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Source: (consider it) Thread: Purgatory: Atheism on Purpose
Marvin the Martian

Interplanetary
# 4360

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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I was actually thinking of the sheer liberation of not having to worry about whether maybe eating shellfish or pork is hideously sinful, or whether my support for GLBT rights is going to get me damned, or whether it really ultimately matters if I have that extra pack of crisps/pint of beer/lie in on Sunday or not.

Or the things the various religions say about taking care of the poor.
No, this one really is about the fear of Hell. It's about the overwhelming, suffocating, you're-never-going-to-be-good-enough-which-means-you're-going-to-burn certainty that there's a God out there, that He demands a lot from us, and that I'm going to fail. It's about me knowing that I'm a selfish, loveless cunt who can't change how his brain works any more than a leopard can change his spots, and therefore no matter how many good works or noble causes I follow, and no matter how many of God's little arbitrary laws I obey (assuming I follow the right God), I'll never get in because even if I do the right things I'm doing them for the wrong reasons.

It's about me preferring the idea that life has absolutely no meaning or purpose to that nightmare. But feel free to characterise it as me just not wanting to feel vaguely bad about screwing over those worse off than me if it makes you feel better.

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Hail Gallaxhar

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anteater

Ship's pest-controller
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Yorick:

I don't see why you cannot admit that the innate desire of homo sap for communion with the divine is an argument in favour of the idea that the divine exists. After all, we would seek to understand physical features of hom sap from actual conditions which gave rise to them.

In a thought experiment, if you found a certain animal preferred a type of food that is not naturally found in your environment, you may reasonably conclude that the animal originated in an area where this food was available.

I'm not saying this is conclusive, but to me it is indicative. Plus I think it is just silly to equate belief in God with a desire to unbridled sex. I do not hear you recommending aSexualality as the correct response to sexual crimes, nor will you hear me recommending unbridled religion. Nobody imagines that religion is not subject to abuse, nor that one of the advantages of rationalism is that it debunks religious and other hucksters.

But to simple rule mans' religious nature out of any questions about how we developed and can best live today is, IMHO, just too narrow.

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Schnuffle schnuffle.

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Yorick

Infinite Jester
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quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Some of us just haven't got the turn of mind to be impressed by very big numbers. Even less so by very small ones.

But that’s probably because these numbers defy comprehension. The Big Bang is so mindblowing not because of whatever we might imagine caused it, but because of what we know happened instantly after it. In the first 10^-30 seconds (that’s one million, million, million, million, millionth of a second), it expanded from being the size of a golf ball to being at least a hundred billion light-years across (or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times bigger), and maybe infinite size. If this inflation doesn’t impress you it’s because you simply cannot imagine it (even though you can easily enough imagine god magicking it).

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این نیز بگذرد

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Freddy
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# 365

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quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I don't see why you cannot admit that the innate desire of homo sap for communion with the divine is an argument in favour of the idea that the divine exists.

I wouldn't expect Yorick to admit that for a second, but to me it is interesting that you consider this to be a valid argument.

One of the tenets of my denomination is almost exactly what you have stated:
quote:
There is a universal influx from God into the souls of men of the truth that there is a God, and that He is one. (Swedenborg, True Christian Religion 8)
In other words people are inclined everywhere to favor this idea. It doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of people who are ignorant of the idea of God, or who reject it. But these will never be the majority.

This kind of evidence would never impress Yorick, because, as others have said, it can be seen as amounting to no more than wishful thinking.

But it impresses me, because I think that it is the truth. People do believe in God - the huge majority of the world's population. It only makes sense that the origin of this universal human tendency would be God Himself.

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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg

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Jessie Phillips
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Apologies for not having fully digested this thread yet, but a few rambling thoughts so far (scroll past if it's too much):

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
On the current Purg thread on the problem of evil, a tangent arose in which the proposition was made that, without (belief in) God, there could be no great purpose and meaning for life.

In this very honest post, sanityman stated that, although an atheistic worldview might be more sensible and logically satisfying (particularly in respect of the problem of innocent suffering), abandoning belief in God would mean giving up on the idea of ‘creation having anything more to offer than meets the eye’, and also giving up on hope.

I used to suspect that too - but I suspect that the question of whether or not hope exists without God depends on how you define "God".

I personally do not believe that it's necessary to believe in God to be able to see a purpose in life - however, I do think that it is necessary to believe in some sort of afterlife.

It seems to me that many Christians - and many atheists, for that matter - assume that belief in God and belief in the afterlife are an inseparable package; you cannot believe in the afterlife unless you also believe in God, and - to a lesser extent - you cannot believe in God unless you also believe in the afterlife. But in my opinion, this all depends on how "God", and "afterlife", and "belief in afterlife" are defined.

I personally wouldn't set the bar for belief in afterlife that high. You don't necessarily have to agree with everything that your particular religion may have said about heaven, hell, purgatory, saints, martyrs, angels, resurrection, the tribulation, the messianic return, the final judgement and the New Jerusalem, in order to qualify as having a "belief in afterlife".

As long as you think there's a point in wondering what your eulogy might say - or that there's a point in wondering who will turn up to your funeral - or that there's a point in not trashing war memorials, or graves, or archaeological artefacts - then that's a sign that you believe in some sort of afterlife, even though you might not have realised it. To put it another way, I don't see the need to make a distinction between "belief in the afterlife" and "caring about the future". Anyone who has any sort of care about the future at all has got some sort of afterlife belief, in my opinion.

I acknowledge that it's great fun to engage in polemics with people who hold some really weird views about the afterlife and the apocalypse. I like taking pot-shots at Harold Camping over his prophecy for May 21st just as much as the next guy. But just because you don't agree with someone else's crystal ball gazing about what will or won't happen in the future, does not mean that you don't don't believe in the afterlife.

So I think that to try to define the afterlife in terms of God is to get it the wrong way round. It makes a lot more sense to define God in terms of the afterlife. Most mythical narratives and religious dogma about the afterlife can be thought of as metaphors and allegories of people's more generalised hopes and fears about the future.

But does recognising this make you a Christian? Or does it make you an atheist? Does it mean that you can no longer rightfully describe yourself as either an atheist or a Christian? Why do we care about these labels anyway?

quote:
Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:
The big problem I have with the argument about purpose, including the examples cited in the OP, is that it seems to boil down to saying that there must be a purpose to the universe/creation etc not because there is any evidence of it, but because we think there ought to be a purpose as we would feel diminished without it. It's expecting the universe to subscribe to our wants.

