doodad

It appears that a number of ancient cultures had faith objects, or deities, if you prefer. Paganistic cultures often used a material object made of stone, wood, earth, etc. The more sophisticated gods were things like natural phenomenon such as the wind, the stars, the sun, the moon. In time cultures created supernatural gods such as the goddess of love, the god of war, etc.

Faith objects that were material in nature, such as as stone idol, were vulnerable to destruction, to being stolen, or to being damaged. Some bright boy concluded that a supernatural god is not vulnerable in the same sense so the use of supernatural gods became popular. A supernatural god will exist as long as there are people who think it exists.

People tend to attach human qualities to their faith objects. Perhaps it humanizes the god and makes it easier to relate to than worshipping a golden calf.

It appears to me that the Abrahamic Gods, namely God, Jehovah, and Allah, exist in conceptual form. One cannot prove that they exist in the corporeal sense, but there's plenty of folks who carry an image of their god in their minds. Maybe such a god is a figment of the imagination.

Does it really matter to a believer that his god exists or not in reality? I don't think so. Just the belief that the god exists is enough to influence his thinking and his behavior.

I find it more constructive to wonder why people have the emotional need to believe in a God. It appears that some folks have a need for an absolute authority and for absolute truth, and they look to their god for these qualities.

doodad

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It's people's beliefs that serve their emotional needs, not the existence of a supernatural God. Beliefs don't have to be based on logic or reason or proof, as it the case of believing that God exists.

I have posed a middle ground, the posit that God exists in conceptual form, in the minds of men. Some would call this a mental construct or a figment of the imagination.

Does freedom exist in the material sense? Does justice? I think neither can be touched, measured, or otherwise, observed in the scientific sense, but it appears that both do exist as concepts and in reality. Why? Because human beings make them exist by believing such things are possible. Again, it's what they perceive and it's the results they observe from putting those beliefs into practice that give life to the concepts. I think the believer in a sense breathes life into his supernatural God in somewhat the same manner.

Biff the unclean

And how does not believing in the IPU effect my life in any way? Just because something is invisible doesn't mean it's on a different spiritual plain. But you guys made it up, who am I to say that? But that's a whole nothing discussion.

Did you notice that all the sarcastic preaching (gee, the humor gets dry around this place) used only arguments that Christians make for God? That was the point. You can easily tell that all of these arguments were completely ineffectual.
Not believing in the IPU doesn't effect your life in the slightest.
Not believing in God doesn't effect your life in the slightest either. Except for the animosity (and occasional brutality) of believers. Belief in God adds no benefit to your existence. The holes that you are told God fills in your life aren't really there.

Being invisible indeed does not mean that something is on a different spiritual plane. There are no spiritual planes. There are no spirits. The whole thing was made up to cover the question of why you can't see God. You are right, I made it up about the IPU. It sounds silly when I say it, doesn't it. But Xians are saying exactly the same thing about God. Doesn't it still sound silly?
I can't produce the IPU because there isn't any IPU. I can't give you honest information about the IPU because there is no IPU to have information on.
Instead I shamelessly used flim-flam against you. Flim-flam you were able to see through easily when used for the IPU. But these are the same arguments, the same "evidence," used to support God…get it?

Mageth

I would definately have to agree that belief in God is not the default mode. It is definately a positive statement where there should be burden of proof.

But why is "lack of believe" any different?

Quite simply, because "I lack belief in god(s)" is not making a positive claim. No positive claim, no need for a burden of proof.

