Do you wish there's a god?

[fredd bear]

Old Joke:

Uri Gagarin has jus arrived back on earth.

Reporter: Welcome home. I understand that while you were in space, you met God!

Uri; Yes, I did. There are going to be some changes. First of all, she's black........

(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((9)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Fair's fair; for centuries European christians have been portraying Jesus as a 6 foot, fair haired, blue eyed Caucasian--and from the nineteenth century ,it was common knowledge in the British empire that God is English.

[Abaddon_ire]

Have always been fascinated when people claim to know god's view, generally, or on any given subject.--Invariably  coincides with the views of the reader of the divine mind. Simply reinforces my view that without exception, all religions reflect the society which invents them.

Odd, isn't it. The very people who claim that "god" is a fundamentally unknowable entity are quite happy to tell everyone what precisely "god" is thinking right now this minute.

And they see no problem with that claim.

[Simon Moon]

When the sun rises over the good and the bad
and the rain pours on the righteous as well as the wicked,
wouldn't you wish there's a god?

Besides all ideas about the creator being a wicked psychopath

wouldn't you wish for a loving god?

No.

There is not a single idea of a god that interacts with the universe on human's behalf or hinderance that I've ever been presented with, that is not tantamount to a dictatorship.

Even a benevolent god would be a dictator.

---

I think you'll see from the replies that people here focus their not-belief on a very specific image of God. Basically a naive literalist reading of the early Old Testament. 

Though people are adamant that their not-belief extends to all the different images of God people have believed in, this is the one that they talk about. What William Blake called Nobodaddy. It doesn't matter that no theologian has ever agreed with that view. 

Sometimes it seems as if people formed a view of the Christian God when they were about 12 years old, decided it was bad, and stopped believing. It doesn't occur to them that a 12-year-old might not have the most well-informed judgment. 

I'm curious of your own view of this. Is there a way for you to describe your thoughts about what God is in a way that wouldn't require as many pages as Thomas Aquinas wrote? People here will insult you no matter what you say, so in that sense any reaction will be the same. But I'm curious.

I think it's interesting that atheists here indicate they don't want God to exist, that they prefer there be no God.  I would say such a desire plays a significant role in why they don't believe. Creates a barrier to prevent belief.

I have no barrier that prevents me from belief.

I am able to believe anything that is supported by: demonstrable and falsifiable evidence, reasoned argument, and valid and sound logic.

If your version of a god was able to meet the above criteria, I would be compelled (by my intellectual honesty) to believe it exists. But please note, just because I would then believe it exists (if the case for its existence met the above criteria), does not mean I would be compelled to worship it.

[Cod]

wouldn't you wish for a loving god?

Why? For what purpose? I don't get it.

[Acrobat]

I have no barrier that prevents me from belief.

I am able to believe anything that is supported by: demonstrable and falsifiable evidence, reasoned argument, and valid and sound logic.

If your version of a god was able to meet the above criteria, I would be compelled (by my intellectual honesty) to believe it exists. But please note, just because I would then believe it exists (if the case for its existence met the above criteria), does not mean I would be compelled to worship it.

Of course you have barriers to beliefs, after all you’re not a robot, but a biological human being, in which our beliefs shape who we are and how we interact and relate to the world.

But here’s a question do you want to believe?

If so I think it’s pretty easy to believe that we’re a part of a created order, that life has a narrative arc, possessing a moral order, in which we recognize right and wrong, that the sheer beauty and excessiveness, complexity and depth of life, our desire for meaning, truth, goodness, a sense of something more, provide an adequate enough basis for anyone looking to believe to believe.

It’s only not sufficient for those who desire not to believe.

[pocaracas]

I have no barrier that prevents me from belief.

I am able to believe anything that is supported by: demonstrable and falsifiable evidence, reasoned argument, and valid and sound logic.

If your version of a god was able to meet the above criteria, I would be compelled (by my intellectual honesty) to believe it exists. But please note, just because I would then believe it exists (if the case for its existence met the above criteria), does not mean I would be compelled to worship it.

Of course you have barriers to beliefs, after all you’re not a robot, but a biological human being, in which our beliefs shape who we are and how we interact and relate to the world.

