Searching for GOD...

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Not from me, as I made it abundantly clear I was talking about Christian ideas of salvation.

Fully atheist in that I have no belief in any god, and agnostic in that there is no way that I can absolutely establish that no god exists, hence it always remains a possibility. How do you convince yourself that your opting for for no God is the correct one?

It seems to me that the possibility of God should elicit some exploration, however I find none since there is no awareness, no insights for full atheism to share

All I can say is that as regards the idea of a god, I see no evidence of it being an actual thing and therefore it follows that it is incapable of evidencing itself.

That could be a text book case of empiricism, Aside from that I can't gleam much from your statement.

As I find no logical reason to assume a god,

I find logical reason for it in the argument from necessity and the argument from morality so called refutations end in scientism or the repudiation of cause and effect

as I find no evidence in my experience for said god and as I find no empirical evidence for said god

I find no empirical evidence for empiricism but that doesn't seem to worry empiricists

and as I try to employ an inquiring, rational and skeptical mind

Do you mean an atheist's mind?

You might find the idea of personal morality confusing

We might want it to be a personal matter but it doesn't quite sit comfortably just as a personal thing

, but I don't, and I have set out the grounds for my position before so I see no point in doing so again. Can it be blunted? Yes, just as anyone's morality can be blunted in certain circumstances. Indeed the history of the Christian religion seems to show this par excellence.

But it's a personal matter, isn't it? How would you know conscience has been blunted? You are saying that there is the unblunted conscience and the blunted one and it shows up in groups of people particularly christians as if they have fallen below a standard....which completely goes against personal morality.

[Enki]

How do you convince yourself that your opting for for no God is the correct one?
It seems to me that the possibility of God should elicit some exploration, however I find none since there is no awareness, no insights for full atheism to share

I simply have found and find no reason to believe in any god and therefore live my life accordingly, no momentous 'opting' involved. I'm not in the business of trying to convince others so the last part of your above quote holds no significance for me.

That could be a text book case of empiricism, Aside from that I can't gleam much from your statement.

Then you'll understand just how vague and even recursive I found your original statement, "I believe that things can evidence themselves,"

I find logical reason for it in the argument from necessity and the argument from morality so called refutations end in scientism or the repudiation of cause and effect

All I gleaned from the extensive rebuttals to your point of view on these matters was that the idea of a god remained only a possibility, even if one allowed for the ultimate original cause idea, a possibility which I have already accepted in defining my agnosticism.

I find no empirical evidence for empiricism but that doesn't seem to worry empiricists

As the statement that God exists is assumed to be an objective fact then I simply choose to use empiricism and rationality as the most reliable approaches to the subject. For me, therefore, I find the statement that God exists to be not proved. Hence I have no reason to believe that God exists. If you can suggest more reliable methods or approaches then please tell me and if I find them worthwhile then I will happily consider them.

Do you mean an atheist's mind?

Perhaps when you respond to what I said, you could have the good grace to complete my quote in full, which was "and as I try to employ an inquiring, rational and skeptical mind I would say that I am also not bound by empirical evidence."
So, I would say that I try to employ all of the above and, rather than starting from an atheist's position, it is where I end up.

We might want it to be a personal matter but it doesn't quite sit comfortably just as a personal thing

For you, it seems. But there again, you have some sort of allegiance to your selected Biblical morals, so that would be understandable.

But it's a personal matter, isn't it? How would you know conscience has been blunted? You are saying that there is the unblunted conscience and the blunted one and it shows up in groups of people particularly christians as if they have fallen below a standard....which completely goes against personal morality.

My own morality can be blunted by attaching too much importance to selfish reasons, for instance, which may(and has) made me act in a way that I later have regretted. I would submit that groups of Christians have been shown to have had their sense of morality blunted and often it is they who accept they have fallen below their own standards.

[Alan Burns]

Why?  God is supposedly omnipotent, God has supposedly made the hierarchies of angels who don't have to go through pain and suffering, there are any number of examples around the world of the vast gulf in the extent and depth of suffering. God created this world, rather than others, and didn't need to - God chose suffering.

"Hey, I had to torture you into it, but it's OK because you love me now..." I'm pretty sure we'd lock people like that up if we caught them.

Why doesn't he take away our pain? If I could take away the pain of my loved ones  I would, in a heartbeat. The idea that you might consciously use pain and suffering to try to 'teach' people is monstrous. If you've reached a point in someone's life where the suffering has happened then maybe you try to salvage something from it by framing the learning that's arisen from it as a benefit, but if you can stop it before it happens you do.

