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what are you calling God. Omni-dudes only or anything more complex that we may be part of?
what is your definition of atheist? Deity only?
I wrote:
Has any atheist reading this ever received evidence of any sort that gave you pause about your atheism? If so, what was it? What did you appreciate about it?
If not, have you heard of any other atheists who spoke of encountering evidence that paused them?
I did not define God in the questions. I am letting you self-qualify as an atheist any way you like, and letting you decide what pausing from it means to you. I'll run with whatever you say in your reply.
Thank you.
Last edited by sylvianfisher; 06-07-2016 at 07:08 PM..
But, once I die, if I remain nothingness forever, if I won't ever know that I ever had lived, then what is the point of all of this universe of complexity if it serves only... itself? What does it need me for?
As you have intuited, it doesn't "need" you. The universe just IS.
But the universe is also impersonal, so its lack of interest in you isn't personal, either.
Your importance isn't defined by such things. It's defined by the regard that you and your loved ones hold you in, and the contribution, however small, that you make towards a civil society that others who come after you will enjoy. Nothing is added to that legacy by demanding that the universe care about you personally.
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Originally Posted by sylvianfisher
I mean, sh*t, I figure if it was just nature alone that evolved the sexual orgasm into a highly pleasurable thing in order to entice people and animals to even bother slamming into each other to reproduce, why does nature even care to bother? Seems to me nature could have let sex start off as, or become, a dull and boring piece of stinky grunt work that people and animals had no incentive to promote. Let us die off. Who cares?
Nature didn't "bother". Natural selection is the operative mechanism here, over unimaginably vast time frames. Natural selection only cares that you survive long enough to pass on your genes, and the operative word is "survive", not "enjoy" or "thrive" or "be self-actualized". Natural selection sets the bar low. That's the bad news. When you think of it, a few minutes of sexual pleasure now and then over against all the hard work of relationships and nurturing children and so forth isn't much compensation.
The good news is that YOU get to set the bar as high as you want for yourself. As I believe Sartre said, we are "condemned to be free" -- it's a scary freedom -- but we ARE free nonetheless. Humanity is increasingly directing its own evolution with higher goals than mere survival. That is an enterprise worth contributing to in my view, because I choose to believe that humanity will endure long enough to largely overcome its limitations and suffering.
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Originally Posted by sylvianfisher
Hey man, I admit it, I need to believe there is something more than the here and now.
I and others are Exhibit "A" for why you don't need to, actually. The Buddhists largely have it right ... there is nothing BUT the here and now and it is enough. That's the general metaphysical take that I embrace. But the empirical take I have is that the need you speak of is largely operant conditioning, and there are real advantages to being free of it. Until you fully accept and absorb the fact of your own mortality, you will be wasting a lot of time and energy in immortality projects.
Read Ernest Becker sometime, especially Denial of Death and Escape From Evil. They were eye-openers for me.
I figure if it was just nature alone that evolved the sexual orgasm into a highly pleasurable thing in order to entice people and animals to even bother slamming into each other to reproduce, why does nature even care to bother?
The same thing can be asked about stars forming in space, clouds forming in the sky or waves forming in the ocean. The answer is that nature doesn't "care" about any of these things. All of these things simply happen through natural processes that were set in motion billions of years ago.
And so does life. Life just is and that's really all there is to it. You have to make your own purpose out of the cards you have been dealt.
All of these things simply happen through natural processes that were set in motion billions of years ago.
Be careful, sir! None of us were there and this is how religions come about. You've merely omitted reference to any catalyst who set the inertia into motion.
I'm teasing!
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And so does life. Life just is and that's really all there is to it. You have to make your own purpose out of the cards you have been dealt.
I believe sexual orgasm is a purposeful enticement which implies an enticer. And the enticer ain't nature because nature doesn't care. Imagine if it were any other bodily function that was awarded the best physical feeling as orgasm, instead of reproduction.
We don't need to orgasm when we eat, because we WILL eat anyway.
We don't need to orgasm when we eliminate waste, because we WILL eliminate anyway.
We don't need to orgasm when we breathe, because we WILL breathe anyway.
We don't need to orgasm when we die, because we WILL die anyway.
