Kip

Arguing strong atheism is a difficult task.

<strong>I'd like to hear counter-arguments to my reasons.

I don't believe in a personal God because:

1. Immortality of the soul is impossible. Most Christains believe that the personality & memory of an individual will go to heaven after death. Yet, what happens when the personality is changed by brain damage or disease? Is the soul "changed", or are we faced to alter our view of soul? One can say that the *true* personality lurks in the background of one who is brain damaged, like a prisoner, or perhaps there is some kind of metaphysical backup of the Self, like a DVD-RAM somewhere deep inside, but I doubtit. If the personality---the soul---can die before the body is dead, then who is it that makes it to heaven? </strong>

Although I entirely agree with you, a theist could bend over backwards to escape this argument. The theist never claimed that the soul was static, just eternal. So a brain damaged so may be dumb, but the soul is still alive. An even more absurd claim would be that the missing intelligence is saved and that the soul reaches Heaven in pieces.

<strong>2. The teachings of the bible must be taken on faith. So what gives it more authority than any other religious text? It was built by comittee, its books arranged by vote in the 3rd century. Faith truly does seem to be best described as a belief without evidence.</strong>

The Bible is unsupported, yes, but you have yet to refute the Bible (although that surely can be done too).

<strong>3. What kind of a God would allow for such suffering? Why is it that whenever somebody is saved from a burning house by a fireman, but the rest of the family burns, that it is a "miracle"? Why would God save one and allow millions to die horrible deaths? It makes more sense that HE/SHE/IT does not have its hands in mortal affairs at all, but sits back and watches the show. Or, even better, it does not exist. Nature is unkind as often as it is good to us. The Hindu and nature-based Pagan myths make better sense of Gaia than the concept of God.</strong>

Whether or not you like God does not prove or negate his existence (unless you define God as someone you like). What prevents God from creating a world full of hurricanes and starvation and delighting in his creation? The only "God" that the existence of evil disproves is a loving, paternalistic father, which is rather narrow definition of the word God.

<strong>4. Evolution lacks foresight. Bad design is evident. God would not make such mistakes, even for creatures living in a fallen world. CHeck out E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, etc. Their arguments are quite probable. Much more probable than the reality of God anyway.</strong>

Citing the flaws produced by natural selection is, in my opinion, rather uncharitable. The theist never claimed that God created us to be perfect. Forusing upon the imperfections, while ignoring the otherwise brilliant design, is unfair.

<strong>5. Why would god punish people born into the world who had nothing to do with Original Sin? And how can this punishment be based on events that never occured in history? And if we are to interpret those events as metaphor, it does not remove the weird concept of sexually transmitted guilt. It is absurd. What kind of a silly despot is that?</strong>

Again, you are disproving the existence of a loving, paternalistic, and specifically just God. I maintain that this definition is rather narrow and naive. There is no need for God to be just or paternalistic.

That is the arguments I would cite against yours.

Personally I am a strong atheist because:

1. anthropomorphism

God is always described as looking like humans.

2. anthroPOcentrism

God is the loving cosmic father so many of us need.

3. evil (natural and moral)

Hurricanes, AIDS, the food chain, as well as rape, murder and September 11. God must find all that very amusing.

4. the impossibility of free will

We choose according to unchosen motives.

5. the impossibility of an afterlife

Admitting that we are created at birth but can never be destroyed (even those suffering in hell are still alive) is wishful thinking. Harps, clouds, St. Peter - ridiculous.

6. incoherent definition of "God"

God is something but is not made of matter. He exists everywhere and nowhere. He knows the future but also possesses the power to alter the future that he knows must happen unaltered. Philosophy has rendered the word God incoherent.

[ July 25, 2002: Message edited by: Kip ]</p>

A3

Hi Kip,

Personally I am a strong atheist because:
1. anthropomorphism
God is always described as looking like humans.
A3: You are right it should be the other way round, after all we were created in His image and likeness not the reverse. BTW this is not about arms and legs, but our spiritual make-up.

2. anthrocentrism
God is the loving cosmic father so many of us need.
A3: Could not find this in my dictionary. But what is wrong with this concept apart from it being rather simplistic? What about the Creator of the Universe and/or the Source of life?

3. evil (natural and moral)
Hurricanes, AIDS, the food chain, as well as rape, murder and September 11. God must find all that very amusing.
A3: He might if He were human. It is the presence and influence of hell on this world?

4. the impossibility of free will
We choose according to unchosen motives.
A3: You can choose to act from a love of self or a love of God and others.