And how do you suppose you come to hold a belief?
What is the mental mechanism that leads to a particular belief?

I wrote something about this a while back ago.... something like: I believe in that which I find to be plausible and I disbelief in that which I find not to be plausible.
What makes me consider something as plausible or not? I'd say that is connected with my perception of the world (notice that it seems like I'm moving backwards relative to your view).

How is that perception of the world formed, or impressed, upon a mind?
It starts with feeling gravity and the mother's womb's limits. Followed by biological needs, supplied by a trustworthy guardian (typically parents) alongside psychological needs - how does this work, how did this happen, how far back can we trace all the events we see unfold nowadays?
Some things are easily answered, others are not.
Those that take more legwork or that are completely unanswerable lead to speculation. Unfalsifiable speculation can lead to acceptance of this speculation as something as close to truth as possible.
If this speculation makes into my perception of the world, then I will find plausible anything that aligns with it. The feedback mechanism of belief takes over and who knows where it might end...

So, when forming my perception of the world, I desire to know where all (realistically, as many as possible) the information comes from, in order to be clear about what is speculation and what is factual... and, ideally, add into my perception only those things that are factual.
Sadly, most people are conditioned to ignore this and are made to form their own perceptions as including some religious speculation or another. And the result is what we see... religions fighting it out, each claiming to be right, each claiming to be the one truth... each unable to see that all others are just an expression of the same very human speculative capacity.

But here’s a question do you want to believe?

If so I think it’s pretty easy to believe that we’re a part of a created order, that life has a narrative arc, possessing a moral order, in which we recognize right and wrong, that the sheer beauty and excessiveness, complexity and depth of life, our desire for meaning, truth, goodness, a sense of something more, provide an adequate enough basis for anyone looking to believe to believe.

It’s only not sufficient for those who desire not to believe.

There are those difficult to answer questions...
Some are quite easy, but we don't really like the easy answers to them...

Why is it important to you to be part of a created order? What if there's no order?
Why is it important to you to have a life with a narrative arc? Time does flow forward, and that's enough. The end comes to us all, each at our time.
Why is it important to you to have a moral order, and recognize right from wrong? Perhaps because you live in a society and such a trait has been bred into you by "evolution"?

Some will not see life as something beautiful, nor excessive.... some will find it very simple and lacking in any depth... You are lucky to have all that, due to the society in which you have been born.
Our desire for meaning can just be another societal advantage. We yearn to be recognized by our peers... to think that we'll somehow be remembered after we're gone... that something of us remains.

Truth and goodness are, again, societal traits. Only meaningful when the individual practicing them in embedded in a society. Again, they are evolved traits that most of us share, although most of us are also capable of bending these... hinting at them being relatively recent in the evolutionary chain.

The sense of something more brings back the speculation, the desire to know the unknown... and provide answers to questions, even if we haven't performed the required research.


Finally, why would I want to believe, when I know that the mechanism that leads to belief can be easily hijacked and cause me to accept speculation as truth?

[The Grand Nudger]

There's only one part of that entire bit that I don't believe...but..yeah, sure, it's probably easy to believe that bit, or easier, at least, if you want to.

It probably helps to mistakenly believe that the rest is somehow connected to or dependent on that one part you want to believe, too. We et that all the time on the boards.

"Don't you believe in god?"
Nah.
"Why don't you believe in moral order/beauty/life/blahblahblahblahblah!!!!!"
....dafuq?

[Acrobat]

And how do you suppose you come to hold a belief?
What is the mental mechanism that leads to a particular belief?

How biological creatures like ourselves form beliefs, and our perceptions of reality, is quite messy if anything, and not really the product of surgical precision. “The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man”.

If you grew up with terrible parents, an absent father, it’s going affect your perception of reality itself, just as if one was raised by loving and kind parents. Just as it would be for a man in a happy and committed marriage, and a man whose been divorced multiple times.

Also many of things we believe are not the result of any real rational deduction on our part, but a result of seeing, of having something shown to us, that we might struggle to adequately articulate or express, but believe as result of seeing, more so than hearing.

