recognizing whatsoever is the case. Only in a non-believing intelligence can truth appear. When you already believe or disbelieve, you don’t allow truth any space to come to you. Your prejudice is already enthroned."

oneblindmouse

03-13-2008, 11:42 PM

Roger J Carlson

03-13-2008, 11:48 PM

"A person of intelligence does not believe in anything and does not disbelieve in anything. A person of intelligence is open to recognizing whatsoever is the case. Only in a non-believing intelligence can truth appear. When you already believe or disbelieve, you don’t allow truth any space to come to you. Your prejudice is already enthroned."But then once a truth has come to you and you embrace it, are you not then a believer in that truth? Doesn't this preclude you from allowing any new truths to come to you? So it seems that the truly intelligent person is one who believes nothing. But if that's the case, why bother to create space for truths to come to you if you're not going to believe them anyway?

Angelinity

03-13-2008, 11:56 PM

how do you judge a truth?

would that be based on your latest set of beliefs?

how do you know it is the truth -- and not the truth of the hour?

deathwizard

03-14-2008, 12:00 AM

Rather than believe in something, you see it for what it is. It is truth that our sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Whether I believe or disbelieve in this has no effect on the truth of it.

Angelinity

03-14-2008, 12:07 AM

East is where the sun rises.

West is where is sets.

which came first? is it true the sun rises in the East? If we choose to call its rising place East, it is true.

Roger J Carlson

03-14-2008, 12:24 AM

Rather than believe in something, you see it for what it is. It is truth that our sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Whether I believe or disbelieve in this has no effect on the truth of it.But how do you know what it is? The sun does not actually rise in the east. The earth rotates. Who can stand outside of their own experience and just know what is?

Little Earthquake

03-14-2008, 12:25 AM

Something you might find interesting: http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2007/10/atheists-and-an.html

But I digress. My opinion is that atheists are believers. They believe that there is no god. Ithink that everyone has beliefs, from the small and simple, "I believe that Charlize Theron was ROBBED of the Academy Award for North Country," to the big theological stuff like, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth."

Many god-believers assume that atheists want to strip them (the god-believers) of their religious rights, which as far as I can tell is just not the case. I've never met an atheist who wanted to prevent me from going to church or praying or reading my Bible. I have, however, met plenty of atheists who just want to be left alone about all this god stuff already. And I've met lots of believers who want to push me to agree with their version of god, or who wanted to get me to go to church more or do more "Christian" things, or who want to change their government's laws to reflect their theology.

Perhaps it's a case of "guilty dog barks first:" those who are pushy and fundamentalist towards those outside their fold assume that those "outsiders" are just as pushy and fundamentalist.

Little Earthquake

03-14-2008, 12:33 AM

Is there a God? I don't know. Anyone who suggests that he knows the answer to that question should be disregarded, unless he is able to provide me with evidence that is sound.

Agreed. Like a (tongue-in-cheek) bumper sticker I saw once, "Militant Agnostic: I don't know and neither do you!"

People of faith have many different reasons for believing in their deity of choice and following their path of choice. But not a single one of them can PROVE that god exists. Even someone who's had a revelatory experience where god (allegedly) spoke to them or appeared to them cannot PROVE to me that their experience wasn't a hallucination or a lie. They cannot call god up and say, "Hey, buddy, can you come over to my crib later on tonight? Emily's over here and she says she doesn't believe you're real. I know, right? Well, we'll show her."

I choose to believe in God for many different reasons. But do I know without doubt that he/she/it exists? No. And can I prove his/her/its existence to any other person? Hell no.

otterman

03-14-2008, 12:43 AM

I think you've honestly identified what faith is about: the wish for something to be. That I can accept. People who say they know there is a God because of their faith, I cannot.

deathwizard

03-14-2008, 12:43 AM

But how do you know what it is? The sun does not actually rise in the east. The earth rotates. Who can stand outside of their own experience and just know what is?

You're right, I used a poor example. Still, my point is that recognizing the truth of something and believing in something are two different things.

The truth is that all things are impermanent, from stars to microbes. That all living creatures will one day die. That the universe and all things within it are in a constant state of change. That all things have a beginning, middle, and end. When you recognize these truths in the deep depths of your mind, your perspective changes.

Higgins

03-14-2008, 01:18 AM

You're right, I used a poor example. Still, my point is that recognizing the truth of something and believing in something are two different things.

