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What kind of twisted question is that??
I'll respond later. Back to work here.
It's similar to a question philosophers asked of the "logical positivists" early in the 20th century. They (the logical positivists) held to a principle similar to the one you are claiming, and they were forced to give it up because they couldn't answer this criticism. Their principle could not live up to its own standard, and so, it was self-refuting.
Perhaps it's not God who is having difficulty communicating with us, maybe it's us who are having difficulty paying attention and understanding the message.
So you're saying that your god intentionally made it difficult to communicate with it when it created us. And you're trying to claim that this is somehow our fault? Talk about blaming the victim.
I appreciate your comments, and your good-faith effort to engage.
Cool, I'm happy you took my comments in the nature I intended. I appreciate interesting posts even if I don't agree 100% - those are the ones I'm most likely to respond to.
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Now, I don't know why you disagree with me when I say that beliefs--in particular, beliefs about religious objects (e.g., God) are influenced by the way we feel about the object. You ask for evidence, yet this seems almost self-evident to me. It follows from a very general observation that we are complex creatures that have both cognitive and non-cognitive aspects (these are in a give-and-take relation within us, striving with one another). You really think this is controversial?
The problem is that you, like many believers, don't see that other people really don't care all that much about your religion. Not in the sense that there's animosity towards the idea or the believer, but literally in the sense that it's just not a big deal. You believe that God is the creator of the universe and loves you deeply - so obviously there's a big emotional connection there for you. What you seem to be saying is that this fact automatically makes it a big emotional investment for someone else to reject this belief.
It's simply not the case. For a non-believer, there's not much to feel about the subject at all. Trying to put some sort of special emphasis on religious beliefs doesn't make sense from the view of a non-believer.
Sure, some people had bad childhood experiences with religion and reject them. But I think it's more common to find people who looked at the religion and found fewer and fewer reasons to believe. Or people who were never particularly religious and find no good reason to change. For them, there's about as much emotional component to the decision as there is in your outright rejection of Zoroastrianism.
In this sense, trying to separate whether a belief is reasonable or justified from why someone holds it doesn't make sense. If there's no underlying emotional need for the belief and the belief doesn't make sense, you've found your explanation for why a non-believer wouldn't adopt it.
I can understand why it's more interesting to a believer to look for emotional reasons for people not to agree with them. It makes it easy to side-step rational questions about why you'd believe in the first place. But in doing so, you're missing the point of why a large part of non-believers are the way they are.
The problem is that you, like many believers, don't see that other people really don't care all that much about your religion. Not in the sense that there's animosity towards the idea or the believer, but literally in the sense that it's just not a big deal. You believe that God is the creator of the universe and loves you deeply - so obviously there's a big emotional connection there for you. What you seem to be saying is that this fact automatically makes it a big emotional investment for someone else to reject this belief.
It's simply not the case. For a non-believer, there's not much to feel about the subject at all. Trying to put some sort of special emphasis on religious beliefs doesn't make sense from the view of a non-believer.
Sure, some people had bad childhood experiences with religion and reject them. But I think it's more common to find people who looked at the religion and found fewer and fewer reasons to believe. Or people who were never particularly religious and find no good reason to change. For them, there's about as much emotional component to the decision as there is in your outright rejection of Zoroastrianism.
In this sense, trying to separate whether a belief is reasonable or justified from why someone holds it doesn't make sense. If there's no underlying emotional need for the belief and the belief doesn't make sense, you've found your explanation for why a non-believer wouldn't adopt it.
I can understand why it's more interesting to a believer to look for emotional reasons for people not to agree with them. It makes it easy to side-step rational questions about why you'd believe in the first place. But in doing so, you're missing the point of why a large part of non-believers are the way they are.
I agree with almost everything you say here. I thought I mentioned something like this, but apparently I didn't. Basically, I think there are three attitudes (valuation) one can take toward the objects of religious belief: favorability, neutrality, negative valuation. I was primarily focusing on the negative, but it's undoubtedly the case that most of us are neutral with respect to most religious beliefs--Hindus might be neutral with respect to Judaism, Christians might be neutral with respect to Zoroastrianism.
The fundamental equation in any religion or belief system is faith in a god or higher power. My question is, who created god? We know that something can't exist from nothing, so where exactly did this "man in the sky" come from?
