Miss Piggy

I've read Beliefnet.com's Pantheism discussion board, too, and noticed that many Pantheists are reluctant to use the word God, because they consider it too full of Christian etc. connotations. Independent of what dictionaries say, most people think God as a "bearded guy sitting on a cloud" kind of being The fact is, that it takes a very long time to make that word neutral from those connotations.

But many other Pantheists are quite happy with the G-word. So using / not using it is largely a matter of taste.

Calzaer

emotional:

WTF?

Why the hell should a God answer OUR prayers?? Do we answer the prayers of ants and grasshoppers??

"What room is there for a being that answers prayers?" ?? Why are you so arrogant to assume that, if there WAS a God, he'd have nothing better to do than annul the laws of the universe on your behalf?

What makes you think that God "should" answer prayers? That God "should" intervene? Why the fuck are you that special? What entitles you to the undivided attention of a critter so huge and so powerful that it could create a universe with one swipe of its hand?? Why the hell should he even CARE whether or not your gothy angst impelled you to ask him for aid in writing poetry?? He's got an entire UNIVERSE to entertain him! Or maybe he IS the universe, in which case he's certainly much more likely to pay attention to the "prayers" of our planet itself that the prayers of an a single cell of invading bacterium on her skin!

Your arrogance is sickening. "If God existed, he'd give me what I ask for. Since I don't get what I ask for, God must not exist."

emotional

[unnecessary emote-age deleted - BJM]

Calzaer

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot how important you are. If God existed, he WOULD help you write poetry. Because he'd have nothing better to do than micromanage one life, less than a dodecatillionth of his entire creation.

Because you're so important.

But since God hasn't actually done anything for you, he must not exist. What rousing logic!

emotional

[unnecessary emote-age deleted - BJM]

Eudaimonist

Go to your rooms! March!

emotional

Calzaer: if God exists (that is a possibility, I admit) then He hasn't given me the slightest inkling of a sign of His existence. I can't see Him, I haven't experienced Him, therefore I don't believe in Him, and I can't worship Him.

I worship visible, accessible Nature -- the Sun, the Moon, the stars, the trees and the stones -- because God isn't available for me. Surely you can understand that?

God simply cannot make Himself inaccessible to humans, and then become indignant that some humans worship what He created instead of Him.

Calzaer, I respect your religion, now you can respect mine.

Bumble Bee Tuna

Calzaer, the point of the matter is, if God does not intervene in the universe, there is no reason to care about God. Exactly 1,000,000 years ago, in the location you're sitting at right now, did a rodent walk by? Who knows, and who cares? The knowledge has zero effect on our lives today. You believe in Creator-God, I don't. Does that belief affect either of our lives in any way? No. If Creator-God doesn't intervene, then it doesn't matter if it exists. We have no reason to expect Creator-God would intervene if he exists (and we have no reason to expect Creator-God to exist, either).

Also, you might want to lay off the flaming- emotionals posts were not flames at all until you started getting angry.

-B

Calzaer

What I believe in is not the issue. Whether I believe in a creator god or not is completely irrelevant. The POINT is the arrogance displayed by emotional.

You're absolutely right that if God doesn't intervene, he's pretty pointless. But emotional actually DEFINES the term "god" as "somebody who'll answer my prayers and give me stuff". It's almost like the "Santa Claus for adults" thing run amok.

It becomes an insultingly simple false delimma fallacy, since there are a thousand other perfectly valid god-definitions out there. God might intervene in an attempt to accomplish a specific goal, or he might intervene on a random lottery system, or he might simply be watching us like a sitcom. Or he might intervene at the request of something other than humans, like ants or geese or planets. Or maybe he only intervenes for people who know the password and perform the proper rituals in his name. But no, emotional's sole definition of God, and the definition he tries to foist onto each and every discussion on the subject, is the one where God intervenes specifically for emotional's benefit. If "God" hasn't dropped a pile of cash on emotional's head, than "God", by this definition, must not exist. And it's also (convieniently) the only definition emotional accepts.

Is this the atheistic version of the Ontology Argument?

...

I'd apologise for my tone, but that sort of "God, if he existed, would be my personal Star-Trek-type replicator" attitude is a huge shiny red button.

[edited to remove some of the more flame-like loaded language]

emotional

You call it arrogance, I call it stating confidently what I think.



First off, I didn't say "someone who'll answer MY prayers and give ME stuff" -- I said "someone who'll answer ANYONE'S prayers...". You turn my whole statement into an egocentric play, and that's a twisting of what I meant.

Second, if you don't like me defining, then fine, say you don't like me defining! Why do you have to call me a "fucking goth" and laugh at my writing poetry?! Maybe I'm arrogant, but this arrogance is only matched by your personal attacks!



Accepted. But I still call myself an "atheist" and not a "pantheist". I still think "pantheism" or "All-God" is a name-game and that pantheism is just atheism under another name. I won't say that for Deism, of course, where God is definitely a being distinct from the universe.



"... for emotional's benefit" -- NO! For ANYONE'S benefit! Stop this insulting ad-hominem, will you?!



I don't know if God exists or not. Maybe, maybe not. If God exists for you, then power be to you. But for me, God doesn't exist, because I've never experienced Him. I used to be a fundy, I used to worship God with a crying heart, and I didn't get the sight, I didn't get to "see" or experience God. That's why I now worship God's creation instead of God. At least I can see and experience the Sun and the Moon.