I guess for me it’s nothing at all really. It’s a snippet of someone’s worldview. There are millions of them. It’s no different than someone saying “ comedy is better than horror what’s the response”. It’s something that’s not measured that way across the board.
1 Like
Nothing fuels our illusions like faith in love. Is how much I - like other people - want to believe in the existence of love already a reason enough not to believe in love. Love is too beautiful to really exist. What is the answer to this?
The idea that one can live life as an objective observer is the most massive delusion of modern times. Science which is founded on objective observation is an immensely valuable tool. It is the best way of discovering how the world works. Our immediate primary access to information is entirely subjective. But through a process of shared experiences and intellectual abstraction we can construct an understanding of shared reality with written procedures which give the same result no matter what we want or believe.
But this cannot change the fact that life is subjective participation where what we want and believe is central. We alter our reality by work and actions according to what we want and believe. We make love real because we believe in it, and likewise we make God a part of our experience of life in the same way. Why isn’t God an objective reality from written procedures which give the same result no matter what we want or believe? Why isn’t God like the laws of nature which care nothing about our desires and feelings? Why isn’t God something we can examine in a microscope or manipulate in a controlled experiment? When put that way, don’t these questions seem just a little bit stupid?
The whole point is that life is not just things we can manipulate or measure with our machines. Not everything is that small. There are also things too big to grasp and control with our greedy hands and minds lusting for power. So we believe in God to name that which is greater and see this as the origin of everything. To be sure we could believe like the atheists and naturalists that the laws of nature which we can master and use to manipulate things is the only reality. We could believe like they do that everything is really that small – this is in a metaphorical sense obviously, and perhaps the only greatness they need in their lives are the great size of the universe and the great power of the laws of nature in things like the sun. Is this because that is the only greatness they want to measure themselves against? Or is it because they only want to believe in things they can conquer in some sense with their minds and intellect?
On the other hand… it often seems to me like religious people are essentially doing the same thing, where they have made God something they have conquered with their theology and dogma to use as a tool for manipulation of people. If theists are going to do that then the atheist option looks not only more reasonable but vastly superior.
1 Like
That is an interesting argument. God is too good to be true. That must mean that God should be evil to be true.
The problem with this and other facile arguments that atheists use is they are false. The life of Jesus is the Christian ideal. He did not live a long life. He did not marry. He did not own a home or a business. He died alone on a cross.
Faith is born of human desires is not born of selfishness, hatred, and fear. It is born of love, joy, and peace. If love, joy, and peace are illusions then life is not worth living, because God does not exist.
1 Like
I found this in particular rather amusing.
In almost every argument put forward by atheists, that refers to the character of God, he can’t exist because He is a vengeful, slavery loving, tyrannical monster, so really, you’re better off if he doesn’t exist. But well, that wouldn’t fit this particular one…
5 Likes
Interesting to note that to the degree atheists hold this view, like fundamentalist creationists, they too believe a creator is required to account for God belief. It is beyond me why they should doubt such belief evolved naturally to make sense of human existence. Of course they would trivialize this by only looking to explain outward things like lightning and earthquakes. Oh, they’ll say, we don’t need Gods to explain the world any more. Indeed science is better for explaining things in the world but what about the world of our experience? In my experience, the scientism held by most fundamentalist atheists will insist science will in time explain absolutely everything: literature, love, you name it. Apparently the entire soul can be replaced with a long list of empirical facts with nothing left out. But of course that is absurd.
I don’t believe God is a being apart from everything which He has brought into being. So I’m an atheist as far as Christianity is concerned. But I’m no fundamentalist nor do I worship science or just my own pleasure.
2 Likes
Christians believe that God can, did and does reveal himself through legitimate testimony* (and not just the testimony of the beauty of nature and the grandeur of the cosmos). And the Bible also tells us that there is an adversary who wants to dissuade belief and trust in God and excels in lies and counterfeits.
*He had been mentioned before as a relatively modern example, and it seems to me that it takes considerable denial to dismiss him casually and portray him as a self-deceived charlatan:
1 Like
That seems like a fool proof way to ensure beliefs will never change or be challenged.
Agrees with me = still more support.
Disagrees with me = clever deceiver counterfeit.
It could also be true. Do other religions make a similar claim, to your knowledge?
And you don’t see Christians changing their beliefs or challenging others’? 
