[Optimus Prime]

Faith is a powerful thing. And not just faith in a God.

I have faith that my family will always be there for me and it gives me strength. Now, some would argue that living beings you can touch are easier to draw support from than a God (or Gods) that you cannot touch or see.

[Terez]

Optimus Prime;363898 said:

Faith is a powerful thing.

That, in my opinion, is exactly the problem.

Xander said:

I have faith that my family will always be there for me and it gives me strength. Now, some would argue that living beings you can touch are easier to draw support from than a God (or Gods) that you cannot touch or see.

I would definitely argue that you have "faith" that your family will always be there for you because they have demonstrated in the past that they will always be there for you. Which means it's not exactly faith.

[Optimus Prime]

Terez;363900 said:

That, in my opinion, is exactly the problem.


I would definitely argue that you have "faith" that your family will always be there for you because they have demonstrated in the past that they will always be there for you. Which means it's not exactly faith.

Depends on what you consider faith I suppose.

I don't know what God is but I think about it a lot. My mind tries to wrap around the concept of something creating the universe, but I can't fathom it.

[Terez]

Optimus Prime;363917 said:

Depends on what you consider faith I suppose.

Well, there are a few distinct definitions of the word, but the one that applies to faith in god doesn't apply to your faith in your family.

Quote

faith n.1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. See Synonyms at belief, trust.
3. Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters.
4. often Faith Christianity The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
5. The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.
6. A set of principles or beliefs.

The red one in particular is the dangerous one. The first definition applies to your faith in your family, but in order for that definition to apply to god, then definition #2 has to be involved (which is how definition #4 comes about), while for faith in your family, no invocation of definition #2 is needed.

[Tes'thesula]

What's particularly dangerous about the red definition?

EDIT;

Relentless said:

No. We didn't establish it. We assume that everything needs a cause and if everything needs a cause, the universe needs one, too. But then you cannot say that God is the terminus. If everything needs a cause, there can't be a terminus. Can't have it both ways.

Well, we didn't establish it here, but in the actual cosmological arguments, the philosophers tend to go about demostrating why they think the universe needs a cause - not everything, because clearly not everything needs a cause if you believe in God. So no, we don't assume that.

Relentless said:

Anyway, I didn't want to derail about proofs of God. What I'm trying to get at is, that you can create your own concept of God and make it benign and fancy and completely consistent with reality. It still won't make it rational to believe in it because A) you still don't have any evidence for its existence and if you go the sceptic route you will run into Occam's Razor.

If you think the proofs for God's existence actually work than you do create a rational reason to believe in God - you have just created a logical argument as to why - this is evidence to belief.

But you're probably right about derailing the thread

[Optimus Prime]

For some people, evidence that "God" exists is that anything exists at all though, right?

[Silencer]

Yes, and that is why it is often impossible to argue with someone who believes that God does not exist.
THAT is why the red definition is dangerous - if you can believe, basically unquestionably, in something without any logical proof, that's dangerous.

[Tes'thesula]

There's a lot of things out there we believe without logical proof

[Terez]

Yes, but most of those things have material evidence....it's the beliefs that have neither logical proof nor material evidence that are dangerous.

[Tes'thesula]

What is so important about material evidence?

[Terez]

Empirical evidence would probably be a better way of putting it. It's important because, not only can you observe it directly, but everyone else can too.

[Tes'thesula]

Terez said:

not only can you observe it directly, but everyone else can too

And why is that important - or why does the lack of that mean the belief is dangerous

[Silencer]

How to put this. Oh, an example:
Saw a doco on this guy in Japan yesterday. Leads a cult called Aum. He says he can levitate, and that he is the prophet (essentially) of Shiva. He has followers. Who believe he can levitate. They've never seen it. They kill people for him. Because he told them to submit to his will.

Does that help show you why it's dangerous? People can be manipulated to an extent beyond belief if they have unquestioning faith in something. Not only that, but they CANNOT be argued with. There is no proof for either side. One side says "you're wrong", the other says "I'm right". How does one decide who's right?
And don't say it doesn't matter because they can each go their own way - there have been SO many wars started over religion it's not funny. Not too mention all the people who feel a PERSONAL compulsion to try and get YOU to believe as well.

/rant.

[Tes'thesula]

Yes, mindless devotion is dangerous, but that's not what's being said here

[Cold Iron]

Terez;363185 said:

CI is apparently something like a pantheist. "God" for him is an analogy for all the good and wonderful things in the world.

First point of contention, instead of paraphrasing, you should have quoted verbatim:

Cold Iron;361194 said:

I believe god can be understood as the reason for all things and in this way the embodiment of all things.

