Jack Kamm

OK. Cool.

rainbow walking

[b[haverbob[/b]: No, I am not adherent to the Christian misinrepretation although I would say that I am adherent to the words of Jesus and I am not adherent to the misinterpretation of his words.


rw: Ah...a man with his own private interpretation.


haverbob: People really do not understand what Jesus was REALLY trying to say and do. In fact, an atheist would have an easier time understanding an alternative interpretation for Jesus's words than would alot of theists. This is why Jesus had no problems with the sinners. His biggest problem was with the supposed saints.

rw: Try me.

haverbob: Oh, I think not. It would be foolish for me to think that I can do better than that. Just as foolish as you explaining the exact nature or essence of the origin of everything according to science. Before you tell me science can, just remember my example of what science does when it finds the ultimate endower, it looks for the endower of the ultimate endower as so on, so on....

rw: Uh...who said anything about science explaining the nature or essence of the origin of everything? As far as I know that's never been a scientific endeavor I've ever heard of. Cosmologists might be searching for possible explanations of how this universe came to exist, but nature and essence seem a little out of their field of expertise. Perhaps you'd like to take a shot at describing the nature and essence of this god you've been championing?

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haverbob: No. Sorry to disappoint you. In fact, if it did, surely I would not have believed it, just like you don't believe explanations. When all falsehoods are removed then perhaps God can be experienced, but NEVER explained.

rw: What falsehoods are you speaking of?

haverbob: About the only thing he says is that when you live moment to moment in the present moment, that's where God can be found (but not explained).

rw: That's exactly how I live...except when I'm sleeping...then I live from snore to alarm. When do you reckon I'll get to experience this god?

haverbob: I merely gave as general attributes that I could for the purpose of discussion. Timeless, creation and love. Creation is easy, but explain to me what timeless is and what love is.

rw: Timeless would be a state of being. Love would be a state of mind. Creation would be a realized capability.

haverbob: So I really didn't give a description, I merely threw in a fews words for the sake of the argument. Words, however, will always be false to a varying degree in the face of reality.

rw: Then you're possibly not saying true things?

haverbob

I don't think so, although, logically speaking, I will admit that there is a possibility that God doesn't exist (I just don't believe that, that's all). So if God didn't exist, then it would be something else that would have to represent the origin. I understand that. So in that case they would be 2 different things. However, choice B, there is a God, would mean that origin and God would be the same or perhaps origin is a subset, either way.
Imagine if you were in the 1700's talking about microwave signals. Let's just replace "God" with "microwave signals" and re-read it. But that's not really a good answer because I believe that God will never be supported by evidence anyway. Assuming there is a God, he, she, it...whatever would be a timeless entity, at least as the story goes, and therefore be beyond the bounds of "reason", which creates "explanation", which happens in "time". Believe or not, when someone tries to make God sound "logical and sensible" to you, you would be correct in immediately seeing them as full of it. God doesn't get explained in logical and sensible terms, those are just terms we made up. If we didn't create "logic", then who did? Same goes with "sensible"
Not really and sorry if I'm causing confusion. I may have used the term "happiest" somewhere along the line, but I doubt that I would have said "best". Equal? I suppose. About as equal as a purple frib and a yellow frab. The point of the thread was not to tell anyone what to believe, that's stupid. It was to point out how one can rationalize one's belief in the existence of God as the title suggested. It's really a pointless exercise if you think about it, but it's generating some interesting thoughts and responses.
Well I think cause and origin, while often interchangable, are not exactly the same thing, but anyway
Then you seem to subscribe to the "something can appear without origin or cause right out of thin air" argument. That would be theory number 2 (and to think I dismissed this right away). That takes care of the hole in number 1 "infinite origin" Well, I'm no scientist obviously, but if some matter was suddenly created from anti-matter, the anti-matter becomes the cause of the matter or maybe both matter and anti-matter share the same cause, either way. Picture how far the "question of origin game can go". I think forever, based on human reason.
I understand this. When I belch, I release air and feel better. I didn't create that belch, I merely changed the balance between inner and outer air in a rude fashion. In this case, it is said that while the belch may have had a "cause" (me blowing air out) it did not have an "origin". It was a mere rearrangement of molecules. The molecules themselves have an origin, but the rearrangement of those molecules has a cause.
In this case, I would prefer the word "origin". "cause" is often confused with "purpose".
Actually, I believe they would say "of course there is a cause, we just don't know the cause yet". That's a little different.
Well then thank God at least the scriptures referred to God as "timeless", "no time", "eternal". I guess that was the part they got right. I'll say this much, the word "God" itself will necessarily block someone from experiencing God, because it's a word, and words will never sufficiently represent reality.
It may be, except for the fact that I would have to ask what made the multiverse "arise".
And it NEVER will. I'm just saying that the other side of the fence don't look so hot either. So I could just as easily laugh at myself if I chose to be an atheist as I could being an theist.