The truth is that all things are impermanent, from stars to microbes. That all living creatures will one day die. That the universe and all things within it are in a constant state of change. That all things have a beginning, middle, and end. When you recognize these truths in the deep depths of your mind, your perspective changes.

Truth and believe actually point at implausibly sustained mental states. For example: How do I know that it is true that I believe X? Do I expect to see state X? Soon? Now? Did I see X yesterday? Well...you can definitely talk about X and the possibility of X, but to believe truly in X is to posit a continuous unverifiable mental state. It is much easier to think in terms of plausibility, as in Do I in general think that the expectation of X is plausible? If I think about X at all? Or just every few hours?

For example, as I pointed out long ago in this thread, the problem of not proving a negative is a non-problem related to supposed and impossible to verify mental states of truth related to belief. As I said then:

"Atheists cannot overcome that problem because there is no problem to overcome. If no one has ever seen even a trace of what is supposedly the most omnipresent thing that can be defined, then the very definition of the being in question ceases to have any plausibility. You cannot look for something that cannot be described. This is far more true than any possible fact or proof: an ominpresent thing that has never been anywhere is nowhere to be found. This is far, far less existential plausibility than simply not being somewhere, it is equivalent to never having been anywhere ever in any way at all.

Or to put it another way, since the absolute nature of the claim of God's existence would require that he is everywhere all the time, even one case of his non-appearance serves as an indicator of plausibility that is far more negative than a matter of mere fact or proof."

deathwizard

03-14-2008, 01:21 AM

Truth and believe actually point at implausibly sustained mental states. For example: How do I know that it is true that I believe X? Do I expect to see state X? Soon? Now? Did I see X yesterday? Well...you can definitely talk about X and the possibility of X, but to believe truly in X is to posit a continuous unverifiable mental state. It is much easier to think in terms of plausibility, as in Do I in general think that the expectation of X is plausible? If I think about X at all? Or just every few hours?

For example, as I pointed out long ago in this thread, the problem of not proving a negative is a non-problem related to supposed and impossible to verify mental states of truth related to belief. As I said then:

"Atheists cannot overcome that problem because there is no problem to overcome. If no one has ever seen even a trace of what is supposedly the most omnipresent thing that can be defined, then the very definition of the being in question ceases to have any plausibility. You cannot look for something that cannot be described. This is far more true than any possible fact or proof: an ominpresent thing that has never been anywhere is nowhere to be found. This is far, far less existential plausibility than simply not being somewhere, it is equivalent to never having been anywhere ever in any way at all.

Or to put it another way, since the absolute nature of the claim of God's existence would require that he is everywhere all the time, even one case of his non-appearance serves as an indicator of plausibility that is far more negative than a matter of mere fact or proof."

What you just said is borderline brilliant, but I still disagree with your first statement. Truth is not an implausible mental state. Truth is simply what is.

Pup

03-14-2008, 01:47 AM

how do you judge a truth?

would that be based on your latest set of beliefs?

Yes.

how do you know it is the truth -- and not the truth of the hour?

You don't. It's always the truth of the hour.

And I think that's a good thing.

Everything is only a belief, based on more or less evidence. I believe the country of France exists, though I've never been there. I believe I'm sitting by my computer, though I might be hallucinating or dreaming. I don't believe in unicorns or gods or that bigfeet live in the Pacific northwest, because I don't have enough evidence for their existence, and I doubt seriously that there will be enough evidence come forth to make me change any those beliefs. But it's possible, and if I became aware of enough evidence, it wouldn't bother me in the least to change.

In a religion-based worldview, sticking to a belief in the face of all contrary evidence is seen as a positive thing. Keeping one's faith through tests and trials is laudable.

In a science-based worldview, sticking to a belief in the face of all contrary evidence is just, well, silly. The only way to get closer to the truth is to follow where the evidence leads, even if new evidence contradicts the tentative conclusions drawn from the older incomplete evidence. And ironically, many people with religion-based worldviews do that also, even if their evidence is only personal testimony: it's called converting.

deathwizard

03-14-2008, 02:19 AM

[i]

Everything is only a belief, based on more or less evidence.

I agree with most of what you said, but not with this. There are truths that are beyond belief or disbelief. They are simply what they are, whether anyone believes in them or not.

Are human beings often wrong when they proclaim something to be a truth? Of course. But truths exist, regardless of anything we might say or do.

All of this, of course, is my opinion, which is based at least partially on hours of mindfulness meditation, during which truths are revealed ... one by one.