5. the impossibility of an afterlife
Admitting that we are created at birth but can never be destroyed (even those suffering in hell are still alive) is wishful thinking. Harps, clouds, St. Peter - ridiculous.
A3: Yes, Harps, etc. is ridiculous, but the rest? Why not, we are spirits now why not then?

6. incoherent definition of "God"
God is something but is not made of matter.
A3: Right, He is the Love (Esse) itself and Wisdom (Existere) itself.
He exists everywhere and nowhere.
A3: I would put it more like He is in time, but apart from time and in space, but apart from space. With the creation of the universe time and space were introduced. In the spiritual world (e.g. our thoughts and dreams) there is no time and space.
He knows the future but also possesses the power to alter the future that he knows must happen unaltered.
A3: Past, present and future to Him are Now. He knows what will happen because He is there. He will guide us and try to steer us in the right direction as far as we let Him. God is order itself, to change the future willy nilly would go against His very own nature.
Philosophy has rendered the word God incoherent.
A3: That’s human nature for ye!

Regards
Adriaan

banditoloco

I didn't find that word either, but i did find anthroPOcentrism. It seems to fit with the idea Kip was trying to get across.

Kip

Adriaan, because you bothered to address my reasons for being an atheist, but obviously do not agree with those reasons, allow me to challenge your position. The one question I always ask Christians is how you can be sure that your revealed religion, Christianity and the Bible, is the one true religion, while others, such as Islam and Hinduism, are false?

Your user profile says that you live in Canada. If you examine the Contemporary Geographic Distribution of Religions:

<a href="http://religion.wadsworth.com/student/maps/matthews_world/w001.html" target="_blank">http://religion.wadsworth.com/student/maps/matthews_world/w001.html</a>

or

<a href="http://www.sunship.com/mideast/gifs/religionsmap.gif" target="_blank">http://www.sunship.com/mideast/gifs/religionsmap.gif</a>

you find that Canada is very Christian. India, however, is not. So religion appears to be a matter of habit that varies with geography and not a matter of fact. People in India still believe that 3 + 4 = 7 but they mostly do not believe that Christianity is true. Now, the difference between matters of fact and matter of habit is that matters of fact can be right or wrong, while matters of habit simply express preference. People in Asia tend to eat more rice than Americans. That is a matter of habit but no one would suggest that Asians are wrong to eat more rice. The contradiction, I challenge, is that American and Canadian Christian claim that your religion, a matter of habit, is truly right and other religions of the world are wrong. But obviously religion is too distributed across the globe to be a matter of fact and there is no evidence to support any religion as a fact.

Please explain to me how you can be sure that Christianity is true and other revealed religions such as Islam are false. My understanding is that there is no evidence that favors one over the other. Christians simply tend to inherit Christianity from their parents and peers while isolated from Muslims, and Muslims tend to inherit Islam from their parents and peers while isolated from Christians. Also remember that the Bible cannot support itself (that would beg the question) and that Muslims have "faith" in Islam as strongly Christians have "faith" in Christianity.

Jayhawker Soule

Who made up that rule? Perhaps your definition of "the traditional sense [sic] of God" is overly dependent upon and constrained by your tradition.

D.H. Cross

quoted from various posters:

“As I understand Swedenborg, we have a soul a mind and a brain (with its body). Via our soul God (Life) flows in and disperses all through our mind and body.”


DHC: And how does Swendenborg know that? That is not a testable theory, and even its logic appears flawed to me. If the personality simply went “unconscious”, as is said, then a new personality could not emerge; We would simply have a spectrum from full personality to loss of ability to express ones “true self” due to brain damage. But what happens in reality is that entirely new people emerge from the ashes of those who have had severe amnesia or fronal lobe damage. There is no other self somehow trapped inside, else why would a secondary personality emerge? And yes, it is true that some forms of amensia allow for recovery of memory, but there are rarer forms that do not. In those cases the subject must be taught basic things again, and as he “grows up” for a second time he may experience new likes/dislikes, tastes, etc. So what happened to the other personality? Still unconscious I suppose. Or perhaps now there are two “souls”? I think not.

“Whether or not you like God does not prove or negate his existence (unless you define God as someone you like). What prevents God from creating a world full of hurricanes and starvation and delighting in his creation? The only "God" that the existence of evil disproves is a loving, paternalistic father, which is rather narrow definition of the word God.”

