ax

What is true to me may not be true for you, but here's what I think: To a degree, God is not a person, but a proccess. We create God in our own image, and we are constently changing our perceptions of him with society. We attribute human traits such as mercy, love and so on, and then procced to worship them. We can spend our whole life trying to understand God, but how much closer does it get us to ourselves? Goals have a way of changing, in fact, they must change,given that stage 1 melts into stage 2 just when we think we've arrived at God. When you study the teachings and lives of people who claim to be from "GOD" (Buddha, Jesus), you can see a theme running through them. God is what can be experienced, not imagined.( I'm still on a journey
though!!)

goody2shoes

Hello ax,

Interesting post and one with which I can somewhat agree -- but largely disagree.

Unfortunately, another problem beacons me for a few days. I hope that the thread continues until I can get back

Goody

HelenM

Hi ax!

This is a lot like how the liberal Christians think. Like Spong, etc.

I.e. there are lots of people who would agree with you

One thing I think is - surely as a society our views of 'love, mercy, bloodshed, violence' etc have changed. So we can't help but interact with Bible texts differently than people used to.

I doubt that people centuries ago were concerned to defend God when they read the story of Noah. I expect that when it was written the thought was simply "all the wicked people deserved to die".

I think we have changed our views a lot, societally, and so questions are raised now that never would have been raised in the past.

People who try to say nothing has changed - I think they are kidding themselves. People who won't change will be left behind - and I'm not referring to the Christian doctrine of the rapture and those who don't get raptured!

love
Helen

HelenM

Hi stardust

So are you saying: if God does in fact exist and God is the type to send you to hell for being honest about what you don't believe in, then you'd rather be sent to hell than hang out with that sort of God?

It seems like I've often read comments to that effect, here.

love
Helen

philechat

Again, people always hope to attain objectivity as if such thing really exists. However, no one is omniscient and we only have a lifetime to achieve a certain amount of knowledge of this world, and therefore "picking and choosing" the sources of knowledge is essential.

People, no matter how much they study, is unlikely to become "completely objective" in their understanding, and I would say a certain amount of "bias" is always required to still make choice about one's own life. You may call this "talking to oneself", but in my opinion, to have a perspective of oneself is more important than becoming perfectly objective on all ideas.

Again, how do you know "a personal god exists and we should worship him" to be more objective than another? A buddhist, a hindu, and a pantheist may all disagree with you, and no matter how much you insist on the "objectivity" of your feelings and viewpoints it's still "your" perspective and not "everyone's" perspective. Again how do you prove your perspective more correct than the other perspectives? From "your" experience (and thus "your" perspective)?

Similarly, how do you know the need to connect to a god is essential to all (open-minded) people? Perhaps some people do not need it. For example, I may attribute all divine qualities and subtle meanings toward the classical music I listened to, but again it is a purely subjective critique, and I know that many people does not share the same feelings about classical music as I do. Does that mean they are close-minded? No. They simply feel differently about classical music and saw no meanings to it while I saw all cosmos embodied in it.

Similar to the idea of a personal god, isn't it? The idea of God to you is like classical music to me. All the meanings we attribute to them are ad-hoc, and therefore subjective. We should blame no one if they "do not see meaning" in things we value most.

(Let's also imagine the argument between a stamp-collector and a non stamp-collector...the stamp-collector waved his fist around, gestured at the pictures of the stamps, and talked loudly about where each stamp originated...the non stamp-collector tried to feign interest, but in his heart he knew all the things the stamp-collector said to him meant nothing...was the non stamp-collector "wrong"?)

[ July 05, 2002: Message edited by: philechat ]</p>

Perchance

Hi Goody,

I think this thread will hang around until you get back (at least I hope so!)

I think perhaps where we disagree (if we do- it's so hard to know sometimes ) is that one can ever settle on something and decide that one's search for truth has been, more or less, fulfilled. I don't think that I ever can. This is the primary reason why I continue to call myself an agnostic (or atheist agnostic) rather than an atheist. Even weak atheism seems to require a certainty I'm not ready to commit to.

Thanks for the advice regarding Mere Christianity. (I still haven't found it yet, which frustrates me because I know I saw it a few days ago while looking for another book). I may or may not end up reading the whole thing, depending on how interesting I find it. I will at least try to get through the first chapter.

And yes, all analogies when talking about atheism/theism are probably going to be uncertain or flawed from the point of view of someone. Analogy is a hard form of argument to maintain, even though I think it's probably the best form when talking about metaphysics and other things 'outside the realm of nature.'