Despite being a very simple question, and one which I'm sure many of you have considered, I realize it's probably difficult for most believers to truly comprehend.
How did god come into existence?
I haven't read all the replies yet, but I will try whenever I can. Here's my reply to the original question.
Humans have been creating gods, and more recently in history, a single god, since the moment they appeared on the planet and began to think about their relationship with the rest of nature and about themselves. The things that they could not explain, such as floods, earthquakes, famine, etc., they attributed to the supernatural and they created names for them (different gods). There were many things to fear, but none as great as the personal fear of death and the thought of personally going into oblivion. In order to calm that fear, the concept of an afterworld, a world after death, was created. This was made possible by believing in gods, and more recently in a single god. This could only be made possible by belief in omnipotent gods, or a god.
The idea of a god (or gods) is one that psychologically appeals to humans because it makes us feel unique and more special than the rest of nature. It makes us feel that we can even transcend life and go to a place after death, in a non-physical form (called the soul by most religions), and live forever into eternity.
All this has been created to appeal to the human ego which has an underlying need to feel "special." It is this ego in all of us that keeps perpetuating the concept of God even as science continues to explain away those things which at one time were not understood by those before us. It feeds the ego to know that we can transcend death. That's my opinion on this.
Except that the tale of the Garden of Eden was not literal. It originated as a Sumerian folk tale to contrast mankind's evolving from nomadic hunter/gatherers, to that of agrarian societies just before the Primeval period. With the advent of agriculture meant increased food supplies; and with it, large increases of populations in concentrated areas. To maintain crops meant that you had to stay in one place. For mutual protection, this is when mankind started building villages, and eventually fortified cities. The tradition of Eden was a "paradise lost" tale meant to contrast the free-wandering life of hunter/gathers, with that of the immobile agrarian societies who were held "slave" to the land. Even the tale of Cain and Abel expands on this theme.
DD
Now I would agree on most of what you say in regards to Eden...But if Eden is perfect...As I know My God to be...then there is no need to build anything else...it is climatized by the workings of the plants.
Sow the right seeds, and harmonizing the entities as one force working together....Now this entails many precepts, many covenants, many principles...and Truth has to be the focal point or focrum, other wise it doesn't work...
And nothing God has given us (genesis 9:3) should be omitted or removed...but restored to its rightful place..and to do it sinlessly to correct the focrum....this rights the wrongs!
So Eden is the quest...and it is at hand...and it was, was not...and if we read into Global warming it is coming or will be or it won't be......because we have to restore the eco systems because human stupidity has polluted them with their bent direction down the profits for dollars road of destruction of those vital and necessary ecological systems which support us!...and more hospitals will not solve the problem!
Now without the word of God to say..."tend and keep the Garden" and Acts 3:21, and 10:15 to keep us in line with those ideals...we would not be able to formulate the truth...as is truth is always true..and it is eternally true...Jesus kept on saying I tell you the truth!...Truth is very important!
It is wisdom and knowledge coming to that focrum now showing signs of destruction (eden), due to certain things not being right as the controller or God head... that we need to take heed of....and solve for!...and or restore!
So I see Marijuana and other plants, as Givens!
I see Marijuana as a Sun Plant...it stores energy from the sun, and keeps it as heat...thus climatizing when grown in large enough amounts!
It feeds certain life, and it ties into the maridian of the soils, and connects to all the other plants...when it decomposes it turns to myceliums, and enriches the soils...and so we have MANA...? perhaps?
Now if I am right...and I usually am on things like this...The prohibition of any of God's Gifts is wrong!
And those who oppress others from doing service in the garden , and imprisoning them, or the user...is wrong!
Now...that being said...if God wants us to restore Eden, and multiply it out over the Earth, and eventually beyond Earth to expand the kingdom....I think it is a remarkable endevour we should embrace, and employ!
And it was said first hand...by God.
But as it is...this world is moving closer and closer to its own destruction under the idol, and a bunch of stupid individuals who cannot step down or let the people just live for free under those precepts laws and covenants...making more gardens before making more of self!
God shares...why can't we?
And to this day I question just how this world will end....might be an atomic epic!...I wonder who will write that down?