haverbob

rw: Ah...a man with his own private interpretation.

hb: Well it's actually based on a concept that many people are aware of. Jesus was "awakened". There are people that have written about being awakened for thousands of years, aside from Christianity but most people don't see what they really mean. Too long to explain right now, but I do not believe it's solely my own interpretation.

rw:Try me.

hb: I picture arms folded and a foot tapping. That's fine. Although that book is 180 pages, and it talks about nothing that others haven't said throughout history, the credit it gets from critics is actually that he explained what he did in an organized fashion and in a mere 180 pages of big text. Now after saying that, I'm supposed to explain all of this to you in one message on a chat board? Unfortunately, that would be impossible, although I suppose that I wish I could.

rw: What falsehoods are you speaking of?

hb: Well, okay. Maybe I can show you, maybe not.

1)If you like to do charitable things from time to time, then I ask "why are you wasting your time? Who are you helping anway? I don't do charity. I look after myself".

2)What do you think about the statement that true love means sacrificing for your partner even if it's at the expense of your happiness, and the expectation that the partner will do the same in return, even if it's at the expense of the partner's happiness?

rw: That's exactly how I live...

hb: Well you may think it's moment to moment but it doesn't seem like it to me as far as I can tell. First let me say that "moment to moment" is often confused as a subset of "day by day" and that they are both basically the same concept. "Moment to moment" creates timelessness. "Day by day" or "live for today" are not even the same animal as by what is meant here by "moment to moment". Day and today are words that represent time. Moment does not. If it did, then you could tell me how long a moment lasts, right? Here's a couple of questions that I don't need an answer to and you obviously don't need to answer them for yourself if you don't feel like it.

1)Think of a day in your past that was one day before a day that you know could be a horrorshow and there is nothing you can do about it, kind of like a Sunday before a Monday when everyone at work is going to find you broke something beyond repair or any example of a bad day that was coming up that you couldn't do anything about. Now, did you think about what may happen the next day?? If you did, you were not living in the present moment while you were thinking about it. You were partially living in the future and some of your focus was taken away from the present moment and there may have been things that you missed during that present moment that you will never know (and never recover). Your Sunday became Sunday/Monday. You lost 50% (or whatever) of Sunday and that will never come again, and gained a projection of a Monday to fill the 50% loss of Sunday. A Monday that frequently turns out to be quite different than the "Monday of your Sunday"

Have you ever said "if I would have only done this or that a different way, things could have been better" If so, then when you did that, you are now partially living in the past during the present moment. The past is brought about by our memories ( the past) operating in the present moment. It has nothing to do with the present moment (reality). It's the past. Don't get me wrong, memories can be useful, but the memories themselves are not the present moment. The "action" of recreating the past is in the present moment, but not the memories themselves and yet our mind is focused on the memories and not what is going on around us and is not cognizant of that fact that it is creating the past as a substitute for the present.

The future is invented by our hopes and fears, but the future never really exists because when it gets here it becomes reality, it's the present moment, not the future. Therefore, we invent the future as well. The only thing that reflects reality is the present moment and the more we pay attention to that the closer we get to reality. By the way, good memories and good expectations fall in to the same thing as the bad ones used in the example. There are thousands of miniscule examples that one can find every day of how we think this way. We are usually just not aware of it.

rw:Timeless would be a state of being. Love would be a state of mind. Creation would be a realized capability.

hb: okay good. that's what timeless and love mean to you. It's not really what it means to me or to websters, but I'll accept those definitions if it helps you grasp what I have been saying. Doesn't matter, they're just words anyway.

rw: Then you're possibly not saying true things?
Anything that one says about God will never be entirely true and therefore be false to varying degrees. Same thing goes with reality. Words take a flowing river (reality) and fragment it and slap labels on the peices. Water in a bucket from a famous river is not the river anymore. River does not mean water. River is a cheap word to represent a continuous event with no seams or fragments. The word "River" is a fragment of the reality of a river.

Jack Kamm

If this were the 1700s and we were talking about microwave signals, I would be correct in assuming there are no microwave signals. Why? Because there are a seemingly endless number of creations one can imagine, and the chance that any one of them happens to exist is extremely low (although it is possible that they do happen to exist). Thus, without evidence, we can assume any random extraordinary claim is false.

And the claim that a personal nonspaciotemporal being exists is a wildly extraordinary claim.

Besides, what's the point of talking about gods if reason and logic don't apply to these beings?

I'm not a physicist, so correct me if I'm wrong, but according to QM there are random and spontaneous physical processes. To quote Asha'man from an earlier thread ,

At the macroscopic scale (which is just the average of a huge amount of particles at the quantum scale), things average out and appear to have deterministic cause-effect relationships.

But anyways, back to the topic...

Sorry for the misinterpretations of your original post. But anyways, I'll try again. Hope I do better this time

You believe that the existance of everything has an origin. I think that is not unreasonable (though I am an agnostic on this issue).