Why is it important to you to be part of a created order? What if there's no order?
Why is it important to you to have a life with a narrative arc? Time does flow forward, and that's enough. The end comes to us all, each at our time.
Why is it important to you to have a moral order, and recognize right from wrong? Perhaps because you live in a society and such a trait has been bred into you by "evolution”?

I don’t see my beliefs in these things as result of ascribing importance to them. Anymore so than I believe I have two hands because I think it’s important to believe I do. 

It’s how I see the world, it’s the way the world appears to me. The arguments otherwise seems quite unconvincing. It’s hard for me to see those who try and make the counter argument as being honest with themselves. They seem to reject these things more so because they don’t want to believe it, rather than because it’s not true.

Life appears to point to something. Our desire for truth, meaning, goodness, a sense of the sacred, the basis of which we created religions in the first place, because man is under the impression that there’s something behind the curtain. Now perhaps this is mirage, yet we seem to posses an innate desire to chase it, as if it’s there.

Some will not see life as something beautiful, nor excessive.... some will find it very simple and lacking in any depth... You are lucky to have all that, due to the society in which you have been born.





Life’s excessive, no matter how one looks at it. We occupy a life briming with near endless diversity, a product of an endless stream of potentials, that resulted in the very existence of conscious life, life is both brutal and beautiful, and deep beyond all measure and understanding. If you can’t see it, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, it’s that you’ve been deprived.

Truth and goodness are, again, societal traits. Only meaningful when the individual practicing them in embedded in a society. Again, they are evolved traits that most of us share, although most of us are also capable of bending these... hinting at them being relatively recent in the evolutionary chain.





They could all be evolved traits, but in order for trait to be evolved, there has to have been the potential for such traits to have evolved. Consciousness is not going to ever arise from legos, because legos lack the potential to produce consciousness, no matter what combinations are formed. 

Secondly goodness and truth, aren’t reducible to evolved traits, just the recognition of them. We couldn’t evolve to recognize truth, unless truth exists in the first place, as part of reality. And the same with goodness. We perceived goodness as we do truth, only because goodness exist in reality itself. When we see the wrongness of the holocaust, we recognizing an objective truth about reality, just as when we recognize a round ball, or a yellow dress.

[The Grand Nudger]

-and yet what any of that needs reference to a god for is as unexplained as it has ever been. Divinity is the perpetual free rider on better ideas than itself, lol.

[pocaracas]

And how do you suppose you come to hold a belief?
What is the mental mechanism that leads to a particular belief?

How biological creatures like ourselves form beliefs, and our perceptions of reality, is quite messy if anything, and not really the product of surgical precision. “The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man”.

If you grew up with terrible parents, an absent father, it’s going affect your perception of reality itself, just as if one was raised by loving and kind parents. Just as it would be for a man in a happy and committed marriage, and a man whose been divorced multiple times.

Also many of things we believe are not the result of any real rational deduction on our part, but a result of seeing, of having something shown to us, that we might struggle to adequately articulate or express, but believe as result of seeing, more so than hearing.

Messy indeed... and that is why belief systems seem to have a regional component, at least, prior to easy worldwide travel.

Why is it important to you to be part of a created order? What if there's no order?
Why is it important to you to have a life with a narrative arc? Time does flow forward, and that's enough. The end comes to us all, each at our time.
Why is it important to you to have a moral order, and recognize right from wrong? Perhaps because you live in a society and such a trait has been bred into you by "evolution”?

I don’t see my beliefs in these things as result of ascribing importance to them. Anymore so than I believe I have two hands because I think it’s important to believe I do. 

It’s how I see the world, it’s the way the world appears to me. The arguments otherwise seems quite unconvincing. It’s hard for me to see those who try and make the counter argument as being honest with themselves. They seem to reject these things more so because they don’t want to believe it, rather than because it’s not true.

If you see the world with a "created order", then I'd say you're assuming a lot about the world. Mainly the created bit.
From my point of view, the "moral order" which you mentioned is simply related to general agreed upon behaviors among a social population that lead to the survival of that population. along with the betterment of the population as a whole. I'm using betterment here to mean, less suffering, easier access to food and mates, more protection against threats, etc...