V.W. Singer

03-14-2008, 12:25 PM

The belivers say that seeking god through objective observation and analysis (science) is futile because man's feeble intellect is incapable of comprehending god(s).

Then they say that through the use of those same inadequated mental faculties they have determined that god exists. When asked how this was accomplished, they will reply that they have absolute proof, but anyone who does not already believe will not be able so see this proof.

One can see how a non believer, or even an agnostic would be a bit frustrated with this discussion.

As far as this goes however, it does not really matter one way or another, as in the end everyone can only perceive the universe through the use of his or her own senses and mental abilities.

Unfortunately, people being people, the belivers almost always carry their belief to the next stage, which is to manifest their belief in god(s) in a physical and social manner. Excusive ways of speech, dressing, behaviour. Exclusion of non believers, a communal fear of non believers, the imposition of social norms based on the believer's interpretation of what their god(s) wants. And when I say non believers, I include believers of other god(s).

Unless the believer's concept of god(s) is so fuzzy as to be nothing more than a warm feeling in the tummy, belief automatically implies disbelief in the god(s) of other believers where they are expressed in a different manner. The believer may say that the other believer is just using a different way to describe god(s) which is equally valid, but put to the test, would they change over and follow the teachings of the other believer, or is it just a nice way of saying that the other person is wrong/deluded.

It is at this level that most atheists and agnostics have a problem with god(s). A true believer must act on those beliefs. He or she has no choice. Eventually, those actions must infringe on the lives of those who do not believe. What to eat, what to teach in school, what to wear or not wear, how to act, etc. One of the most obvious examples is abortion.

No group of athieists or agnostics in human history has ever gone to war to enforce athiesm. The reverse is not true.

The simple fact is that in the world of human beings as it exists today, the declaration that one believes in God(s) implies at least two things:

1. The belief in a God or pantheon of Gods, and the concurrent disbelief in every other variety of God(s).
2. The adoption of a set of social and cultural norms and rules and an active opposition to all other social and cultural norms where they differ significantly.

I am an agnostic because I admit that I am incapable of even concieving of the nature of a god worthy of the name (and not just a much more advanced/powerful being or collection of beings), let alone what such as god would want of me. To me, anything else is sheer hubris.

aruna

03-14-2008, 01:05 PM

I agree with most of what you said, but not with this. There are truths that are beyond belief or disbelief. They are simply what they are, whether anyone believes in them or not.
.

Exactly.

Unfortunately, people being people, the belivers almost always carry their belief to the next stage, which is to manifest their belief in god(s) in a physical and social manner. Excusive ways of speech, dressing, behaviour. Exclusion of non believers, a communal fear of non believers, the imposition of social norms based on the believer's interpretation of what their god(s) wants. And when I say non believers, I include believers of other god(s).

Unless the believer's concept of god(s) is so fuzzy as to be nothing more than a warm feeling in the tummy, belief automatically implies disbelief in the god(s) of other believers where they are expressed in a different manner. The believer may say that the other believer is just using a different way to describe god(s) which is equally valid, but put to the test, would they change over and follow the teachings of the other believer, or is it just a nice way of saying that the other person is wrong/deluded.

.

It's really a shame that atheists and agnostics almost invariably choose the WORST example of religious folk in order to draw general conclusions about religion. That is simply false; humans are by nature fallible, and if a particular person or group of persons does not live up to the tenets of their religion as taught by that religion's founder or scripture, then that is hardly the fault of the religion.

You say, for instance, that people of one faith always reject other faiths. That is simply not true. Take Gandhi, for instance; he was a Hindu yet always carried with him the New testament and the Buddhist Light of Asia.

When asked why he did not embrace Christianity (http://www.kamat.com/mmgandhi/xity.htm), Gandhi has said that he had studied the scriptures and was tremendously attracted. But eventually he came to the conclusion that there was nothing really special in the scriptures which he had not got in his own, and "to be a good Hindu (http://www.kamat.com/mmgandhi/christian.htm#) also meant that I would be a good Christian. There was no need for me to join your creed to be a believer in the beauty of the teachings of Jesus or try to follow His example," he said.

I have been in countless Hindu homes where there are pictures of Jesus and copies of the Bible. I know a devoted Hindu woman who goes to services in a Sikh temple. I myself often go to church even though I would not call myself a Christian.

I admit that Christians are less generous; they tend to see this as "straying" from the One True Path, which I don't agree with. But even there, there are exceptions. I know countless Christians, Catholic priests, even, who go to a particular Hindu ashram for recharging their "spiritual batteries".

