[MEGA] God

[vegan]

You'll find the bible clearly states, in not so few words, that it dont matter anyway and you should live by your faith/knowledge and not by foresight/intellect.

so to SHATT's classic "the bible is right because it says so and since it's the word of god it can't be wrong" we can add the new "since by using your brain you'll obviously find out that the bible is full of nonsense, you must not use reasoning but only blind faith when reading it"

 

[Jamshyd]

Alpha: A hamster on a stationary wheel (you know, the kind they sell at pet shops) can go "infinitely" forward.

Does this help? (for the sake of visual analogy)

 

[toejam]

True, one cannot ever even attempt to do so. However the rationality movement set out to do just so by attempting to establish an objective reality in which commonly perceived phenomena were considered empirical evidence for objectively real things or occurences. You have used one of the standards of rationalism by arguing that something cannot be proven to exist without empirical evidence for its existence and arguing that nothing can ever be proven not to exist, we can only infer that it has yet to be proven to exist.

No, not at all. I have stated that we can not disprove the existence of an object that is external to ourselves that is percieved by another being. This is because any validation of that theory relies on subjective experience which is non-transferable and any communicative medium (eg, language) of said subjectivity is based on a system of absolute values (eg, logic/laws of stable attributes) that is inherently meaningless because it is entirely anti-natural; in the manner by which it is an antithesis to the transience that is the state of the universe.

Attributing the effects of "something" to an unperceived entity is faulty science. Anyone could say that the entire universe is the effect of God. This is b/s. Causation cannot be inferred by merely observing the effects of a speculated cause.

Im afraid I can't agree here. The invisible penguins was originally a reference to God. The conceptual substance of the Christian God in a theological/philosophical sense (the validation of his existence through a means other than pure faith in historical events) is essentially based on Platonic dualism (originating in the works of Saint Augustine). Platonic dualism, of course, segregates existence into transient sensual subjectivity and the absolute metaphysical reality of the Form's realm (transcending into the Form of Forms; God). This unpercieved entity/realm is the invisible elephant.

Natural science (and consequently the modern scientific method) is the prodigial offspring of the Platonic/Christian dualism that gives rise to antithetical positivism; or rather is maintained by a system of stable values that are applied universally. While these values are not directly perceptible themselves, and do not exist inherently within the phenoumena they 'control', they are observed and inferred from the consensual collection of data.

 

[VibeTribeScribe]

"We can not disprove the existence of an object (that is external to ourselves) that is percieved by another being."

According to an empiricist nothing can ever be disproven, it can only fail to be proven. According to a relativist proof is irrelevant because each individual's reality is subjective and perception (ie hallucination) is proof in itself. No matter what perspective one holds, noone is going to perceive invisible penguins unless they are hallucinating or having a psychotic episode. A relativist having the hallucination of an invisible penguin has proven their existence in his or her subjective reality. An empiricist however cannot infer that invisible penguins exist by simply citing what he or she considers the manifestations of invisible penguins; there must be evidence connecting an objectively established cause to an objectively established effect. Invisible penguins can never be objectively established because they are imaginary. The same goes for an anthropomorphized God.

"Any validation of that theory (objective reality) relies on subjective experience which is non-transferable and any communicative medium is based on a system of absolute values that is inherently meaningless because it is entirely unnatural; in the manner by which it is an antithesis to the transient state of the universe."

Agreed. Empiricism corrodes the poignance of subjectivity, it was founded with good intentions however - to put an end to the holy wars by establishing a non-denominational monotheistic world view which validates the existence of God through deductive reasoning. None the less, empiricism is a hoax because no reality lies outside of subjective experience. The idea of an objective reality only has relevance to a subjective beings and it can only be validated through subjective values and experiences. Empiricism is a perspective held by individuals who value establishing a world view restricted to common experience.