Can't argue with that. But then again, where did the idea of "purpose" actually come from in the first place? To say that there isn't any hope for the future begs the question, why do any of us eat? Why do any of us reproduce? Surely it can't just be because it "feels good"? Indeed, what is the point of feeling good?

How important is it that "purpose", however we define it, is measured objectively anyway? Is it really the case that life cannot be thought to have a purpose unless there's an eternal God who deems that it has a purpose? Supposing there isn't an eternal God; does that mean that the ideas that mortal men have about what their purpose might be are of no consequence?

Sure, not everyone will agree on the purpose of the existence of humanity - but as long as at least some people think life has a purpose, then isn't that good enough? Why does it make any difference whether those people try to externalise those beliefs about sense of purpose onto an imagined immortal deity or not?

As far as I'm concerned, life has got a purpose. The fact that God might not exist, and the fact that God might not agree with me about what the purpose of life is if he does exist, really doesn't bother me. However, what does bother me is the thought that other people might not agree with me about what I think the purpose of life is. But it makes very little difference whether those people who disagree with me ascribe their own beliefs about the purpose of life onto an imagined God or not. The only difference that it does make is that those who do ascribe their beliefs to God tend to be a bit more arrogant and dogmatic than those who don't. But there are exceptions to that rule - and, indeed, perhaps I'm being a bit dogmatic about my own beliefs too. On the one hand, we need to recognise our own dogmatism if we are to have constructive dialogue with the people around us - but on the other hand, a dogmatic person is not necessarily wrong.

quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
As I said, I agree that any individual, whether atheist or religious, can have a satisfying life full of hope and purpose. Goals such as justice, world peace, or success in any number of senses, do impart purpose and meaning to life and do not depend on anything supernatural.

My meaning, however, is that if you step back from individual circumstance and ask what the point of life is, or ask why this matters a thousand years from now, the answers available to an atheist are, in my opinion, less satisfying and adequate than for a believer.

I'm inclined to agree, but I can't see how it's possible to measure that sort of thing objectively. For example, is a scientist who also happens to be an atheist likely to believe that the world is a better place as a result of Aristotelian logic? I suspect that the answer to that question is yes - but we're talking about a development that occurred some 2,400 years ago here. If a development that took place 2,400 years ago benefits us now, then it's not unreasonable to think that contemporary developments might have benefits for future generations 2,400 years down the line from now.

And why not? Who exactly are the heroes that scientists try to ape anyway? Just because an atheist scientist says he doesn't believe in God, does not mean that he does not venerate Einstein.

quote:
Originally posted by Squibs:
At a purely reductionist level, we are products of amoral and purposeless universe. All of us might act like there is purpose to life, but surely any purpose an atheist sees in life is illusory. How can it not be a figment of the imagination?

While I wouldn't dream of trying to divest somebody of the noble belief that things like justice and freedom are good and necessary, I don't see how this is grounded on anything other than the shifting sands of relativism.

I completely agree. However, I don't see how religious belief and dogma is any different.

quote:
Originally posted by kankucho:

Have people of faith managed to pin down a definition of God yet which makes that statement in any way cognitively meaningful?

I think some of them probably have. But a lot of what passes for religious apologetics is little more than elitist obscurantism. It's a way of saying "I'm a good Christian, you're a bad heathen" that rebuts any objections it faces by saying "Ah, but if you were a good Christian, you would understand these things."

Having said that, whilst I'm inclined to see evangelical Biblical elitism as my nemesis, on the other hand, I must admit that I think it's paid me enormous dividends in getting my brain cells working again, which I hope will put me in good stead in the knowledge-based economy. Not because I think I'm going to make lots of money out of theology books - but because I think it's given me insights into the cognitive processes that help with any kind of learning and planning.

quote:
Originally posted by TubaMirum:
But in any case, surely the central idea in Judeo-Christian religion at least, and its whole raison d'être, is human alienation from God? It's about deeply flawed human nature, and how to live under those conditions and in a fallen world? This, and not "how the universe was created," is what Genesis is all about. And this is a serious psychological and existential problem that has been around for a long, long time. Philosophers, too, and not only religionists, have addressed this problem as if it were as centrally important to people as it actually is. And I'm always a bit surprised to hear that some people don't seem affected by it!

Very good point. Indeed, in my opinion, you don't necessarily need to nail down the attributes of God in order to recognise the theme of alienation.

But I don't think this is the only thing that Hebrew tradition and Christianity are about - and I also don't think that the theme is completely peculiar to Hebrew and Christian tradition either. The archetypes that Joseph Campbell has spotted still mostly have some validity, in my opinion.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
It is certainly possible that existence has no purpose. I would find that disappointing.

I would find it liberating. Just think - no consequences. No penalties for getting things wrong, whether you get them wrong through genuine error, believing the wrong things or imbalances in your brain chemistry that simply don't allow you to get them right. It means that no matter how badly you screw up, ultimately it doesn't matter! Take risks! Have fun! If there's no purpose to life then there's nobody and nothing to tell you you shouldn't, or punish you if you do!

Sure, no purpose to life means there's no reason to do anything. But it also means there's no reason not to do anything! And if there's nothing but oblivion beyond the veil of death then that means there's no Heaven - but it also means there's no Hell! Somehow, I find it hard to think of that as a bad thing!

Very good point. But the idea that there are no consequences is demonstrably not true. If you have a disagreement with your brother, and you get into a fight, and you kill him, it's quite likely that you're going to grieve the death a little bit later.

It could be argued that the question of whether we kill our brother or not is a rather trivial matter in the bigger scheme of things. But it's still big enough for most of us to care about it. So, if we care about something as small as that, how is it possible for us not to care about bigger things?

A world in which there are really no consequences would be a world in which it doesn't matter - either to you, or to anyone else - whether you kill your brother or not. It would be a world in which no-one ever dies. The fact that people do die is what makes things matter - which is kinda ironic, because some might say that it's the fact that we're doomed to die which means that nothing ultimately matters at all. Death doesn't just defeat purpose; it creates it too.

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Yorick

Infinite Jester
# 12169

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quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
People do believe in God - the huge majority of the world's population. It only makes sense that the origin of this universal human tendency would be God Himself.