Then there is Bede Griffiths. (http://www.bedegriffiths.com/bio.htm)

Father Bede was both an ordained minister, a Benedictine monk, and a Hindu monk, all at one and the same time:
Bede Griffiths was a monk, a man in whom there was no guile, and was last to see the guile that may have been in any other. This monk with a universal heart was an icon of integrity and guilelessness. As John Henry Cardinal Newman once described them, Bede was one of those:
who live in a way least thought of by others, the way chosen by our Savior, to make headway against all the power and wisdom of the world. It is a difficult and rare virtue, to mean what we say, to love without deceit, to think no evil, to bear no grudge, to be free from selfishness, to be innocent and straightforward... simple-hearted. They take everything in good part which happens to them, and make the best of everyone. (homily, Feast of St. Bartholomew) Such was Father Bede Griffiths, Swami Dayananda, who died May 13, 1993, barefooted and clothed in the color of the sun, in his thatched hut at Shantivanam in South India.

Those are the example of what Christianity and Hinduism should and are supposed to be. I can give examples from Buddhism, too: I personally know three Buddhist nuns who live in Amarvati, a Buddhist monastery near London who partake in a wonderful annual Hindu "satsang" every October.

People of an open mind search for truth wherever they can find it, be that atheist, scientific, or spiritual. An open mind does not fear loss of truth, for if it can be lost or overturned it cannot be truth. Neither does an open mind cling to dogma, be that Christian or atheist. It listens and can separate the wheat from the chaff.

In fact, what I am against is not religion, but dogma. Of any kind. Atheists can be as close-minded as any Christian fundamentalist.

oneblindmouse

03-14-2008, 02:58 PM

"...An open mind does not fear loss of truth, for if it can be lost or overturned it cannot be truth. Neither does an open mind cling to dogma, be that Christian or atheist. It listens and can separate the wheat from the chaff."
[/quote]

Beautifully put! Just wish more people were open-minded!

Roger J Carlson

03-14-2008, 05:55 PM

No group of athieists or agnostics in human history has ever gone to war to enforce athiesm. The reverse is not trueIn the 1950s, Communist China tried to wipe out religion in its society. It imprisoned or killed an estimated 3 million religious people (of many faiths). They went to war against their own people. That war continues today.

Higgins

03-14-2008, 06:46 PM

What you just said is borderline brilliant, but I still disagree with your first statement. Truth is not an implausible mental state. Truth is simply what is.

Well...there seem to be several meanings for the notion of true. One is a judgement: "X is true." Which must reflect a mental state. One is a simpler observation "X runs true" (ie conforms to some other measurement)...which you might call a judgement with a visual aid.

I can't see how saying "Truth is what is" is not a judgement about how one verifies the plausibility of a mental state that pictures the world rather abstractly.

Higgins

03-14-2008, 06:47 PM

In the 1950s, Communist China tried to wipe out religion in its society. It imprisoned or killed an estimated 3 million religious people (of many faiths). They went to war against their own people. That war continues today.

I agree...the idea that there is anything particularly nice about atheists is
not very interesting or plausible.

Roger J Carlson

03-14-2008, 07:06 PM

I agree...the idea that there is anything particularly nice about atheists is not very interesting or plausible.I didn't say anything remotely like that.

Higgins

03-14-2008, 07:43 PM

I didn't say anything remotely like that.

OOPs......well...how about, Athiestic societies have not proven to be much more kind and good than theistic societies (with the exeption of course that Theocracies like the Aztec Empire that were pre-occupied with massive human sacrifice are kinda off the atheistic-theistic paradigm in this discussion)....?

Roger J Carlson

03-14-2008, 08:16 PM

How about: Societies, whether theist or atheist, are composed of people who run the gamut from good/moral to bad/evil and none has a monopoly on either good or evil.

deathwizard

03-14-2008, 09:10 PM

Well...there seem to be several meanings for the notion of true. One is a judgement: "X is true." Which must reflect a mental state. One is a simpler observation "X runs true" (ie conforms to some other measurement)...which you might call a judgement with a visual aid.

I can't see how saying "Truth is what is" is not a judgement about how one verifies the plausibility of a mental state that pictures the world rather abstractly.