Hi KC. First off, would you agree with what I said in my last post? That there are three general attitudes we can have towards religious beliefs: favorability, neutrality, and negative valuation. Note: I may have been misleading by paying attention to hope, desire, fear, etc. The main point is really about valuation, and all these attitudes (hope, fear, desire) involve some sort of valuation of an object. And it's really the valuation that's pertinent here.
My next step would then be to suggest that what we believe is affected by the way we value (or don't value) the object of a particular belief. And you agree with what I'm saying, since you write, "some people had bad experiences with religion and reject them." (I assume the point of your comment is that someone with a bad experience can develop a negative outlook towards all religion) So where we differ, then, is in how prevalent the influence of valuation is in the formation of religious beliefs. You think it is "more common to find people who looked at the religion and found fewer and fewer reasons to believe." Or, you suggest, some people just don't have any "emotional component" (I would say valuation) with respect to religion. Now, I agree, but I think the numbers are greater. I don't have any data to back this up (and I don't think you have any data to back up your claim here either). But that's fine. We can do experiments later.
I think many atheists have their own theories on why theists believe the things they do. And it would seem a great deal of the explanations for theistic belief boil down to one of the following: (1) stupidity, (2) irrationality, (3) brainwashing from parents/community, (4) wishful thinking (Freud), (5) fearful and desperately wants a "crutch". There are others. Now, while I vehemently disagree with these "explanations," and find some of them offensive, I also understand that it is natural to try to explain how another person can so fundamentally disagree with you on a big issue. It's human nature to try to explain the "other side." Now, I want to point out that these explanations already begin with the assumption that the other view is incorrect, false. And my own suggestion about what at least partially influences the formation of religious belief has the same starting point: I assume the truth of my own general view: that God exists. And then I look for an explanation for why people don't believe in God (just as an atheist will look for reasons why people believe in God when he believes there isn't any God).
I think people don't believe in God, in general, because their experiences have left them with a neutral valuation, or because they think belief in God is bad in some way, i.e., that God is not worth believing in, and is rather silly, or dangerous, or poisonous, etc. I'm not saying that emotions have ruled a person in this latter instance. I'm not saying that such a person is necessarily blameworthy. But there is a sense in which such a person can be close-minded--when he/she is not aware of how the prior value judgment affects his/her belief.
I'm trying to be fair about this--and I think my explanation is more fair than many explanations I've heard from the atheist side (I listed some above). But maybe you disagree, and you still think I'm being insulting.
I've already written far too much. But I just want to respond to one thing you said:
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Originally Posted by KCfromNC
trying to separate whether a belief is reasonable or justified from why someone holds it doesn't make sense. If there's no underlying emotional need for the belief and the belief doesn't make sense, you've found your explanation for why a non-believer wouldn't adopt it.
First, I disagree with you that it doesn't make sense to distinguish between justification and why someone holds a belief. These may be related, but I'm not sure they are always related. And they really are different things. Justification has to do with whether or not a person has a right to believe something (that is, whether he has a right to claim it is true). But "why" a person holds a belief encompasses a wide range of causal influences--from being in the right place at the right time, to having particular cognitive capacities, to having requisite experiences, etc. These don't necessarily pertain to justification.
Second, you seem to be claiming here that, objectively speaking, religious beliefs don't make sense. But my point has been that a belief might not "make sense" to a person because of a prior value attitude they posses--even if a person's underlying value-attitude is neutral, this might prevent them from believing. So whether a particular religious claim "makes sense" depends in part on one's attitude toward it. This is how belief formation is influenced (I'm suggesting).
An example might be found in the world of art. There are controversial works of the 20th century that some, perhaps many people, would deny can even count as artwork. In response, it could be said that they lack the necessary aesthetic sense, the required sense of "taste" that would enable them to make the appropriate judgment. But, alas, because they lack the appropriate aesthetic sensibilities, they are not able to value the works for what they are--and they are not able to see that they are works of art. The judgment of the aesthetic value of the object is intimately tied to the judgment of whether the object is, or is not, even considered a work of art. This example might not be perfect, but I think it might capture what I'm saying in some way.