"The conceptual substance of the Christian God in a theological or philosophical sense (the validation of his existence through a means other than pure faith in historical events) is essentially based on Platonic dualism (originating in the works of Saint Augustine). Platonic dualism, of course, segregates existence into transient subjectivity and the absolute metaphysical reality. This unpercieved realm is God."

True, can we agree that an absolute metaphysical reality or form(s) only exists in the subjective realities of those who assert its existence? Being that an objective reality does not exist and is a fallacy, can it not be said that the confusion created by this fallacy led to the idea of God (since an objective reality could only be said to exist if there were an omniscient and omnipresent consciousness to perceive it)?

"Natural science (and consequently the modern scientific method) is the prodigial offspring of the Platonic dualism that gives rise to antithetical positivism; or rather is maintained by a system of stable values that are applied universally. While these values are not directly perceptible themselves, and do not exist inherently within the phenomena they 'control', they are observed and inferred from the consensual collection of data."

"Universal" truths, values, or principles are not inherent in the reality which we all perceive. They are learned interpretations of an ambiguous reality specific to given cultural lenses.

 

[VibeTribeScribe]

God is imaginary. It can be proven that God doesn't exist by the fact that humans created the idea of God in order to reconsile philosophical difficulties. Reality is composed of things which we perceive and subsequently contrive symbols to represent. We do not imagine things and then later find them to exist, we perceive things and their qualities. Conceptualization is limited to the ideas of things and qualities which we perceive. Thus it is not surprising that our ancestors anthropomorphized God(s), being that the human condition was what people were most familiar with.

 

[Turbo Monk]

Exclusive monotheistic beliefs in an anthropomorphized God are prideful, self-righteous, outspoken, human/self-glorifying, human/self-centered, and condusive of disharmony with the natural environment.

Faith in God stems from quite the contrary.

The biggest inhibitor of faith in God is pride. It takes pride/ego loss to admit that there is a force/being/what-have-you having more intelligence & power than lil ol' me.

One who truly believes in God/Christ believes Christ is the only one who is righteous and the sacrifice for their personal sin.

Who doesn't speak up for what they believe? You've typed quite a few words in this thread alone proclaiming your beliefs.

Giving credit and glory to God is self-glorifying how?

Faith in God/Christ makes one others-centered, putting someone else's needs above one's own.

Condusive of disharmony with the natural environment - please explain.

The only way in which one can attempt to prove or disprove God's existence is through the use of intuition.

Do you understand everything there is to know about everything?

I admit I do not, but I understand enough to know that there is brilliance in creation - our universe & physical world. My intuition tells me there is intelligence in life systems. My intuition tells me spontaneity cannot generate functioning, living organisms, let alone intelligence. My intuition tells me that time, in and of itself, can do nothing to a cell unless a.) energy and b.) intelligence are introduced to it.

 

[B9]

Happy christmas to all you philosophers.

zophen.

 

[toejam]

An empiricist however cannot infer that invisible penguins exist by simply citing what he or she considers the manifestations of invisible penguins; there must be evidence connecting an objectively established cause to an objectively established effect. Invisible penguins can never be objectively established because they are imaginary. The same goes for an anthropomorphized God.

Just to emphasise my distance from empiricism, something does not exist (and is proven to not exist) unless it is experienced by the subjective reality of an individual. If one has faith in objective rationality/positive structures then this is unlikely to happen for the majority of common phenoumena. But if one has belief in the purposeless, impermanent, intangible nature of the universe then empirical structures cannot be maintained.

The idea of an objective reality only has relevance to a subjective beings and it can only be validated through subjective values and experiences. Empiricism is a perspective held by individuals who value establishing a world view restricted to common experience.

I am aware of empirical philosophy, however I negate any form of dualistic thinking thus deny any application of empiricist structures to my thinking! Plus, there isn’t any wildly evident exclusivity/loyalty to either rationalist or empiricist camps present in the pre-Kantian philosopher’s works in my opinion anyway. The perception of a great conceptual battle is largely a modern academic illusion.