I don't know any other way of saying it other than there are truths that exist beyond the bounds of human judgement or perception. Certain truths exist, and they stand up against any examination or play of words.

rugcat

03-14-2008, 09:10 PM

How about: Societies, whether theist or atheist, are composed of people who run the gamut from good/moral to bad/evil and none has a monopoly on either good or evil.I agree with this.

But one might expect that a society composed of religious individuals who believe in the virtues of love, compassion, and following the word of God would on balance be a better society than one that does not.

To take Christianity as an example (since we live in a predominantly Christian nation) if Christianity is the one true religion, its followers ought to be, on balance, better people than pagans, for example.

Or, or a more micro level, if Christianity were to have a positive effect on people, I would expect that the Christians I know would tend to be "better" people than those who are not.

But I have not found that to be the case. The Christians I know are indistinguishable from anyone else, no better, no worse. An individual may state that accepting Christ has changed their life, but for Christians as a whole, it seems to make little difference.

So it seems to me that although religious belief may make a tremendous difference in one's personal relationship with God or the universe, it has little effect on the relationship an individual has with other people or society in general.

I'm not trying to be snarky here -- this is something that has always bemused me. Why doesn't religion make people better -- more tolerant, more kind, more honest? And if it has no effect on people's behavior or actions, what does it do?

aruna

03-14-2008, 10:16 PM

I'm not trying to be snarky here -- this is something that has always bemused me. Why doesn't religion make people better -- more tolerant, more kind, more honest? And if it has no effect on people's behavior or actions, what does it do?

It does. But there's a huge difference between professing to belong to a particular religion, and actually living that life. It's the hardest thing on earth.
When a group of people actually truly live their belief that community is in fact better behaved.

Another thing is that in my experience people who meditate, for instance, often find that their negative qualities grow worse, before they get better. That's because the meditation actually brings latent tendencies we;ve hidden to the surface, so we can deal with them.

deathwizard

03-14-2008, 10:17 PM

deathwizard

03-14-2008, 10:51 PM

Another thing is that in my experience people who meditate, for instance, often find that their negative qualities grow worse, before they get better. That's because the meditation actually brings latent tendencies we;ve hidden to the surface, so we can deal with them.

This is true. Also, when people begin to meditate, they see -- for the first time in their lives -- things as they really are, and they tend to resist, become depressed, and get angry. But it's only short-term.

Pup

03-14-2008, 10:57 PM

So it seems to me that although religious belief may make a tremendous difference in one's personal relationship with God or the universe, it has little effect on the relationship an individual has with other people or society in general.

That's been my experience as well. I've always chalked it up to people being people.

Since they can suit themselves by choosing their religion and/or what tenets of it that they want to follow (at least where I live in America), they can generally adapt their beliefs to justify what they'd do anyway. So religion isn't the engine driving their behavior; their behavior is what drives their religious practices.

aruna

03-14-2008, 11:20 PM

That's been my experience as well. I've always chalked it up to people being people.

Since they can suit themselves by choosing their religion and/or what tenets of it that they want to follow (at least where I live in America), they can generally adapt their beliefs to justify what they'd do anyway. So religion isn't the engine driving their behavior; their behavior is what drives their religious practices.
Exactly.

rugcat

03-15-2008, 12:44 AM

Since they can suit themselves by choosing their religion and/or what tenets of it that they want to follow (at least where I live in America), they can generally adapt their beliefs to justify what they'd do anyway. So religion isn't the engine driving their behavior; their behavior is what drives their religious practices.A terrific point.

Roger J Carlson

03-15-2008, 12:44 AM

I agree with this.

But one might expect that a society composed of religious individuals who believe in the virtues of love, compassion, and following the word of God would on balance be a better society than one that does not.

To take Christianity as an example (since we live in a predominantly Christian nation) if Christianity is the one true religion, its followers ought to be, on balance, better people than pagans, for example.

Or, or a more micro level, if Christianity were to have a positive effect on people, I would expect that the Christians I know would tend to be "better" people than those who are not.

But I have not found that to be the case. The Christians I know are indistinguishable from anyone else, no better, no worse. An individual may state that accepting Christ has changed their life, but for Christians as a whole, it seems to make little difference.

So it seems to me that although religious belief may make a tremendous difference in one's personal relationship with God or the universe, it has little effect on the relationship an individual has with other people or society in general.

