Bogo:
You explanation might excuse the nature gods or the pegan gods but can you then say that all of the 'revealed' faiths from Greek pantheon to Islam are all not only made up, an willed as far as belief goes, but massively covered up as to thier structures and foundations.
This is not to say that the people like Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, Nanak and others were just fully blown in the head and amassed thousands of followers in thier life time because people are stupid.
It seems like the simplest answer might be instead of the millions of persons conspiracy outlined above for EVERY faith on the planet - that there might be a grain of truth to it all.
Also, you have reduced two different concepts that cannto be reduced so.
Faith cannot be reduced to religion. God cannot be reduced to followers of God.
Religion can be the cause of all the travesties above - but so can government as Hitler prooved. However, we should not reduce Germany to Hitler - like we should not reduce God to religion.
The original question was about God - not religion. What humans do with word from a divine - if there is such a thing - is not upon the responsibility of the god - as long as free will is a given.
I think so many people see humans in a religion and judge the word by the people in the church. You should not and cannot do this justifiably.
TF
thethinkfactory; Why do you ask Perception if his concept has any proof or is it just a belief? you have made numerous statements that can be characterized as opinions, or beliefs, as we all do.
Most of us have belief systems, nicely rationalized to suit our particular consciousness....except ofcourse, those beliefs that are based on scientific
empirical data that give them a credibility of some import. JLNobody,joefromchicago,BoGoWo,
hodgepodge and others seem to have little difficulty
in dislodging themselves from a theistic position but
I find a reluctance to do so on your part, choosing to blame "religion' born of human nature....(as does
BoGoWo).
Will you confirm if i am reading you right?
Al:
I simply asked him what his support was to see what lead him to his belief. I am not against opinion, but I think we are all against baseless, rash, and unfounded opinion... which I can nearly guarantee Perception is not doing.
TF
thethinkfactory:
You have not answered my question regarding your difficulty in dislodging
yourself from a theistic position.Did I read you correctly?
I am not sure I am reading your post right - in that the only people that are allowed to use emperical evidence are those that are willing to 'dislodge themselves from the theistic position'.
In what way must all believers jettison emperical data less, in your words, they be in some conflict?
Also, in what way must every belief system be 'justified'?
How are you so sure there is a consciousness - your emperical data cannot 'prove' such a thing - so I think, for you to stay consistant, you must confirm everything your 'know' with scientific and emperical data.
Here is the issue with scientific and emperical data. Scientific and emperical knowledge cannot be proven in the positive. The negative (i.e. proving something as not correct) can only be proven. Even when science sees something like the law of gravity as holding on this earth every time it is tested, it cannot 'certainly' predict future instantiations of this 'law'.
As far as the definitions go Religion is absolutely comfortable with a .0(repeating)1% chance of its effects occuring. With science unable to 'prove' this percent chance away - you cannot prove religion away with science.
Thus, even if you were to prove every word in the bible, bagavad gita, koran and other scriptures as pure manifestations of peoples minds that lived in the past - the believer really has no issue with believing in a God.
The problem is that the emperical model, as it is defined, uses repeatable, independantly verifiable, and viewable data. Take a miracle - or the answer to a prayer - it, by definition, occurs once (per prayer if answered) occurs only to the person who prayed, and mostly is not able to be sensed or measured.
So by the very definition of religion and science the believer seeks to use data outside scientific 'sensation' to build its belief on. 'Feeling at peace' and 'knowing I am not alone' is not exactly measurable and independantly verifiable.
However, if this were all for the believer, I could see a clear case against it - and hence for simply believing only in science.
But, since its insception, religion has sought to use the same types of sensation that science uses. Believers in the past give attesting of miracles (viewed by thousands) and testamony of the effects of god or gods that have spoken to them, given them things (like the 10 commandments, or the ability to win wars, or angelic warriors to fight along side of them), or changed them in some way (given sight to the blind, cured thier cancer). Thus if you look at it in the same way you look at science you see repeatable (every time Jesus said he was going to cure someone - he did) sensational (thousands upon thousands have witnessed god) and independantly verifiable - I think religion does play within sciences rules.
I am not sure why, then, I would need to dislodge myself from a theist position - unless I chose not to believe certain data (as being corrupted) and chose to believe other data (scientists in the last 500 years have gotten in right and I can trust thier results).
I feel then, that not only does the scientist have beliefs that are poorly founded (that the emperical model can get them to certainty - while failing to answer the epistemological questions as to how - despite the evidence - our senses do not always get us 'truth') but also that Athiests have beliefs as fallible as believers and have totake a leap of faith to disbelieve - because using thier own model they cannot prove a negative.
Thus, I am not sure about the other difficulty dislodging thier empericist 'belief'.
