Ryanfire

Reality is predicated on the material, if the immaterial existed, the universe would have no reason to be material.

Stretch said immaterial 'things' such as ideas exist. Is this not an illusion of the immaterial since our brains are material?

So far god exists outside logic, space, time, reality, our perception, and as the immaterial. Where else can theists and agnostics hide him?

Just_An_Atheist

I'm sorry, but I'm not quite sure what you mean here, could you please clarify? As far as I can tell, this is a confused post.

Jobar

How so? I think you're mistaken to apply "reason" to the universe; looks like anthropomorpizing to me. Plus, there do exist abstract aspects to reality, which may be said to be "immaterial"- mathematics, for example.

I'm not saying you are completely wrong here, or that you don't have some point to your argument- but you need to phrase it more carefully.

Ryanfire

you're right guys.

I didn't mean to apply reason to the universe.

I meant:
If god was immaterial, and was the only being that existed, how would he know to create material?

Kat_Somm_Faen

To exist means to be material ( in the loser sense of the word ).

How can something be existing and be imaterial puzzles me.


So by something existing is immaterial is like saying something red is not red.

It wouls seem to me that everything that would come into exitence would necesarily become material.

Stephen T-B

What I’m getting from some of the Believers here (Normal and Whispers come to mind) is that the Material and the Immaterial merge into a sort of mystical continuum. Disentangling the two seems to be beyond their powers.
I wonder if we haven’t stumbled on something here: a difference in thought processes which distinguishes those who “know” there’s a supernatural dimension from those who don’t know.
It is already clear that a person’s belief in god amounts to near certainty. Billy Graham is Cool has said he is 95 per cent certain his God exists. That’s not quite certain knowledge, but it’s about the same degree of certainty as I’d claim to have in regard to the effect a particular sort of anti-malarial pills has on my insides.
To me, that is just extraordinary; it is unaccountable.
I put it down, of course, to wishful thinking, but I may have missed something more interesting.

phil

Something that is immaterial cannot exist physically (that would be an oxymoron), however, that does not mean immaterial things do not exist.

Do not love, hate etc. exist? They do, but it only in the mind. Immaterial things get their existence by being derived from material things (love only exists because we have a mind, and our mind only exists because we have a brain).

If the Christians you talked to believe God is only immaterial, they are mistaken.

"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness...' " Genesis 1:26

The Christian God has 3 parts; the physical (Jesus), mental (the Father), and spiritual (Holy Spirit). If God made us in his image, then we should have these 3 parts as well.

Christians believe people have all three characteristics, while atheists belive we only have two (physical and mental).

I hope that helps.

-phil

Hedshaker

With respect phil, that sounds like christian point scoring and it's immaterial.

Wouldn't a band's music be considered, their material? Is not a comediens jokes his/her material?

Would the material they choose not to do be immaterial?

Ryanfire

Love, hate, spirituality do exist, but only as concepts developed by the mind. Ideas, thoughts, and intuition can also fall under this category. The immaterial only exists in our minds.

So what exactly is god? If he is not immaterial, he is material.

So the story would go as follows,
In the beginning, there was a material being known as god, surrounded by nothing. Therefore, he has the knowledge of nothing. When's the last time you learned quantum physics by studying nothing?

Before I go further with this story, do we concede that reality, ideas, thoughts, theories, love, hate, emotions..etc.. did not exist? Or did god have knowledge of them from the beginning, and if so, how did he learn while existing and surrounded by nothing?

As phil said above, "Do not love, hate etc. exist? They do, but it only in the mind. Immaterial things get their existence by being derived from material things (love only exists because we have a mind, and our mind only exists because we have a brain). "

Would the supernatural get its existence by being derived from material things?

I think the human brain has evolved abstract thinking to better figure out the material universe. Unfortunately, this is where religion and the god concept has a hold over the beliefs of the world. Abstract thinking is treated as truth, rather than a system of analyzing.

Stephen T-B

Thanks Ryanfire for that.
Things are becoming marginally clearer in my fogged-up mind.
The merging of the material and the immaterial is, I realise, axiomatic as far as believers are concerned. From their perspective, it is inevitable that the supernatural and the natural should be indivisible or how else could the gods they believe in be a part of their every-day lives?

I get a glimpse of how it happens when I consider the power of imagination and of the abstract concepts it generates, like love, hate, longing, fear, joy, demons and gods.
I think the reason I don’t believe is because in my mind there is a clear delineation between the abstract and concrete reality, and there always has been. As a child I “believed” in God and Jesus because of what the grown-ups told me, and I didn’t know enough to question them. Nevertheless, I put these entities in a compartment of their own, which is why, when I saw a map of the Middle East I was astonished (at age 10) to see that the Holy Land actually existed. It is also why my belief was able, later on, to fall away.

The reason Believers make no distinction between the concrete and the abstract may be because rejecting harsh realities is a necessary part of the way they can function.
I see a similarity in the way Believers regard atheists and the way atheists regard believers: they think we have made a wilful decision to reject god; we may be guilty of a similar error when we imply that they have made a wilful decision to believe the unbelievable.
I think they have as little choice in the matter as we have.
Being incomprehensible to one another, we look for explanations as to the other’s belief / lack-of-belief which lie within the parameters set by our own perceptions of reality.

(This seemed to make sense when I wrote it. Re-reading it, I’m not sure it does, but it’s the best I can do at the moment.)