I'm not trying to be snarky here -- this is something that has always bemused me. Why doesn't religion make people better -- more tolerant, more kind, more honest? And if it has no effect on people's behavior or actions, what does it do?Well, this requires a lot of answer, and I'm not sure I have time to do it justice. However, I'll give some quick thoughts:

First of all, you're asking me to comment on people that you know and I don't. I don't know that they are Christian in the true sense. For that matter you don't. No one knows what is really in another's heart. The often misused term "born-again" has real meaning. It refers to someone who really believes and lives by the faith they espouse. There are many Christians who are not Christians at all.

Secondly, your perspective may be a factor. Perhaps you see people who identify themselves as Christian in a different --and possibly negative-- light. Perhaps you look more for flaws in such people. I don't know. The possibility exists. However, I have to say that I know a lot of Christians who are better people than most non-Christians. I will grant you that my perspective probably colors this view.

Thirdly, the 80/20 rule applies to churches as well as any other organization. A lot of people who say they are Christians do not live by their faith. It is living by the principles that Christ gave us that makes people better -- not joining a church.

Fourthly, (and this expands the third point) Christianity is not a destination -- it is a journey. Many Christians take only the first step, figure that's enough, and never progress in their walk. Others feel a need to delve deeper into the teachings of Christ. These people recognize their failings and attempt to live more and more as Christ taught. Perhaps you don't know any mature Christians.

Lastly, I guess if you want to compare societies, you would have to have a truly pagan or atheist society, one that had no influence by Christianity. I'm not saying you can't have morality without religion. But any atheist in American society has been influenced by Christianity. Those very attibutes you mentioned (love, compassion, etc.) are based in Christianity. That's not to say that other religions don't also have these, but American culture (at least) derives it mostly from Christianity. So what you really can't know is what this country would be like without Christian influence. I believe that we are all better, kinder people for that influence. That's my opinion, of course.

deathwizard

03-15-2008, 02:50 AM

Those very attibutes you mentioned (love, compassion, etc.) are based in Christianity. That's not to say that other religions don't also have these, but American culture (at least) derives it mostly from Christianity. So what you really can't know is what this country would be like without Christian influence. I believe that we are all better, kinder people for that influence. That's my opinion, of course.

I thought that your response was fair and well-conceived, except for this. "Love, compassion, etc." are not based in Christianity, nor do I agree that American culture derives these things from Christianity. These are attributes shared by all good human beings, regardless of spiritual beliefs.

oscuridad

03-15-2008, 03:49 AM

Extraordinary.
Atheism is a belief, absolutely, but not a Belief, if you appreciate the distinction.

rugcat

03-15-2008, 06:35 AM

Secondly, your perspective may be a factor. Perhaps you see people who identify themselves as Christian in a different --and possibly negative-- light. You have some valid points here.

I think you are correct about my perspective in a sense. But it's not so much a negative light as it is that I tend to hold Christians (and any other religious believers) to a higher moral standard than I do non believers. Perhaps that's not fair, but when morality and living a godly life, however one interprets that, is a major theme of one's life, I find that normal transgressions take on more weight.

And I actually said I find Christians to be just like everyone else -- no better, no worse. I don't see that as a negative statement. What I am saying is that I somehow expect them to act in a more moral fashion. To say that those who do not are Christians in name only and are not true Christians seems somewhat of a circular argument. Clearly, anyone who truly follows the moral teachings of Jesus is going to be a pretty fine individual, no matter what their particular beliefs.

But I find a pastor who cheats on his wife more culpable than an ordinary person. I find a police officer who robs people more reprehensible than an ordinary crook.

And I'm not singling out Christians. I'm expressing my disappointment that religions of all sorts don't, in my experience, have much effect on the moral compass of the individuals who are part of them.

To reference what Pup said, good people who turn to religion use it to expand those good qualities inherent in themselves. Cruel people use it to justify their inherent cruelty.

You have Martin Luthor King. You have Fred Phelps. You have Rumi. You have Osama. You have the Dalai Lama. You have. . . well I can't actually think of any Buddhists who are cruel and violent, but maybe that's because I don't know enough of them.

Hey Deathwizard, help me out here.

deathwizard

03-15-2008, 07:22 AM

You have some valid points here.

I think you are correct about my perspective in a sense. But it's not so much a negative light as it is that I tend to hold Christians (and any other religious believers) to a higher moral standard than I do non believers. Perhaps that's not fair, but when morality and living a godly life, however one interprets that, is a major theme of one's life, I find that normal transgressions take on more weight.