If that's already promised why are we still suffering, why is there still the threat of hell? If our sins have been forgiven why do  we still need to suffer? What the hell is 'sin' anyway - it's not any sort of moral judgement, it's not tied to any rational set of rules or principles, it's purely obedience or not to an arbitrary selection of a host of arbitrary demands - there's no 'why', there's no justification, there's no nuance. There's just 'obey or be damned' because a capricious tyrant wants it.

How has someone born with a developmental disorder that brings them suffering but not understanding 'sinned' at all, how can there be judgement on those without the capacity to understand either the crime or the punishment?

O.

You appear to be trying to analyse God in our own human terms - "If I were God I would do things differently ..."
But you are not God, and as I said, you do not see the big picture of reality - you only see what your physical senses can detect.

As I see it - God allows two types of freedom which He himself does not control.  There is the freedom of the human soul, and the freedom within nature, driven by physical reactions - not by God's will.  Without such freedom, all reality would be just a meaningless, God driven machine.  These freedoms are what God created, but He relinquishes full control over them to allow the reality we all exist in and which allows us to appreciate and experience love - God's greatest gift.  It is the reality which God intended, and I am in no position to cast judgement on it.  I would not wish to live in a world of human idealism in which love would be an unnecessary distraction.

[Outrider]

You appear to be trying to analyse God in our own human terms - "If I were God I would do things differently ..."

Again, what option do we have than to approach it from a human perspective. Although, I seem to recall being assured that we were 'created in his image'...

But you are not God, and as I said, you do not see the big picture of reality - you only see what your physical senses can detect.

Good and evil are sensory perceptions, they're moral judgements. There is objectively pain and suffering, and if there's an omnipotent deity there doesn't need to be. Commentary about 'not seeing the bigger picture' is suggesting that this is an issue of the ends justifying the means, and that sort of pragmatic, utilitarian approach to morality can be justified in some sense by our human limitations, but if you're omnipotent you aren't limited by utility. Ironically, it's your defence of this depiction of God which is falling prey to human limitations.

As I see it - God allows two types of freedom which He himself does not control.  There is the freedom of the human soul, and the freedom within nature driven by physical reactions - not by God's will.

One of those is meaningless, and the other demonstrably does not exist.

Without such freedom, all reality would be just a meaningless, God driven machine.

There is no evidence of any sort of intrinsic 'meaning' to reality - we make meaning for ourselves.

These freedoms are what God created, but He relinquishes full control over them to allow the reality we all exist in and which allows us to appreciate and experience love - God's greatest gift.

Does he not love the Angels? Do we not deserve, as the first manifestation of that 'freedom' to choose the angelic life free of suffering and aging and gradual decay and ignorance?

It is the reality which God intended, and I am in no position to cast judgement on it.

I appreciate I'm not necessarily fully cognizant of your exact stance on the story, but isn't the whole point of the story of Adam and Eve's exile from the Garden of Eden that this is very much not God's original plan? I mean that makes no sense in light of the claims of omniscience on God's behalf, but nonetheless.

I would not wish to live in a world of human idealism in which love would be an unnecessary distraction.

I have no idea how you jumped to that conclusion, or even what it means in detail. Everything is cosmically 'unnecessary', our significance is only to ourselves; our love is, therefore, as significant or insignificant as we choose to make it.

O.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I simply have found and find no reason to believe in any god and therefore live my life accordingly, no momentous 'opting' involved. I'm not in the business of trying to convince others so the last part of your above quote holds no significance for me.

Then you'll understand just how vague and even recursive I found your original statement, "I believe that things can evidence themselves,"

All I gleaned from the extensive rebuttals to your point of view on these matters was that the idea of a god remained only a possibility, even if one allowed for the ultimate original cause idea, a possibility which I have already accepted in defining my agnosticism.

As the statement that God exists is assumed to be an objective fact then I simply choose to use empiricism and rationality as the most reliable approaches to the subject. For me, therefore, I find the statement that God exists to be not proved. Hence I have no reason to believe that God exists. If you can suggest more reliable methods or approaches then please tell me and if I find them worthwhile then I will happily consider them.

Perhaps when you respond to what I said, you could have the good grace to complete my quote in full, which was "and as I try to employ an inquiring, rational and skeptical mind I would say that I am also not bound by empirical evidence."
So, I would say that I try to employ all of the above and, rather than starting from an atheist's position, it is where I end up.

For you, it seems. But there again, you have some sort of allegiance to your selected Biblical morals, so that would be understandable.

My own morality can be blunted by attaching too much importance to selfish reasons, for instance, which may(and has) made me act in a way that I later have regretted. I would submit that groups of Christians have been shown to have had their sense of morality blunted and often it is they who accept they have fallen below their own standards.