Lobstrosity

It sounds like we simply are simply having a debate over semantics at this point. I honestly don't care what name you affix to the physical laws which govern our universe and its creation. You can call it physics, God, Big Bird, or Fred for all I care because the label itself means nothing. What I do care about is the assumptions one makes about these forces and how much faith they are willing to put into these assumptions. When people label these forces as "God," they usually are doing so with a mindset as to what this God is, and this mindset relies on absolutely no objective, testable data. They will often tell you all about this God and how he created the universe and when he created the universe and what his intentions were when he did so and what he wants out of each of us. This same God, they will tell me, is hanging out with their dead relatives and answering their prayers and helping their favorite football teams win games. This is what I personally deem that to be false knowledge (for the reasons I gave in my original post in this thread) and it makes me sad when people use this purported knowledge to excuse the need for further probing along those lines of inquiry (e.g. "we don't need to investigate the Big Bang because I know that was just God's creating the universe...what more is there to ask?"). Theologists may claim to still be searching for real answers, but in practice they are only looking to better interpret man-made documents (e.g. the Bible) that they feel already hold every answer one would need in the hopes of better understanding God. They do not approach things with an open mind and will often reject evidence that conflicts with their previously held notions of the way "God" should be. Specifically, people who use the term God usually do so in order to specifically imply that this universe was created by an intelligent force. I do not think this is something anyone can say with any authority. Frankly, we have no objective theoretical or empirical reason at this point to say one way or the other whether there was intelligence behind creation. I personally feel it is most logical to assume there was no intelligence behind it (since I find it harder to rationalize the existence of such intelligence over the existence of constant physical laws), but I openly admit that this is just an assumption on my part and could very well be false. I know nothing about what might have instigated the Big Bang and I have only slight, speculative insight into why we are governed by this specific set of physical laws.

A friend of mine once told me that he knew God existed because he could feel it inside him; he could just feel the presence of God. I have no problem with this because clearly here God is just some subjective human creation. If you tell me you're in love, who am I to tell you you're not. Similarly, if you tell me you feel the existence of God, who am I to tell you that you don't? Where I draw the line is when you start telling me how this subjective "God" of yours affects me; what this God requires me to do and what this God will do for me. Now this subjective entity has left the realm of the subjective and entered a realm where objective analysis is possible. You may feel the beauty of the universe and the "divinity" of creation within your very "soul," but these are all subjective emotions that have no actual bearing on the physical world. They color how you perceives things, but they don't reveal any fundamental truths beyond the fact that this universe is an amazing place.

Well, I think a nihilist might say that
I'm still not clear, though, how exactly we're defining "God." Your references to God seem incredibly vague, so I'm not sure whether we're talking about some arbitrary abstract concept, a specific diety, or an nebulous concrete entity. I have no problem with your saying that God is present within yourself, I'd just like to know what that means. My "God" is simply the set of wonderously elegant and asthetically pleasing physical laws that define our universe. I ascribe no sentience to these laws and hold them to be symmetric over space and time, but these restrictions do not make them any less awe-inspiring to me; there is beauty in this simplicty. As such, it would be fair for me to say that this god is present within my own self because this god is the universe, for all intents and purposes.

Vorhis the Wolf

Well, according to the bible god created the world, so it cant be millions of years old. Also, "Adam" and "Eve' were gods first 2 creations. Here is the part of Genesis that deals with it:
Now if god made the earth and everything on it, and people were on the earth from the begining of time then shouldnt there be some mention of dinosars?? Logicaly there is only 3 explanations.[list=1][*]God is about as real as the tooth fairy and didnt make anything, since figments of the imagination have no bearing on reality.[*]The earth and dinosars were here before humanity. God still didnt create anything.[*]The fossilized remains of dinosars are a plot by space aliens to make us think that there is no god.[/list=1]

The lack of dinosaurs isnt limited to christianity though. Not a single religion since the dawn of time has realy mentioned dinosaurs, but all of them claim that their god is the one who created the earth and everything on it and that humanity was one of gods first creations. If we were one of the first then why didnt we see dinosaurs? Either we werent the first or there isnt a god.

Jobar

That was a first-class post, Lobstrosity. I hope you find II to your liking, and stick around!

Biff the Unclean said:
Not believing in God doesn't effect your life in the slightest either. Except for the animosity (and occasional brutality) of believers. Belief in God adds no benefit to your existence. The holes that you are told God fills in your life aren't really there.

I have a medium-large quibble with that statement, because the 'holes' you speak of do in fact exist- starting with human mortality and suffering, and working all the way down to any question to which the only answer an individual has is the echo. The unanswered questions are real, but God is not an answer to any of them. God, the way that many (not all!) theists believe him to be, is just a question-begging device; "Goddidit" is a cover for "I don't know."