And I actually said I find Christians to be just like everyone else -- no better, no worse. I don't see that as a negative statement. What I am saying is that I somehow expect them to act in a more moral fashion. To say that those who do not are Christians in name only and are not true Christians seems somewhat of a circular argument. Clearly, anyone who truly follows the moral teachings of Jesus is going to be a pretty fine individual, no matter what their particular beliefs.

But I find a pastor who cheats on his wife more culpable than an ordinary person. I find a police officer who robs people more reprehensible than an ordinary crook.

And I'm not singling out Christians. I'm expressing my disappointment that religions of all sorts don't, in my experience, have much effect on the moral compass of the individuals who are part of them.

To reference what Pup said, good people who turn to religion use it to expand those good qualities inherent in themselves. Cruel people use it to justify their inherent cruelty.

You have Martin Luthor King. You have Fred Phelps. You have Rumi. You have Osama. You have the Dalai Lama. You have. . . well I can't actually think of any Buddhists who are cruel and violent, but maybe that's because I don't know enough of them.

Hey Deathwizard, help me out here.

Ha! Well, if you check out the thread in Writing Novels about using directional words, you'll find out that I'm cruel and violent.

As for Buddhists, or at least those that anyone in the U.S. would recognize, I can't think of any either! But a great deal of cruelty and violence has been perpetrated against Buddhists.

aruna

03-15-2008, 12:52 PM

.

To reference what Pup said, good people who turn to religion use it to expand those good qualities inherent in themselves. Cruel people use it to justify their inherent cruelty.

What a very true statement! I agree 100%. What we need here now is an example of a society that is atheist throughout, and has been that way for generations, so that we cannot say the typical Christian virtues of love, compassion, forgiveness etc have been brought to it through Christianity. Can people in such a society develop such inherent qualities(and I believe they ARE inherent) without a framework of religion? Is it possible? I know that individual atheists certainly can.

My parents were like that, and they were both atheists, my father especially, one of the more argumentative kinds! But they BOTH grew up in Christian families. They were above-average good and honest people, who dedicated their lives to others. And they did so without leaning on Christ. Did they develop those qualities because of their Christian upbringing, because of the framework of Christian teaching they learnt as children, up to the point where they were able to see certain incongruities and even fallacies in their religion, and then cut loose while holding on to the best qualities -- picking the raisins out of the cake, so to speak?

What happens when children grow up without any such framework--neither in their family, nor in society? How can they access those inherent qualities of caring for others? Our natural human tendency is to be egoistic. It's so easy to live only for one's own needs, to think only of oneself and one's own loved ones, for one's own pleasure alone.

Christians, (and other people of other religions, but I use Christianity because it is the prevalent religion in the West) learn to fight against their selfish tendencies by turning to Christ; they are supposed to become Christlike by his example; some do, many don't.

But how does a society which has NO guiding framework of any sort prevail against the inherent human tendencies of greed and selfishness? Is there any such society in history? What is it like?

Zoombie

03-15-2008, 01:10 PM

Roger J Carlson

03-15-2008, 07:51 PM

I thought that your response was fair and well-conceived, except for this. "Love, compassion, etc." are not based in Christianity, nor do I agree that American culture derives these things from Christianity. These are attributes shared by all good human beings, regardless of spiritual beliefs.

What a very true statement! I agree 100%. What we need here now is an example of a society that is atheist throughout, and has been that way for generations, so that we cannot say the typical Christian virtues of love, compassion, forgiveness etc have been brought to it through Christianity. Can people in such a society develop such inherent qualities(and I believe they ARE inherent) without a framework of religion? Is it possible? I know that individual atheists certainly can.My point, I guess, was that it is impossible to say whether these good qualities are inherent in all of us or learned from religion. ALL of the great religions speak of striving toward these "good" attributes and away from "bad" attributes as if we naturally gravitate away from the good and toward the bad. Enlightenment, salvation, nirvana are all antithetical to our "natural" state.

My contention is that we can't really know if good atheists are that way because of their inherent goodness or if the teaching of some religion has permeated the society so much that they have adopted good morals through osmosis (so to speak). I used Christianity as an example because it is the dominant religious influence in the West.

As Aruna said, what we would need was a totally atheistic society to make such a determination and there is none.

