Samhain

Greetings atheists, theists, and fellow freethinkers...

I am new to the forum, but this seems an appropriate place to have my questions answered. A little bit about myself, though, first so that you all will understand my position. I am an an atheist; I believe that reason has power over every human trait. I guess I'm a rationalist, in a somewhat vague sense. I've been largely influenced by Existentialism mainly with Sartre & Camus (but of course, are any who are influenced by Existentialism NOT influenced by Sartre or Camus at the same time?). My knowledge of religions is somewhat limited, for I do not know every religion and only the basics of many of the major religions. I have studied Christianity quite extensively, though, and view it more as a cultist society (for, really, where I reside in America, it is, as much, one with the society around me as much as any part of America) than anything else. So pardon me if I refer to Christianity only in this post, I just do not feel confident enough to say that all religions are the same way because I have not studied them as I have studied Christianity. Also pardon me if these questions have been brought up before in this forum, but I don't have the time or the energy to go through every post and check for them (and doing a search in this forum on the word "God" would probably in effect be the same thing as checking every message here). I challenge all to give me answers if you have them, because I've searched and cannot find any rational reasons for these questions. These questions are about Christianity, yes, but do not fear that I will become a Christian if these questions are answered, but I am only amazed that if these questions are unanswerable why would ANYONE have reason to follow the Christian god. Sorry, sometimes I can be somewhat longwinded, anyway, on with the questions...

1. The Pride of God:
A question I have posed to many who I meet, Christian and atheist alike, is: who exactly must answer to the Christian god (if I forget to include that it is the "Christian god" and say only 'god' then know that I AM in fact refering to the god of Christianity) when they die. Of course, if one is a Christian they clearly state that ALL must answer to their god when they die. Well then, so even if I do not believe in the Christian god, or if I believe in a different diety, then I must, in fact, answer to only the god of Christianity when I die.
Well, this being accepted as true, then what IF I do not believe in this god and I die, what will then happen to me? Of course, the answer to this question lies within the sect of Christianity that the person follows. Of course many Christians will still say that to ignore, disbelieve, or to believe in a "false" god is, in essence, the same as mocking the "true" god, and this god will not be mocked. So, for many of the sects of Christianity, your punishment for this is an eternity of torment and agony in hell. But what if one lives a good life, even, perhaps, a "Christ-like" life, but still does not believe in the Christian god, what then? Still many Christians hold that this does not change the situation and you will suffer for all of the after-life. Of course, some Christians will say that if you live a good "Christ-like" life, then, essentially, you are doing their god's work, and truly follow god whether you know it or not.
This leads me to question: which is truly the correct answer? Obviously, if the christian god is compassionate and loves his/her/it's children, then if we lived a good life, then we would surely be given a chance to enter heaven regardless of our belief in life. But what about the Noah incident. God destroys the world, all except for a drunkard and his family on a boat. Of course we were led to believe that they were evil because they were "pagan idolators," and had no faith in the "true" god. But does it make one evil to not believe in this god? Can't one still be a good person if we aren't Christians? Why would we be denied entry into heaven if our own faults in life caused us to not believe (by faults I mean the inability to know EVERYTHING)? Would this god condemn Gandhi to hell because he didn't bow, and worship what he didn't know to be true? Does this god feel it is just to allow someone like Hitler or Stalin into heaven as long as they believed in "Him"? The more I think, the more I feel that this is the truth of the Christian god. This god would condemn the good man and condone the evil man depending on whether or not they believed and worshipped Him. Tell me if I am wrong about this in view of the majority of Christian sects.
This brings up another interesting question: for what purpose does this god NEED to be worshipped and praised? The only answer I see is plain: Pride, absolute pride and vanity. Quite ironic that such a terrible sin of man could be taken in it's most powerful sense with the Christian god. Of course average Christian does not see this as pride at all, but as something above that, because if it is true that god is prideful and vain then it is also true that god is fallible in the same sense that man is, thus closing the gap between god and man, showing AT THE VERY LEAST that god is still not so powerful as man makes him out to be. Feedback is appreciated.

