Hello to all

[SimpleCaveman]

Hi Harry,

Sorry for the delay in responding. Had a great weekend. Lots of family, food, games, etc. I hope you did, too.

My relationship with the Church went through many phases on my path to atheism.

Thanks for the explanation. Yes, I know many good people like that. It’s likely you would not characterize it this way, but I would say that the Church has failed many people, especially in the last fifty or so years.

Are you here as a true believer wanting to discuss your beliefs and win souls for Christ -or- are you here as someone questioning their faith and wanting to discuss what you believe/question about theism and atheism?

It doesn't have to be on or the other but I am curious on how you would describe your religious and spiritual life.

I am here “looking for a good time.” :-) I am, as one might say, a devout Catholic. With the understanding and experiences that I’ve had, I can be nothing else.

However, I do not have the delusion that I’m going to convince others to believe in a forum such as this. As I told another person, even if I tried, “I doubt it would work. Certainly, I have no authority and the Church certainly doesn’t seem to have authority. I am here for the fun of engaging in these kinds of conversations. If I can explain things about the Church or related topics (there’s a lot of confusion out there), and can learn about things myself (there’s a lot of confusion in here :-), then all the better.”

[SimpleCaveman]

Hi Confused-by-christianity,

How’s things going? Have a good Thanksgiving?

I guess what i mean when i say theology is:  what someone thinks god is like, and how people think we should respond to him.  also - the answer to the question "the way everything is?".  "Hows it all work - with god and the universe and everything??"  (Not 42).

I think different groups have different beliefs about that and they have a different value system.

I assume you mean - who is god, whats he like, whats he want from us, whats he made the universe to be like.  Basically if someone wrote down their religion.

Yes, I would agree with that. These are the questions that are best discussed over beers. Unfortunately, there’s little of that. I have taught basic theology before. No beers. At one time, I was part of a group that had theology discussions in a local pub. That was fun. It was a pretty diverse group, so the conversations were very interesting.

I think Theology is good because these questions are important. Don’t you think so?

[Confused-by-christianity]

I can't really see why anything is important without god.???

why should i bother with anything.??

What conclusions have you come to.

Are you mystified by the fact that very few atheists seem to have these issues that you can't imagine someone without God wouldn't have?

Do you have an answer???

[SimpleCaveman]

Things are equally important with or without God.

What makes them important??

Exactly!

[The Grand Nudger]

Whats the answer??

What makes a thing important - other than whats just going on in my own head - or a bunch of peoples heads??

Do you have an answer???

Well, sure, I have an answer?  I have lots of them, for as many things as I think are important.  Yet more for different ways of being important.  Intrinsic and extrinsic and combinations of both. You'll find that other people also have other answers.  I'm not a subjectivist or a relativist. Rightly or wrongly.  I certainly also think at least some things are important and I really don't know why I think that - I couldn't honestly tell you. Any explanation would be ad hoc, post fact. We try not to do debates in an intro thread.  

I'd put "because a god exists" types of importance in the utilitarian set.  It's a transaction.  A god exists or we believe a god exists and this belief, in turn (we believe...), provides us with utility or this fact provides us with some tangible return.  Moral foundations, paradise, what have you.  Nothing about the thing itself is important.  It's not an intrinsic value or even an extrinsic value related to the thing.  It's an extrinsic value related to the belief or existence of gods, instead.

I don't personally believe in or agree with that kind of importance regardless of whether or not a god existed. Which is to say that I could simply give you god - and it doesn't change my calculus in any way.

[Confused-by-christianity]

Whats the answer??

What makes a thing important - other than whats just going on in my own head - or a bunch of peoples heads??

Do you have an answer???

...  It's an extrinsic value related to the belief or existence of gods, instead....

Im going to go with that one.  heres a stream of consciousness guess ......

Im going to give this impossible question a go ...

I'll put my athiest hat on ...
Material universe only ...
Here, i cannot see how anything is important.
All i see is matter moving about with other matter.
Importance, value and meaning seem to just all be in my brain - but they dont really really matter - not more than my sayso.  And who should care about that??
The only way i can make something important is to assign value to a thing.
But i cannot see why anything should be valueable outside my own experience and sayso.  And i cant see why my own experience and sayso should matter.
Thinking something matters, or is valueable or is important - is all in my head and carries no more weight than that.
Others might find a consensus that a thing is important - but a cluster of material thinking a thing matters doesn't mean anything either.
Why should i care more about a mouse than a lamp.
???

Religious hat
Material universe and spiritual universe ...
You can have a concept of moving more towards reality or further from reality.  
You can say the material universe is less real than the spiritual.
You can say the material universe is subject to the higher reality of the spiritual.
So there really is a spiritual thing called:  Love, goodness, beauty, truth, mind, freewill .... and so on.
In that universe you would see these items as you "see" gravity operating.  
If you open to the idea of god - you can say there is a higher reality - more "real" i.e. closer to god. Spiritual realities project out of god - attributes. god is projecting parts of himself unpersonalised.
the end

you need a higher reality to bolt the material one onto.  Ive basically described a larger spiritual universe that contains the material one, that instead of physical forces, has spiritual realities.  with the spiritual realities - life in the physical universe can have meaning moreso than our sayso.

thats a rolling attempt.  the obvious thing to say is - ok, what then.  

