Right! A rational and reasonable atheist would skip over and ignore the possibility of “a revelation of God to humans” completely, IMO.
Here, I’d welcome the input of a genuine atheist to correct or amend my thoughts on the matter.
But that’s just the thing Terry, you could call your dog an atheist if you follow this logic. Trying to be flippant while answering a valid argument from non-believers won’t do.
Perhaps this argument doesn’t bother you but awful lot of atheists find it to be a strong one and even Dr Collins admitted in his book that if there was a naturalistic explanation of religion, then he would take that very seriously.
OK, have to go watch Grand Prix now. More later.
What bemuses me is why, how there can be a non-scientific bias to the question, in any answer to it? The origin of religion is only amenable to, by science. I always thought that it was Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin’s bulldog, who said that religion is man’s attempt to communicate with the weather. But nobody knows.
LOL! Now there’s a thread-generating thought if I ever saw one.
What prevents me from calling my dog an atheist? Interesting question, that I have never asked myself. [I have a dog now and can view my years, since joining my wife’s family, in terms of "during the time of Chico, of Barollas, of Blanca, of Capulin, of Duque, of Frida, and of Diego’. it’s easier to do than trying to remember what year it was when some significant event occurred.]
To answer your question, I think it’s important to note the sequence of events leading up to my “flippant remark” [which I actually dared to think was a genuinely serious invitation to atheists to rethink their conjectures regarding the origin of religion.]
- Atheist X conjectures that religion was originated by the first human who conceived the concept of “Mortality”, or as Altair suggested: who invented religion to overcome the fear of death; or even, I suspect, who invented religion to address the void some call “the great unknown beyond death”.
- I’m not an atheist, so I’m just guessing what an atheist might conjecture regarding the origin of religion. Clearly, I haven’t studied the matter. But it’s my impression/“best guess” that an atheist’s “default beliefs” will be that:
- An assertion that “God exists” is unprovable;
- Without indoctrination, humans are natural-born atheists;
- Religion is the product of creative imagination motivated by “fear”;
- And religion’s harm outweighs its benefits.
- I reasoned that, given a totally atheistic population, the appearance of a human who experienced enough fear (of mortality/death/the great unknown beyond death) would–following Atheist X’s reasoning–invent a religion to assuage his/her fear. Ergo, my flippant remark.
Why not call my dog an atheist? Find a dog who holds one or more of the "default beliefs that aheists hold, then convince me that dogs and human beings share the same attitude toward committing intentional suicide. I can’t imagine a dog believing any of an atheist’s “default beliefs”; and my understanding is that only human beings–whether atheist or theist–are capable of intentionally committing suicide. Dogs don’t intentionally commit suicide.
Again, what has the the origin of religion to do with God? We have been as [biologically, neurologically, behaviourally] complex as we are now for at least 50,000 years. [We’ve been doing religion for at least that long.]
Well, I’m not gonna find one. That’s why I challenged what you and @mitchellmckain said regarding atheists inventing religion. Fear MUST have come before the ability to fully conceptualise God. And if you can’t fully comprehend this concept then you can’t be atheist any more than you can be a theist. Despite some non-believers trying to claim new borns, dogs, cats and giraffes as atheists.
A bit like asking blind person from birth what is their favourite colour I suppose.
Well, at the very least - I bet your dog hasn’t fully accepted the Trinity - and probably wouldn’t sign on with the apostle’s creed either. What does your dog think about death and theodicy? It could be that your dog is a heretic. Would be pet-owners can’t be too careful about these things. Always ask for the papers. 
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Reality check question: You don’t think I accept the atheist conjecture that religion originated with the first atheist who experienced his mortality/fear of death/or fear of the Great Unknown beyond death, do you? Because I certainly don’t accept that conjecture as a plausible explanation of the origin of religion in the history of evolution.
I believe at least one human being–who was not just a two-legged, knuckle-dragging, clueless mammal–had at least one encounter with some being that addressed him in a very personal and intelligible way; even if what the being “told” that human was no more than: “Don’t touch that”. The atheist belief that religion originated in human creative imagination motivated by fear and/or wishful thinking is, IMO, nonsense.
I didn’t respond to that post because it was completely incoherent to me. GIGO
I said nothing of the sort and Terry was asking a question.
When I said…
I certainly wasn’t talking about any atheist inventing religion. I was talking about this absurd notion that religion was invented because of a fear of death. Fear of death has absolutely nothing to do with my reasons for believing. I consider the fear of nonexistence to be complete irrational - a fear of absolutely nothing at all. I can only speculate that such an irrationality arises from some kind of narcissism.