2. The Omniscience & Omnipotence of God
This is a question that has bothered me in the most extreme way since I began pondering it, for if this question is unanswerable, I cannot see why any rational man would follow the christian god at all.
This question alone encompasses determinism vs. free-will, morality, and the power of god, all of which, I believe, are the heart of the Bible, and without these things, the Bible would just be a pointless book, not worthy of even reading, really, let alone following. The question is a simple one: If god knows EVERYTHING we will ever do, from life to death (which he should know, being omniscient), then how can we possibly have any free will to make any decisions at all if god already knows every path which we will take in life? The idea that god knows everything would, in turn, mean that we have a pre-determined destiny, which cannot be changed, for if an omniscient being knows of something to be true, then it must be true. Whether or not we try to change our lives, god ALWAYS knows that we are trying to change them, and ultimately knows what will result from that change. So where does this leave morality if we have no free will? If we are determined to do these actions because god knows these actions will come, then we cannot be held accountable for our actions because we could not have chosen otherwise (all reliant on the fact that god knows everything that we will ever do). I have heard arguments against this (a sort of round-about "chicken and egg" argument) stating that it is not because god knows that we are determined, but instead that we have free-will to chose, and while god may know what we will chose, we are still making our own choices. This my friends, when discussing something of this nature is one and the same thing! This is exactly the "chicken and egg" argument I talked about earlier, but what makes this argument different is that the Bible states that god is all-knowing but it at the same time states that we have free will to make choices, this, though, is an impossibility because god will always know what choices we will make and what the consequences of those choices will be.
This brings me to another point, which is a little less confusing and mind boggling, and easier to grasp. It concerns the power of god. If god is an all-powerful being, then he must have the power to change anything in the world; he could have changed what happened on 9/11, or he could have made sure that you didn't read this post. No matter how trivial or great something is, god has the power to change all of it. But does he use that power? If he does use that power, then we fool ourselves in to thinking we have free-will because we are determined by the actions that god takes in order to prevent something from happening. In that same note, if god does nothing at all, then we are determined by what god ALLOWS to happen, meaning that god, whether he likes it or not, chooses our destiny for us, by either taking action or not taking action, for he has the power to change it. We can see this as we study the ant. We are basically the same thing as god to the ant, the ant is nothing to us really. Whether or not we step on an ant determines whether or not that ant will live or die. Therefore, our actions, or inactions determine the most important thing for that ant ever: life, and hence, we could also change other, more trivial things about an ants life. In essence, though, the ants whole entire life is dependent on whether or not I wish to intervene somehow.
This being said we must draw some conclusions and rational explanations for these things to actually be true. If god truly is all powerful and all knowing, then we truly have no choice over any action we take, all of it is dependant on god, making free-will an illusion and ultimately a lie. If god is not omniscient and omnipotent then the nature of god changes. God would no longer be an infallible being, capable of anything, but would basically be the same thing as a human, restricted by what he/she/it did not know and restricted by the fact that it could not be everywhere at once and could not change everything in the world, making god a somewhat worthless being compared to the All-Powerful one of the Bible. So which is truly correct? Either way, the Bible slips on an EXTREMELY MAJOR point, like I said, I feel that this is truly the heart of what the Bible states.
Some will say: "you look too deeply, these things were never meant to be questioned" or "some things must be taken on faith."
I'd like to state the two types of faith in order to show why these reasons are irrational and unreasonable and really have no place in this question. In my experience there are two types of faith...1 - reasonable/rational faith (this is faith based off of something that has been proven by someone else, all of us must experience some kind of rational faith. An example would be that we all believe that the world is made up of atoms, this is something we take on faith, because few of us, if any, have ever truly seen these atoms, but we accept it as true, because it is a rational and reasonable explanation for what things are made up of). Then there is irrational/unreasonable faith (this is faith which is based solely on the fact that one does not want to believe otherwise. Religion is a good example, considering the amount of contradictions and how many times and ways it is proved wrong. Another good example would be to believe that the holocaust never happened just because you don't want to believe it [whatever your reasons are]).
These to faiths being identified, then wouldn't it be irrational faith to still believe in the Bible and in the Christian god, even if there is all the evidence needed to prove that god does not exist? This is largely what we are faced with today. The evidence keeps compiling, and still, people are not rational enough to think for themselves and to question their beliefs even when if they did they would know them to be false and misplaced. Once again, feedback is appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

Jayhawker Soule

What was the question? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Samhain

Heh...er...well...I guess I'm looking for any reasonable explanation or counter to the statements I've made. The question is basically, if none of these can be rationally and successfully countered, then why does anyone at all worship this god? What is the purpose of worshipping a fallible being? What is the purpose of worshipping if we are already pre-determined whether or not we will follow god anyway?
Basically, I'm stating that if one can truly find no explanation for these questions then there is no doubt (at least in my mind) that god either, does not exist, determines everything that we do so that it doesn't truly matter anyway, or that god is fallible and therefore not worth all the worshipping and praising that is given to him/her/it. I guess I just want feedback, other peoples rational opinions/explanations are valued more than anything else.