DHC: I am challenging the existence of a loving, paternalistic father-god. It may be a narrow definition, but it seems to be the most common one. As for pantheism, etc, that is another issue. But I will quote from George H. Smith as I think it is relevant (pantheism being here the example, but it should suffice---read between the lines folks---):

“The pantheist is open to the charge of reducing his god to triviality. IF god is taken to be synonymous with nature or some aspect of the natural universe, we may then ask why the term “god” is used at all. It is superfluous and highly misleading. The label of “god” serves no function (except, perhaps, to create confusion), and one must suspect that the naturalistic theist is simply an atheist who would rather avoid this designation.” (Smith, page 32, The Case Against God).

“Citing the flaws produced by natural selection is, in my opinion, rather uncharitable. The theist never claimed that God created us to be perfect. Focusing upon the imperfections, while ignoring the otherwise brilliant design, is unfair.”

DHC: Brilliant design? Like the mating ritual of the praying mantis? (Even after a male mantis has mated with a female, he is not safe from her tremendous appetite. Females often seize their partners and devour them as soon as they have finished mating. In fact, they sometimes attack the males during the mating act. Males do not resist these attacks and even try to finish their tasks before they are eaten by their ferocious mates). My argument is not that god created us to be perfect and screwed it up, but rather that there is NO good evidence of actual foresight in design. The evidence I have read lead me to think that we are the product of random chance, not design...but WAIT! I cannot even begin to defend that on my own. Have you read the Blind Watchmaker, the Selfish Gene, the Moral Animal, Human Nature by E.O. Wilson, or even the Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore (warning: that last book is bit weird, maybe over-the-top...).? How about “How we believe” by Michael Shermer? If not, then I can’t do more than state my opinion based on those books. I am not an expert on evolution but the evidence for random selection over design is convincing to me, and one facet of that argument is the fact of inefficient design, the kind that would make sense if we evolved by accident. I do not begin with the assumption that god designed us and did a crappy job. Heh.

"Again, you are disproving the existence of a loving, paternalistic, and specifically just God."

DHC: Thank you...I am apparently doing a good job of it.

“I maintain that this definition is rather narrow and naive. There is no need for God to be just or paternalistic”

DHC: Naive? We can suggest a god that is like that of the Gnostics, the Demiurge that created the world. How bout that? Or maybe we can talk about the Brahman and the Atman and how they are in fact One...but those are other subjects than the conception of god that I do not accept. I admit that pantheist, henotheist, polytheistic, or other “theistic” types do not impress me much anymore, but I am hardly unaware of them.

“Perhaps your definition of "the traditional sense [sic] of God" is overly dependent upon and constrained by your tradition.”

I choose to use the word Theism to imply Christian theism specifically, as the Unabridged Websters allows. And yes, I do focus on “affirmative theology” rather than “negative theology” (ala Paul Tillich), or other more nebulas concepts. My reasons for doing so are summed up below:

“When God’s attributes are pushed back to the limits of absurdity, the Christian invariably falls back on man’s inability to comprehend God. If the atheist complains that the omnipotence is impossible, or that a benevolent God cannot be reconciled with the existence of evil in the universe, the Christian retreats into the unknowable god of agnosticism. Man, we are told, cannot understand the ways of God...scratch the surface of a Christian and you will find an agnostic. The Christian God is simply the Agnostic god with window dressing” (Smith, page 50, Case Against God).

A3

Great, but please take the time to respond to my responses as well. We might end up just writing back and forth without really getting anywhere. BTW the person who started this thread asked for responses, so if you don’t want to have any just say so.

A3: Instead of ‘false’ I would prefer to see them as containing less truth for me. They make less sense to me because basically they look inside a person and I don’t believe that is where we will find revelation. And I hasten to add that traditional Christianity falls in the same category with its faulty interpretations and consequent mysteries.
I subscribe to Swedenborgianism because it has credible answers to the meaning of life from creation to eternity.
It tells me everything I ever wanted to know about God and was invited to ask. What He came to do and how He did it.
It even explains to me why there are two genders with either a male or female mind.
That the resulting (holy) institution of marriage is based on the nature of God (not on the Bible). And that the most perfect “image and likeness” of Him is expressed in this unit of husband and wife.
It gives abundant detail about heaven and hell including their 5 laws.
By doing that it shows where our thoughts and feelings come from e.g. what happens during hypnosis.
That reincarnation is based on the incorrect interpretation of phenomena then encountered.
What the real origin of good and of evil are and why wars are allowed and even necessary.
Why there is no physical proof of anything spiritual, which includes God and His Providence.
It even tells me what the purpose of creation is and where God is trying to get us to go to, every moment of every day.
All this is based in part on a consistent explanation of the internal meaning of Genesis, Exodus and Revelation.