For me the belief in oblivion sounds far too good to be true. Shall I speculate that this is why people are atheist, because they are afraid of some existence after death. The notion in the OP sound just as stupid to me as this may sound to you.
Another premise in your response may be the incoherent definition of atheism as a lack of a belief in God or gods, which seems to have been invented as a prop for some default position rhetoric and putting burden of proof on those believe differently. The burden of proof is always on anyone expecting others to agree with them (and certainly not based on the entirely arbitrary distinction between a positive and negative assertion) – that is the very meaning of the word proof!
P.S. A coherent modern informed definition of atheism is that of judging that there is no good reason for believing in a God or gods. The difference is the status of infants which are neither theist nor atheist not having considered the question. Adding infants to the population of atheists would make atheists the most ignorant and poorly educated people on the planet and I don’t think that is right.
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I’m very fond of my dog, but am certain that–as observant and clever as she is–the Trinity, the Apostle’s Creed, death, and theodicy are beyond her ken.
No, I figured that you weren’t serious in your reply to the OP. That’s the problem because whatever you think of this argument, it’s being used ALL the time and clearly @Altair wouldn’t have started this thread if this wasn’t important to them.
Well yes, OK, I’m obviously Christian so not going to argue about that, the point is what would you say to an atheist who uses this argument?
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Apologies for misunderstanding your post. BTW what does GIGO stand for???
There are people who are terrified of hell, usually as a result of being “harmed by religion” as children. Good job Richard managed to “cure” some of them of belief on British television…so actually this isn’t necessarily THAT stupid.
its a programming term “garbage in garbage out.” And my usage was that I couldn’t come up with a meaningful comment to something which was to me incoherent.
Yes and there are theists who are terrified of nonexistence and buy into religion for that reason. But neither of these groups are a sufficient explanation of either religion or atheism.
Ok… hyperbole of my declaration is established.
Pretty much just what I said that you deemed “flippant”. [No offense taken on my part.] I might have gone on, if the atheist allowed me to, to point out the “bed” he/she made and encourage him/her to lie in it and see how silly it is.
Speaking of silly, Woody Allen–of ill-repute as a male but a clever comedian–opens his movie “Annie Hall” as a comedian, Alvy Singer, who tells this story:
“There’s an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says: “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know, and such … small portions.” Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly.”
That’s the long version of what I call: “The Joy of Atheism”. The short version?
“Life sucks! … and it’s too short.”
.
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I’ve read you say the same before. It has always struck me as odd or perhaps it just goes with the territory once you adopt a religion. For me non-existence just seems to bookend the part of life that includes me. It isn’t surprising to me to consider that we didn’t exist before we were born so I’m not sure why it would seem either surprising or “too good to be true” to imagine that death will mark the resumption of the world without me.
I don’t despise the idea of unending life since I rather like it. But I don’t feel entitled to extra innings nor does the inevitability of an ending strike me as tragic. My life isn’t exclusively all about me so my death won’t be the end of everything I care about. From a larger point of view, what sets us apart as an individual strikes me as banal and inconsequential. Others will notice and care about what I have cared about. It doesn’t matter who carried the banner before or will do so after, and it matters even less what our hobbies and interests were or who our loved ones were.
“Surprising” is something you are reading into my words which simply isn’t there. There is only the simple fact that oblivion is such an easy answer to every set of problems. If you read my reasons for belief, you will see how well this fits in. Remember how my definition of God comes from an equivalence between a faith in God and a faith that life is worth living, and how this goes to a faith that all of our experiences is something to cherish as a gift from God. The easy answer of oblivion is a complete negation of that. Why put up with anything when we simply don’t have to. Not happy with the person you have become? Why go through the painful process of change when you can simply make it all go away.
Of course this is not much of an argument. It is not intended to be. It is just my own choice which I am making as a fundamental faith. And this is NOT buying into the notion that life must be preserved at all costs. On the contrary, life is not only a great deal more than just breathing, but also giving ones life for the sake of love or principle is in my way of thinkin an ultimate affirmation of life, because the real essence of life is choice not breathing.
Physical life is too limited for an unending supply of it to be a good thing. Indeed, much like you, I think it would ultimately be a negation of life – not giving over the world to the next generation. But this and the objections you made are only about a continued participation on the earth and doesn’t apply to a continued existence elsewhere. On the contrary, oblivion means any caring you have for things simply ceases to exist and becomes irrelevant, and if the only meaning of anything you have done or felt is the effect on those which remain, that leaves you with the same philosophical poverty you have with moral consequentialism.
