What Makes People NOT believe In God? (Atheists Come!)

snood wrote:

Setanta wrote:
Read the book, Boss, you'll be even more interested. Azimov wrote several "Robot" novels, and they are all thought-provoking.

Really? Asimov wrote about robots? Wow!! I must have been under a rock for fifty years not to know that, huh?

I just meant that seeing the movie and reading some of the comments here brought those things back to mind. I last read the book when I was a teenager.

My favorite are his short stories.

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I never thought of renting that movie, Snood, until you commented on it. I do like Will Smith, so I'll look for it today.

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Portal Star wrote:

You had me until "Eternal Life"

That's up there with concepts like "World Peace."

It just isn't happening, and if it does it will cause all manner of problems.

Others think we may be closer then I imply.

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Aubrey de Grey has no victory pronouncements to make as of yet, but he is vigorously pursuing an even more challenging project. Using the legacy that Watson and Crick bequeathed us, he proposes to tinker with the essential biochemical pathways that drive the aging process. De Grey contends that we know enough to intelligently map out a program of anti-aging intervention research such that sometime in the next 100 years, and quite possibly much sooner, the average human life span may be 5,000 years, a figure brought short of outright immortality by the small number of people who will die from non-age-related diseases and everybody else who, given the boggling amount of time available to them on the planet, will eventually do something unlucky or stupid like walk in front of a moving rocket car. In de Grey time, the 400-year span between Shakespeare's England and today would be but the blink of an eye.

source

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WOW! thats bloody incredible.

I think 5,000 years is an excessive amount of time to live though.

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Everybody has a God, they just won't admit it. Everybody has something they place as number 1 important in their lives. Whatever means the most to you is what you worship, whether or not you want to call it a God.

It would seem to me (A believer) that those who do not acknowledge a God of somekind are a little on the lazy side and perhaps have a problem with authority, or their own egos.

If there is nothing more "grand" powerful than us, that makes us pretty powerful. If there is nothing to answer to, then all is acceptable and we don't have to DO anything. To steal from a restaurant slogan "No Rules, Just Right".

I think in the end all people will use the expression "Oh My God" it will just be for different reasons. JMO Smile

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Duce, there are many of us who do not know if there is a Creator or, if there is, what part she plays in our brief lives here on this planet.

The harder life is one without a god to fall back on, for advice, morality, and explanation of "why we are here." We who think our minds are our only resource know that we must find morality within our own reason and where it leads us. This does not lead to "relativism," as you note. Reason and rationality provide standards for living as a member of a family, of a community, and as a member of the world order. These standards can be very demanding, but the demand comes from inside the person and is not imposed by an authority such as god.

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duce wrote:

Everybody has a God, they just won't admit it.

I think that falls under the heading of "self-serving."

In fact, if there is a category "amusingly self-serving"...that would be an even better place for it.

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Everybody has something they place as number 1 important in their lives. Whatever means the most to you is what you worship, whether or not you want to call it a God.

Ditto the remarks up above.

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It would seem to me (A believer) that those who do not acknowledge a God of somekind are a little on the lazy side and perhaps have a problem with authority, or their own egos.

It would seem to me (an agnostic) that those who want to guess that a god of somekind exists in the absence of any reasonably probative evidence pointing in that direction...are a great deal on the lazy side...and probably a mixture of superstitious and fearful.

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If there is nothing more "grand" powerful than us, that makes us pretty powerful.

The cosmos is more than "grand" and "powerful" enough to keep everyone humble. No need to allow superstition to inject a god.

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If there is nothing to answer to, then all is acceptable and we don't have to DO anything.

Well...there may not be anything to answer to...except self. I have enough pride in self to sustain a fairly decent ethic. I feel rather sorry for people who need ancient superstitious Hebrews to help them determine what is right and wrong.

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To steal from a restaurant slogan "No Rules, Just Right".

To assume that because their might not be a god...there are no rules...is plain stupid. You should be above that.

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I think in the end all people will use the expression "Oh My God" it will just be for different reasons. JMO

C'mon, Duce....you can do better than this!

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Quote:

Everybody has a God, they just won't admit it.

The flip-side:
Nobody believes in a god... those that think they do only have had one part of their mind to trick another part.

(this is not my opinion, only a talking point for a narrow-minded conversation)

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So, if there are certainly rules even if there is no god, what is the standard of measure?

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Different thinkers would have different standards, just as different religions do not agree on biblical interpretation, signs of God's pleasure or displeasure, and on what constitutes good and evil. Some religions stress faith; others, works.