Kip: “. . . So religion appears to be a matter of habit.”
A3: Do you still see religion as a habit, which to me means a thoughtless, involuntary and repetitive action, like smoking, after reading the above?

Regards
Adriaan

Jayhawker Soule

And 'atheism' is, no doubt, the absence of a belief in Jesus. Thanks for the belated clarification. I am somewhat reminded of: I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with this distinction. How might, for example, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, or Sikhism be defined?

A3

Hi D.H. Cross,
“As I understand Swedenborg, we have a soul a mind and a brain (with its body). Via our soul God (Life) flows in and disperses all through our mind and body.”

DHC: And how does Swendenborg know that?
A3: The total list of his works - scientific, mineralogical, political, philosophical and psychological - comprises seventy-seven publications, some of which are of considerable length. Emerson says of Swedenborg that "he is one of the missourians and mastodons of literature who is not to be measured by whole colleges of ordinary scholars." When Swedenborg was fifty-seven years old, he had a vision in Delft, Holland and abandoned his brilliant scientific career. (To give some indication of his brilliant scientific thinking and of the extent that he was ahead of his age, here are a few of his scientific anticipations:
Years before Buffon published the first outline of the nebular hypothesis which was later developed by Herschel, Kant and Laplace, Swedenborg outlined the theory in great detail in Chapter 4 of his Principia.
The dominance of the cerebral cortex in neurology (Section D, No. 61 in The Brian). Cerebral localization. This is the basic theses of The Brain. Dr. Talbot, the editor of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, writing in the October 1968 number, points out that in the work cited, he also discussed the somatotropic arrangement of the motor cortex, the importance of the pituitary gland, the formation of cerebro- spinal fluid, and (shades of Sherrington), the integrative action of the nervous system with a pronouncement on the neuron theory for good measure.
John Eastman points out that he introduced to Sweden the differential and integral calculus.
He predicted an atomic theory and was one of the creators of the modern sciences of crystallography and metallurgy. He identified electrical phenomena nineteen years before Franklin's experiments and anticipated the theories of the solar origin of the earth and the undulatory principle of light. He also developed the bases of the modern theory of molecular magnetics.)
During the last twenty-seven years of his life he devoted his literary efforts entirely to theology. During these years, he produced thirty large volumes, each averaging over 300,000 words in modern editions, as well as fifteen minor works (often a draft and a printers-copy of each while using a quill pen).
This is indeed untestable as it is above science. If you are married, how do you prove to your wife you love her? (Erections don’t count) We can measure symptoms but not love itself or thought itself, they are above science.
We seem to have an internal and an external mind with each their own memory. I do not have the wherewithal to go into the details but I would be more than happy, as done before, to send you or anyone who asks (please see profile) the file “The Human Mind.” This is based on Swedenborg’s findings. This sending, however, is futile if everything beyond what science can measure or quantify is regarded as airy-fairy.
You know your limits better than I do.

Regards
Adriaan

D.H. Cross

Affirmative and negative theology is something I've only encountered in reference to Monotheism. Philosophers realized that it was better to describe God in terms of what he was *not* because it was impossible to accurately describe what he IS. That is, of course, no surprise to me. We run into a lot of double negatives with this line of thinking...god is not *not* anything...he is All, etc. It reminds me of the concept of Emptiness in Buddhist thought. I first learned of it in Karen Armstrong's book, "A History of God". How might Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, or Sikhism be defined? Judaism is monotheistic obviously. Hinduism is usually polytheistic, henotheistic and pantheistic among the philosophers. Buddhism is everything from atheistic to very nearly monotheistic (Theravada vs. Pure Land are the extremes I think).

Also, I am sorry if I confused you with my use of the word Theism. It is used as I used it in all of the atheistic and philosophical texts I have ever read! I had more reason than mere whim to follow suit.

I do not choose words in hopes that I can obscure my meaning! I agree with Derrida that words have no final definition---the signifier and the signified always context bound--and so I try to make myself clear in which way I am using a word. Throwing the dictionary at me only demonstrates to me YOUR preferred usage. Of course, if you could prove to me that my use of the word was totally unprecedented that would be another matter. I guarantee that would not be the case. I would not, for instance, substitute the word "dog" for god and argue that it's meaning should be clear simply because I like a fuzzy conception of deity better.

Therefore, I don't see the point in wrangling with me over YOUR preferred usage when I have made my meaning quite clear within context and not without precedent. Shall I pick a new word then? Which would you prefer that I use? <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

[ July 25, 2002: Message edited by: D.H. Cross ]

[ July 25, 2002: Message edited by: D.H. Cross ]</p>