True, can we agree that an absolute metaphysical reality or form(s) only exists in the subjective realities of those who assert its existence?

It too exists as an illusion and serves, now, only to inhibit the recreation of new values (because of its stable, anti-natural substance) and thus fasten its proponents into the paradigm of infantile consciousness of Self.

Being that an objective reality does not exist and is a fallacy, can it not be said that the confusion created by this fallacy led to the idea of God (since an objective reality could only be said to exist if there were an omniscient and omnipresent consciousness to perceive it)?

For me the concepts of objectivity/antithesis/stability/inherent tangibility or meaning in the phenomena of the universe are all necessary constructs of infantile homo sapiens consciousness as it is presented with the new faculty of self-awareness/perception of a willing entity (‘I’ or ego) that is segregated from an external universe.

"Universal" truths, values, or principles are not inherent in the reality which we all perceive. They are learned interpretations of an ambiguous reality specific to given cultural lenses.

I don’t know if you were producing a summation of the paragraph you quoted, but that is pretty much exactly what I meant!

 

[VibeTribeScribe]

"Faith in God stems from quite the contrary" Turbo Monk

Faith in the anthropomorphized God of any exclusive monotheistic religion that imposes its beliefs on others is not only prideful but it is self righteous. How can anyone argue that it is not?

"The biggest inhibitor of faith in God is pride. It takes pride/ego loss to admit that there is a force/being/what-have-you having more intelligence & power than lil ol' me."

True, a person can be prideful and stubborn, unwilling to submit to the will of a higher power (ie God/the legal system/family/etcetera); or a person can paradoxically be prideful and "humble" by submitting to the will of a higher power but asserting that everyone who doesn't will suffer eternal damnation and laying blame on others for not believing in the "universal" truths presented to man in "revelations". One might be humble in his/her personal life (submitting to the will of God) but prideful in his/her social life (self righteous and intolerant of other beliefs).

For one to avoid being prideful, he or she might engage in apatheism (holding no stance or an unwillingness to hold beliefs) or at least accept/respect beliefs which differ from his/her own. Otherwise an individual is claiming to know better than others and is basically boasting that he/she can show people the light. To an individual that has learned that all ideas were contrived by others through speculation and that nothing is universally true other than the latter, such nonsense (no disprespect intended) - imposing one's beliefs on others - is self righteous and borderline if not completely delusional in the case of those who believe exclusively in one anthropomorphized God but not another.

"One who truly believes in God/Christ believes Christ is the only one who is righteous and the sacrifice for their personal sin."

Even claiming this goes to show that Christian beliefs are self righteous. This is evident by the fact that you assert such narrow minded views and are unwilling to tolerate even the utterance of a differing view (ie hedonism). I would argue that everyone considers him/herself righteous by rationalizing his/her actions and doing what one was taught or considers right to do most of the time.

"Who doesn't speak up for what they believe? You've typed quite a few words in this thread alone proclaiming your beliefs."

It is truly impossible, I believe that beliefs counteract our receptivity to the way things actually are. This belief denies the fact that holding beliefs is part of the way humans are.

"Giving credit and glory to God is self-glorifying how?"

Because individuals give a public show if it and claim to have found the truth while asserting that others who do not give credit and glory to God should be ashamed. If an individual wishes not to glorify him/herself he/she will admit that he/she is confused and knows nothing. Even then an individual is glorifying his/hers lack of ignorance.

"Faith in God/Christ makes one others-centered, putting someone else's needs above one's own."

By imposing his/her beliefs on "heathens" and slowly eradicating every other culture but one's own. Selfish, prideful, and self righteous. Within the community of those who already practice the same religion however selflessness and compassion is valued. However, it is all to serve the best wishes of the individual who feels it best to be selfless. A truly selfless thing to do would be to help someone do something you don't want them to do, something that conflicts with your own moral beliefs. But "selfless" Christians will instead do "what is best for that individual" - by imposing his/her own moral judgments on that individual who is in the wrong and helping them find what they ought to do instead of what they want to.