No, Freddy, that absolutely does not necessarily follow. There are other explanations for the wide prevalence of religion (and I’m not just talking about wishful thinking, either). It is widely supposed that belief in God conferred an evolutionary advantage to mankind, and that religious faith developed as a by-product of human sociability. This is hot stuff in the cognitive sciences, and is being studied in all kinds of fields like neuroscience, human evolutionary biology, and linguistics and computer sciences. Evidence is being amassed, and you may very soon end up having your assumption refuted.

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این نیز بگذرد

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Moran
Apprentice
# 14195

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quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
By this non-militancy and because of my own private uncertainties, I am a poor advocate of my own beliefs, so I apologise for my apologetics.

No worries but 'I am apologetic for my apologetics' would have been a nice turn of phrase.

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We can always hope!

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Pre-cambrian
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# 2055

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quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I don't see why you cannot admit that the innate desire of homo sap for communion with the divine is an argument in favour of the idea that the divine exists.

I wouldn't expect Yorick to admit that for a second, but to me it is interesting that you consider this to be a valid argument.

One of the tenets of my denomination is almost exactly what you have stated:
quote:
There is a universal influx from God into the souls of men of the truth that there is a God, and that He is one. (Swedenborg, True Christian Religion 8)
In other words people are inclined everywhere to favor this idea. It doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of people who are ignorant of the idea of God, or who reject it. But these will never be the majority.

This kind of evidence would never impress Yorick, because, as others have said, it can be seen as amounting to no more than wishful thinking.

But it impresses me, because I think that it is the truth. People do believe in God - the huge majority of the world's population. It only makes sense that the origin of this universal human tendency would be God Himself.

I don't know about Yorick, but I won't admit what anteater would want me to admit because I don't accept her basic premise. I have no desire for communion with the divine so I cannot see it as being innate to homo sapiens. Indeed on anteater's logic my lack of such a desire is an argument against the idea that the divine exists.

You seem to claim that I do in fact have that innate desire but are somehow ignorant of it or rejecting it. That of course is the same dismissal of the other point of view as self-delusion which theists find so insulting when it issues from the mouth of Dawkins.

You say the argument impresses you because you believe it is the truth. But how much of that is because it is what you believe and helps to confirm you in what you believe?

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"We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."

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Yorick

Infinite Jester
# 12169

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quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I don't see why you cannot admit that the innate desire of homo sap for communion with the divine is an argument in favour of the idea that the divine exists.

I do admit it. God might exist, and this might explain why people believe in Him. However, despite this, the fact that we all feel this desire for God to exist very much more strongly persuades me against his existence. Very much more strongly, like about a gazillion to one in ratio.

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Johnny S
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# 12581

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quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
The desire/need for higher purpose (and god) is innate. I don’t think it’s subhuman to suppress it; rather, it is a sign of the capacity of our intelligence that we can see and understand it, and even ‘rise above’ it and control it. Although I’d quite like to fuck most human females of fertile age, I elect not to. I control the impulse to murder my neighbour in his sleep and steal his wine cellar. In the same way, I appreciate my natural desire to believe in purpose/god for exactly what it is, and reconcile it with my experience that he/she/it does not exist.

It looks like the discussion has moved on. So - a little bit of what Anteater said.

However, all I would add is a great quote from Clive himself (Abolition of Man):

quote:
“You cannot go on explaining away forever, or you will find that you have explained your explanation itself away. You cannot go on seeing through things forever, because the whole point is that you can see something else through it, it is good that you can see through a window because the garden beyond is opaque. But if you see through everything then everything is transparent and a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. So to see through things is the same as not to see at all.”
Sooner or later we are going to catch on to the truth of those words.

Yorick - explaining how things work is not the same as explaining them - you do get that don't you?

[ 25. February 2011, 11:40: Message edited by: Johnny S ]

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Yorick

Infinite Jester
# 12169

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But that is precisely what you’re trying to do by explaining the purpose of life as being God-created. I say it is objectively purposeless because there’s no god, and you say it’s objectively purposeful because there is God. The difference is not whether we explain how thing work, but that your threshold for satisfaction in understanding how things work is very much lower than mine. Yours goes something like, ‘because God made it that way’.

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kankucho
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# 14318

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quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
People do believe in God - the huge majority of the world's population. It only makes sense that the origin of this universal human tendency would be God Himself.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I don't see why you cannot admit that the innate desire of homo sap for communion with the divine is an argument in favour of the idea that the divine exists.

This is a most interesting turn in the discussion. Would anyone else like to chip in their conviction that God has been willed into existence by some sort of democratic agreement on the part of homo sapiens?

Are we talking about God here, or Tinkerbell? Could we collectively will Him out of existence if we disbelieve hard enough?

Was the Earth actually flat right up to the moment we discovered it was spherical?

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"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself" – Dr. Carl Sagan
Kankucho Bird Blues

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Adeodatus
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quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Some of us just haven't got the turn of mind to be impressed by very big numbers. Even less so by very small ones.

But that’s probably because these numbers defy comprehension. The Big Bang is so mindblowing not because of whatever we might imagine caused it, but because of what we know happened instantly after it. In the first 10^-30 seconds (that’s one million, million, million, million, millionth of a second), it expanded from being the size of a golf ball to being at least a hundred billion light-years across (or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times bigger), and maybe infinite size. If this inflation doesn’t impress you it’s because you simply cannot imagine it (even though you can easily enough imagine god magicking it).
I could get really bored saying this, but no. Yorick, I was a scientist. I lived numbers for nine years, student and researcher. They're only numbers. I haven't got the little twitchy thing in my head that gets excited at mathematical inevitability.

(Do you "get" Wagner? If you don't, it wouldn't be much worth my while trying to make you get him, would it? If you do, I'm sure you're familiar with the inability to make people get him. Well, that's me with all the cutesy maths stuff.)

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"What is broken, repair with gold."

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Ricardus
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quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
No, Freddy, that absolutely does not necessarily follow. There are other explanations for the wide prevalence of religion (and I’m not just talking about wishful thinking, either). It is widely supposed that belief in God conferred an evolutionary advantage to mankind, and that religious faith developed as a by-product of human sociability. This is hot stuff in the cognitive sciences, and is being studied in all kinds of fields like neuroscience, human evolutionary biology, and linguistics and computer sciences. Evidence is being amassed, and you may very soon end up having your assumption refuted.

The difficulty with this argument is that science is based on the presumption that common human experience is the means to finding truth.

Science proceeds by experiments - that is, a series of human experiences. This presupposes that experience tells us something about the world - which is an unprovable hypothesis, but a useful one.

If we're now going to say that common human experience doesn't prove or even suggest anything because human experience can be deluded, then where does that leave the empirical sciences?