I think many of the things you're taking on faith are the product of evolution within a social species, one that has found that if all elements of the population to behave in a particular way, the result is better for the population. It's probably been a very long series of trial and error, coupled with some introspection... and I see no need to believe that some external entity bestowed these features upon our species.

Life appears to point to something. Our desire for truth, meaning, goodness, a sense of the sacred, the basis of which we created religions in the first place, because man is under the impression that there’s something behind the curtain. Now perhaps this is mirage, yet we seem to posses an innate desire to chase it, as if it’s there.

I'd wager that the drive to believe in the transcendent is also an evolved trait. One that is also quite recent and that can be why we have a large part of the global population that finds such belief baffling, the atheists.

Why evolve such a drive towards belief? Perhaps, initially, to keep the mind from pondering questions for which society was not equipped to provide an answer, and keep the people dedicated to their "jobs", producing food and tools and practical stuff. Eventually, it would have taken over a majority of the population and then disbelief would have been selected against, as believers would find it easier to breed and survive. At some threshold in the ratio of believers/disbelievers, the disbelievers would have started to be banned from society, shunned, mocked.... barred from producing offspring. And belief got selected for even further.
And, nowadays, you have this innate "impression that there's something behind the curtain". You've been selected to think like that... a selection typically reinforced by indoctrination. While I don't have that impression, unless you mean physics is behind the curtain.

Truth and goodness are, again, societal traits. Only meaningful when the individual practicing them in embedded in a society. Again, they are evolved traits that most of us share, although most of us are also capable of bending these... hinting at them being relatively recent in the evolutionary chain.





They could all be evolved traits, but in order for trait to be evolved, there has to have been the potential for such traits to have evolved. Consciousness is not going to ever arise from legos, because legos lack the potential to produce consciousness, no matter what combinations are formed. 

Secondly goodness and truth, aren’t reducible to evolved traits, just the recognition of them. We couldn’t evolve to recognize truth, unless truth exists in the first place, as part of reality. And the same with goodness. We perceived goodness as we do truth, only because goodness exist in reality itself. When we see the wrongness of the holocaust, we recognizing an objective truth about reality, just as when we recognize a round ball, or a yellow dress.

Are you wanting to argue that metaphysics comes before physics?
I would counter with metaphysics possibly being the product of our pattern seeking brains observing and classifying apparent patterns in reality.


Truth then becomes an aspect of a statement. We can even call it metadata. Any particular statement has a truth value.
I would argue that such a value would be as closer to absolutely true, let's say 100%, as the statement accurately portrays reality. And it would be as close to false, 0%, as it fails to portray reality.
As such, the truth metadata (and, indeed, any metadata pertaining to a particular statement) only begins to exist as the statement is made.

You can say that there's a generalized truth notion, or concept, which is the actual definition of the statement's truth metadata I gave above, so that any and all statements carry that truth metadata. But then this truth concept would only have begun to exist when the first statement was made, when language of some sort was invented for communication among individuals.

Language of some sort and communication come prior to truth.
Not necessarily communication as we intuitively think of, with words and stuff.... we evolved from apes and we know that apes have an array of non-verbal communication skills... many mammals use smell for communication... even our stomachs somehow communicate with our brains to let upper management know that it's full. Sometimes, the stomach is full, but the "full signal" is not going... the stomach is lying. Some sort of society is in operation among the different parts of the body, and society requires communication.
In the absence of society, however, with no communication, the concept of truth is meaningless... which is to say, doesn't exist. It's a pattern that doesn't appear in a reality without communication.
But what I was saying above is that metaphysics itself is probably a product of the human brain. We would classify the stomach incorrectly communicating with the brain as producing a not true "statement". But would such truth value exist in the absence of our classification? Is it that what exists is just the signal that the stomach can send and we then ascribe a classification on top?


The same sort of argument holds for goodness, wrongness, yellowness, roundness, etc... these are all classifications produced by humans upon recognizing certain patterns in reality and then extrapolating them to produce a generalized conceptual pattern which can be applied to similar parts of reality.
Similar, because while we may say that the sun has yellowness and roundness, I can't associate goodness or truthfulness with it.