Have you read any of any of Müller’s books? One cover:
interesting point, Marta
1 Like
Altair/Alex…you quoted part of an article without a general reference. It would be nice to read the whole thing so as to have context. The idea that God was somehow manufactured by people has been said by others – and could partly be true — that is, if God is Someone who grants our every wish, approves of hot fudge sundaes for breakfast, is OK with the occasional shoplifting or casual rape, and stops the aging process — or any other thing we “feel” inclined to at the moment. We do tend to make Him in our own image at times, and we do trot this “god” out from time to time, dust him off, and admire the image of ourselves that we see in him. But then, no one really thinks that this is right — not ultimately. And then there is always something that each faith entails which is “hard” to say the least. How can the hard stuff be “born of human desires”? Are we all masochists? Well, maybe Freud would say so…but then we get into other weird things. For me, the real problem with atheism overall is that most atheists are like everyone else — that is, they believe in a lot of things they cannot see (quarks for instance)…and never write that thing off to “faith born of human desires”. …It is only when they get to the notion that there is Someone out there Who transcends ourselves. And this then seems to them like a problem
1 Like
Rrrright… I never came across THAT(especially rape, unless you referring to the fact that some think women deserve it)…
Being the devil’s advocate I would say that people made up the hard stuff in order to control the populace i.e to keep them well behaved. Now I’m not an expert but it seems like even the sceptics have come away from this idea lately, besides if there were too many snags then the majority wouldn’t want to follow IT in the first place.
thanks for the answer. this man is indeed quoting Freud here.
Thanks Marta…and as for hard stuff…I suppose just about any idea looks like a control device (no right turn on red…be in bed by nine…eat more calories than you burn up and soon you will be classified as ‘calorically impaired’, or whatever the latest term is, but you surely will not fit into your leggings any longer!) if you do not like or want it…but a control device that turns out to be good for you (thou shalt not commit adultery) plus other people/things (“save some for the fishes”…“you should care for the poor”…“do not gossip”) is probably, in the long run, NOT a bad thing…and the only question is why we do not like it. The “hard stuff” like “gossiping is a sin” or “you break it you own it” is hard because it mostly holds some accountability. I’m sure we can make a list of hard things…and if religion or deity were eliminated from them, many of them would still look reasonable to us psychologically or from the perspective of civic order, good eating habits, etc----and there are other control devices such as police, psychiatrists, prisons — which technically should eliminate the need for deity. …But still the concept of deity remains.
So why do you think it still remains? And was it purely invented because there was no police at the time? And did people were just inventing rules as they went along to suit their needs?
I presume you are thinking of 'belief in a deity" when you ask “why do you think it still remains?” That could actually be separate from the questions you ask about the police and whether or not people invented something…I think the need for deity is just there in us because it was meant to be there to begin with. It could be just like a shadow on the sidewalk. If we see a shadow, we know it came from something or someone, even if the person is right around the corner and has not yet come into view (depending on their location, or yours). The “shadow,” in this case, is the universality of some concepts – such as do not murder. steal etc., Something about those basics (before you define different gradations of each illegal act) has always been in humans. And they existed before the first police department, otherwise we would never have felt the need for law enforcement to begin with. Another “shadow” is the need to worship someone or thing. If we don’t worship God, then we worship our jobs or an entertainer or guru or our new car or spouse or kids…Worshipping these other things eventually get us into trouble at times because people disappoint and new cars break down at unpredictable times and the job has layoffs…but that is because they are really not what we should have placed faith in to begin with.
1 Like
So what if it is true, and God doesn’t exist? Would you want to live your life any differently?? (said the agnostic) 
(Hey, Dan – it’s been a while. 
)
There is no ‘what if’ hypothetical for some. I will point to George Müller again (I have a lot lately, it seems – I don’t know if you have seen any – there are two above – here and here) and your profession* ties in:
*Dan’s a statistician, for those who don’t know. (He’s still a statistician, for those who do. )
1 Like
Sounds like therapeutic deism.
thanks for the answer. I think my life would change quite a lot
you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong… I see my religion dismissed on the grounds that ‘the comfortable parson had every reason for assuring the nineteenth century worker that poverty would be rewarded in another world’. Well, no doubt he had. On the assumption that Christianity is an error, I can see early enough that some people would still have a motive for inculcating it. I see it so easily that I can, of course, play the game the other way round, by saying that ‘the modern man has every reason for trying to convince himself that there are no eternal sanctions behind the morality he is rejecting’… But of course it gets us not one inch nearer to deciding whether, as a matter of fact, the Christian religion is true or false. That question remains to be discussed on quite different grounds—a matter of philosophical and historical argument. However it were decided, the improper motives of some people, both for believing it and for disbelieving it, would remain just as they are.
-C. S. Lewis, Bulverism
4 Likes