Posted on 12/05/2003 10:43:11 AM PST by vannrox
This is a subject near to my heart and my own spiritual journey, and I'd like to discuss it with as many intelligent minds as possible as I ponder it. It seems to me as though the most basic, intrinsic aspect of a religious philosophy is faith. I have been talking to a lot of Christians lateley, so I'm not sure if that is the prevailing veiw among people of other persuasions. Anyways, it seems to me as though a religion can really be boiled down to beliving that it is THE answer, and it seems to me as though atheism is no exception.
But this is where I came to realize there many different brands of thought given the title of Atheist, each with their own twists. Here are some categories that i have run across, and my opinion(just roll with me on this one):
Spiritual Atheists Some people claim to be "spiritual" but not "religious," disavowing belief in a god persay in favor of just not thinking about the issue. It sounds just lazy to me. They get the "all good people go to heaven" feeling without defining good, heaven, or even feeling itself. This may work for some, but it seems to lack any real thought into the matter.
Non-Practicing Atheists And there are the "Catholics" like my parents who dont buy a word the church says, but are so afraid of what it means to be atheist that they desperately cling to a religion that offers them no real meaning.
Deist Atheists Some people use Atheism to describe a sense of disbelief in the major established world religions, which to me sounds like it could still be a throwback to the deism of the 18th century. Basically it can be summed up as: There is some kind of god, hes a pretty decent guy, dont be an ass and everything will turn out ok somehow, once again, a little too lazy for me.
Orthodox Atheists Then there are the Atheists so absolutly steadfast in their disbelief in god that they would have made an excellent Christian in another life (THAT's an interesting turn of phase!). They dont buy the proof that the various religions offer, but the seem to narrowmindedly rule out any possiblities except absolute soulless oblivion. I have a friend like this, and i have yet to figure out how he can 100% FOR SURE rule out a higher power of any type...
Agnostics This is the only one that really makes sense to me. I mean, maybe there's a god. Probably not one of the big religion's vengeful, mythical "gods" with their spotty and doubtfully accurate "historical records," I doubt reincarnation that doesnt work well with the increasing entropy of the universe, and the evidence for it is even less credible than the rest ... But prove to me god's not just hiding...
Thats where i'm at right now. I would appreciate any input, even religious propaganda. I want to know the truth, even if it means the complete destruction of my current schema for faith.
I would even go so far as to recommend two such books, The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith, to anyone who is openminded enough to consider Christianity. I almost bought into it after reading those, but to me, there are still holes (i'll probably talk about those later) If your already Christian, they will strengthen your faith, and if not, they will rock your world...
I don't have to pray ever.
And the issue is?
Evidently, the issue is your paucity of knowledge concerning 20th Century "establishment clause" jurisprudence.
It is not a semantic game to speak of "something that is dry and wet at the same moment, or blindingly bright blackness". These are examples to indicate the law of identity. The law of identity indicates that there are LIMITS to concepts. The concept of "God" violates the laws of identity. THAT is the point I'm getting at.
Do you follow me so far?
I posted the full definition from MW Online: http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=atheist
Ah, but I make no definitive statement
except that God does not exist. It's clear that you'd rather attempt to frame your view as disbelief, but the atheist position is that there is no God, that is not a disbelief but a belief. A belief that God does not in any fashion, shape or form exist.
...except about myself. I disbelieve in all supernatural entities. I do not state that they do not exist. I state that I disbelieve in them. This is about my own disbelief, not your belief.
Ah, then you are misidentifying your view, you are simply an agnostic, that is, you don't believe God exists, but limit that claim to yourself personally as you are not confident enough in the claim God does not exist to believe that view extends beyond yourself.
That's much different. An agnostic can logically defend their position (it doesn't make them right of course).
I don't honestly care what you believe. It has no impact on me whatever.
That is fine, I will not impose my belief upon you...although I would prefer if you accepted the truth. And before you get peeved, just remember, if I didn't believe my views were truth I wouldn't hold them, so no offense intended.
If prohibiting mention of God by government establishes a religion, that must mean that having government promote Christianity does not establish a religion, right?
Does that make any sense? LOL. Spoken like a true athiest. You are sneaking up, by accident I'm sure, on the realization that government will be promoting religion one way or another. President Eisenhower, in his final address to the nation before leaving office, is often quoted by conspiracy nuts because of his famous "military industrial complex" line. The part of his speech they should have paid attention to, was his warning about athiesm.
No, I don't follow. No, I don't comprehend. No offense, but whether or not you like my personality is irrelevant. Logic is not a parlor game. We are talking about the Law of Identity. What exactly is the false premise of my earlier example? Tell me that much and perhaps we can still get this conversation off the ground.
Those aren't atheists, those are professional a$$holes. They do have a religion: narcissism. They give decent atheists a bad name. I wish they'd burst into flames.
A futile effort if ever there was one. There is no evidence that will convince you absent a visit from the Lord but the Lord is a testable theory and the fantastic thing about it is that each one of us will test it in our own time. Patience Skywalk.
Prove Adam and Eve existed.
If you're asking my opinion why one should follow God I would say "because He is worthy".