I cannot let your argument from reliability go unchallenged. Domestos bleach is reliable....for what it does. Reliable but hardly comprehensive if I want to paint my walls. Methodological empiricism is to do with that which can be measured instrumentally or with the five senses. Empiricism, the belief that methodological empiricism is the only game in town with regards to existence is not established by methodological empiricism. It is as a philosophy automatically self negating. That seems to remove a lot of the virtue you are imbuing empiricism with.

If rationality, inquiry and skepticism are not specifically atheist, then I can claim them.

To get the full reality of the Large Hadron collider I would say one has to step inside it where the action is.
Which is the same as Christianity really.

Regarding your morality section to me this reads like an appeal to accept you have a personal morality not the philosophical thinking to establish your thesis that all morality is personal. I would not wish to  jump into that and you probably couldn't give a hill of beans if I did.

[Outrider]

Methodological empiricism is to do with that which can be measured instrumentally or with the five senses. Empiricism, the belief that methodological empiricism is the only game in town with regards to existence is not established by methodological empiricism.

Except that if you cannot discern something directly or by a measurable or detectable effect, in what way can you suggest that it's actually a thing?

If rationality, inquiry and skepticism are not specifically atheist, then I can claim them.

You cannot 'claim' them; you'd be welcome to try them on for a while, see if they are tools that you can get to work for you.

To get the full reality of the Large Hadron collider I would say one has to step inside it where the action is.

No, if you're sufficiently versed in the scientific theories, then just the reports coming out of it will tell you what's going on. Ultimately, what's happening within it that is of interest is outside of our human senses' direct capabilities anyway.

Which is the same as Christianity really.

Except that we have demonstrable, measurable outputs that show something's happening within the LHC.

O.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Except that if you cannot discern something directly or by a measurable or detectable effect, in what way can you suggest that it's actually a thing?

As opposed to a figment of one's imagination? I would say one experiences it and reacts to it which may make the efforts to refute it a kind of allergic response to it, particular when the challenge is from a mere belief like empiricism and in the case of Sean M. Carroll to name but one, one is prepared to undercut the very basis of science in order to be able to refute sufficient reason an endevour surely springing from his atheist commitment.

You cannot 'claim' them; you'd be welcome to try them on for a while, see if they are tools that you can get to work for you.

The assumption I don't or haven't is just mindless parroting from the large book of atheist abuse. A slovenly caricature.

No, if you're sufficiently versed in the scientific theories, then just the reports coming out of it will tell you what's going on. Ultimately, what's happening within it that is of interest is outside of our human senses' direct capabilities anyway.

Except that we have demonstrable, measurable outputs that show something's happening within the LHC.

So what, the LHC does not belong to atheism. It is not an atheist proving machine. The philosophical race to dispense with sufficient reason undoes much of what an atheist scientist achieves particularly in cosmology.


Moderator: quoting fixed.

[Sebastian Toe]

As I see it - God allows two types of freedom which He himself does not control.  There is the freedom of the human soul, and the freedom within nature, driven by physical reactions - not by God's will.  Without such freedom, all reality would be just a meaningless, God driven machine.  These freedoms are what God created, but He relinquishes full control over them

....hold on there......

Are you not the one who stated quite emphaticly that your god must have "directed" (intervened in other words) evolution because the endless physical chains of reactions could not possibly have resulted in life, especially human life as we have it today?

[Outrider]

As opposed to a figment of one's imagination?

Or any other unsubstantiated claim.

I would say one experiences it and reacts to it which may make the efforts to refute it a kind of allergic response to it, particular when the challenge is from a mere belief like empiricism and in the case of Sean M. Carroll to name but one, one is prepared to undercut the very basis of science in order to be able to refute sufficient reason an endevour surely springing from his atheist commitment.

We know that people are more than capable of reporting experiences that aren't related to actual things, from dreams through any array of delusions and hallucinations to 'vague feelings'. You are presuming that someone deducing that what they've experienced is 'god' is therefore actually experiencing god, but our experiences are not necessarily a reliable indicator.

This is no way undercuts science, which relies on more than merely the report of an experience to consider a claim validated.

The assumption I don't or haven't is just mindless parroting from the large book of atheist abuse.

It isn't an assumption, it's a conclusion from the innumerable logical fallacies you've smeared over these boards.

A slovenly caricature.

That I make this look easy does not imply slovenliness, it's a combination of years of practice, a natural flair, and a practically unmissable target.

So what, the LHC does not belong to atheism.

No-one said it did; you raised it as an example, I showed you why it was a poor example for your comparison. If you want to pick another poor example I can highlight that instead.

It is not an atheist proving machine.