We can make this material universe meaningful by saying there really is a spiritual universe with spiritual realities - which the material is subject to.  spiritual realities are not sustained in their own right - they are projections of god.

?????????????

Im going to stop there ... thats a guess at how to make it work??

@SimpleCaveman Is this theology??

[pocaracas]

...  It's an extrinsic value related to the belief or existence of gods, instead....

Im going to go with that one.  heres a stream of consciousness guess ......

Im going to give this impossible question a go ...

I'll put my athiest hat on ...
Material universe only ...
Here, i cannot see how anything is important.
All i see is matter moving about with other matter.
Importance, value and meaning seem to just all be in my brain - but they dont really really matter - not more than my sayso.  And who should care about that??
The only way i can make something important is to assign value to a thing.
But i cannot see why anything should be valueable outside my own experience and sayso.  And i cant see why my own experience and sayso should matter.
Thinking something matters, or is valueable or is important - is all in my head and carries no more weight than that.
Others might find a consensus that a thing is important - but a cluster of material thinking a thing matters doesn't mean anything either.
Why should i care more about a mouse than a lamp.
???

Religious hat
Material universe and spiritual universe ...
You can have a concept of moving more towards reality or further from reality.  
You can say the material universe is less real than the spiritual.
You can say the material universe is subject to the higher reality of the spiritual.
So there really is a spiritual thing called:  Love, goodness, beauty, truth, mind, freewill .... and so on.
In that universe you would see these items as you "see" gravity operating.  
If you open to the idea of god - you can say there is a higher reality - more "real" i.e. closer to god.  Spiritual realities project out of god - attributes.  god is projecting parts of himself unpersonalised.
the end

you need a higher reality to bolt the material one onto.  Ive basically described a larger spiritual universe that contains the material one, that instead of physical forces, has spiritual realities.  with the spiritual realities - life in the physical universe can have meaning moreso than our sayso.

thats a rolling attempt.  the obvious thing to say is - ok, what then.  

We can make this material universe meaningful by saying there really is a spiritual universe with spiritual realities - which the material is subject to.  spiritual realities are not sustained in their own right - they are projections of god.

?????????????

Im going to stop there ... thats a guess at how to make it work??

@SimpleCaveman   Is this theology??

It is curious to see how the "atheist hat" tends to downplay the importance of society.
Granted, you did include the "Others might find a consensus" bit, so kudos to you, but then failed to roll it to its natural conclusion. You just wished to have some overarching, objective, independent-from-humanity importance that everyone should attach to things... everyone, even if non-human.

But one can say that there is objective importance when that is the societal consensus - objective to that society, subjective to each individual within that society.
I think a good example of this is the important rule that states that it is wrong to kill another human being. It's in the 10 commandments, it's in pretty much every codified law of the land. Human societies agree that it is important to let other humans live. Obviously, it keeps the society alive.
Still, some will interpret the rule to mean that you should only not kill within your own society - but it's fine to kill humans from other societies (or else there would have been no holy wars in the last two millenia, right?)
With the awareness of the global village, some of us humans have come to extend the importance of this rule to the whole of humanity thus making it feel even more objective. To the religious mind, that makes it more divine... to me, it just seems like the right thing to do... To the United Nations, it's a human right. But the obvious existence of war makes it clear that not all humans in power agree.

[Mister Agenda]

Whats the answer??

What makes a thing important - other than whats just going on in my own head - or a bunch of peoples heads??

That's the only thing that makes something important: what it means to us, or to someone.

[Mister Agenda]

Are you mystified by the fact that very few atheists seem to have these issues that you can't imagine someone without God wouldn't have?

Do you have an answer???

I do, and I can answer a question with an answer, you might try it sometime.

In my experience, and I know hundreds of atheists IRL, when someone stops believing in God, all the things they were worried about happening if they did fail to materialize. Their loved ones mean just as much to them as they did before. Their moral compass doesn't go anywhere, and arguably may improve. Your fears are imaginary, just like God.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'll put my athiest hat on ...

I would suggest that you're not actually "putting your atheist hat on".  Fwiw..maybe you can't?  These are still comments flowing from your belief in the import making property being a property of a gods existence rather than a property of the thing and how, absent that belief in you, a theist, you couldn't see this or that.

It stands as a brute and inarguable fact that...rightly or wrongly, actual atheists can see what you do not or cannot. Maybe not all of us, or even most of us, I don't have exhaustive numbers, lol. Atheism is not a position on those things in and of itself so expectations of homogeneity are misplaced at best. MA is an atheist. MA sees and acknowledges human or intersubjective or relative importance. I think that exists too, but not just that. In fact, things important to god or because god are in that set themselves. God is also a subject in moral designations. So...the two of you may not be so far apart in principle as it appears in practice. MA does not believe that a god exists, but if it did it could conceivably have opinions on x just like we do and those opinions would be in the set of all like opinions on any such matter to be given equivalent care and...as it so often happens with many of the various opinions, assumed, acknowledged, or discarded. Gods opinions may be real, in the sense that there is a god and a god does hold those opinions...but so what?

-mind you, this is rhetorical, for elaboration - if you wanted to debate the issue or just discuss it in more depth make a thread and I'll be there. As an atheist, as an objectivist.