Yellum Notnef

Yikes. Calm down. I'm well aware it was a typo,but it conjures up a funny image (at least I thought it did).

Request it removed if it bothers you that bad or if you feel it detracts from the serious nature of this thread.

Ojuice5001

From Corona846:

I have two kinds of itch. (This is true.) One is the normal kind of itch that everyone has. The other, referred to as the "personal itch," is subtly different; I know it's not the same because it is best relieved by applying mild pressure to the itching area (pressing one foot against the other, etc.). Most people don't have the personal itch. The personal itch gives insight into objective realities as much as a normal itch, and I would assume that the physical condition triggering the itch is not the same as the physical condition triggering a normal itch. Now, what if someone didn't believe this, and thought that this special form of itch is uncaused, or caused by the same condition as a regular itch?

If you didn't have access to medical equipment to prove otherwise, and could look at only the itch, then by your criterion I can't back up the existence of this condition in any way, shape, or form. But does that mean that it's unreasonable to think that the second itch is caused by a different physical condition than the first itch? Of course not.

(Sorry if the analogy seems farfetched, but I don't see any ways that the epistemology is different. The point is that the personal itch is just as subjective as an experience of gods, and yet we don't doubt that it's an insight into objective reality (at least, once you understand that itches in general tell you something objective).)

Well, I've finally realized that the label "atheist gods" is somewhat inaccurate. It's just stupid to say it's contradictory, but it is inaccurate to call them "atheist gods," because they're the gods of more than just atheism. I just called them that because they do promote atheism. They're a whole pantheon, and I don't think any of them is solely a god of atheism. Rather, they are gods of either natural phenomena, or modern cultural trends like science and the media. A better term would be "post-Enlightenment gods," which emphasizes their distinguishing feature from other gods and the fact that the Enlightenment was the vehicle of their taking control from Yahweh. So from now on, I will refer to them accordingly

The gods I believe in do one thing ubiquitously, and other things seldom or never. They affect any natural event that is causally indeterminate, that is, an event that, if you look at only natural factors, could turn out any of several ways. Examples of this include the weather, broken-down machinery, health-related phenomena, human decisions that are made very quickly, dice, adn so on. I do feel that a deity is needed to explain why these things turn out one way and not another.

BTW, I'm not back. Individually, you guys are fine, and some of you are great people, but en masse you are worse than the Christians. I'd rather post on a forum for fans of Dear Abby than come back here. I will revisit this thread, but only after long period, when my morbid curiosity gets the best of me (as it did now). But I do plan to post occasionally, and I have a new thread planned for about a week and a half in the future.

Autonemesis

But what about what Jupiter wants? Maybe he wants to be left alone.

Ojuice5001

Uh, who says they haven't? But most of it is invisible to us humans, and the effects can only be seen if Florida seems to be becoming more like the Roman gods' vision and less like that of the post-Enlightenment gods or Yahweh. (And what's more, I'm not really that sure what that would constitute.) This lack of verifiability is not a good thing for my credibility, but that is the nature of my proposition.

Corona688

Your analogy is faulty. An itch is just an itch, and can be accepted on the ground that people DO get itches. And actually, I do have that kind of itch sometimes. A deity, on the other hand, is an extremely powerful, invisible, undetectable supreme being, that is somehow known to have all these characteristics despite the fact that it never fuggin does anything.
Why thank you for the insult, sir. If you think that implying that people that aren't convinced gods exist are actually worshipping gods isn't contradictory, who am I to argue in the light of your overwhelming wisdom? oy... miss the point much? Atheists not only don't worship gods, they don't believe in any! Did these gods of the media just poof into existence when the media was formed? Or were they lying dormant for the 6.5 billion years before there was life with enough intelligence to read and write? Again, you insist on invoking supernatural deities to explain events that are nothing of the sort! Why!? :banghead: I hope they have the permission of the science gods for figuring out what events are indeterminate.
WHY!? I cannot imagine the kind of mind that it would take to conceive of this. It's tantamount to believing that invisible little elves prod your brain when you're thinking in a hurry, because natural events can't POSSIBLY be enough to explain it. Only when you tell us that our lives are run by invisible omnipotent gods that prod our brains when we're thinking in a hurry. That sort of magical thinking highlights the very worst traits of theism: 'I'm right and I know it, and it's amusing to watch you disagree because my one of my gods is making you do it'. It smacks of all kinds of narcissm and schitzophrenia, and [personal insult deleted by me].

Ojuice5001

I don't mean to imply that, which is an important reason "post-Enlightenment gods" is a better term. Rather, the point is that these gods promote atheism, and have a lot of control over atheists. That's not a contradiction. And I was insulting Faust, not you; you had not yet said that the phrase is contradictory. I don't really think the phrase "atheist gods" implies that atheists worship deities; it could imply any strong relationship between atheism and these gods.

Bast is the goddess of cats. Does this statement imply that cats worship or believe in Bast?

No, this god was something other than a god of the media before the media existed.

ex-xian

Wow. I thought this was a parody post at first, then I realized the OPer was serious. So, Ojuice5001, I am curious about how you form you idea of what gods actually exist. Do you believe that all the gods of roman mythology exist, or only jupiter? What about the gods of norse and hebrew mythology (you mentioned yawheh, but I mean baal, ashtorah, etc)?

Also, how do you determine which god rules over what area? Is it all subjective feelings/messages, or is there some outward criteria?

I'm not being facetious, I'm truly curious to learn more about what you believe...this is facinating.

Oh, btw, atheism is not a modern invention. There was a whole group of ancient greeks, ionians I think, who rejected the greek gods and all the other gods. The believed that nature could be explained in totally materialistic ways; I first read about them in Carl Sagan's Cosmos. There have always been atheists throughout history.

By the way, what were the gods of the post-enlightenment doing before and during the enlightenment.

GunnerJ

I really don't think I need to respond here, the post really speaks for itself.

Corona688

Ah, I see, it's just an outright insult then - we are not only the mouthpiece of one of your gods, we don't even know it. Not to mention a dismissal. You can write off everything we say as being the influence of some deity you don't like and ignore it. Don't you see how myopic and self-reinforcing a worldview this is? You reinterpret everything you see through deity-colored glasses. Take them off, and let the facts stand on their own; if you're right, surely logic will see you out, right?

Maybye our arguments AREN'T blasphemy piped straight from enemy gods. Maybye we're right.

Ojuice5001

First of all, I put on the "deity-colored glasses" because they seemed more like the truth than the alternatives. I've looked at the facts of the world in several ways, and they seem to make more sense if there are deities.

The post-Enlightenment gods are only one aspect of the explanation for atheism. Of course there are philosophical reasons for atheism; the concept of post-Enlightenment gods doesn't deny it. In fact, if they are trying to make a rational person an atheist, they need these reasons, because they need a pathway from random neural events to actual atheistic beliefs. And if most of a person's thoughts are rational, they such a pathway would probably involve the use of these rational thoughts, right?

Have you known me to state this right-out? To say that I don't need to consider atheists' opinions, because they were suggested by enemy gods? No, because the fact that I think this doesn't invalidate the possibility that they're good arguments and I'm wrong.

How is this different from any other theory about the causes of human thought, like materialism for example? I neither know nor care whether you're a materialist, but say A is a materialist who believes all events are caused material processes, and B is an idealist who thinks matter doesn't even exist. Now, for A to be consistent, he'd have to think that B's idealism is not only wrong, but caused by material processes. A could still understand B's reasons (as I try to do with atheists), but his position does entail that B's thoughts are caused by the matter he disbelieves in.