And the suggestion that it was came from where?

The philosophical race to dispense with sufficient reason undoes much of what an atheist scientist achieves particularly in cosmology.

My atheism is predicated on sufficient reason; to whit, you've not given sufficient reason to believe your claim of 'god'. I don't have to prove a case, I don't need sufficient reason, I just need to point out the manifest flaws in your attempts at it.

O.

[SusanDoris]

Nice post, outrider, as always. I haven't dropped in on this topic for a whilebut coincidentally, the Author of the Month on GH is Greek ( and his book seems to be  about the statuary of ancient Greece. The article he wrote as an introduction was too short and the subject not of particular interest to me, but he mentioned intuition so I had to question him for a definition of intuition. An experience of apparent intuition is not a proof and his comeback was to mention logical fallacies, so perhaps I have dropped in here at a suitable place and will follow for a while!!

[Enki]

I cannot let your argument from reliability go unchallenged. Domestos bleach is reliable....for what it does. Reliable but hardly comprehensive if I want to paint my walls. Methodological empiricism is to do with that which can be measured instrumentally or with the five senses. Empiricism, the belief that methodological empiricism is the only game in town with regards to existence is not established by methodological empiricism. It is as a philosophy automatically self negating. That seems to remove a lot of the virtue you are imbuing empiricism with.

As regards the actual existence of a god, I try to utilise my senses in as intersubjective way as possible and I try to use my mental abilities in as rational and inquiring manner as possible. My conclusion, using this approach, is that, although it is always possible that a god exists, there is no information and no evidence that has been gathered so far concerning the actuality of any god. All that can be gathered is information regarding how humans have described, and their attitude to, their various gods.

Certainly for me this is the most reliable approach to the whole subject of the existence of a god that I can think of.


Consider the alternative which can be summed up as having a personal faith. I submit that simply having a personal faith has huge disadvantages on the reliability front, not only due to the plurality of god characters it produces, but also because it could simply be annulled by someone else's personal faith in there being no god at all. All personal faiths, by virtue of them being so described, are equal to the extent in which they are held. This, I submit, is no way to show the validity of any particular god/no god.

However, I am always open to a more reliable approach in assessing the validity for any god, as I have already said. so, if you have one, please elucidate.

If rationality, inquiry and skepticism are not specifically atheist, then I can claim them.

As I do not regard the above as being particularly atheist, and as I do not claim them as such, you have every right to use them, just as I do.

To get the full reality of the Large Hadron collider I would say one has to step inside it where the action is.
Which is the same as Christianity really.

Surely you are not suggesting that I become a believer in order to see Christianity from the inside? If so, I leave you to work out what the problem with this is.

Regarding your morality section to me this reads like an appeal to accept you have a personal morality not the philosophical thinking to establish your thesis that all morality is personal. I would not wish to  jump into that and you probably couldn't give a hill of beans if I did.

You're right. I really don't care what you think. I have my own personal morality which I try(emphasis on 'try') to abide by.

[jeremyp]

You appear to be trying to analyse God in our own human terms - "If I were God I would do things differently ..."
But you are not God, and as I said, you do not see the big picture of reality - you only see what your physical senses can detect.

You are in the same boat and yet you seem pretty keen to tell us what God wants and what his/her/its motivations are. I mean, even the fact that you call God "he" and you talk about him having a son shows that you analyse him/her/it in human terms.

As I see it - God allows two types of freedom which He himself does not control.

How could you possibly know?

[jeremyp]

As opposed to a figment of one's imagination?

Yes.

I would say one experiences it and reacts to it which may make the efforts to refute it a kind of allergic response to it

An allergic response is a physical reaction. You can detect it empirically.

So what, the LHC does not belong to atheism. It is not an atheist proving machine.

Nobody claims it is. It's a machine designed to verify scientific hypotheses. You see when scientists make claims, they need to find evidence before people will accept them. This is why science has made unparalleled advances in our understanding of the world whereas religionists still can't agree on how many gods there are despite arguing about it - sometimes bloodily - for millennia.

[Alan Burns]

....hold on there......

Are you not the one who stated quite emphaticly that your god must have "directed" (intervened in other words) evolution because the endless physical chains of reactions could not possibly have resulted in life, especially human life as we have it today?

Yes,
God can use His will to manipulate and interact with the forces of nature to bring about His desired creation.
Just as humans can use their gift of free will to interact with nature to bring about human creation.
We are made in God's image.

What I was saying was that God does not exert total control over nature. 
As CS Lewis observed, the natural world appears to be designed to be manipulated.

[jeremyp]

Yes,
God can use His will to manipulate and interact with the forces of nature to bring about His desired creation.