Yet, would we seek each other out to slam our bodies together for reproduction if there was no physical payoff for it such as the orgasm?
Heck, why aren't there orgasms involved with any or all of these other bodily functions? Why not?
Reproduction is desired by something or someone and we know that nature cannot give a f*ck about f*cking. LOL
Last edited by sylvianfisher; 06-07-2016 at 10:43 PM..
Your importance isn't defined by such things. It's defined by the regard that you and your loved ones hold you in, and the contribution, however small, that you make towards a civil society that others who come after you will enjoy.
Sir, without God, the above is only poetry to me, made to seem true by the ego recognizing the general meshing of the different components that you mention, and looking to see in them a purposeful fit beyond what effects these components would have on each other anyway.
Without God, I have no importance except perhaps to my petty ego. What importance that others assign to me is their fictional valuation made to seem real by their need to express this valuation. I say fictional because I am not what others decide I am. We trade with each other in valuations, that's all. And that's okay, because with no afterlife in the picture, it is perfectly acceptable on earth for me to have no importance, to make no difference, to leave no legacy. If people value me as important but I never see it, then they are not there to barter with, and their valuation is not felt.
In this godless world, and as an example, thinking about parents who have passed away is a waste of time, mere mental masturbation, as they cannot exist ever again. My valuation of them cannot even be bartered with them. How pointless are my thoughts about them when they're dead? About as pointless as would be my life.
With God, I perform for Him by trying to love his other humans beyond my own ego, as he requests, and by doing things for reasons more than mere barter. With an afterlife, I can love my deceased parents with depth and purpose instead of feeling that I am wasting my time over it.
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Nature didn't "bother". Natural selection is the operative mechanism here, over unimaginably vast time frames. Natural selection only cares that you survive long enough to pass on your genes, and the operative word is "survive", not "enjoy" or "thrive" or "be self-actualized". Natural selection sets the bar low.
Agreed, nature cannot bother. But, I notice you then say that natural selection can care. How can you reverse yourself like that, please? Natural selection cannot care about anything. It is not sentient. Natural selection cannot recognize any threshold to have it set low. That is a human assessment. We don't know what happens over the eons of time. We were not there. Natural selection is a model invented for the mental management of the incompleteness that we observe. That it may be viewed as exclusionary of a deity is an assumption that possibly no Higher Power yet stoops to correct in our thinking.
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The good news is that YOU get to set the bar as high as you want for yourself.
High is a bias. There is no bar to set. There just is the doing of things. As soon as I am dead in a godless setting, I exist no more. There would be no point in ascending except to please my petty ego, and then it is all pointless when I am dead.
I'll tell you one thing, in place of God I'd never appoint my own ego as anything worthy to serve. I'd make it a buddy, but that's all.
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As I believe Sartre said, we are "condemned to be free" -- it's a scary freedom -- but we ARE free nonetheless. Humanity is increasingly directing its own evolution with higher goals than mere survival. That is an enterprise worth contributing to in my view, because I choose to believe that humanity will endure long enough to largely overcome its limitations and suffering.
Well, I appreciate your optimism. I'll join you in that.
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I and others are Exhibit "A" for why you don't need to, actually. The Buddhists largely have it right ... there is nothing BUT the here and now and it is enough. That's the general metaphysical take that I embrace. But the empirical take I have is that the need you speak of is largely operant conditioning, and there are real advantages to being free of it. Until you fully accept and absorb the fact of your own mortality, you will be wasting a lot of time and energy in immortality projects.
I'd be an uglier person without God. I know this, because once upon a time I felt I was that person, getting uglier. It's never a waste of my time to operate in concert with the model of reincarnation.
Thank you.
Last edited by sylvianfisher; 06-07-2016 at 10:48 PM..
[quote=sylvianfisher;44335646]Be careful, sir! None of us were there and this is how religions come about. You've merely omitted reference to any catalyst who set it in motion.
Teasing, teasing!
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Originally Posted by sylvianfisher
I believe sexual orgasm is a purposeful enticement which implies an enticer. And the enticer ain't nature because nature doesn't care. Imagine if it were any other bodily function that was awarded the best physical feeling as orgasm, instead of reproduction.