As for sin causing viruses, natural disasters, etc that's nonsense. You would have to believe in collective punishment(us being punished forever for Adam and Eve) and Creationism, ie. a world in which the laws of physics(including those that rule biology) did not exist prior to some act of "defiance" of God.(I've read of apocryphal myths where eating the fruit was SUPPOSED to happen.)
You're falling into the same logically inconsistancy as before, you may opine that it is nonesense, but you can not prove it to be so. You are stating an unprovable opinion, which is therefore based upon your faith that is it accurate.
What if God is more like the creature in an episode of Star Trek called Nagilum? He was "curious" about humanity and how we reacted to death and other situations. So he killed crew members to see how others would respond. He was not "evil" because he felt no emotion or joy from the deaths and suffering--only curiosity. What if God is merely a great Scientist who, through nearly infinite combinations of lives, personalities, events, etc, wants to learn and 'experience' things that would not have been possible in the void before Creation?
I would say I don't believe your speculations are accurate, and if you were to claim them as definitive fact then I'd ask for your proof, otherwise, you're basing them on your faith that God is so.
What if God is actually a Satanic-like being who looks forward to roasting us in hell? How do you know that is not what God is?
If God were the petulant creature you propose that it is inconsistant for such a creature to postpone their pleasure and we'd be in hell this moment.
How can God BE a moral code? Why does he believe in X, Y and Z? How would he know about these things without having ever experienced them(and don't talk about Jesus being the incarnate, because that was millions of years after the first suffering of a living being.)
You're anthropomorphizing God. As I stated before, God is not just some really powerful, smart human. What does omniscient mean to you? Do you believe a perfect omniscient being would be required to learn through personal experience?
Furthermore, as far as your conjecture regarding Jesus...
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. John 1:1-4
The Christian perspective is that Jesus, being God, predates creation, and in fact, it was through Jesus that creation occurred.
Buddhism is for atheists who wish to remain religious.
I accept your explaination here. No hard feelings on my part.
And it's not an ad hominem attack to say that you have chosen faith over logic. The two are not compatible. Period. You've chosen one and I've chosen the other.
You are incorrect. Faith and logic are incompatible only when they conflict. You are missing the conditions where they are both part of the same subset.
It is not a semantic game to speak of "something that is dry and wet at the same moment, or blindingly bright blackness". These are examples to indicate the law of identity. The law of identity indicates that there are LIMITS to concepts. The concept of "God" violates the laws of identity. THAT is the point I'm getting at.
This is from www.importanceofphilosophy.com regarding the law of identity:
A car can be both blue and red, but not at the same time or not in the same respect. Whatever portion is blue cannot be red at the same time, in the same way. Half the car can be red, and the other half blue. But the whole car can't be both red and blue. These two traits, blue and red, each have single, particular identities.
What I've written is consistent with this. It is a violation of this law of identity to say God can do the "impossible" and then to point to the definition of impossible as something that can't be done. This is indeed a word game.
As to your second point, God does have a specific nature, although much of God's nature is beyond our ability to observe or understand. For instance, we can observe that God's creation is orderly and functions on definable and measurable rules. We can speculate that order is a "value" of God's...hence a likely aspect. Clearly since you discount God you will deduce that we're really lucky that there everything works so consistently.
AGNOSTIC = fairly honest seeker for they don't what.. and listener to the clueless in hopes of finding one.. or else they would be atheist "road kill" just waiting for the right tires to subtract them from the gene pool.. and are too scared to cross the road..
Religionist = (1)believer in what they know of (2)told to them by some people(s) they know of (3)in varied and unique ways (4)obligating the subject God(s) they were told about to agree because it was God that set it all up (5) GOTO(1)...
Another paradigm theres no English word for = Member of a cult with one member throwing itself on Gods mercy, no matter who, what, where, or wherefore it(God) is... even if it is a silly thing to do... and could care less.. what the three catagorys above think about it.... basically offering a hand to God as a friendly gesture being fully willing to be prostrate if need be...
" What is man that thou art mindful of him? " the answer is of course..
A MEAN, SOMETIMES LEAN BULLSHITTING MACHINE
After all, agnosticism doesn't cost anything, it doesn't demand that one make changes in one's life, and it comes with a bunch of wise-sounding catch-phrases that look great on t-shirts. Actually following any long-standing religion (and not something made up by someone in the last few decades) is far more difficult.
When someone tells me they're an agnostic, I always say, "Great. Saying you don't know is a great place to start. So what are you doing to find out?" Those who don't give me blank stares usually mumble something about looking into various religions. When I query them about said religions to see what they've learned and why they still have problems accepting one of them, the answers I get tend to reflect more pop-culture than serious philosophical discovery. In other words, they're not really searching seriously, they're just reading the dust jackets.
I've met exactly three agnostics who I'm convinced were seriously searching rather than just justifying their staying where they were. Two were Freepers, and one of those became a Christian a couple of years back. Another is a close friend who comes to the Bible study that I teach. That's not to say that there aren't more, just that my experience is that the truly searching agnostic is a rare breed indeed.
And those that are will admit that they envy the faith of those who ardently believe in something--which just proves my point that those who stay in perpetual agnosticism by choice (concious or not) are sadly cheating themselves.
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