Couldn't he have manipulated the forces of nature to prevent Vladimir Putin from invading the Ukraine. Maybe a lump of masonry falls from a high part of the Kremlin just as he's going in...

Of course, you are free to claim that the current suffering going on on in Ukraine is part of God's plan and that's why he didn't do it. That seems to be the only answer to my suggestion. 

 
As CS Lewis observed, the natural world appears to be designed to be manipulated.

CS Lewis didn't have a grasp of the "natural world". It doesn't look designed at all to anybody who has looked at it rigorously.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

As regards the actual existence of a god, I try to utilise my senses in as intersubjective way as possible and I try to use my mental abilities in as rational and inquiring manner as possible. My conclusion, using this approach, is that, although it is always possible that a god exists, there is no information and no evidence that has been gathered so far concerning the actuality of any god. All that can be gathered is information regarding how humans have described, and their attitude to, their various gods.

Certainly for me this is the most reliable approach to the whole subject of the existence of a god that I can think of.


Consider the alternative which can be summed up as having a personal faith. I submit that simply having a personal faith has huge disadvantages on the reliability front, not only due to the plurality of god characters it produces, but also because it could simply be annulled by someone else's personal faith in there being no god at all. All personal faiths, by virtue of them being so described, are equal to the extent in which they are held. This, I submit, is no way to show the validity of any particular god/no god.

However, I am always open to a more reliable approach in assessing the validity for any god, as I have already said. so, if you have one, please elucidate.

As I do not regard the above as being particularly atheist, and as I do not claim them as such, you have every right to use them, just as I do.

Surely you are not suggesting that I become a believer in order to see Christianity from the inside? If so, I leave you to work out what the problem with this is.

You're right. I really don't care what you think. I have my own personal morality which I try(emphasis on 'try') to abide by.

You seem to be putting your empiricism against my faith. Empiricism is a belief or faith because the tenet of this is the only way to make decisions and have knowledge about the universe i.e. the only game in town cannot be established by science or methodological empiricism. I enjoy methodological empiricism too, recognise that it is reliable as you.

So there we are then you have a kind of hybrid empiricism as your belief and modus vivendi and methodological empiricism and I have christianity as my belief and methodological empiricism.

The LHC has a hatch into which you may enter if it is running to get the full effect and to partake in the reactions, similarly God has a hatch which you have referred to as ''the possibility of God.''

[Udayana]

You seem to be putting your empiricism against my faith. Empiricism is a belief or faith because the tenet of this is the only way to make decisions and have knowledge about the universe i.e. the only game in town cannot be established by science or methodological empiricism. I enjoy methodological empiricism too, recognise that it is reliable as you.

So there we are then you have a kind of hybrid empiricism as your belief and modus vivendi and methodological empiricism and I have christianity as my belief and methodological empiricism.

The LHC has a hatch into which you may enter if it is running to get the full effect and to partake in the reactions, similarly God has a hatch which you have referred to as ''the possibility of God.''

Not bad - much better than your usual effort! ... is it like the hatch that the found in "Lost"?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Not bad - much better than your usual effort! ... is it like the hatch that the found in "Lost"?

Apart from the feeling of having my homework marked, I didn't see ''Lost'', please enlighten us on the reference.

[Udayana]

Apart from the feeling of having my homework marked, I didn't see ''Lost'', please enlighten us on the reference.

Well ...it would be much, much too long - just like the series ... you can find the plot and all the episode summaries on wiki.

Essentially they find a hatch and in a chamber at the bottom they find someone obliged to complete a series of games to stop destruction of the world: Why? - we have to work that out for ourselves.
 
 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Well ...it would be much, much too long - just like the series ... you can find the plot and all the episode summaries on wiki.

Essentially they find a hatch and in a chamber at the bottom they find someone obliged to complete a series of games to stop destruction of the world: Why? - we have to work that out for ourselves.

I rather meant that the hatch is there for us to climb into, to mull, to explore, if we so choose.

[Udayana]

I rather meant that the hatch is there for us to climb into, to mull, to explore, if we so choose.

Oh I see - a hatch for us ... I thought you meant a hatch through which God could come and partake in the world.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Oh I see - a hatch for us ... I thought you meant a hatch through which God could come and partake in the world.

That describes Jesus Christ.

[Udayana]

I rather meant that the hatch is there for us to climb into, to mull, to explore, if we so choose.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Thanks for your post, it is an arresting image.

[Sebastian Toe]

I rather meant that the hatch is there for us to climb into, to mull, to explore, if we so choose.

Where is the hatch?
What happens if you look and can't find it?
What if you find it but you experience it as being empty?