I'm not trying to be clever here. I've read Dawkins on religion and memes, and though I think his arguments are valid as far as they go, I honestly don't see why they can't be applied to the scientific method as well.

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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)

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Yorick

Infinite Jester
# 12169

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I don’t follow, Ricardus. Aren’t you talking about the difference between objectivity and subjectivity?

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Yorick

Infinite Jester
# 12169

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quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
no. Yorick, I was a scientist. I lived numbers for nine years, student and researcher. They're only numbers.

Well, of course. But we’re not talking about the numbers in themselves here- in Big Bang terms they’re simply descriptors, and entirely symbolic ones at that. The thing that’s amazing isn’t the smallness and bigness of the numbers, but what they represent. It’s the smallness of the amount of time it took for the bigness of the expansion of the universe that’s impressive. You are impressed by that, right?

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Adeodatus
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# 4992

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quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
no. Yorick, I was a scientist. I lived numbers for nine years, student and researcher. They're only numbers.

Well, of course. But we’re not talking about the numbers in themselves here- in Big Bang terms they’re simply descriptors, and entirely symbolic ones at that. The thing that’s amazing isn’t the smallness and bigness of the numbers, but what they represent. It’s the smallness of the amount of time it took for the bigness of the expansion of the universe that’s impressive. You are impressed by that, right?
No. Like I said, what's impressive about the inevitable? You might as well ask me to be impressed that this morning - shock! - my shoes were the same colour as they were last night.

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"What is broken, repair with gold."

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Yorick

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# 12169

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Wow. I'm honestly surprised.

It must be a very dull world for you.

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Ricardus
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quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
I don’t follow, Ricardus. Aren’t you talking about the difference between objectivity and subjectivity?

What I mean is, in the empirical sciences, AFAICS, experience is King, in that the only thing that trumps experience is more experience.

If lots of people observe that e=mc^2, then that's considered reasonable grounds for believing that e does indeed =mc^2, and the only thing that can alter that is if lots of other people observe that, actually, the relationship between e and m is more complex.

Now scientists don't have to do that: they could say that experience is unreliable because of the various issues in meme theory, and that the only sure path to wisdom is by logical deduction from necessary truths like Aristotle did.

What seems unreasonable, though, is to say that experience can be treated as an authoritative source, except when it's religion.

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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)

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Yorick

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quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
What seems unreasonable, though, is to say that experience can be treated as an authoritative source, except when it's religion.

But that's not what anyone's saying. Yes, of course, all evidence is personal experience, including evidence derived by the scientific method. However, science deals with a subset of personal experience called intersubjective, which is personal experience that is the same for everyone under approximately the same circumstances. Religious experience is non-intersubjective personal experience.

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Boogie

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quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
But that is precisely what you’re trying to do by explaining the purpose of life as being God-created. I say it is objectively purposeless because there’s no god, and you say it’s objectively purposeful because there is God. The difference is not whether we explain how thing work, but that your threshold for satisfaction in understanding how things work is very much lower than mine. Yours goes something like, ‘because God made it that way’.

Hmmmmmm ...

I don't agree with either idea. I think we make our own purpose in life. I believe God leaves us to it. Completely. But lends his love/strength/hope or whatever to those who want/need it ( Not only Christians, but all who look outside of themselves for inspiration/hope/whatever).

I have tried pretty hard to not believe in God - I'm sure I'd be less confused and questioning if I could. But, somehow, S/he is still there - even in the darkest of times, underneath everything else.

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Yorick

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Well, of course- if you believe He exists, you will surely find Him there. This is how religion works, and it touches on what I was saying earlier. (Almost) everyone is naturally inclined to believe in god, and if we allow ourselves, that is the natural default position. That’s actually how ‘knock and it shall be opened’ works.

Atheism, IMO, is an intellectual standpoint that goes against the natural grain.

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mdijon
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quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Wow. I'm honestly surprised.

It must be a very dull world for you.

That's what I say about people who don't like Indian classical music.

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Boogie

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quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Well, of course- if you believe He exists, you will surely find Him there. This is how religion works, and it touches on what I was saying earlier. (Almost) everyone is naturally inclined to believe in god, and if we allow ourselves, that is the natural default position. That’s actually how ‘knock and it shall be opened’ works.

Atheism, IMO, is an intellectual standpoint that goes against the natural grain.

Yes, I agree. But then the question is 'why'?

Why are we 'hard wired' to look for 'God' however God is perceived?

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Ricardus
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quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
What seems unreasonable, though, is to say that experience can be treated as an authoritative source, except when it's religion.

But that's not what anyone's saying. Yes, of course, all evidence is personal experience, including evidence derived by the scientific method. However, science deals with a subset of personal experience called intersubjective, which is personal experience that is the same for everyone under approximately the same circumstances. Religious experience is non-intersubjective personal experience.
OK, I'm over-simplifying my case somewhat, but the point is that there must be some rationale to interpreting experience.

Both intersubjective experience and religious experience can be explained as a delusion. The question is why favour delusion as the explanation in the latter case but not the former.

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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)

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Scarlet

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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
No, this one really is about the fear of Hell. It's about the overwhelming, suffocating, you're-never-going-to-be-good-enough-which-means-you're-going-to-burn certainty that there's a God out there, that He demands a lot from us, and that I'm going to fail. It's about me knowing that I'm a selfish, loveless cunt who can't change how his brain works any more than a leopard can change his spots, and therefore no matter how many good works or noble causes I follow, and no matter how many of God's little arbitrary laws I obey (assuming I follow the right God), I'll never get in because even if I do the right things I'm doing them for the wrong reasons.

It's about me preferring the idea that life has absolutely no meaning or purpose to that nightmare...<snip>

I so want to be here. I'm in a religion I cannot obey and I have things right now that I cannot confess to my priest - a bone-chilling pickle!

If I forsook religion and still desired to be "good"...

How would one handle their conscience? If christians believe their conscience is pricked by the holy spirit, how would an atheist consider the matter? And how would one quiet down that brain chatter of guilt and worry (that was MTL tainted by religion anyway)?

Since this thread is titled "Atheisn on Purpose", hopefully this is a topical question...

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They took from their surroundings what was needed... and made of it something more.
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kankucho
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quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Yorick:
[qb].....But then the question is 'why'?

Why are we 'hard wired' to look for 'God' however God is perceived?

The question that I think is hard-wired is your first one — 'Why?"

