I sympathise. 110%. Empathise. I feel your pain. Which is poetic of course. I feel that pain. That loss. Loss of that which we’ve never actually had. Absence. Reach exceeding grasp. That we become aware of with puberty. Sex and death are perichoretic. The antidote is in our wonderful superficiality. Thank evolution that we are so easily distracted from existential horror. Leicester were beaten 2:1 by Aston Villa. I ask you. At least it was an away game.
I just want to add a dimension to this. I actually like the aforementioned argument from Lewis about desires matching actual things. It is a good conversation starter. I certainly would not press it as a logical proof though. The fact that 52 of our desires have real world correspondence does not necessitate a 53rd one will. So it can’t constitute proof. Also for some, this might be evolved, pattern-seeking humans finding patterns however they can and coping with their mortality. The desire may ultimately be to not die but to live, two things very much real to our species. In other words, it could simply be a product of evolution and they way our brains evolved.
Ultimately, as far as the God being a delusion thing, I see a strong argument for it, possibly the chief argument for it, not really addressed. So in the effort of steel manning it:
Millions if not billions of people across time and space were all convinced God speaks to them and tells them things. They’ve seen "evidence: of the divine and witnessed the power of God do things. Unfortunately, these things are not always consistent with one another. People have been thoroughly convinced by their faith and walk with God that slavery is acceptable and others that it is a grotesques injustice and perversion of the created order. Do we honor the sabbath or not as Christians? Its tied into the created order, much like a lot of Christian reasoning against homosexual unions. For many Christians Trump was Satan and were sure he would lose, others thought Trump is the newest incarnation of Jesus and would win and prophesied incorrectly to their church! Alleged “prophets” have been wrong millions of times and many times if we compare the religious beliefs
of individuals claiming to have heard God speak to them or move them a certain way, or tell them something, a great deal of this material would certainly be mutually exclusive. This could easily lead to the conclusion that religion is not “real” in the sense of our deities corresponding to reality, but its “genuine” to us because we have real psychological needs. I don’t know if I am expressing this well but the sheer volume of genuine believers with conflicting experiences with God could scream delusion. Are we believers hopeless victims to confirmation bias? How do we cut through this maze? Do I get it all right while all of you get parts wrong?
Vinnie
Atheists. Maybe so. I thought it was those who found the philosophy students to be the most tiresome people on campus.
Unaware of assumptions.
Prease exprain.
If you’re suggesting disdain for philosophy is much wider than just atheists I’d agree. Heck my favorite grad student in that department and friend while I was a philosophy major basically agreed with Wittgenstein
who very fittingly compares a certain type of philosopher with a fly in a bottle, going on and on, buzzing about. And he says it is the task of his philosophy to show the fly the way out of the bottle.
This grad student Paul who ran a practicum for myself in my first semester at Cal assigned us writing weekly which we would copy up for each other and Paul and give to each other before our at least weekly meetings to discuss our writing. Paul frequently would note where I was guilty of actually practicing philosophy, not completely a compliment coming from him. While he succeeded in dissuading me from going further in the field, he went on to be a professor of philosophy somewhere in the northwest. I think he enjoyed helping out flies.
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No disdain for philosophy itself, but a lot for
the half baked purveyors of the att.
A lot like how i feel toward some similarly endowed " spiritual" people.
While few of us will accept the burden of proof for the claim that there is no God/gods, most of us do view the world and ourselves as being fully determined atoms, cells and programming. By far the many atheists I’ve known online felt that way. Many but not all acknowledged the nihilism they felt. Implicit strong atheism does paint a pretty grim prospect for finding meaning when facing big questions about what we’re here for and who to turn to when one’s own answers provide no hope or solace.
I don’t feel that way at all because I’m aware of something more within than that which I have chosen or constructed myself. I do think there is more but only sometimes available to us. I don’t know exactly what that is but I doubt it could only be the maker of the cosmos. I don’t think I or we are so important as to require anything quite so lofty to explain our subjective experience. But I do think the something more I find is wiser than I about what really matters. It justifies being less eager to decide things hastily before that something more -which seems not to speak- can find a way to chime in.
My own theory is that consciousness is shaped by culture and that mythologies and religion address the question of what this something greater is and wants from us. I find the Christian God is placed on too impossibly omni- of a pedestal for me to embrace. I believe the reason why all mythos build this subtle inward something extra up so high is to help keep it from being overlooked. Our conscious sense of self is sufficient to survive in the world and we could easily over llook or set aside what it is if the culture didn’t give us cause not to.
I’d like think we’re past that now, that we don’t need to buy all the omni’s in order to recognize the value in what is within but only sometimes available. On the other hand were it not for the mythic being present in our culture, wouldn’t it be exceedingly rare to develop a regard for what is there? So I don’t call for the end of religion because I don’t have an adequate substitute to offer for how people are to go on finding the richness in their depths any other way.
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Pretty sure heaven would be lacking for one such as @LM77 if there were no spiders, ants and endless varieties of creepy crawlies most beautiful.
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Not sure what you mean by “att” but I agree that traits abound among the spiritual and religious which are at least as off putting as any wooly headed academic philosopher.
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You are not wrong, Mark!
Thankful that the Christian’s hope is not in some disembodied future in the spirit realm, but an embodied future in a renewed physical realm… spiders, ants, and all!
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Grim?
Nihilism?
I dont reject moral principles,
not think life is meaningless.
Strong atheist?
Your post seems very strongly
from the mindset of a theist, with
what may be the general incomprehension
I alwayd see, of what it is to be atheist.
I dont think in terms of ultimate “meaning”
or “god”. Total nonissues like they are to
a cat, like whether pigs have wings.
I cannot be a strong apigwingest or a strong
atheist. Makes no sense to me.
Deletedxxxxc
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