The difference is demonstrated here:

Cold Iron;361742 said:

Conceiving of an external entity and defining it "good" (call it what you want but to my mind god is the best name for it) will enable you to examine what is good and follow it when you are conflicted.

To rephrase, god exists whether you believe in it or not, but believing gives you the freedom to define it, and in so doing shape the attitude with which you approach every moment of your life.

Terez;363185 said:

But this analogous god, he claims, IS the god of Abraham (and therefore the god of the Jews, Muslims, and Christians), and though he doesn't believe that "god" is sentient, he believes that he/it/whatever created the universe (apparently in a retro sort of way, like, "whatever created us, is god), and he even prays.

This is not exactly right either, god created us simply as it is the reason for all things. We were created. Why? God. How? However. Big bang, super-symmetry, cosmic constants, atomic stability, background fluctuations, star formation, supernovae, electrical charge, properties of water, protein development, evolution, asteroid impacts, molten core, protection of Jupiter and everything we don't yet know.

Terez;363185 said:

The people who wrote the scriptures were ignorant of the true nature of god, so therefore they got a lot of stuff wrong.

This is a big one. I've not said anything like this, that you've interpreted my position this way is, I believe, a consequence of your confidence in your interpretation of the scriptures. When I say this is the Abrahamic god you assume it is because I believe the writers of the scriptures were somehow wrong. What I actually meant is that the writers of the scriptures were writing about this god.

Speaking of westeros, there is a young man that hangs out over there (the one who suggested I read up on Friedrich Schleiermacher, in fact) who is a student in a US seminary, presbyterian somewhere in the mid-east if my memory serves (it may well not), who will freely tell you that what the clergy believe and what they teach their flocks are more often than not two very different things. Now if you think about this a moment, you may find that it is not actually much of a surprise. These are men and women who dedicate their lives, full time, to these matters. How many of us can claim most people know absolutely nothing about what they do for a living? Sure most of us don't spend Sunday's trying to explain it to them either, but this is where it gets interesting. In a manner analogous to parents teaching their kids about Santa Claus, the clergy are required to teach us what is in the bible as, I'm sure you'll have no problem agreeing, the two have a result in common, they are both effective control mechanisms (ok not that interesting yet, but wait for it) the other things they have in common are that they are also both simplistic analogies taught to capacitate this control both as the truth is assumed to be beyond the recipient's ability to comprehend and for the recipient's "own good".

Now I'm going to go ahead and assume no one thinks this is beyond what the respective religious organisations are capable of, nor, I imagine, could anyone fail to see sufficient motive for it. However, I will acknowledge the need for me to provide evidence, rather than just my word. I will get to this further down the post.

Terez;363185 said:

So, he's done what a great many people have done that are disillusioned with organized religion, and he's sifted out the things in the religion that he feels are relevant and discarded the rest, adding his own bits in from what we've learned about the world.

You do know we've been anatomically modern for over 100,000 years? Nothing I've mentioned has required any modern science to discern, indeed the distractions of modern living is one of the things that I believe have made it possible for some of us to claim literal belief in the myth, despite the spread of education. I've not added a thing to religion, and what I've taken out are things that have been out in some form or another for some time (the sexism, the separatism etc.).

Terez;363185 said:

I'm really unclear as to why you think that including the western tradition of thought in your conception of 42 is important. It seems to me that this falls under the appeal to tradition category, especially considering that you place strong emphasis on etymology where I would argue that connotations, which are current, are more relevant.

I'm not sure what these connotations you are talking about are, and my reference to etymology wasn't all that successful at proving anything other than the words god an good are alike (shock). However, if I'm right I believe you are asking why I need the god of Abraham, and the answer is I don't. But what I've said is that the god of Abraham and my god are one and the same and I also said I would provide evidence, so now seems to be the time. The only evidence that could possibly validate my position is the scriptures themselves with simple logic and reason applied to the interpretation.

Now the bible is full of grand claims of all the fantastic things that will happen to those who follow god. Indeed, if you believe Psalms 2:8 (I use psalms because they demonstrate readily what I'm talking about) all we have to do is ask and god will "make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession." Now, reason and logic tells us that these words were written by a man, and it also tells us that if this man believed these words were true, he would have taken his own advice and asked god for everything. The next thing reason tells us is that if he did do this, he would have discovered that his words were not true, and thus would have ceased believing them. Indeed he would have no reason to write them down as truths because it would be quite easy for others to try the same thing, and thus discover the falseness of his words. However, he did write them despite this, and so reason tells us that his intention must not have been to convince us that his words were actually true.