"God" is one of the answers to that question; and it's the answer that got deeply ingrained into our consciousness long before we had the wherewithal to conduct more rational investigations into the origins and purposes of the world around us.

(Rational investigation was a sober late arrival at a party where everyone was already heartily drunk. It was inevitable that a fight would ensue.)

[ 25. February 2011, 14:26: Message edited by: kankucho ]

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Scarlet

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Afterthought to my previous post...

I should have said "if I forsook my religion and my belief in god...

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They took from their surroundings what was needed... and made of it something more.
—dialogue from Primer

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IngoB

Sentire cum Ecclesia
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quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Ah, but the demonstrably-true truth is invariably more exciting than any fiction. The wildest imaginings of man are as nothing to the wonders of reality. Compare the brain-screwing scientific knowledge of big-bang cosmology with the oh-so predictable creationism of Genesis, for example. Understanding what really happened in the first 10^-32 seconds of expansion knocks boring old God’s magical zappery into a cocked hat.

You are getting awed there more by modern journalism than by science. After all, you wouldn't know a FLRW metric if it bit you in the butt. Anyway, this was just a stupid claim. A bit like saying that Terminator 2 is a better story than Hamlet because the CGI of the liquid-metal T-1000 is cooler than any stage effect in a Shakespeare play. Genesis was not written as an article for SciAm, and guess what, we all knew that...

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
The way I look at it, the Christian worldview is just that: an Earthview, woefully anthropocentric and ethnic. It’s a philosophy based on scripture that concerns itself exclusively with a staggeringly insignificantly miniscule part of the whole. To imagine all ‘creation’ is centred by God on us is arrogance on a cosmic scale, to the point of total stupidity.

Firstly, Christianity is not identical with theism. Your average deist is a theist but does not believe that God particularly cares about Earth or humans. You really like to do that: evade theistic critique by finding issues with Christianity. However, theism could be right and Christianity wrong. Secondly, Christianity simply sticks to the evidence: God in fact incarnated on Earth to bring salvation to humanity. You don't believe in that evidence. Fine, it's not compelling, only believable. However, accepting this evidence as true means that an aloof deism makes no sense. To claim that Christians believe this evidence just because they want God to care about humanity is Bulverism on your part. Thirdly, I'm not aware that any evidence exists that we are not utterly unique in the universe. If we one day make contact with aliens, then your argument may become meaningful. Till then, you are just arguing from your favorite speculation - and that has no force at all.

quote:
Originally posted by kankucho:
When an atheist feels a sense of awe and inner well-being, s/he thinks, 'I'm feeling a sense of awe and inner well-being'. When a person of Christian faith feels the same, s/he thinks, 'This is God (of the Bible) revealing himself to me'. A Hindu is experiencing Krishna, a Buddhist is experiencing Buddha nature. The locus of experience is merely shifted to accord with the anticipated religious context.

I think you are confusing the experience of God with drinking a cold beer on a warm summer day. Why precisely are you telling us what sort of experience we must be having? Handy hint: What is the first thing the angels (messengers from God) tend to say to people? "Don't be afraid." not "Have another one."

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Why is there something instead of nothing?

Because in all the universes in which there’s nothing, the question doesn’t arise.
That just tells you why this questions would not be asked if there was nothing, which is trivial and totally not an answer to the question.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Isn't this whole issue easily squashed by the same sort of kids argument about the creator: Who created him? So what ultimate meaning and purpose has God? None, outside of himself. So if we accept and even worship a God without any meaning outside himself, what's so bad about a universe with no meaning outside itself?

The issues is not squashed by such questions, but rather defined thereby. What is God? That which is totally self-referential in meaning, purpose, existence, ... and therefore is capable to impart these things on other entities without external prompting. God is be-cause of God, all else is be-cause of God. That's basically the definition of God. You can try to define the universe in its entirety as this entity "God". Then you are a pantheist, not an atheist. (There are clear difficulties with pantheism in my opinion, but that's a different discussion.) You are an atheist when you believe that there is no such entity.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Just think - no consequences. No penalties for getting things wrong, whether you get them wrong through genuine error, believing the wrong things or imbalances in your brain chemistry that simply don't allow you to get them right. It means that no matter how badly you screw up, ultimately it doesn't matter! Take risks! Have fun! If there's no purpose to life then there's nobody and nothing to tell you you shouldn't, or punish you if you do!

And people wonder why theists claim that one needs God to have a foundation for morals... If this is true, then the only thing stopping me from doing whatever I like is 1) retaliation from others and 2) evolved instincts to avoid such retaliation. But following Yorick, we surely can use our intellect to overcome such biological predispositions if in fact we have no retaliation to fear. Thus once I grab power, I'll use my intellect to overcome my irrational qualms, and kill those I don't like, and exploit / rape those I do like. After all there's nobody and nothing to tell me I shouldn't.

quote:
Originally posted by kankucho:
That certain theists are so afraid of the mayhem they would reek if they lost sight of their imaginary babysitter says a lot more about them than it does about about the godless, the majority of whom are perfectly capable of behaving themselves.

That's really missing the point. The question is not what happens "normally", where frankly most of us have no capability of doing great evil without harming ourselves significantly. Other people place strong checks and balances on our behavior most of the time. The question is whether that's all there is to it. Because then the behavior of your average dictator is perfectly fine: given that they can get away with murder, there's no rationale for avoiding murder. There's is no "good" and "evil" then, just a power balance, and if that shifts to you, then you can do what you want (if you can suppress those cautionary, irrational biological urges). With God in the game, this is just not true. Or if you like, the power balance never ultimately shifts away from God.

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Although I’d quite like to fuck most human females of fertile age, I elect not to.

As with most of your claims, so also with this one: other explanations why something does (not) occur are a lot more reasonable than yours... [Razz]

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Obviously, we need god in some form or other, and that is why we invented it. The Christian God happens to be exceptionally durable, because the religion and theology that is constructed to support the deity is remarkably robust and effective in reinforcing this naturally innate human desire/need.

I hate these "just so" stories, if they are told without the slightest inkling of doubt as factual. You in fact know none of this, just as we theists do not know that our desire for God has been put by God in every human heart. That's also a "just so" story, but at least it is not sold as a fact. It's a belief, just like your little story there.