Lobstrosity

Well, there is a technically a fourth option: claim that Genesis is just a parable and not meant to be taken literally. Of course, when you then go on to say how other portions of the Bible are meant to be taken literally, you somewhat shoot yourself in the foot. I don't see how you can have it both ways. That is to say, if you admit that the Bible isn't literal in one area, how can you then assert with any reliability that the whole thing isn't merely a giant man-made parable? A final problem I have with the parable argument is that I don't really see the purpose it serves other than to tell us women should be subservient to men and that they are inherently stupid when they find themselves having conversations with evil snakes. There aren't even any particularly good moral lessons in Genesis. True, it provides us with the notion of "original sin" from which we must be absolved by Jesus's sacrifice on the cross, but if it's merely a parable, how did we in reality commit any original sin?

Oh, and thank you, Jobar. I just recently discovered this place but I think it's great. I certainly am finding it much to my liking.

Biff the unclean

I have a medium-large quibble with that statement, because the 'holes' you speak of do in fact exist- starting with human mortality and suffering, and working all the way down to any question to which the only answer an individual has is the echo.
These "holes" appear to be instilled in us as infants as we are breast fed religion. Those of us who were lucky enough to have been born into Atheist families don't seem to be bothered by them.
Also you would expect that the "God hypothesis" would have some sort of placebo effect. However in times of loss, high stress or fear there is no difference between how Theists and non-Theists cope with the difficulty. The only time I did note a marked difference was in 'Nam. Those men who claimed "a personal relationship with Jesus" were all (all the ones who I heard of at least) uncertain in the field (a euphemism for cowards). The Atheists who were in the foxholes could be depended upon as could the "spoken" Christians.

Jamie_L

JubalsCall,

Let me try again to explain why I feel atheism is the default position:

Think about what you recently said about the IPU. IPUists have made a claim to you: "The IPU exists." You have examined that claim and determined, "The IPU does not exist." Is there a burden of proof incumbant upon you to prove that the IPU does not exist? If you cannot do that, are you are obligated by reason and logic to adopt a position of either a) IPU agnosticism ("I can never know if the IPU doesn't exist or not. It may be real. I shouldn't pass judgement.") or b)IPU belief ("Since I can't prove there is no IPU, I must assume it exists.")?

If you think this analogy through, you should be able to understand the atheist position. Atheism is not the same kind of claim as theism. Atheism is a reactive claim to the initial claim of theism. It is essentially the claim that "Until someone proves that there is sufficient reason to believe in God, it is not rational to do so." If that proof has not been made, the default becomes "it is not rational to believe this claim." Even defaulting to agnosticism doesn't make a lot of sense.

That is really the default response for all positive assertions. Some other examples:
"Until someone proves to me that there is sufficient reason to believe the Tooth Fairy is real, it is not rational to believe this claim."
"Until someone proves there is suuficient reason to believe there is a conspiracy to bring about the New World Order, it is not rational to believe this claim."
"Until someone proves there is sufficient reason to believe this woman is a witch, it is not rational to believe this claim.

Imagine if this were not really the case. Imagine if atheism and similar stances were not the defalut position. The analogous cases would be:
"Until someone proves there is not sufficient reason not to believe aliens mutilate cattle, we should believe aliens do mutilate cattle, or at least withhold judgement. It may be true."
"Until someone proves there is not sufficient reason to believe the New World Order is coming, we must believe the conspiracy is real, or at least withhold judgement. It may be true."
"Until someone proves this woman is not a witch, we must assume she is, or at least withhold judgement. It may be true."

It's this kind of thinking that got a lot of people killed for witchcraft, heresy, and the like. I'm not saying that to condemn religion. I'm saying that to point out how erroneous, and sometimes dangerous, it is to assume that the default position is to assume a claim is true. If this were not the case, we would be forced to believe everything anyone told us unless we could prove otherwise.

And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.

Jamie

Edited to add:Here's a good article in the Library that hits on some of this stuff.