Roger J Carlson

03-15-2008, 08:10 PM

You have Martin Luthor King. You have Fred Phelps. You have Rumi. You have Osama. You have the Dalai Lama. You have. . . well I can't actually think of any Buddhists who are cruel and violent, but maybe that's because I don't know enough of them.
Konoe Fumimaro, Pol Pot, Hideki Tojo, Itagaki Seishiro

Ref:
http://www.japantoday.com/news/jp/e/tools/print.asp?content=book&id=181
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot

rugcat

03-15-2008, 08:59 PM

Konoe Fumimaro, Pol Pot, Hideki Tojo, Itagaki SeishiroWell, the Japanese version of Buddhism is unique to that country and I don't think reflects the teachings of Buddhism. Zen and the warrior culture have a long tradition of their own. Pol Pot was a communist who actually outlawed religion, as communists are wont to do, although he grew up in a Buddhist society.

Still, clearly none of these people had Buddha in their hearts.

As far as what an atheistic society would look like, we can guess, but we'll never know. The search for and belief in the divine seems to be a universal of human societies.

Roger J Carlson

03-15-2008, 09:08 PM

Pol Pot was a communist who actually outlawed religion, as communists are wont to do, although he grew up in a Buddhist society. From Wiki: "The party adapted elements of Theravada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theravada) Buddhism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism) to justify their non-standard communism." Which is why I included him.

Still, clearly none of these people had Buddha in their hearts. As clearly Phelps and Osama do not have God or Allah in their hearts.

rugcat

03-15-2008, 10:20 PM

As clearly Phelps and Osama do not have God or Allah in their hearts.I don't think we're much in disagreement here. Our only disagreement is whether, in general, religious beliefs contribute to superior moral behavior in individuals.

Pup

03-15-2008, 10:20 PM

My contention is that we can't really know if good atheists are that way because of their inherent goodness or if the teaching of some religion has permeated the society so much that they have adopted good morals through osmosis (so to speak).

Are you saying that religious people may influence atheists to have better morals, but atheists can't influence religious people to have better morals?

If so, I suppose one could look at societies where religion is dominant and atheists are tolerated the least, and see if those societies contain more people with more "good" qualities, than societies where there are more atheists.

If atheists are getting their morals from religion, then a society where they're present should be "worse" than a society without them, because not all atheists will be improved by religion and therefore the naturally "bad" atheists will drag down the average.

In real life, societies where religion is strongly enforced by law and peer pressure, and atheism isn't tolerated, don't seem to be the ones most famous for love, compassion, forgiveness, following the golden rule, etc.

Roger J Carlson

03-15-2008, 11:21 PM

Are you saying that religious people may influence atheists to have better morals, but atheists can't influence religious people to have better morals?No. What I'm saying is that every society and culture on the planet is so steeped in religion of one sort or another that it's impossible to say whether an atheist gets his/her morals from their own convictions or from the background assumptions on which the society is based, ie. religion.

It is my contention that religion, whether an atheist in that society follows it, still shapes the definition of what is moral.

otterman

03-15-2008, 11:55 PM

Morality (the inherent understanding of right and wrong, good and bad) can exist without religion. Religions "shape" morality by promoting a specific interpretation of it based on doctrine. It is also true that atheists/agnostics - voicing their opinions about what is right and wrong - can also shape that definition.

deathwizard

03-16-2008, 01:19 AM

Konoe Fumimaro, Pol Pot, Hideki Tojo, Itagaki Seishiro

Ref:
http://www.japantoday.com/news/jp/e/tools/print.asp?content=book&id=181
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot

Just living in a Buddhist country doesn't make you a true Buddhist. Fumimaro, Tojo, and Seishiro were all part of the ultra-violent war times of Zen-dominated Japan. Pol Pot was a communist and a Hitler-caliber monster.

However, in full seriousness, I would never argue that there are no bad Buddhists. There are just as many bad Buddhists as bad Christians or whomever.

I would contend, however, that Buddhism is the world's supreme religion, in terms of the education it provides the mind and also in terms of producing human beings of extraordinary character and wisdom. If you've ever spent time with a highly realized Buddhist monk, then you'll know a little of what I mean. This, however, is only my opinion -- and I certainly understand that anyone who is not a Buddhist will not agree with me. And I don't ask them to. I'm only presenting my viewpoint for the sake of discussion.

Buddhism in the Theravada tradition is not about conversion or a belief in the supernatural. (Certain ritualistic aspects delve into the supernatural, but it's more metaphoric than anything else.) Buddhists believe that people eventually come to Buddhism, not the other way around. I have far more in common with an agnostic or atheist than I do with anyone who believes in a supernatural-based religion. In fact, I consider myself an agnostic who uses the psychological tools of Buddhism to enrich my mindset.