Hi KC. First off, would you agree with what I said in my last post? That there are three general attitudes we can have towards religious beliefs: favorability, neutrality, and negative valuation. Note: I may have been misleading by paying attention to hope, desire, fear, etc. The main point is really about valuation, and all these attitudes (hope, fear, desire) involve some sort of valuation of an object. And it's really the valuation that's pertinent here.
OK, this plus your previous post makes what you're saying more clear - I probably missed it the first time around. I agree in general, but I see the categories you give above as pretty large buckets with pretty diverse membership. That is, one can be neutral because religion doesn't have much of a presence in a person's culture, or be neutral because of a strict faith-based adherence to agnosticism (in the "can never possibly know in any way if god exists or not), or for many other reasons in between. Some involve hope, fear, or other deep emotions, some involve apathy, some involve reason, and so on. It's hard to see this as anything other than a huge continuum with many different moving parts.
But I do worry that you're missing cause and effect. If some people do value god poorly, it's entirely possible this is the conclusion and not the premise of their investigation.
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Or, you suggest, some people just don't have any "emotional component" (I would say valuation) with respect to religion. Now, I agree, but I think the numbers are greater. I don't have any data to back this up (and I don't think you have any data to back up your claim here either). But that's fine. We can do experiments later.
True, none of us have numbers. I was just looking at the growing number of non-believers in this predominately Christian country - a reasonable guess is that many of them came from relatively normal Christian backgrounds. A fair number of those were probably raised with a relatively favorable view of god and later ended up rejecting the belief.
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I think people don't believe in God, in general, because their experiences have left them with a neutral valuation, or because they think belief in God is bad in some way, i.e., that God is not worth believing in, and is rather silly, or dangerous, or poisonous, etc.
As I mentioned before, this doesn't fit with Christians who have deconverted. If the valuation of an object is that flexible and malleable over time, it doesn't seem to be as strong an a priori cause in the beliefs/non-beliefs of people as you're making it out to be.
Nor does it fit much of what's been written here by actual non-believers, but that could easily be (self?) selection bias.
Also, these "experiences" and "valuations" can be as simple as "this stuff doesn't make any sense". You seem to be caught up in there being an emotional component to this decision, but it can really be as simple as that - no hope, fear or desire other than a desire to actually understand the stuff you believe in.
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Second, you seem to be claiming here that, objectively speaking, religious beliefs don't make sense. But my point has been that a belief might not "make sense" to a person because of a prior value attitude they posses--even if a person's underlying value-attitude is neutral, this might prevent them from believing. So whether a particular religious claim "makes sense" depends in part on one's attitude toward it. This is how belief formation is influenced (I'm suggesting).
Again, the idea that religious beliefs don't make sense could be the end result of objective investigation of them. The prior value judgment would be that "I apply a consistent set of rules to figure out what I believe because that's worked well in the past - no need to apply a special case to something just because other people believe it".
This tactic of sidestepping the evidence and trying to figure out why people don't believe in something that you do is missing a large part of what's going on. If you or god could provide reasonable evidence that it exists, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place. There's no huge discussion of the philosophical underpinning of belief in the germ theory of disease - the evidence is pretty conclusive. Same with the ether - it's been conclusively disproved. It's only god where we have to break out this special set of rules unique to discussing the existence of this one particular being.
The fact that you need a special set of rules to figure out why people think that god doesn't exist compared to anything else is suspicious to me, almost like an attempt to change the subject away from the fact that there's no evidence for this belief in the first place.
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This example might not be perfect, but I think it might capture what I'm saying in some way.
This analogy doesn't work for me. You're attempting to relate something which everyone agrees is opinion with something that should be objective fact. Everyone agrees the objects exist but there's no consensus on whether they're judged as art or not. Existence of a being isn't something that's a subjective judgment call - we may not have enough evidence to know for sure, but something either exists or it doesn't. There's no way even in theory to produce enough evidence to conclusively prove that something is art - it's just opinion.
So comparing belief in existence to belief in art is apples and oranges. Unless you're saying that god is just a feeling or opinion, in which case I doubt many atheists would disagree. Orthodox Christians, on the other hand...