Also, unless you can prove that mans actions are somehow deterministically guided as the actions of thier god, I see no contradiction as to seeing a perfect God whose creations do not act perfectly. Granted, to hold this belief I must hold that free will is somehow 'better' than 'good' but I see no problem with seeing how free good actions can outweigh determined good actions or free bad actions.
If I 'choose' somehow to see actions as the result of humans religion, I do so no more so than you who 'choose' to see the actions of other humans as so bad that there could not possible be a god that could have created them.
Personally, I see no natural evil - only inconvienience (I know... a soft word for natural disasters) described as 'evil'. Interestingly enough, this is where, Bogo, Joe, and JLNobody, fall in the same 'belief'.
TF
Unless, ofcourse, what you meant is that I need to get rid of the concept of god to contemplate your original question.
Then, if I assume that God does not exist - I think we would simply create him. I don't think it would be as much survival mechanism but more an epistemic mechanism - to make ourselves feel better about all the data that we did not know.
Now perhaps, if this, in turn made us less stressed about our existence, then it could be a survival mechanism. But then we would have made a God that is less stressful too - and look at the Catholics - they need a reinvention of thier God - he stresses ME out!
So, yes, I think if God did not exists - we would invent him - but I think if it was about survival we would do so in a way that benifited us most. But maybe this is what you mean... and perhaps I am getting where you were going here. (finally
)
The Catholics, then 'invented' a God whereby they could justify the destruction of other peoples and the wealth of thier nation. Perhaps, then, Contantine, chose a religion, that he invented, to get Rome to unify.
But I don't see this, as really what happened - Constantine - had many other religions to choose from that would allow for a greater submission to his rule - namely the Roman Gods who, through thier ripping off of greek Gods taught submission to power and might makes right.
TF
ttf; i had to reread my post to be sure it was the one you referred to; let me enlarge on my 'experience', in line somewhat with alikimr's thoughts:
revelation is not confined only to religious experience.
one one discards the spectre of a deity, it is remarkable how everything falls into place.
while i agree that there is no absolute proof that there are no gods, of any kind (producing evidence for a negative is rather a meaningless exercise; the evidence has to be produced by those who invent the questionable concept), looking at the universe from the point of view that no such supernatural forces exist, the whole concept just fits comfortably in as obvious.
everywhere i look, and every theory i contemplate, things start to make sense; however, at the same time one comes up against the realization that without such ephemeral guidance from above, it is actually up to us to do what is right, and fashion a fair and equitable world for all.
BoGo: I was responding mostly to Al's question - but I had replied to to you as well - and if your thoughts somewhat mirror Al's then I guess that fits in there too.
However, now I am confused - What or who has been revealed to you if there is no creator or purpose?
Unless you allow for a sort of Daoist logos to the universe... but I am fairly sure you are stating there is no diety or anything resembling diety - there is merely existance and what we make of it.
There is nothing to be revealed to you - ex nihilo nihil fit.
I am not sure of the many things that result from your line of reasoning:
1) What falls into place? Lack of diety seems obvious because once you stop looking for him you see a lack of his effects? What do you mean that it is obvious? What has become clear?
2) Why would we want to fashion a fair and equitable world for all - why not get as much as we can - and scew the rest?
I am not sure there is a foundation for any ethics over any other when there is a lack of diety or divine. If you are right, then relativism (at least ethically) IS the correct answer.
With all of this said - I think Kierkegarrd would say that unless you submit yourself to the faith of a diety you simply will not see its spiritual effects. All of the Abrahmic religions (perhaps Islam is the strongest) are a submissive thing. This is the difference between subjectivity and objectivity for him - that objectively you simply cannot find God - but subjectively you can.
I agree with Hume that the watch tells you nothing of its maker - other than there was one. I am fine with that - for the rest thier is reacon (to the best that works) and faith.
TF
P.S. Bogo and the rest - I absolutly love your rational responces and educated replies. It is refreshing and reassuring to see respect for my replies and I know that I respect yours.
@hodgepodge,
So to sum up what you said: in order to live a fear-free life I will delude myself. I think to believe in an after-life is simply an easy way out, a simply way to avoid facing a tough truth.
"People gain hope, happiness, and confidence from the belief of God (once again, in most cases), which is something I believe outweighs the negatives of the false belief."- at this point, truth is irrelevant and "hope" "happiness" and "confidence" is seen as more important; also you say you would rather live your one life believing in an after-life, which would make life happy for you, but how is infinite life anymore meaningful than infinite non-life? Philosophy, science etc is concerned with the truth, so I do not really know why people raise such "truthless" points.
I do agree that belief in God is a survival mechanism, a sort of tool as it were, it disperses all fear and worry, life is essentially "perfect" if you believe in God.