We don't need to orgasm when we eat, because we WILL eat anyway.
We don't need to orgasm when we eliminate waste, because we WILL eliminate anyway.
We don't need to orgasm when we breathe, because we WILL breathe anyway.
We don't need to orgasm when we die, because we WILL die anyway.
Yet, would we seek each other out to slam our bodies together for reproduction if there was no physical payoff for it such as the orgasm?
Reproduction is desired by something or someone and we know that nature cannot give a f*ck about f*cking. LOL
It's not about caring, per se, but surviving. Natural selection will almost always favor the organism that can pass its genes on to as many offspring as possible. The organism that can reproduce the most successfully will survive -- and humans have a pleasurable 24/7/30/365/10/100/1000 etc. sex drive. In other words, it never shuts off unlike most species that have specific rutting periods.
But having a pleasurable orgasm and a never-ending sex drive has caused humanity a massive amount of problems, as well, which, to my mind, would have to make this "enticer" you refer to a rather capricious voyeur. That goes triple if this enticer happens to be the Christian God who puts no brakes on the human sex drive yet saddles us with hundreds of sexual rules. Yeah, right.
At any rate, no matter who or what this "enticer" would happen to be, it would still be cruel to the core for making human sexual intercourse so pleasurable, the desire for it so great, and the basic instinct to seek it out so powerful. In addition, the cruelty continues considering that human sexuality never turns off since we have no specific rutting period -- we don't go into and out of "heat" so that we aren't constantly pining away for our next roll in the hay. What's worse, for men especially, that need for sex never ends, not even when sitting in a feces-filled diaper in a nursing home.
Then there are the sex-starved people who want it but can't get it, the asexuals who don't fit in with a sex-crazed society, and hell, I personally think that sex is the most over-hyped and most over-rated thing in all of human history but hey, that's just me.
Bottom line is that, should an enticer be involved, then we move from an uncaring act of natural selection that did not purposefully set out to cause problems, mayhem or mischief to an enticer with intelligence that deliberately did what it did and has now wreaked a lot of havok with humanity and the way we must live -- because we are all slaves to our biology regardless of how that biology came to be.
And why does everybody have to argue about the Bible anyway? None of us were there, for crying out loud!
"Everyone" doesn't. I for one certainly do not. I hardly talk about it on this forum unless someone brings it up directly in a reply to me. But what does "being there" have to do with it anyway?
There is much in history, and the present, where we do not have to "be there" to discuss them. Did we need to "be there" to discuss World War 1? No. It was before my time but I can still discuss and argue the facts and details about it.
And even in the present, for example in criminal law, do the people like the Judge, defense and prosecution lawyers, and jury.... have had to "be there" to discuss the details? No.
Why? Because in the case of history and law we discuss the arguments, evidence, data and reasoning behind the claims being made. No one discussing it ever had to "be there" to do so.
The problem for the Bible is that the arguments, evidence, data or reasoning that some people, let alone the words and events, described in it are quite thinly substantiated in terms of their having existed or happened.
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Originally Posted by sylvianfisher
was my 45-minutes of nothingness a taste of what it's like when I'm dead?
All the evidence we have at this time would suggest that yes, it was. None of the evidence we have at this time suggests otherwise. It is not about "I do not know, and no one else does either" as you say. It is merely about what reason we have to think something true at a given time. And at THIS time..... we have no reason to think anything but what you describe here is true.
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Originally Posted by sylvianfisher
I won't ever know that I ever had lived, then what is the point of all of this universe of complexity if it serves only... itself? What does it need me for?
The first thing to notice about this line of questioning is that it assumes there even IS an answer. Why SHOULD the universe owe us any reasons, purposes, or to serve anything? It is only our human trait.... that we like to live by a narrative.... that makes us feel like it should owe us these things. So we invent things like religion and gods to serve that need and expectation in us.
But when you see past that internal (and natural enough) need.... you realize that there is no reason the universe owes us ANY explanation or reason or narrative. It just is what it is. Why does there need to be a reason for it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by sylvianfisher
I figure if it was just nature alone that evolved the sexual orgasm into a highly pleasurable thing in order to entice people and animals to even bother slamming into each other to reproduce, why does nature even care to bother?