I wonder why there are conscious beings at all, wondering about god, the universe and all manner of things? If there were a big bang and subsequently creation of matter and physical laws, why do you suppose that self aware, conscious beings evolved? Why not inert matter? Just rocks...that is truly puzzling to me, just an ignorant agnostic..
KC, thanks for your thoughtful comments. We're probably coming close to the end of how much we can discuss this particular topic, but it's been interesting (of course, we could go on indefinitely...but we both have to live our lives, eh?). I think we agree on a good deal of stuff, which is something of a victory for both of us.
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Originally Posted by KCfromNC
Again, the idea that religious beliefs don't make sense could be the end result of objective investigation of them. The prior value judgment would be that "I apply a consistent set of rules to figure out what I believe because that's worked well in the past - no need to apply a special case to something just because other people believe it".
I'm not denying this.
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Originally Posted by KCfromNC
This tactic of sidestepping the evidence and trying to figure out why people don't believe in something that you do is missing a large part of what's going on.
I don't think I'm sidestepping or shirking my "epistemic responsibilities". I have just been focused on a different set of questions, coming from within the Christian worldview. And I think it's perfectly reasonable to provide answers from the Christian perspective.
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Originally Posted by KCfromNC
If you or god could provide reasonable evidence that it exists, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place. There's no huge discussion of the philosophical underpinning of belief in the germ theory of disease - the evidence is pretty conclusive. Same with the ether - it's been conclusively disproved. It's only god where we have to break out this special set of rules unique to discussing the existence of this one particular being.
But this is the heart of the disagreement. Who gets to say what counts as "reasonable evidence"? Does the atheist? The theist? I don't think there is any neutral territory here. There is no conclusive objective proof for the existence of God. But that only matters if there is any such thing as objective ground for deciding metaphysical truths. I could give (and I have given in the past) arguments for the rationality of belief in God. None of these arguments have conclusively shown that God exists (atheistic arguments are similarly inconclusive). However, I don't know of any metaphysically important view that comes with a conclusive argument--and yet, there can be a lot of compelling cases for things, even in the absence of such epistemic certainty. Some arguments I've considered for God's existence I have personally found compelling (and many, many other people also find convincing). But whether you, or anybody, find arguments and evidence to be compelling, convincing, is really about you--about your commitments, about what you are willing to take a look at, at what you allow yourself to consider, etc. etc (this is a general statement applicable to both theists and atheists). We all would like to think that what we find compelling perfectly tracks what is in fact objectively rational. But I seriously doubt that this is true for us when it comes to the big metaphysical worldview (and I seriously doubt whether we can find any objectively neutral ground). And this is where my theory of valuation fits. Why doesn't an atheist find arguments for God compelling? What we find "convincing" is a function of our psychological makeup.
Also, I think it's something of a mistake to compare beliefs in God to, say, beliefs in animals (living or imagined), or other objects we might encounter in the world. Beliefs about God are instead to be compared with other metaphysical theories--like naturalism, pantheism or Platonism. Theism has to do with the structure of the world itself, and involves "systematic" theories about all the facets of the world. This should be taken into consideration by anyone who merely wants to sit back and ask, "well, where's the "scientific" evidence for your god? Do you have any proof?" What sort of proof is there for naturalism or Platonism? We have to look at the competing comprehensive metaphysical theories, and we should judge them against one another. Which provides the most "compelling" picture of the world? For me, it's the theistic model.
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Originally Posted by KCfromNC
This analogy doesn't work for me. You're attempting to relate something which everyone agrees is opinion with something that should be objective fact. Everyone agrees the objects exist but there's no consensus on whether they're judged as art or not. Existence of a being isn't something that's a subjective judgment call - we may not have enough evidence to know for sure, but something either exists or it doesn't. There's no way even in theory to produce enough evidence to conclusively prove that something is art - it's just opinion.
Well, not everyone would agree with you that what counts as art is just opinion--lots of people care about having objective grounds for making aesthetic judgments.
In any case, the analogy is imperfect. But we could compare the alleged artwork to the world itself. As you say, everybody agrees the world exists (like the artwork), but not everyone agrees as to its value or what it is--is it a marvelously designed creation? Is it a randomly generated structure? Following my analogy, one could say that many atheists do not have the requisite "taste" or "sensibility" (value judgment) in order to see the world for what it is--a work of art.
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