"Condusive of disharmony with the natural environment - please explain."

Being ashamed of our carnal and natural desires and denying our impulses - this creates inner conflict and inner disharmony. A way that is condusive of harmony is to offer guidance as to how an individual can mediate his/her impulses with others in order to facillitate acting them out constructively. Trying to play God by practicing species elitism and enslaving "lower" animals and manipulating and exploiting land and the habitats of the lifeforms with which we share it. Judeo-Christians believe that humans are the most intelligent and powerful creatures on the Earth. They also feel as though we have the right to change the environment in ways that suit us. In fact we are the most foolish creatures on Earth because we pollute and exploit the resources which we rely upon. We are destroying Nature, even though we are completely dependent upon it. Humans are amongst the lowest creatures on Earth - parasites!

Easter Island can be seen as an analogy for our condition - The natives there chopped down all of the trees to make boats and huts and to roll their statues on and destroyed the ecosystem. They ran out of trees to make boats with and when they could no longer fish they fed upon eachother until they all devoured one another and could no longer reproduce.

By thinking that we are the most intelligent creatures we are securing our own demise. If we truly had foresight - as we claim to have exclusively, unlike any other creatures - we would establish a balance with the environment and sustain it by valuing conservation instead of expansion/progress.

 

[VibeTribeScribe]

Challenging another persons subjective reality!

Response to ToeJam

I was pretty sure that someone brought up the argument that God's existence can not be disproven. Perhaps I was misinterpreting the argument by assuming that the impossibility of providing empirical evidence for anythings non-existence was the grounds for such a claim. If this argument was being made by a relativist of sorts, can it be that God is fiction in my reality but an actual existing being in another persons reality?

If another person asserts the existence of an anthropomorphized God in his or her own reality, I am still free to challenge such assertions and perhaps influence that persons perception of reality am I not? Of course, whether or not I have an influence depends on the other persons response to my argument and does not depend on how strong I feel the argument is. Thus, it ultimately comes down to persuasion and how convincing my arguments can be.

I would like to suggest that - just because an argument is convincing does not mean it is valid and ultimately what is true is really self evident but becoming receptive to that means casting aside ignorance and preconceptions that were grounded in misinterpretations of actuality or deception. Perhaps this is an impossible feat being that noone can escape his or her cultural and historical context. However I would argue that by reserving one's judgment, true receptivity can be accomplished. The way things are (metaphysically) is self evident to he or she who holds no stance and contests no one - (however this does create an epistemological problem).

If God created us in his image, how could we ever know this unless we experienced his presence? Even then, how could we know that he is not a shape-shifter or that his perceived presence was not just a 'mask' or illusion? Those who claim to know for certain of his form argue that it is known through either intuition or through the (exclusively valid) "revelations" given to man by God.

How can it be that Christian revelations are valid but Jewish or Islamic revelations are invalid? Would a Christian argue that Jewish or Islamic revelations are grounded in delusions or hallucinations? Or would he or she argue that they are misinterpretations of God's word and are not valid because the inspired individuals were blined by their ignorance (ie faith in a misled religion)? If the latter is the case, how can any Christian assert that he or she has transcended all ignorance or that those who received revelations from God had transcended ignorance and so did not misintepret his message?

The belief in an anthropomorphized God is delusional to everyone who has not been inspired by revelations from God himself. Everyone else who has faith in an anthropomorphized God has faith in the subjective experiences of those who received revelations from God and thus holds belief in something that he or she has not experienced him or herself. Even those who have been inspired by the word of God suffer from self induced delusions and hallucinations because the idea of an anthropomorphized God is just that, an idea - and not a reality.

