Amos

The proper answer here is to say that you love your parents every second day and the in between days you hate them. This would prove love and hate to be opposites and since God has no opposite the love you feel for you parents is not of God.

The problem here is that the failing love you have for your parents are just extractions of Gods love and therein find an opposite.

Jayhawker Soule

Yep: so can all Gods and witches and warlocks and the Faerie Kingdom and the Loch Ness monster and galaxies made of jellybeans and ... Therefore?

Welcome to the forums!

diana

Hi, theIPU. Welcome to II. Good OP, there.

This is a good one to familiarize yourself with, as it is a favorite argument of theists: Oh yeah? Well...do you believe in love? Can you prove it? There you go, then!

First of all, it's bogus to ask you to prove your love for your parents the same way you're asking him to prove the existence of a God. One does not prove the existence of one's emotions in the same sense that the existence of, say, that wall can be proven. (Abstract concept. This has been covered already, I know.) But I'd have replied to his red herring question with, "I can't and don't have to."

In the case of love, we begin with an emotion/sensation, then we label it. It's a direct label.

In the case of God, they're beginning with...what? A belief? But what sensation is this belief based on? The desire to believe? The fear of the unknown? What? When you corner them and don't let them wiggle out of the question, you'll find that "God" is a label for something they have no actual experience of; at best, it's a twice-removed label.

d

excreationist

You "show" affection towards your parents... this is something that others can see, but it isn't necessarily a result of your love... e.g. you might secretly despise your parents, but you want to get in their will or "use" them in some other way.

Maybe "love" involves feeling a strong attraction towards something (e.g. loving hamburgers) and/or empathizing with it (e.g. being against cruelty to animals)... in the second case, it means that you might act altruistically towards the other thing. And there isn't much reason to act altruistically to someone/something unless you care for them - or you want to pretend you are caring for them - or you're just bored. If you did a very charitable thing and didn't make a big deal about it, it would seem that you genuinely cared.

Anyway, the loving state of mind is what we can experience. Others could experience a God-centered state of mind... though they might be hallucinating or deluded. I guess people can be deluded that they love someone or something (somehow).... but if they honestly believe they love that person/thing and act like it, then their emotion is real enough. Feeling you know God (or an invisible friend, while you're a kid) could be a real sensation, though it doesn't mean that God literally exists.

Koyaanisqatsi

Then Allah exists?

theIPU

Thank you all for your answers, they were very helpful . I just have a few more problems....

1- Why do humans have morals? Can science explain that? What other way can you explain humans having morals without a god?

2- Atheism uses logic to denounce the probable existence of a god- what if logic is wrong, or, at least, wrong now? e.g. people used to think the world was flat using the time's logic.

3- Many cultures have come up with some explanation of a supreme being or beings- don't you think that all the different cultures' interpretations of being/s are just different interpretations of one true God?

thanks-

rainbow walking

1- Why do humans have morals?

Because we are community creatures.



Can science explain that?


Yes.


What other way can you explain humans having morals without a god?


Psychological necessity

2- Atheism uses logic to denounce the probable existence of a god- what if logic is wrong, or, at least, wrong now? e.g. people used to think the world was flat using the time's logic.


People's thinking skills and general body of knowledge have improved considerably since then. Logic isn't the only tool.

3- Many cultures have come up with some explanation of a supreme being or beings- don't you think that all the different cultures' interpretations of being/s are just different interpretations of one true God?

No, but it is a good indication that humans are universally predisposed to need answers and purposes greater than themselves for various reasons and so set about creating them.

Jayhawker Soule

We'll see.
Social animals evolve social constraints.
Not mine. If yours, stop it.
No. What do you think?

Phanes

Well, why humans have morals is probably related to evolution and psychology. Any species that has no qualms about killing off other members for no reason isn't going to last long. Humans, being a social species, are especially constrained by "moral" concerns. Thieving, lying, or otherwise abusing other members of the community is not productive. There are two sorts of "competing" evolutionary factors here, I think. We have to be concerned about the community and the species, inasmuch as the community and the species share the vast majority of our DNA (around 99.9%). On the other hand, within the community or species we want to get as much for ourselves as possible, so our particular DNA will have that extra edge in the group.

Of course this is a somewhat different question from "Why should humans have morals?", and I imagine there is no clear answer to that one (with or without God, unless you drag in self-interest).


I think you are confusing logic with something else. Logic is a sort of method, not a given set of facts or beliefs. The people who thought the world was flat believed as much because they had very little information, and a lot of it was not terribly good.

Logic is something else entirely. "A sentence cannot be wholly true and wholly false at the same time" - that is logic. "Chihuahuas are dogs, dogs are mammals, so chihuahuas are mammals" - also logic. As circular as the system may be, it doesn't make the slightest bit of sense to "criticize" logic. Literally, you can't logically criticize logic; you would be refuting yourself.

I suspect that anyone who talks about logic being flawed somehow does not actually understand the concept.

Only if you like to make atrocious semantical arguments. "Hitler was evil" and "Hitler was good" are two different interpretations of a real, true Hitler. So what? Neither of them tells us anything except that people have different beliefs. Your theoretical argument is even worse because it assumes that one group of interpretations (the monotheistic one) is the right one, when it may well be that monotheistic religions are just an "interpretation" of many different gods put together.

Of course in Hitler's case we actually have evidence that he existed, while the same cannot be said for God. Remember that people can have plenty of "interpretations" about things that don't actually exist (e.g. some people thought fairies were generally benevolent, while others thought fairies were trouble-makers).

Wiploc

1- Why do humans have morals? Can science explain that? What other way can you explain humans having morals without a god?

[/B] [/QUOTE]

Let me recommend Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches as a book that explains cultural beliefs as adaptive responses.



What we do is this: when Christians say they have a logical reason to believe in a god, we point out that they are wrong. If you'll admit that it's illogical to believe in god, we'll admit that gods may exist in spite of the fact that it is illogical to believe in them.



To believe that, we'd have to believe in a one true god. So the answer is no. Neither do we see any reason to believe that all the false gods are different interpretations of the one false god. And if you want to extend the discussion to pumpkins, we don't think all pumpkins are different expressions of the one great pumpkin.
crc