Well in the previous Psalm, 1:1-2 (and countless other places) we are shown that following the lord and doing the right or good thing are synonymous "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.", so if Psalm 2 wasn't supposed to be taken literally, perhaps it was simply an elaborate way of saying good things happen to people who do good?

Well this isn't exactly true either, all sorts of things happen to all sorts of people, but as I've already said, people will readily associate what happens to them with what they've done, it's one of the basic responses of all life forms, they need some mechanism to be able to replicate actions that lead to positive results and cease actions that lead to negative ones, indeed ability to respond to stimuli is one of the definitions of life. So since all sorts of things happen to all sorts of people, why would one wish to believe that good things happen to good people? Well if one believes good things happen to good people, this would tend to lead to the result that one will try to be good, and in so doing one will have positive associations to their actions and thus will believe the good things that happen to them were brought about by their actions and decisions.

In this way alone are the passages true, and in this way they are all true. Allow me one more quick demonstration of the logic. Say you were translating an ancient text and you had 2 posible definitions of a word. The word appears many times and each time it is used, one definition renders the text incomprehensible or irrational, or makes the authors of the text seem simple minded or gullible, and the other makes actual rational and clear minded sense with no gaps in logic or leaps of faith required.

Now, I'll freely acknowledge that this is far from proof, and is probably nothing you weren't expecting, so I don't expect you to suddenly agree with me to reevaluate your take on the meaning of the scriptures, but allow me to finish with a little speculation. If there's one thing I've learned from my meager readings of history, mythology, and indeed fiction and the rest of art and human expression itself is that it is all analogous to something deeper. Our very existence has been shaped by the stories we tell, we have a long long history of oral traditions, which shape our cultures our languages and even our brains. They always have deep meanings, they are full of analogy and imagery and they are never rationally literal. What makes this one any different? Or do you believe that all myths are written in complete earnestness? That the minotaur is not a literary device at all, not an analogy, an image with a deeper meaning but is in truth something that the writer of the myth truly thought existed? The seven headed hydra? The god that holds the world on his shoulders? I propose that the only thing different about this one is that you've been told to take it literally. You've been taught it is true. But this is always how it is taught. It is how it must be taught. You don't start a ghost story with "this didn't really happen, I'm just trying to scare you". It is barely more imaginative to believe that this story was intended to be taken literally as it is to actually take it literally. And I know you've agreed that it's full of analogies and images, so tell me why you can't accept that god itself is an analogy for some deeper concept? Why can't it be true that an actual being with the literal attributes ascribed to it is not really what they meant? What do you imagine you are supposed to think about when you are meditating day and night? Do you think every monk, every priest, every spiritual official of all religions across the span of history all took it on face value that there's no mystery, no contemplation necessary, that god is nothing more than what is taught to us, that he is a being who spoke to our ancestors, revealing himself so they could pass on the knowledge?

All the criticisms I hear about god, if god is real why does he allow suffering, if god is real why would he care about us, if god is real why would this religion be the one true religion etc. are all based on the false premise that god is some entity like you or me, that god has thoughts or feelings or active abilities. God knows what everyone is doing, is everywhere and invisible because we all know our own thoughts and actions, and hold ourselves accountable for them. God is love because love is the indefinable reason why we make crazy decisions that seem irrational. God controls you and is the master of fate despite your free will because god is what is, what was and what will be. God doesn't decide for you to be something, doesn't do anything or cause anything to be, it simply is the way things are.

I think I've addressed the next parts of your post so I'll skip to this:

Terez;363185 said:

You're talking to yourself, but you envision it as supplicating yourself to some "external reference" of goodness because it makes you feel good to think about it that way, just like smiling supposedly makes you happy even if you have to make yourself do it (as you said).

This is close but slightly off. It's not that it makes me feel good exactly, it does a great deal more than that, it is a conversation between my consciousness and my subconscious. When I pray, however, I am not praying to myself because my subconscious is simply a part of god. It is the part that influences me, and what I do and the choices I make, and it is part of all the things that have shaped it and caused it to be what it is and hence it is part of everything and thus god. Prayer is the time where you can decide to do the things that don't come into your normal daily decisions, it's where you decide to be more loving, to me more caring, to make more time for those around you, to be better for them, and to honour those you've lost. I remember reading an article (linked by someone on this board I believe in a free will/determinism discussion) about how the brain has sent an impulse to the finger to move before it has consciously made the decision to do so. Indeed it can be argued that no decision is made by the conscious brain, that they are simply transmitted there after the fact, perhaps (as the oracle suggested) in order to be understood. This is a difficult thing to discuss scientifically because we simply know so little about it, but somehow, our subconscious is involved in decision making, the way we feel has far more power than the way we think and prayer is a mechanism for accessing this. For talking to that part of us that is also part of god, and it is always listening.