Not all of us feel like such a faceless drone in a hive let alone are such a thing. So this is not a sentiment I share at all. The only pragmatic impact I see in what you are saying is completely negative. I don’t see anything good in either the annihilation of our unique value as persons or in the sweet release from responsibility for anything we do or have become in oblivion.
Why do you believe that when there is no even Christian warrant for it whatsoever? Nothing in the evolution of morality requires God to beam down in person.
The bigger mystery is why I’m bothering to respond to your silliness. What, in anything I posted, indicates that I believe that there’s some evidence in “the evolution of morality” of God’s “obligation to beam down in person.”
Why do I believe what? The part of my post that you quoted and which immediately precedes your question?
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Why do you misquote me?
How do you construe that I infer that you believe that there’s some evidence in “the evolution of morality” of God’s “obligation to beam down in person.”?
They are exclusive unless theistic evolution operates.
And ‘I believe at least one human being…had at least one encounter with some being that addressed him in a very personal and intelligible way’ = God beaming down in person: a theophany in which God was personal and intelligible. Could have been a talking burning bush or a still small voice I suppose.
Let’s take a little trip down memory lane and see if we can figure out where you left the path and got lost in the forest of my words.
- In your Post #36 to me, you asked a question: “Why do you believe that when there is no even Christian warrant for it whatsoever?” and made a statement: “Nothing in the evolution of morality requires God to beam down in person.”
- Keeping this portion of our trip down memory lane simple for you, I lay aside your question and I focus on your statement.
- Now, either that statement has meaning or it is a collection of written words signifying nothing. Being the charitable guy that I am, I assumed the former. So, let’s parse that sentence and see where I misquoted you.
- You wrote: “Nothing in the evolution of morality requires God to beam down in person”.
- I construed that to mean that something I had written led you to believe that I believe
- that God can and does “beam down in person” when “required to so” and
- that His obligation to do so arises when there is “evidence in the evolution of morality” that “requires him to do so.”
- The problem there is that I don’t believe any such thing. To be clear, I do not believe that anything in “the evolution of humanity” requires God to do anything, including beaming down in person.
- Consequently, I rejected your belief that I believe that something in the evolution of humanity can oblige God to do anything, including beaming down in person. [Note: If you don’t believe that I believe that, why did you say: “Nothing in ‘the evolution of morality’ requires God to beam down in person”?]
- The fact that I construed your words to infer that you believe that I believe that something ‘in the evolution of morality can require God to beam down in person’ led me to challenge your inference, from something I had written, that I believe what I actually do not believe.
- Ergo, I asked you to justify your inference when I wrote: "What, in anything I posted, indicates that I believe that there’s some evidence in ‘the evolution of morality’ of God’s ‘obligation to beam down in person.’
- On the other hand, if you weren’t inferring that you believe that I believe something that I actually do not believe’ and if you don’t believe what it looked like you thought I believe, then why bring the issue up in the first place?
- By the way, I find it incumbent on me to correct you. You accused me of misquoting you, when–in fact–I never misquoted you. I merely misunderstood you, for which you have only yourself to blame. I wouldn’t have misunderstood you if you had been clearer about what you believe and what you think I believe; or, better yet, if you hadn’t said anything at all, (which I would have preferred).
I’m not even going to try to unravel that string of words, because–at this point–I am not sure what your “They” refers to. [Spare me the pain of your attempt to explain.]
Yikes!!!
- In my Post #27 to Marta, I shared my tentaive belief about “the origin of religion”:
- You seized on that and, in your Post #36 to me, challenged my belief with your question:
- To ensure that I understood what belief your “that” referred to–which you were challenging as “un-Christian” and unfounded–I asked you, in my Post #38 to you:
- And now, in your last post to me, you identify my belief that you were challenging as “un-Christian” and unfounded, by writing:
Good Lord, flounder, … your supposition accepts a trivial variant of my belief which you challenged in the first place. Have you no shame? Or have you confused yourself so much in your haste to engage me on the “bumper-car court” that you don’t see how egregious your challenge of my belief was?
If my tentative belief was so “un-Christian” and unfounded, why the heck do you propose a trivial variant of my belief?
And are you so obtuse that you can’t even recognize the very real possibility that the encounter between God and Adam and Eve described in Genesis was an early attempt to describe that very same belief?
“Un-Christian” and unfounded, my arse.
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