Jayhawker Soule

That's a pretty harsh characterization of a book rich in folklore, allegory and poetry.

... and there may be other alternatives. Out of curiosity: what do you think of the threads that you have read? Finally, do you reject the Judeo-Christian God primarily because you're an atheist, or are you an atheist primarily because you you find YHWH to be, either, illogical or unworthy?

[ March 15, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]</p>

Samhain

As far as my characterizations about the bible...
Being somewhat well-read has given me quite harsh views on many books, even some of the classics. To me, I feel that while the plot of the bible, etc. is well thought out, at points. Of course there is no doubt that literature as a whole in English society is largely based off of the bible (and other societies as well, such as pre-revolutionary Russia [hence Dostoyevsky] and even many french and german novelists), so it must have some worth as a piece of literature. But when a work such as this has so many contradictions and hardly seems to consider the logical reader, I come up with harsh conclusions on it. Yes, it is a book of folklore, poetry, and allegory, but that is ALL it is to me. And is it truly worth time reading with all of the major points somehow contradicting themselves at some point? In folklore there usually is a "moral" of the story. The moral of the story of the bible seems largely to be to follow god, since he will forgive you ANYTHING in the end as long as you accept god into your heart. But at the same time you cannot possibly be good without acceptance of god. But even if you are the most sinful of all of earths beings you can be forgiven and live in eternal bliss. But Gandhi burns in hell. And of course you must also live a christ-like life, not be vain, be slow to anger, etc. while the god that you must worship can be all of these things. How can you make sense of this, let alone even believe that something with this kind of nature is good literature? Of course, I may be wrong, much is lost through language translations and transfers over a few thousand years, but my point is that the book, as it is now, has lost its true meaning (that is if you accept that it actually had one), and therefore why would anyone want to shape their lives through this work?

Sorry about not having the time to read all of the threads. Being new to a board is always kind of harsh in that regard, but I'm trying very hard to get into it as much as possible, because I plan on staying for a while. From the messages I HAVE read I am quite impressed by many of those who post on here, many seem logical and have well-thought out conclusions or answers to questions. And of course, no question seems to go unanswered here, everyone seems to piece together everything and come to a conclusion about the whole, which I admire and respect. Nit-picking is not my idea of rational thought.
As far as my atheism...I currently reject religions at this point because I have not found anything (besides perhaps Taoism) worth worshipping. Many religions seem to be the same. All are based off the same basic principles it seems (as far as I've read on religions) only with different gods/messiahs/etc. to make them a "different" religion. I find it hard to accept that morality is not dependent on time and place and situation, which is what many books on religion entail. I have my own views on morality, and thats what I choose to follow, I do not need to read a book to know how to treat others. I feel, so others must feel too. It is just illogical to be "evil" in a biblical sense, so that is why I chose to be as "moral" as I am, and I do not need a bible to tell me that. Also, I have trouble accepting anything metaphysical. If god is a metaphysical being, which one cannot ever truly know in life, and which cannot even be explained with any kind of scientific or physical explanation, then what is the point of worshipping this god? If one cannot know what even god IS then one cannot truly know god, and therefore people (at least from my viewpoint) worship what they really do not even know or understand. It's the same thing as worshipping something like the second moon of the earth (hypothetically speaking), you cannot see it, everything points to the fact that it does not exist, yet, you have faith that it's there, but you really do not even know anything about it (what it looks like, what it's made of, what effects it has on the tides of the earth, how big it is, etc.). So in my belief it is illogical to worship anything like this.
I strive to gain knowledge also, and to follow the bible is to be restricted in your actions and especially your thoughts. I wish only to free my mind and find truth that I can experience. Of course the consequences of not believing is that I may be wrong, but at least I know I will live my life in the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, without worshipping some kind of fantastical beings whose only evidence of existence is through a poorly written book.