Of course, you have not explained why people would need a God according to your belief. So your "just so" story also stinks.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
It's about the overwhelming, suffocating, you're-never-going-to-be-good-enough-which-means-you're-going-to-burn certainty that there's a God out there, that He demands a lot from us, and that I'm going to fail. It's about me knowing that I'm a selfish, loveless cunt who can't change how his brain works any more than a leopard can change his spots, and therefore no matter how many good works or noble causes I follow, and no matter how many of God's little arbitrary laws I obey (assuming I follow the right God), I'll never get in because even if I do the right things I'm doing them for the wrong reasons.

I have some good news for you: what you describe is not the (traditional) Christian point of view. According to Christian teaching, if you can't help yourself, then you are not culpable. Hence any such sins, as grave as they may be, will not count concerning your eternal destiny. Furthermore, it is true that you should obey God because He is God, and feel sorry about your sins because you have offended God. However, if you obey God because you are afraid of hell and desire heaven, and if you feel sorry about your sins for the same reason, then that's suboptimal but sufficient. Yes, fear of hell can be enough to scrape into heaven. That's not precisely heroic sanctity, but God will take what He can get. That's what (traditional) Christianity actually teaches. It's not at all as inhumane and impossible as you make it out to be.

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
The Big Bang is so mindblowing not because of whatever we might imagine caused it, but because of what we know happened instantly after it. In the first 10^-30 seconds (that’s one million, million, million, million, millionth of a second), it expanded from being the size of a golf ball to being at least a hundred billion light-years across (or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times bigger), and maybe infinite size. If this inflation doesn’t impress you it’s because you simply cannot imagine it (even though you can easily enough imagine god magicking it).

No, Yorick, we certainly do not know that this has happened. It's a decent enough theory, supported mostly by circumstantial evidence (like fixing gaping holes in other theories). Furthermore, you understand very little about human imagination indeed, if you think that inflation is unimaginable. Of course you can "form an image of it in your mind". We've seen plenty of expanding things, so that's not even particularly hard. Even the numbers involved are not any more unimaginable than say a thousand or a thousandths. You have no intuitive grasp of those numbers either. Yet you know how to manage them: 10^3 and 10^-3. Guess what, you can manage your super-numbers just the same way: 10^30. Wow, that wasn't so hard... Imagining and managing mentally cosmological inflation is really easy, actually, and that's no surprise. It's a scientific idea, and we scientists are working professionals. We don't invent this sort of stuff to say "Wow, awesome." We invent theories to do things, to get to places - so they better be serviceable.

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
There are other explanations for the wide prevalence of religion (and I’m not just talking about wishful thinking, either). It is widely supposed that belief in God conferred an evolutionary advantage to mankind, and that religious faith developed as a by-product of human sociability. This is hot stuff in the cognitive sciences, and is being studied in all kinds of fields like neuroscience, human evolutionary biology, and linguistics and computer sciences. Evidence is being amassed, and you may very soon end up having your assumption refuted.

If there is no God, then it is trivial that belief in God must have evolved as some by-product of human sociability. It is much less trivial to show what sort of evolutionary advantage that may bring, and as usual we will likely just get another "just so" story there. At any rate, whatever evidence may get scraped together for the evolution of faith, it will tell us shit all about the involvement of God. Evolution is no argument against God, it simply is a tool He can use.

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
God might exist, and this might explain why people believe in Him. However, despite this, the fact that we all feel this desire for God to exist very much more strongly persuades me against his existence. Very much more strongly, like about a gazillion to one in ratio.

That would be all humans but Pre-cambrian, apparently? So does that reduce your odds? Our desire for God is not much like our desire to eat or have sex. You love that idea, but I've never heard anyone describe it as such. I think it is more like the desire for music. There is always music where there are humans. But it is not like you will die if you can't listen to music. And popularity is not necessarily a measure of quality for music, but neither is sophistication.

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
However, science deals with a subset of personal experience called intersubjective, which is personal experience that is the same for everyone under approximately the same circumstances. Religious experience is non-intersubjective personal experience.

Religious experience is a lot more uniform and reproducible than you claim. The surest way to avoid any religious experience is of course to stay away from any systematic religious practice, which is what most atheists do. (The second best way is modern "practice", which removes all traces of ritual, discipline, study and habit-formation, arriving roughly at the equivalent of a boring TV show...)

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Autenrieth Road

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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The surest way to avoid any religious experience is of course to stay away from any systematic religious practice, which is what most atheists do. (The second best way is modern "practice", which removes all traces of ritual, discipline, study and habit-formation, arriving roughly at the equivalent of a boring TV show...)

IngoB, my question is a tangent on this thread but hopefully short enough to be tolerated. What do you mean by "modern practice"?

[ 25. February 2011, 16:52: Message edited by: Autenrieth Road ]

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mousethief

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quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
The Big Bang is so mindblowing not because of whatever we might imagine caused it, but because of what we know happened instantly after it.

Can't be both?

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Both intersubjective experience and religious experience can be explained as a delusion. The question is why favour delusion as the explanation in the latter case but not the former.

Because of the sometimes-spoken belief that multiple people are extremely unlikely to all be deluded the same way at the same time, Jonestown notwithstanding. Of course solipsism would destroy that, but solipsism is existentially untenable. Nobody acts like a solipsist all the time. Maybe people scrabbling a life for themselves in a very remote corner of the world where their only interaction is with (nonhuman) predators and prey. In society, you have to act like other people exist in order to eat.

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TubaMirum
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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Because of the sometimes-spoken belief that multiple people are extremely unlikely to all be deluded the same way at the same time, Jonestown notwithstanding. Of course solipsism would destroy that, but solipsism is existentially untenable. Nobody acts like a solipsist all the time. Maybe people scrabbling a life for themselves in a very remote corner of the world where their only interaction is with (nonhuman) predators and prey. In society, you have to act like other people exist in order to eat.

The thing is, though, arguing the other way: people do have the same sorts of experiences - testable ones, in fact - via religion! This is a point that always seems to get lost in discussions about "the scientific method vs. religion."

Lots and lots (and lots) of people find comfort, for example, in the Psalms - and the 23rd Psalm, in particular, seems to hit all the notes for people in various states of distress (and even those not in distress).

Yet somehow, these things are ignored, and religious experience is considered to be merely "subjective" and therefore without merit. But it's actually not - and in fact, that's why these worldwide religions have lasted for such a long time, and continue even today to affect people's lives.

The dismissal of religion as nonsense is, in fact, mighty unscientific (and, BTW, very subjective).

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IngoB

Sentire cum Ecclesia
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quote:
Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
IngoB, my question is a tangent on this thread but hopefully short enough to be tolerated. What do you mean by "modern practice"?

