Open discussion of the Christian Why We're Here thread

[SteveII]

I'm going to narrow it to the Christian God. So then it would be the case that:

1. The 40 or so authors of the Bible lied for reasons that are not only unclear, but incomprehensible

If there is no god, then.... is Drich lying about his experience? Are you lying about your experiences?
I don't think those writers would be lying as "intentionally writing something they knew to be wrong"... I think they were products of their time, descendants of believers who probably had their own experiences and interpret them as you find it written in the bible.

2. Jesus' take on the true nature of humanity was a lucky guess

Philosophy was a hot topic at the time of NT writing. It may have rubbed off into the authors... or into the Jesus person upon whom the story is based.

3. Billions of people have lied (sometimes for their entire lifetime) about some relationship with God and the effects it has on them.

You can speak truthfully and yet convey an erroneous statement.
That, of course, doesn't exclude charlatans who notice how people react to such statements and fabricate/exaggerate their own for profit. Profit at the expense of the gullibility of those Billions you speak of.

4. Billions of people have falsely bought what other have told them is true and what they themselves have intuitively believed to be true.

Think of the IQ scale. It is designed to fit everyone into a neat normalized bell-shaped curve with the 100 at the center. Half the population has an IQ lower than 100. The other half, higher.
Now consider that the majority of the lower half can easily be manipulated by someone with enough charisma. And a good deal of the other half can also be manipulated, but no so easily.

Human reasoning is stock full of pitfalls. We call them logical fallacies. The most common and easier to fall into is the ad populum falacy. Your quote here is a screaming example of it.

5. Million (if not billions) of supernatural-->physical events previously ascribed to God because of the context were just lucky deterministic coincidences that just so happened to perpetuate the "concocted...imagination"

Yep... and with the present day global population at all-time highs, but with access to cameras.... those events have suddenly mostly vanished! Odd!

6. Life has no ultimate meaning, purpose, or value.

Why do you need to preface meaning, purpose, and value with "ultimate"?

Human life generally has societal meaning, purpose, and value. Can't that be enough?

7. I don't think there is a good grounds for libertarian free fill--despite out intuition.

Do you mean "free will" and "our intuition"?

8. Our cognitive abilities were developed for survival--not truth. Calls into question...well...everything.

Indeed. In a society that praises some higher power, those individuals who follow along get a better chance at survival and breeding.

9. We continue to have big gaping holes in questions like:

   why anything at all exists

Must there be a reason?
Must it be the result of some entity's thought process as this "why" question implies?

   the origin of the universe

None of us were there to witness it... That kinda makes it difficult...

   why the universe is fine-tuned for intelligent life

Short answer: it's not.
Most of the Universe is far from forgiving to life at all, let alone intelligent life.

   what is consciousness

That part of your mind that thinks and considers things?
I don't know... just throwing it out there...

   abiogenesis

Again, no one was there to witness it happening.
Research is under way in that subject.

I want to point out that the theory slipped into the question does not have any evidence to support it. It is pretty much just the entailment of the premise: God does not exist.

Not necessarily...
I think the concept of the divine took a while to develop... possibly first by coming up with the concept of the dead living on (my loved ones who die or my hopes of how things are after my own death) and then expanding that notion to include a realm where all the dead people exist... a ruler for that realm, etc, etc...

These are the issues I see if the premise there is no God is true because these are the reasons people believe in God. In many of your responses you reiterate the theory that was slipped into the question. Your answers are fine and reasonable if there is no God. However your answers are insufficient to overcome belief of a cumulative case for God based on these issues. I'm not being argumentative, just a fact that alternative, unevidenced theories that could never be tested of how we came to our beliefs lack the explanatory power of taking people, their experiences, and their word at face value--be it the biblical accounts or a friend who experienced a profound change of heart and now has a newfound joy and purpose that others simply want to experience.

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My 2 cents: This is not an argument, just an observation of the different worldviews. 

Meaning is tied to value and purpose. Value and purpose are relative to a person. There is only one transcendent person: God. Therefore God is the only one that can be the basis of transcendent meaning. Any meaning derived from a godless worldview is necessarily both fleeting and subjective. Fleeting and self-assigned meaning is not enough for a lot people. Some are not equipped to supply it or circumstances in their lives make it difficult to find it and it leads to all kinds of unhappiness.

That's ridiculous.  God is hardly the only transcendent x from which meaning in human lives is drawn.  We've been discussing a bunch of other transcendent x's for a couple of pages now. 

Go to any graveyard and look at any gravestone over 100 years old. The memories of that person do not exist in anyone anymore. That person has no current value or purpose because IMO, those are perceived qualities about a person. He certainly isn't perceiving that anymore. No one else alive remembers him. Any value he had to his family or society is long forgotten. In fact, it might have been the case that society would have been better if he were never born.  How is that transcendent meaning? 

Why would meaning drawn from "other than god" be necessarily fleeting or subjective..and how does meaning drawn -from- god escape that even if god itself escapes?  Do gods escape, for that matter?  There are alot of dead gods that used to mean alot to alot of people who don;t mean anything now.

If God exists, we were made for a purpose and have value to an eternal and omniscient God. From that comes a meaning to life that transcends all time and avoids the problem of relying on yourself and others to provide subjective meaning. 

I agree, however, that for some people, any number of things x just isn't enough.  God wouldn;t be close to enough for me, for example.  More depressingly, though...for people incapable of finding meaning in any given moment, why would they assume they;d find meaning in eternity rather than an eternity of meaningless moments?  Perpetual unhappiness.

They would fine meaning because God made them, has a purpose for them, loves them and eternally cares what happens to them. They have value.