RE: Am I still an atheist if I believe in a higher being?
August 9, 2015 at 11:12 am
(This post was last modified: August 9, 2015 at 11:15 am by Whateverist.)
Hello and welcome, Vixen.
In the early part of this thread your considerations for whether gods exist seem to center on creation. But I don't think that is what really keeps the god question open for you, is it? I mean thoughts about cosmic origins are well and good but really, what position are we in to 'intuitively feel' that a god did it? Of course you may be one of those people who really just think a lot about cosmic origins and have correspondingly strong hunches.
Frankly I just wish theists (and we) could just drop the creator role from the hodgepodge definition of gods. No closure is ever coming to that question. Screw it.
Same goes for an 'after life'. You don't get a definitive answer until you're dead. In the meantime we'll go on thinking there will be no answer realized because we'll be fucking dead. Meanwhile the fundies will go on cackling "oh you'll find out, you'll find out alright!" Afterlife is probably just a naive intuition that arises in a social organism thay continues to feel the presence of deceased loved ones. But that isn't essential to the god question either.
I think people who've been brought up to be religious hang on to the god idea because they feel His presence the same way they do their dead relatives. Something comes up and one imagines they know what the dead relative -or God- would have thought or said. If you don't talk yourself out of it, that 'naive intuition' of the presence of the Other will likely continue.
Now, if that is all there is to it, does god belief do any harm? I don't think so. Without the creator role or afterlife doorman role, what would cause any cognitive dissonance? On the other hand, given this diminished definition, does god belief do you any good? Apparently most theists don't think so. I just strongly disagree, not that I personally indulge.
In the early part of this thread your considerations for whether gods exist seem to center on creation. But I don't think that is what really keeps the god question open for you, is it? I mean thoughts about cosmic origins are well and good but really, what position are we in to 'intuitively feel' that a god did it? Of course you may be one of those people who really just think a lot about cosmic origins and have correspondingly strong hunches.
Frankly I just wish theists (and we) could just drop the creator role from the hodgepodge definition of gods. No closure is ever coming to that question. Screw it.
Same goes for an 'after life'. You don't get a definitive answer until you're dead. In the meantime we'll go on thinking there will be no answer realized because we'll be fucking dead. Meanwhile the fundies will go on cackling "oh you'll find out, you'll find out alright!" Afterlife is probably just a naive intuition that arises in a social organism thay continues to feel the presence of deceased loved ones. But that isn't essential to the god question either.
I think people who've been brought up to be religious hang on to the god idea because they feel His presence the same way they do their dead relatives. Something comes up and one imagines they know what the dead relative -or God- would have thought or said. If you don't talk yourself out of it, that 'naive intuition' of the presence of the Other will likely continue.
Now, if that is all there is to it, does god belief do any harm? I don't think so. Without the creator role or afterlife doorman role, what would cause any cognitive dissonance? On the other hand, given this diminished definition, does god belief do you any good? Apparently most theists don't think so. I just strongly disagree, not that I personally indulge.