I gave an operational definition, didn't I? The crap I suffer through most Sundays is for example modern liturgical practice in Catholic terms - not however, mind you, merely because they follow the "new liturgy". Mostly because they haven't got the foggiest about stagecraft.

It's not particularly hard to make people religious. What's hard - nowadays - is to make people do what makes them religious. I'm confident I can get Yorick to experience God - or at least his soul - within a year: in a monastery, with me as prior and him as novice. (And no, the whippings have nothing to do with it. That's just for my personal entertainment...) If he's willing to practice at typical "enthusiast hobbyist" level (4-6 hours a week), two to three years. At the "Show me God, or bugger off." level that he is at, never.

And that's the entire problem with modernity, that's why churches are empty. People see no point anymore in practicing religion. Practicing as in exercising, building up strength. It used to be that people came just because it was the done thing. Then, after a couple of years of practice, they would get religion. Now, they want the BVM do a little dance routine for them first time they kneel down, or else they are out of the door. And nobody knows what to do about it, because nothing can be done about it. You cannot get religion like that. Religion is many things, but as far as human effort is concerned, it is a skill, craft and habit. Like anything we humans do. (And no, I'm not Pelagian, I know about the role of the Holy Spirit, etc.)

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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TubaMirum
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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
IngoB, my question is a tangent on this thread but hopefully short enough to be tolerated. What do you mean by "modern practice"?

I gave an operational definition, didn't I? The crap I suffer through most Sundays is for example modern liturgical practice in Catholic terms - not however, mind you, merely because they follow the "new liturgy". Mostly because they haven't got the foggiest about stagecraft.

It's not particularly hard to make people religious. What's hard - nowadays - is to make people do what makes them religious. I'm confident I can get Yorick to experience God - or at least his soul - within a year: in a monastery, with me as prior and him as novice. (And no, the whippings have nothing to do with it. That's just for my personal entertainment...) If he's willing to practice at typical "enthusiast hobbyist" level (4-6 hours a week), two to three years. At the "Show me God, or bugger off." level that he is at, never.

And that's the entire problem with modernity, that's why churches are empty. People see no point anymore in practicing religion. Practicing as in exercising, building up strength. It used to be that people came just because it was the done thing. Then, after a couple of years of practice, they would get religion. Now, they want the BVM do a little dance routine for them first time they kneel down, or else they are out of the door. And nobody knows what to do about it, because nothing can be done about it. You cannot get religion like that. Religion is many things, but as far as human effort is concerned, it is a skill, craft and habit. Like anything we humans do. (And no, I'm not Pelagian, I know about the role of the Holy Spirit, etc.)

I must say I agree with you, Ingo. Christianity is quite subtle in many ways, and it takes awhile to catch hold of many of its precepts. And it takes muscle memory - or would that be "spirit memory"? - just like anything else does.

The Church Year itself, and all its seasons and ebbs and flows, still has the power to do this, and so does prayer and meditation, and so does simple singing of chant. But you're right: people don't give it a chance to work - but I eventually they'll come back.

You're right about stagecraft, too; church is like opera, only religious. Nothing wrong with that, either - it's been part of deal for a long time.

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Evensong
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quote:
Originally posted by kankucho:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Yorick:
[qb].....But then the question is 'why'?

Why are we 'hard wired' to look for 'God' however God is perceived?

The question that I think is hard-wired is your first one — 'Why?"

"God" is one of the answers to that question; and it's the answer that got deeply ingrained into our consciousness long before we had the wherewithal to conduct more rational investigations into the origins and purposes of the world around us.

(Rational investigation was a sober late arrival at a party where everyone was already heartily drunk. It was inevitable that a fight would ensue.)

And when reason and rationality could not answer the question either, the revelry began again. [Yipee]

Atheists that are atheists because they believe in "reason" or "rationality" are a couple of hundred years behind the philosophical times. [Disappointed]

It never ceases to amaze me that they think they are cleverer than theists.

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a theological scrapbook

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Evensong
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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
IngoB, my question is a tangent on this thread but hopefully short enough to be tolerated. What do you mean by "modern practice"?

I gave an operational definition, didn't I? The crap I suffer through most Sundays is for example modern liturgical practice in Catholic terms - not however, mind you, merely because they follow the "new liturgy". Mostly because they haven't got the foggiest about stagecraft.

It's not particularly hard to make people religious. What's hard - nowadays - is to make people do what makes them religious. I'm confident I can get Yorick to experience God - or at least his soul - within a year: in a monastery, with me as prior and him as novice. (And no, the whippings have nothing to do with it. That's just for my personal entertainment...) If he's willing to practice at typical "enthusiast hobbyist" level (4-6 hours a week), two to three years. At the "Show me God, or bugger off." level that he is at, never.

And that's the entire problem with modernity, that's why churches are empty. People see no point anymore in practicing religion. Practicing as in exercising, building up strength. It used to be that people came just because it was the done thing. Then, after a couple of years of practice, they would get religion. Now, they want the BVM do a little dance routine for them first time they kneel down, or else they are out of the door. And nobody knows what to do about it, because nothing can be done about it. You cannot get religion like that. Religion is many things, but as far as human effort is concerned, it is a skill, craft and habit. Like anything we humans do. (And no, I'm not Pelagian, I know about the role of the Holy Spirit, etc.)

This is an interesting idea.

How would you answer someone that had lived and practiced religion for decades and then "lost" their faith?

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a theological scrapbook

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Johnny S
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quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
But that is precisely what you’re trying to do by explaining the purpose of life as being God-created. I say it is objectively purposeless because there’s no god, and you say it’s objectively purposeful because there is God. The difference is not whether we explain how thing work, but that your threshold for satisfaction in understanding how things work is very much lower than mine. Yours goes something like, ‘because God made it that way’.

You misunderstood my point, and the Lewis quote.

‘because God made it that way’ - as a bald assumption, is no more satisfying.

My aim was much more modest - just to point out the (very common) illusion that being able to offer some model as to how things work really explains 'how things work' (in the exhaustive sense).

The examples you give are like synonyms. Someone asks you to define a word and you do so by giving a synonym. At first glance it looks like an explanation but you haven't actually explained anything at all.

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IngoB

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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
This is an interesting idea. How would you answer someone that had lived and practiced religion for decades and then "lost" their faith?

There are many variants of "losing one's faith", and hence many answers. For one thing, many people do not lose their faith a such, but rather their faith in a particular institution.