Terez;363185 said:

Wacky as it might seem, I think you're selling yourself short with this concept. It's like subtracting something, and then adding it back later. Not only does it not change anything in principle, but it also gives you more opportunities to screw something up. Especially considering that the process is by all appearances arbitrary, and seems to completely ignore the true external mechanisms of consequence.

You just don't like god. I get it. God is something different to everyone. But if when I read scripture I think of this, if I pray to this, if I believe it to be all the things that have ever been called god, then I too will call it god.

Terez;363185 said:

I say, call a spade a spade. You say you are calling it a spade. But I still don't see how the concept of "god" doesn't simply fall under Occam's Guillotine. The reason that I quoted the bit from Westeros is that you seem to have acknowledged that it does, though you later added some qualifiers.

No, I acknowledged that if your view of good is simply some cost/benefit analysis then you have no need of god. My view is that good is far more than this. This is again something I cannot prove but I'd be truly surprised if you could look me in the eye and tell me you think good is nothing more than prosperity.

Terez;363185 said:

On the other side of the coin, people who want to do good things will do them one way or another, and they can just as easily (I think more easily) be inspired by the simple truth of the way the world works - the cost/benefit analysis - as by a concept of "god".

I disagree, because good on it's own holds no compulsion and the conscious knowledge of good does not easily lead to the subconscious drive to do good.

Terez;363185 said:

The concept of "god" has very strong connotations - cultural baggage - that isn't going to go away just because we want it to. You claim that this is why you hold on to the concept of god (saying that, rather than us learning more as years go on why god isn't logical, that we are learning more about god, and that this is good because we need something like a father figure to keep us in line). I'm saying that this cultural baggage is why we need to move away from the concept of god, because the idea that morals are in any way dependent on religion, organized or otherwise, is inherently dangerous because of the rabid, warring factions of religion that use ages-old scriptures for their morals rather than facts and logic.

Occam makes everything so much simpler.

I didn't mean that we need something like a father figure to keep us in line, I meant that we are what we are, and the image of a father figure is a strong one. Indeed, we are likely to associate dominant forces to father figures even when one doesn't exist (uncle sam, the old whitebearded man in the clouds). I'm not suggesting we put an old man figure in charge on purpose because it works, I'm saying it's there because of the functioning of our minds whether we acknowledge it or not.

Lastly, morals which encourage rabid warring factions are bad, but not a defining or necessary part of religion. I agree we should move away from the fanaticism that surrounds some sects, and the belief that a particular holy book is the singular holy truth. I'm not even advocating any particular religion or religions in general, but I am using the word god, because it is the only word that fits what I'm talking about. Instead of attempting to abandon the religious, or dening it in ourselves, we should be reforming it, developing it.

[Terez]

It's bedtime, and I'm not going to attempt an off-the-cuff response right now, but I'll address this one bit before hitting the sack:

CI said:

First point of contention, instead of paraphrasing, you should have quoted verbatim

I thought about it, but that would have made it a very long post indeed, so I decided to sum up as best I knew how with my interpretations of your beliefs so far with er, faith that you would correct me where appropriate.

[relentless]

Quote

Quote

Originally Posted by Cold Iron
Conceiving of an external entity and defining it "good" (call it what you want but to my mind god is the best name for it) will enable you to examine what is good and follow it when you are conflicted.

To rephrase, god exists whether you believe in it or not, but believing gives you the freedom to define it, and in so doing shape the attitude with which you approach every moment of your life.

Why do you need to create an external entity in order to examine what is good?

And how does that translate to: "god exists"?

Quote

God doesn't decide for you to be something, doesn't do anything or cause anything to be, it simply is the way things are.

First you define the entity "good", and now suddenly it's the way things are?

Also, if God doesn't do anything, I don't see how it makes sense to call it an entity.

Quote

I disagree, because good on it's own holds no compulsion and the conscious knowledge of good does not easily lead to the subconscious drive to do good.

So how does believing in your definition of God lead to the subconscious drive to do good?

Not that I agree with your assertion. I think most people naturally have a drive to do what they believe is good/right. I'd just like to know why you think your God would make any difference in that regard.

[Cold Iron]

relentless;364658 said:

Why do you need to create an external entity in order to examine what is good?

And how does that translate to: "god exists"?

Because otherwise there would be no good or it would be meaningless. There would be an infinity of different perspectives from which to view good and what's good for you may not be what's good for me or what's good for the planet or any other perspective. An external reference grounds this, stabilises is to a perceived ultimate good.

