Can one proof that god DOESN'T exist?

Lola, I was referring to Adam and Eve's CHOICE to make themselves apart from their experience as an "origin myth", not a fact about OUR actual lives. Zen buddhists have for centuries struggled to abolish their egos, their sense of separateness from their experience (i.e., "I" see "it" rather than just "there is this seeing". I and it are one, or as the Hindus say, "tat tvam asi"--thou art that). This original "sin" (not a crime but a stupid mistake) drove Adam and Eve (metaphorically speaking) from their natural or unified state of mind (their paradise lost) into a world of toil. Now we humans HAVE NO CHOICE, as you say, learning to see ourselves as separate selves is the result of everyone's maturational experience wherein we are trained (enculturated) to see, among other things, the world through our society's grammar ("I" subject and "see it" predicate). Why is this a universal process (and most anthropologists would agree it is, with variations across cultural systems)? I think the sense of ego is as critical for our specie's survival as language has been. BUT that is not to say it has not been without a severe spiritual cost. Mystics (including the zen buddhists), come to see first hand (not just theoretically as we are doing now) the delusional nature of Self as something apart from and surrounded by a universe, but they continue to act "as if" they were separate individuals. In no other way could they live among their fellow men.

Lola... I think your statements admirably clear-headed and cogent.

Piffka...I'm afraid your three proofs don't work for me.

On the first, fascination, I'm not sure what might be different between a fascination with the idea of 'god' and fascination with the idea of 'magic' or lepracauns for example. That an idea exists doesn't necessarily mean that its subject is real.

On the second...can't do a good job of swearing without bring god into the rude exclamation...this might be better understood as behavior related to categories of sacred/profane and taboo. Words for body waste, the organs of excretion/sexuality fit in here too, of course. Buddhist belief is quite without a notion of god, yet I'd expect they can swear as well as I.

On music...why we respond as we do is a very curious question. My guess is that it has correlations to trance states seen in chanting, but that is a small window into the question. But I don't think music is unique in producing such responses. Visual art can do it as well, as can drama. But so can quite a number of drugs, or practices such as meditation. Noting that we are each different as regards responses to these stimuli.

jlnobody and timber This is quite incorrect actually. There really are rather a lot of very bright folks, well trained in rigorous philosophical method, who remain theists. The early Christian world has quite a few of them, most notably (and detrimentally) Augustine. Even in the present, there are very many. Jesuit schools are very rigorous and turn them out in great quantity. The Engllish Anglican tradition has produced quite a few - I can recommend John Hick. The least fecund tradition has been American Evangelism which has always been marked by an anti-intellectualism that is not terribly comfortable with abstraction, but even here there are some (mainly, I think, out of the perceived necessity of battling Darwin). Chaps like Plantinga are presently working here in North America.
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/platinga.html

God's existence
Blatham, your first sentence challenges my position, but then everything else you say seems to support it. My real flaw here is that I seem to be labelling atheistic thinkers "philosophers" and theistic thinkers "theologians." I am referring to professional philosophers as opposed to church thinkers.I know there are overlaps. Rienhold Neibhur and Paul Tillich were professional theologians, but their thinking about God was such that virtually all churches--with the possible exception of Universalist Unitarians--reject their views, treating God virtually as an "X" or "?". And many theologians can, I am sure, discuss the "secular" philosophical issues of the day very competently. But it's when they talk about the existence of God that their incompetence is revealed.

blatham, I understand your references, and am able to follow, but not accept, your line of reasoning. As has been discussed on several threads in which you and I have interacted here and elsewhere, I have great familiarity with The Jebbies, as much of my formal education, even Post Secondary, was at their hand (and, not infrequently, in a corporal sense). I hold high regard for their intellectual dillegence and great respect for many of their thinkers, paricularly Chardin. Never the less, I see their defense of theism failing in that for their "proofs" of what is soley a matter of "Faith" to have validity there must be a deity. It is this predisposition to faith in deity, not faith in any particulat Deity, that flaws their argument in my view. I acknowledge Hick as an able apologist for Anglican position, but similarly flawed. The American Evangelicals I dismiss out of hand, perhaps unfairly, as adherents and proponents of a circular logic I find infuriating. Plantinga does not escape my aprobation. The Metaphysical by definition cannot be encompassed within any framework of logic; there simply is no applicable reference, the two are not only contraindicatory, but mutually exclusive.

An interestingr work, from the 'Forties, I believe, is Victor Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning. Not that it provides answers, but it piques interest in exploring the question from varying perspectives.

The hour grows late, I grow tired, and sense I am rambling. Suffice it to say, old freind, that I neither dismiss nor dispute your viewpoint on this matter. Yours is a reasoned, well supported, and honorably derived position. For all that I respect your position re the current issue, I cannot share it. While we each may have our opinions and positions, who is to say which, if indeed either, of us is wrong? It is the hunt, not the kill, which provides the keener thrill.



timber

Not to wear out the Navajo thing tonight, but did you know they usually switch to English for real good cussin'? They can't say 'God damn it!' or 'Go to Hell' in their own language. The words don't exist because the ideas don't exist. This has nothing to do with your thesis - I just wanted to toss that in somewhere.

roger

That's very interesting. I didn't know that. My grandparent, now and again, would switch to German when cussing. Likely this was in part to prevent our innocent little ears, but I think also because there are some German expressions which beat the English version hands down.

jllobody...no problem, I understood this might be simply a matter of definition, but just threw in my stuff to help clarify.

timber...in fact, our personal position here is close to identical. I've been a trouble making atheist since junior high and appreciate that arguing any proposition that contains an assumption which the arguer cannot allow negation of is bound to be circular. I didn't know you'd had a jesuit education, but it shows.

A lovely quote from Jefferson that I've just bumped into...

God's existence
Jefferson was, then (at least here) a Pragmatist. To him it made no substantial difference for the life of mankind whether there is or is not a God (or 20 of them).
What DOES matter for mankind is whether or not people are going to insist on the imperative of belief, whether they are willing to jail, burn, drown, or otherwise ostracize those who do not share their beliefs.

jl

There is possibly nothing you could argue which would find me in greater support.

And I should have realized you were but moving a poker about in the intellectual fire to stir the coals to a hotter glow. Forgive my misapprehension.



Mea Maxima Culpa



timber

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

I wonder what Jefferson meant by this quote?

Piffka

Though it's not noted historically, I think it likely that Jefferson, on completion of the aforementioned swearing, looked heavenward, adding..."And that includes You."

He was, I think, a professed Deist.

God
Hyperboly! It was possibly designed for the particular audience of the moment. He WAS, after all, a politician.

Re: God



And a Jeffersonian Democrat, at that.



timber

And he meant to say " white men"

"White Men Of Property", more like.



timber

What difference does it make whether god exists or not? I don't think for a moment that the crimes commited by man towards man or anything else would have been much different. c.i.

c.i., I agree with you on this point to some degree. It is true, however that certain pathological systems sustain and generate pathological mechanisms and an example is fundamentalist religion (of any type) which is dependent upon violence for sustenance. But there are other pathological systems that might have developed (in the absence of fundamentalism) to create the same violent criminal behavior. However it has historically been organized fanatical religion which has served this purpose in the past. However, look at Hitler and the Nazis. Theirs was a secular system, pathological by anyone's (but Hitler's followers) standards. Actually there are many examples of atheistic systems which require or required violence.