You believe that the origin had a cause (as opposed to a rabbit from a hat origin). Also not unreasonable, but again, I am an agnostic on this issue.

Then you believe that this cause is personal and loving. I don't think that this is a reasonable belief. If there is a first cause, why must it be intelligent? If there is a first cause, and if it is intelligent, why must it be loving? I don't see any reason for believing that this should be so. Why do you not believe in an unintelligent, unloving cause?

EDIT: Dammit! I screwed up again . I checked back and the three words you applied to your god were timeless, loving, and creation, not timeless, loving, and personal as I thought when I wrote this. Oops.

Anyways, I assume you believe in an intelligent god. If not, you can ignore the last part of the post, but if your god wasn't intelligent I don't know if I would consider it a god

Jack Kamm

You seem to be using the origins of the universe to show that atheism is just as bad as theism (at least in you original post). Atheism doesn't say anything about the origins of the universe. There could be an origin, there could be no origin, there could be a cause, there could be no cause. Atheism is just the lack of belief in an intelligent cause of the universe (I realize that the definition of god is much broader, but it's not really relevant to the OP). Atheists lack belief in an intelligent cause for various reasons. I recommend you the to Arguments for Atheism section of the II library.

And anyways, "goddidit!" is not a very satisfactory explanation for the origins of the universe.

haverbob

Okay random. So I have an algorythim the selects a random number between 1 and 16 million. No cause or origin there, it's just random, except for the fact that I am randomly choose from a set of things that have an origin (numbers, 2 comes from two one's)
Yes in this case, the chance was extremely low and therefore you shouldn't be blamed for thinking that way. I agree. It's just that you would have eventually have been proven wrong that's all and therefore your understandable judgement would have been wrong as well. I think you know the basic jist of what I'm saying.
Well, I'm not sure that I started this thread to tell everyone what God is. This occured because I applied the same critical view to atheism that atheist apply to theism and when people started to run out of answers they decided to say "oh yeah, well tell me what's so great about your point of view". When they did this, then I knew that at least they understood my point. So I am politely trying to fairly appease their reverse the table tactic, but I'll never succeed, and I'll never expect to. One has to see it for themselves. Just like atheists never succeed when properly pressed. They merely say "well I don't know what it is, but somehow I KNOW that it's not that". So I guess the small advantage of atheism is that they can take pride in saying "I don't know what it is". Well, okay.
Because humans are intelligent and loving (at least they try to be). I'll grant that it may not be a CONVINCING reason for you, but I have given a reasonable reason. It's certainly possible for it to be unintelligent and unloving, but it seems odd to me that it would create intelligent and loving beings. How would it know how to? If you want to propose that intelligence and love are made up in our heads, then you have a good reason to question my assumption of intelligence and love. Of course, animals have some capability for intelligence and love (at least the way we are describing those things), and yet I'm not sure that they are capable of making it up in their heads.
Well actually I believe in something that goes beyond the bounds of intelligence. Intelligence is really just a word when it comes down to it. I'm using it because I have no choice but to use words in an area that will never be sufficiently explained with words, but it's the best I can do as a semi-intelligent, reasonable human being. Intelligence involves reason and problem solving. I think the concept of timelessness is out of the bounds of those concepts. So any time I use words, I will ultimately stumble. I'm trying not to use words as a descriptor, but merely as a pointer to the undescribable. Maybe I'm not doing a great job. Perhaps that unwieldy task should be left to masters, but again, this is not what I intended to do in this thread anyway.
I understand this. I went from being a Catholic to being a critically thinking atheist and then to being a "theist" (a broad enough definition). I believe that I mentioned that the concept of God goes beyond intelligence. It cannot be understood nor explained, only experienced. So, of course "intelligent" examination will never reconcile the concept. Therefore, if intelligence can't reconcile it, it must be false. Well, okay, but that seems like a little limited from my point of view.
Yes, I agree, according to what you are capable of KNOWING and UNDERSTANDING. If anyone thinks that I don't already know and understand their reasoning behind atheism, think again, because I was one.

Theli

Concepts that makes words are always formed from intelligence and language. You can sense something overwhelming (wich you refer to as god) but to identify and assign a name or a word to it requires intelligence. If you were a dog you wouldn't call it "god" either, simply becuase you would lack the intelligence needed for literal concepts.
This is why there are so many gods and religious beliefs, people sense things they cannot understand and then they make up an explaination for it.

...just my barking.

Theli

If we want to get technical, then an atheist could very well believe in an intelligent cause of the universe as long as it doesn't fill the criteria of a god (supernatural, object of worship, humanlike).

haverbob

I think i may actually agree with both of your posts. Actually, maybe I should say that I really don't disagree.
I like the use of the word "sense". Yes, alot of people could be "making up" explanations but the strange part is how people seem to sense something that appears to have alot of similarities across the board. So while their explanations may be insufficient (and probably always will be), maybe the strange thing they sense is not.