I could have faith in talking invisible unicorn pegasi but they are nothing more than imaginative, for my idea of them does not come from my experience of them, it comes from my imagination. Harboring beliefs in them can lead to self induced hallucinations and delusions, it is a psychological possibility. For example I might attribute the wind to their flight patterns and begin to hear their voices whisper in my ear. Until other people start to experience these phenomenon independent of my ranting about it this is obviously psychotic!

I give my sympathy to the hords of misled individuals out there who have succumb to psychosis as a result of having faith in insanity.

 

[Survival0200]

If god exists, I have some questions

I've been thinking if god exists, why did he make this world and people like we are now? If god exists, tell me why:

... we have to eat and drink? We might as well work without eating and drinking. With solar power for example.

... why do we have to breath? We wouldn't have to do that necessarily.

... why there are deceases? This world would be so much better without deceases and a lot of people would be happier.

... why people are selfish and mean? Why? Tell me that? Why do we have to make the people around us feel sorrow from time to time?

... why everyone can't be happy?

... why does there have to be wars and violence?

... why can't we spend our lives just how we'd like to spend it?

... why god doesn't supply us with infinite supply of our favorite drug if we would want so?

... why can't we have everything we like?

... why can't everyone live as long as they want?

... why did god make us live in this planet?

Everything could be different.

 

[keiths31]

Pretty heavy question that has been asked by millions and answered by none. I, for one, will not attempt to answer any of your points. It is a matter of belief and faith. If you choose to believe in God, then those questions need not an answer. If you don't beleive in God, you still ain't gonna get an answer, but you are going to rack your brain trying to get some.

 

[UnfortunateSquid]

Simple answer: 'He' doesn't.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Simple answer: 'He' doesn't.

Spot on.

It just isn't happening. Seriously, I can't waite until another group of hippies sit around and write a new book of crap and waite for gullible chickens to follow it. I'm going to stand and point and say "Haha you shits, if there is one God why can't there be two?".

 

[Helios.]

'why we have to eat and drink?'
Eve ate the apple. They bacteria in your stomach and digestive tract will eat your body after you are dead.

'why do we have to breathe?'
oxygen is necessary for the oxidation of food which gives us energy.

'why are there diseases?'
we live in an imperfect world.

'why are [some] ppl selfish and mean?'
b/c they choose to be.

'why can't everyone be happy?'
to tell the truth, they are as happy or as unhappy as they want to be.

'why do we have to have wars and violence?'
on a large scale, right wars arise between the battle between forces of good and of evil. on a small scale, violence oftentimes arises from jealousy and other types of sin.

'why can't we spend our lives like we want to spend them?'
who's stopping you?

'why doesn't god supply us with an unlimited supply of our favorite drug(s)?'
the money driven black market and big pharma interests, along with the problem of government intrusion into personal freedoms of choice, thwart that effort.

'why can't everyone live as long as they want?'
in this life, b/c 'Adam and Eve' ate the apple, caught diseases, violence and war occur, etc.
in the long term, they can.

'why did god make us live on this planet?'
lila.

 

[Kilgore]

'why do we have to have wars and violence?'
on a large scale, right wars arise between the battle between forces of good and of evil. on a small scale, violence oftentimes arises from jealousy and other types of sin.

There is no good or evil. There are only sides.

'why are there diseases?'
we live in an imperfect world.

There is nothing imperfect about that. A bacterium gotta eat too, right? Is it our fault that flesh eating bacteria needs us to survive? Is it our fault that viruses need our body to replicate? They are perfect organisms in their own.

 

[Helios.]

Diseases are evil.

 

[rowland2110]

Simple answer: 'He' doesn't.

Yes "she" does.

 

[rowland2110]

With all due respect survival, some of your questions make you sound like a 5 year old telling mommy or daddy that its "not fair".

 

[Pegasus]

With all due respect survival, some of your questions make you sound like a 5 year old telling mommy or daddy that its "not fair".

"With all due respect, I'm going to insult you."