I use beauty as an analogy a lot of the time. I often love things I find beautiful- individual songs, paintings, and poems- but that doesn't mean I start to like the entire genre of music, art, or poesy that it belongs to. Similarly, there are tenets on both the theistic and atheistic sides that I agree with and love (more on the atheistic side, I grant you), but I can't shut out or forget the beauty of the tenets on one side simply in order to turn to the other side. I find this limiting- though sometimes the confusion that results isn't much better.

-Perchance.

Perchance

Huh. All right, I think I see where you're coming from.

However...

Why should people need to "get the focus off of their individual lives?" Is there something inherently selfish about being concerned about the self? Or something inherently wrong with selfishness? Or are you talking here about the desire for immortality that most people appear to have (vain and silly though I find it)?

I think it's the idea of "service" that I object to. Community is one thing. Service is another. The images that spring up in my mind when thinking about such things are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with friends versus kneeling.

Or perhaps I simply haven't met yet something that I would consider "serving." .

I think I see what you mean. However, I suppose that I translate this into: desire for belonging, but not confinement. There are times I've eagerly looked for a group to belong to in the past- such as a political party, a school organization, a "cause" like environmentalism- and each time I found out almost too late that there's some core belief I don't share. By some of the standards I've seen, I'm not even a "woman" as a woman is defined by feminists: a constant victim of rape and patriarchy. I do not feel that I have been oppressed, for example, and apparently being "oppressed" is part of being female for these people.

Of course, perhaps my being here is another attempt to find a community, but at least this time I'm not trying to match myself in perfectly. With a group of such disparate individuals, who could?

-Perchance.

Perchance

I know this was addressed to stardust, but I just wanted to say that:

If there is a God who sends people to eternal torment for non-belief (and whether a believer defines it as fire and brimstone, or just as separation from God, the "eternal" seems to be implied), I hope I would have the courage to refuse to worship him and be sent to hell if that was what he would do to me.

I can't know, of course, until (or unless) I'm in that situation, and my courage may be bolstered by the fact that I don't really ever expect to be in it. But I would hope, as I said, that I had the courage for defiance.

So chalk me up as someone who would rather go to hell than spend eternity with that kind of god, yes.

-Perchance.

goody2shoes

Hi Philechat

My trip got postponed, so I have some time to respond to the "infidels" and other posts over this week-end.

I offer the following comnents to you:

For many centuries, and in all parts of the world, men and women have been interested in the "fundamental meaning of life". Hence we have the many opinions (both pro and con) about god and about his nature. To say there is no god (atheist) or that he is a non-interacting god (deist), then the issue becomes very simple….. namely: just forget it,

If however, there exists a sentient being who created this universe, and who actually pays attention to the sentient life that he created, then it is a relatively important issue to many (or most) people.

Now you are certainly free to choose to relegate the issue in any fashion that suits you. It is a free country after all. However, I really doubt that you can mean everything that you say - because I observe your participation in the infidels. This list is not one to discuss music, stamp collecting, golf or anything other than atheistic/religious issues. If I have read your history on this list correctly, you have made 191 posts in the 70 days that you have been active. That certainly represents a significant period of time on average for each of those 70 days. I estimate in excess of 30 minutes (on average) for each and every day. You may not agree with some conclusions - but I find it hard to believe that you are disinterested.

Indeed! I agree with you that none of us are perfect and that we cannot arrive at the totally correct conclusions. Just look at how long it taken our science to arrive at the even mediocre understanding of the universe that we have as of today. Yet, I still study science and I still search for the deepest meaning of life. I think that is what "it is all about" for me (but not for you).

May I ask what it "is all about" for you?

Respectfully,

Goody

philechat

Aesthetics, of course. It is always intriguing to think about arguments (build philosophical models) and then refuting it afterwards. The intellectual challenges presented on this board is one of the most important reason I am here.

And less so, emotional issues I need to flash out, as people in "the real world" tend to misunderstand me (I am introverted and reserved, uninterested in smalltalks and social niceties...). The "tolerance" in this board is different from the "tact" we often encountered in outside society. This board is a genuine place where people may challenge one another's viewpoints instead of hiding beneath the politically correct "acceptance" which I see as a form of hypocrisy.

As far as my worldview goes I am an aesthetic existentialist, which might differ from the rationalism you often encounter in many atheists. Think about Wittgenstein's idea about the rational argument of God ("If God could be arrived by rational argument then I must defy him") and you get very close to my worldview.

Does this idea mystify you? If so then let it be. Philosophy and art are one and the same, and the play with pure ideas (without necessary correspondence to reality) is my definition of fun. Ask any abstract artists and composers and it should be rather clear to you.

[ July 05, 2002: Message edited by: philechat ]</p>