There is no reason to think it DOES care. There is also no reason to think it is "bothered" or in fact feels any effort at all. It is just the culmination of natural processes. You may as well as why a drop of water "bothers" to drip down a window pane. It doesn't "bother" to. It just does what it does.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sylvianfisher
Hey man, I admit it, I need to believe there is something more than the here and now. Luckily for me, I fell backwards into a belief for reincarnation which I decided is a model that fits a number of otherwise incongruent things for me, including personal experiences.
And that "need" is all there is that explains such beliefs. There certainly appears to be no actual substantiation for any of it.
Sir, without God, the above is only poetry to me, made to seem true by the ego recognizing the general meshing of the different components that you mention, and looking to see in them a purposeful fit beyond what effects these components would have on each other anyway.
Without God, I have no importance except perhaps to my petty ego. What importance that others assign to me is their fictional valuation made to seem real by their need to express this valuation. I say fictional because I am not what others decide I am. We trade with each other in valuations, that's all. And that's okay, because with no afterlife in the picture, it is perfectly acceptable on earth for me to have no importance, to make no difference, to leave no legacy. If people value me as important but I never see it, then they are not there to barter with, and their valuation is not felt.
Glad to see someone willing to question and critically analyze belief, unbelief, and deeper meanings from the theist perspective while attempting to remain self-aware about their own reasons for doing so. It's a welcome change to the typical debates we see here.
2 things come to mind here for me....
1) How or why do you find the valuation of a god, which I believe you acknowledge no resounding proof for, any more satisfying than that of another person?
2) I think you are arbitrarily assuming your own ego to be something not worth servicing in some way. While it is nearly a pejorative to invoke the ego when talking about a particular person....the ego serves our (hopefully rational) self-interest. This is not necessarily (or does not have to be) to the detriment of anyone else, though. And maintaining a rational (we can define that later) self-interest is critical to forming a society that works imo. We need to care whether "we" eat, drink, experience good emotions, procreate, etc. Without it we will not survive natural selection.
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In this godless world, and as an example, thinking about parents who have passed away is a waste of time, mere mental masturbation, as they cannot exist ever again. My valuation of them cannot even be bartered with them. How pointless are my thoughts about them when they're dead? About as pointless as would be my life.
With God, I perform for Him by trying to love his other humans beyond my own ego, as he requests, and by doing things for reasons more than mere barter. With an afterlife, I can love my deceased parents with depth and purpose instead of feeling that I am wasting my time over it.
Their memory serves you for the purposes of continuing on. And for whatever that does for you....be it as a source of happiness, a tale of caution, or the source of purpose which drives you. There is value in that memory, to the one with the memory.
Conversely, I would ask why the valuation of a god is more important? And isn't serving this god just an extension of serving your (perceived) rational self-interest? In other words (playing on the example)....the memory of your parents who you hope to love is the reason you are serving the god, because you wish to gain access to the special place where you may get to love again. Seems to me that such a forced bargain is no bargain at all.
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Agreed, nature cannot bother. But, I notice you then say that natural selection can care. How can you reverse yourself like that, please? Natural selection cannot care about anything. It is not sentient. Natural selection cannot recognize any threshold to have it set low. That is a human assessment. We don't know what happens over the eons of time. We were not there. Natural selection is a model invented for the mental management of the incompleteness that we observe. That it may be viewed as exclusionary of a deity is an assumption that possibly no Higher Power yet stoops to correct in our thinking.
I don't think mordant was suggesting sentience....only that the observation of natural selection shows that the animals that didn't procreate didn't live to tell their tales about how little satisfaction they have in orgasm. And that the alignment of sexual gratification and species survival isn't accidental, nor necessarily thought out.
Like the often cited example of the water that miraculously happens to be in the same shape as the hole under it.
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I'd be an uglier person without God. I know this, because once upon a time I felt I was that person, getting uglier. It's never a waste of my time to operate in concert with the model of reincarnation.
I have no doubt you might be a better person because of what the god-belief does for you, or how it serves your ego to put it into similar phrasing. But I would suggest there are many secular explanations for your behaviors with and without the god-belief.
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