Rationalists either start from the bottom and work up or from the top, down. If they start from the bottom up and reason through empirical evidence and science, they work up to pragmatic conclusions about what seems to work best in the universe, be that guarding the environment, taking care of poor and sick people, working for the good of one's own community, dealing honestly with others and setting a standard for them to follow, etc., until they have devised for themselves a set of principles (or even a first principle) that seem to be the best ones to live by for the good of the earth and of its peoples.

Or you can start from the top and begin with one principle from which you derive all others. One example of this might be Kant's categorical imperative: For Kant, there is only one imperative that commands us unconditionally and this is the Moral Law: "Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law." (More on this: http://photography.cicada.com/sp/kant.html) If you set this as the guiding principle of your life, all opinions and actions would have to flow from it and not contradict it.

If one's mind is not up to the task of creating a world view, there are many thinkers, past and present, who can be consulted for help in establishing one's guiding principles. I would include Jesus Christ among those thinkers. He was a great spiritual leader and thought outside the box. A thinker can consult Christ's thoughts and principles even if the thinker doesn't believe he was "the son of god."

Without the "authority" of god, or the fear of having an unhappy afterlife, one's principles are enforced from within. The reproach of one's conscience can be as terrifying as the thought of hellfire.

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Quote:

The reproach of one's conscience can be as terrifying as the thought of hellfire.

Or not.

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Snood, as I look at my post, I deplore the fact that I wrote it quickly. I was compelled by your post to reply when I should have resisted temptation and pondered longer before replying.

We ought to be teaching ethics in our schools, as early as elementary grades. The difference between right and wrong is not a religious question and can be parsed and taught to children. There are large issues that can be scaled down to where young people can understand them, and all of it can be done without the religious taint that causes lawsuits against the schools. A teacher can talk about the family, the community, the city: our obligations to each. These can be studied and taught without ever bringing up god. Those who believe in god make a leap of faith and go where some or many of us cannot go.

It is imperative that people understand that morality and ethics exist apart from religion.

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Kara,

I think you are operating under the presumption that we all think the same things are right and wrong. It would be as fallacious to let what your view of right and wrong is be taught in school as it would be for the gospel to be taught there.

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Actually, you'd be suprised how much overlap there is in morality. The rule "treat others as you would like to be treated" applies pretty well to most cultures. Sure, there are differences between who people deem equal (different sexes, religions, races, etc.) but in the USA we're not supposed to discriminate anyway.

One very good basis would be to start with the (secular) laws of the country.

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binnyboy,

I am not talking about absolutes here. Ethics can be discussed as early as kindergarten. The students are offered scenarios that make them think. Which alternative will you consider? A man slips on the road. He falls and is prone. Do you try to help him? Why should you help another person? Why should you not? Can you imagine the lively discussion coming from this? Do I protect myself or do I help a fallen stranger?

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hmmmm ok fair enough, but you'd have to be careful is the statement I'd like to add.

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People make the mistake of thinking that God determines how we should act, rather than how we should act determining God. God, in any conception we can have of Him, is inherently a human construction and must be thought of as so. "If God did not exist, man would have to invent him." If we acted as we desired others to act towards us, then of course we'd help the man in the street. Doing so defines what it means to be man (to be caring for the reason that we desire to live among caring men) and, following from that, that God, as a concept by which we might wish to live, is a God that cares.

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Thalion wrote:

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If we acted as we desired others to act towards us, then of course we'd help the man in the street.

Of course, my hiney. Forgive me, but that seems to me a ridiculously inaccurate generalization.
Men don't have any attitude toward their fellow man as a simple matter of natural "course". At the very least, it is debatable as to whether a majority of men give a **** about anyone's hide but their own, or give a moment's thought to "doing unto others...". In my opinion, it is man's self-centeredness that most marks his need for God.

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I had a whole post planned. Even made notes. But you have forced me to a lesser-thought-out post, Snood.

I read not too long ago about the odd phenom of Why people act against defense of the self. This story rose out of an incident on some bridge when a jumper began his dive. A bystander grabbed onto him and held on. Any sane survivalist would have let go after micro-seconds, but the Helper held on, even as he was being dragged over the bridge rails by the weight of the jumper. What explains this? Who knows. Do we all know instintively that, if a member of the community dies, we all die? Is this in our instincts, causing us to react spontaneously to one-of-us diving off a bridge?

I have other thoughts and will post later.

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Kara wrote:

It is imperative that people understand that morality and ethics exist apart from religion.

Well Said. It's a shame we have to start teaching ethics on a college level. (Usually At Law or Medical Schools)

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What Makes People NOT believe In God? (Atheists Come!)

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