This has nothing to do with the existence of god. As the reason for all things, god exists simply because existence exists. Check out the posts terez referred to in the creation vs. evolution thread.

relentless;364658 said:

First you define the entity "good", and now suddenly it's the way things are?

Also, if God doesn't do anything, I don't see how it makes sense to call it an entity.

I personally define it as good, you don't have to. God is the reason for all things and I think they are good.

And I only referred to it as an entity in order to say it is separate from ourselves. You're right, I don't think entity is the right word, concept or conceptual analogy is better, but I like to simply call it god, nothing else fits as good.

relentless;364658 said:

So how does believing in your definition of God lead to the subconscious drive to do good?

Not that I agree with your assertion. I think most people naturally have a drive to do what they believe is good/right. I'd just like to know why you think your God would make any difference in that regard.

I've addressed this in the other thread as well:

Cold Iron;361742 said:

Conceiving of an external entity and defining it "good" (call it what you want but to my mind god is the best name for it) will enable you to examine what is good and follow it when you are conflicted. Supplicating yourself to this entity will go one step further, and will enable you to follow it even when you aren't consciously conflicted. You can't achieve this by simply deciding to strive to be good or loving, because this decision or desire will not always win out, you might suddenly strongly desire to do something else. This is why religious "nuts" are constantly trying to prove that they are true followers, to themselves and to others, they are trying to influence their subconscious, drive it towards good. The physical or sentient entity of god is simply a tool for making this easier, it's in our nature to follow a person, not a concept, we feel we can know a person, so defining a perfect person or good person makes it easier for us to follow that than just some arbitrary concept called goodness. We define what is good ourselves anyway, but there are deep influences on this that our consciousness can simply not grasp.

Cold Iron;361848 said:

It provides me with an image, we can't go back to a time when santa rode in the back of a sleigh, but we can still use the image to represent the abstract. Have you read any Jung? From wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archtypes said:

The concept of psychological archetypes was advanced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, c. 1919. In Jung's psychological framework archetypes are innate, universal prototypes for ideas and may be used to interpret observations. A group of memories and interpretations associated with an archetype is a complex, e.g. a mother complex associated with the mother archetype. Jung treated the archetypes as psychological organs, analogous to physical ones in that both are morphological constructs that arose through evolution.

The father or lord or leader is one of the strongest archetypes (hence religious language) and has strong ties with the archetype of the self. Humans are psychologically inclined to respond to the father archetype by following or imitating. Yes it works better with literal belief but as I said, we can't go back to believing in santa can we? One of the strongest ways for me to encourage the association is prayer. Ever read the papers that showed the act of smiling makes you happy even if you're doing it consciously. By talking to god I both personify and externalise it. By asking it for things I also raise it above myself. With a simple act, I can turn a benign concept into a powerful archetype.

[relentless]

Quote

Because otherwise there would be no good or it would be meaningless. There would be an infinity of different perspectives from which to view good and what's good for you may not be what's good for me or what's good for the planet or any other perspective. An external reference grounds this, stabilises is to a perceived ultimate good.

And how's that different to what you would get with your God? I mean, if everyone started believing in your God, then they would all define it in a way to correspond to what they think is good, and everyone would still have a different perspective of what good is. Only the people would think that their version of good is absolute (because their God says so), which'd make them a pain in the ass. Hell, moral absolutes are one of the worst things about religion. Why on earth would you want/need this?

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As the reason for all things, god exists simply because existence exists.

Quote

You're right, I don't think entity is the right word, concept or conceptual analogy is better

Alright, so let me get this straight. God has no physical/metaphysical manifestation and is just a concept or analogy, but at the same time he's the reason for all things. How can an analogy/concept be the reason for all things?

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I like to simply call it god, nothing else fits as good.

Since it's radically different from most people's idea of God, I would suggest you just make up a word for it. Please! It might not sound as awesome, but it'll be a lot less confusing.

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it's in our nature to follow a person

Speak for yourself. It don't think it's in my nature to follow anything. And besides, just because humans have a tendency to do something, does not mean that it should be done or that it's a good idea.

Quote

By talking to god I both personify and externalise it. By asking it for things I also raise it above myself. With a simple act, I can turn a benign concept into a powerful archetype.

If you're into psychology, I suggest you look up cognitive dissonance. Cause I get the impression that you would get a lot of it, if you tried to make this work. How on earth can you make up a concept, personify and externalise it, and then go and pretend that what it tells you is actually significant somehow? That sounds like a lot of double-think in order to construct some grand metaphysical crutch for no apparent reason.