However, a more general answer can be given: start thinking of religion as a hobby. Yes, I know, it's about meeting God, the most essential part of our lives, and apparently we have to fight with Yorick whether it's more or less awesome than science. But if you want to understand what real people really do, think of it as a hobby. A strong hobby perhaps, like learning an instrument and playing it for fun (at least not fully professional), but still a hobby.

Your question then amounts to: why do some people learn playing the piano, play it happily for many years, and yet stop playing at some stage? Hard to say, isn't it? Something about diminishing returns, boredom with the level they are at, too much effort involved, too many other things going on, ... who knows. One thing however one can say about such people is that the likelihood that they will start playing the piano again later on is rather high. And so it is also with the "previously strongly religious". If they live long enough, they are likely to become active in religion again.

They are not the problem. The problem is that kids do not want to sit down to learn playing the piano anymore. The "answer" that most churches give amounts to a bunch of old farts giving lessons in hip hop, so that the kids become interested in music again. Or it amounts to sitting kids down in front of a piano, while a Liszt recording plays in the background.

Meanwhile, people like Yorick or even Dawkins are more an entertaining diversion than anything else. Can you convince the tone-deaf to grab an ukulele and learn how to play some music? As much as they would like to be "the challenge" to religion, they are a mere minor symptom of the illness that has befallen religion. The true challenge is the breakdown of the culturally derived input stream that had enough people practicing at the entry level to keep a religious community going. It's been a long time since Christianity had to attract people by offering an idealistic alternative to the general society. But we are now rapidly collapsing to the point where that's the case again. All in all, I think that's a good thing. Pity about the many nice church buildings, charities and whatnot. Not a pity about much else that is church now.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Mark Wuntoo
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Evensong:How would you answer someone that had lived and practiced religion for decades and then "lost" their faith?

I realise the word is in " ". I am just waiting for someone to accuse me of losing my faith (strange it hasn't happened from any of my fundamentalist friends) and they will hear why I gave up faith quite deliberately (but not lightly) after a great deal of thought. Doubt they would listen, though. [Razz]

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Blessed are the cracked for they let in the light.

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jackanapes
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Mark,

Do you mean that while still a 'believer', you chose to unplug your faith?

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Adeodatus
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quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Wow. I'm honestly surprised.

It must be a very dull world for you.

Completely the opposite. For me there's nothing beautiful, nothing exciting, about the plodding inevitability that runs from Maxwell's equations to E=mc^2. Science is about discovery - finding out what's just waiting to get found out. What excites me and thrills me is invention - the hairs-on-the-neck zinngg that I get when I experience at first or second hand the ex nihilo of the creation of a literary character who becomes a real person in their fictional world; a painting in front of which I have to sit down because I'm too overwhelmed to stand up straight; a phrase of music that sticks like an electrode into the pleasure or grief centres of our brain.

The "humanities" are aptly named - they are what makes us human, not science. For me, when it comes to the wow factor, science is to the humanities as going by tram is to piloting a stunt plane.

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"What is broken, repair with gold."

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Mark Wuntoo
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quote:
Originally posted by jackanapes:
Mark,

Do you mean that while still a 'believer', you chose to unplug your faith?

Yes, exactly. Had been a Christian for 60 years, including years as a minister. Retired and asked questions. Gave up on GOD - had given up on church years before but stayed to try to do something about it.

More content these days [Smile] - that's 'content' and 'content'. [Biased]

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Blessed are the cracked for they let in the light.

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Freddy
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quote:
Originally posted by Mark Wuntoo:
Had been a Christian for 60 years, including years as a minister. Retired and asked questions. Gave up on GOD

Wow.

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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg

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TubaMirum
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quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
The "humanities" are aptly named - they are what makes us human, not science.

Yeah, I'm with you. Not, maybe, that they make us human - but they put up a mirror human life on earth, and look deeply at what we're all about.

And I think that's why all these old texts - and the old rituals and rhythms of church - still matter to people. Frankly, too: I think we've only just scratched the surface of what we can find there.

The Christian story, in particular, speaks very directly and bluntly to and about the human condition and experience. Even when I was outside the church for all those years, I could feel its power - and be affected by its ecstatic heights and disastrous depths.

Which is why I think it's nowhere near done yet....

[ 26. February 2011, 13:39: Message edited by: TubaMirum ]

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IconiumBound
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quote:
Originally posted by Mark Wuntoo:
Had been a Christian for 60 years, including years as a minister. Retired and asked questions. Gave up on GOD

So...what do you do now? For fun?, For excitement? For inspiration? For love?
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Mark Wuntoo
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quote:
Originally posted by IconiumBound:
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Wuntoo:
Had been a Christian for 60 years, including years as a minister. Retired and asked questions. Gave up on GOD

So...what do you do now? For fun?, For excitement? For inspiration? For love?
Don't want to derail thread so will simply say - still on a pilgrimage, exploring non-theism.

Actually, I did have fun and excitement in the church - often on my own!! Still have some excellent Christian friends who understand me. My fundamentalist friends never did and think I went off the rails years ago.

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Blessed are the cracked for they let in the light.

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Squibs
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quote:
Originally posted by Mark Wuntoo:
My fundamentalist friends never did and think I went off the rails years ago. [/QB]

Maybe you did! [Paranoid]
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Mark Wuntoo
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Even longer ago than they think. Hallelujah!

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Blessed are the cracked for they let in the light.

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jackanapes
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quote:
Originally posted by Mark Wuntoo:
quote:
Originally posted by jackanapes:
Mark,

Do you mean that while still a 'believer', you chose to unplug your faith?

Yes, exactly. Had been a Christian for 60 years, including years as a minister. Retired and asked questions. Gave up on GOD - had given up on church years before but stayed to try to do something about it.

More content these days [Smile] - that's 'content' and 'content'. [Biased]

Thanks Mark. I'm still not sure that I can see how the choosin' came before the losin', but I guess I just wasn't there.
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Evensong
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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

They are not the problem. The problem is that kids do not want to sit down to learn playing the piano anymore.

Do you have an opinion on why not?


quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The true challenge is the breakdown of the culturally derived input stream that had enough people practicing at the entry level to keep a religious community going.

Critical mass? And the decline could be attributed to lack of discipline or practising?


quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
It's been a long time since Christianity had to attract people by offering an idealistic alternative to the general society. But we are now rapidly collapsing to the point where that's the case again. All in all, I think that's a good thing.

I agree.
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