The mystery is in the fact that a concept of a divine being or beings or higher power develops in all civilizations no matter how primitive or how separated they are from all other civilizations. I have not researched it, but I believe there are no cases of archeological/anthropological records of ancient civilizations that have not included at least some semblance or evidence of some sort of religious belief.
The only logical conclusion to draw from that is that curiosity or belief in some manner of deity is ingrained into the human dna. . . . or . . . .there is some other force present in the universe that triggers this phenomenon. I doubt that a desire for survival factors into all of it.
@Foxfyre,
I would agree that it is engrained in the human DNA, and so would Jung.
Quote:Archetypes Defined By Carl Jung
The Archetypal Patterns: The Nature of the Archetypes
Dreams and myths are constellations of archetypal images. They are not free compositions by an artist who plans them for artistic or informational effects. Dreams and myths happen to human beings. The archetype speaks through us. It is a presence and a possibility of "significance." The ancients called them "gods" and "goddesses."
What then is an archetype? Jung discovered that humans have a "preconscious psychic disposition that enables a (man) to react in a human manner." These potentials for creation are actualized when they enter consciousness as images. There is a very important distinction between the "unconscious, pre- existent disposition" and the "archetypal image." The archetype may emerge into consciousness in myriads of variations. To put it another way, there are a very few basic archetypes or patterns which exist at the unconscious level, but there are an infinite variety of specific images which point back to these few patterns. Since these potentials for significance are not under conscious control, we may tend to fear them and deny their existence through repression. This has been a marked tendency in Modern Man, the man created by the French Revolution, the man who seeks to lead a life that is totally rational and under conscious control.
Where do the archetypes come from? In his earlier work, Jung tried to link the archetypes to heredity and regarded them as instinctual. We are born with these patterns which structure our imagination and make it distinctly human.
Archetypes are thus very closely linked to our bodies. In his later work, Jung was convinced that the archetypes are psychoid, that is, "they shape matter (nature) as well as mind (psyche)" (Houston Smith, Forgotten Truth, 40). In other words, archetypes are elemental forces which play a vital role in the creation of the world and of the human mind itself. The ancients called them elemental spirits How do archetypes operate? Jung found the archetypal patterns and images in every culture and in every time period of human history. They behaved according to the same laws in all cases. He postulated the Universal Unconscious to account for this fact. We humans do not have separate, personal unconscious minds. We share a single Universal Unconscious. Mind is rooted in the Unconscious just as a tree is rooted in the ground. Imagine the Universal Unconscious as a cosmic computer. Our minds are subdirectories of the root directory. If we look in our personal "work areas," we find much material that is unique to our historical experience--could only have happened to us--but it is shaped according to universal patterns. If we humans have the courage to seek the source to which our "account" belongs, we begin to discover ever more impersonal and universal patterns. The directories of the cosmic computer to which we can gain access are filled with the myths of the human species.
Modern man fancies that he has escaped the myths through his conscious repudiation of revealed religion in favor of a purely rational natural religion (read: Natural Science). But consider his theories of human origin. In the beginning, there was a Big Bang, a cosmic explosion. This is an image from which reason may begin to work, but it is not itself a rational statement. It is a mythical construct. Consider the theory of biological evolution. Man's ancestors emerge from the seas, and they in turn emerged from a cosmic soup of DNA. The majority of creation myths also begin with the same image of man emerging from primordial oceans. See Genesis 1 or the Babylonian creation epic. Consider the Modern tendency to call ourselves persons from the Latin persona. The term derives from the "mask" of Dionysus. Moderns are the wearers of masks! The reality is concealed in the darkness of mystery. This too is a mythical construct.
http://www.iloveulove.com/psychology/jung/jungarchetypes.htm
But if you want to know why I think people believe in gods and religions it is because such belief satisfies the questions that Joseph Campbell spoke of concerning myth.
Quote:“The first function of a mythology is to reconcile waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of this universe as it is:
The second being to render an interpretive total image of the same, as known to contemporary consciousness. Shakespeare’s definition of the function of his art, “ to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature,” is thus equally a definition of mythology. It is the revelation to waking consciousness of the powers of its own sustaining source.
A third function is the enforcement of a moral order: the shaping of the individual to the requirements of his/her geographically and historically conditioned social group.
The fourth, and most vital function is to foster the centering and unfolding of the individual in integrity, in accord with d) him/herself (the microcosm), c) his/her culture (the mesocosm), b) the universe (the macrocosm), and a) that awesome ultimate mystery which is both beyond and within ourselves and all things.”
And I would take Kurt Vonnegut’s advice, too
Quote:Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.
@kuvasz,
Perhaps, but I think Jung was no Atheist. And I think he would not have discounted a divine origin of whatever spark drives us to seek a god or gods. He certainly did believe that some form of spirituality was ingrained in the human dna.
