RE: I have an honest question for theists.
July 5, 2012 at 3:20 pm
(This post was last modified: July 5, 2012 at 3:24 pm by Angrboda.)
Well, allow me to make a modest observation in return. It sounds like you are asking about the refutation of a certain subset of religions which postulate a god or gods. I'm not sure I can imagine the alternative you are suggesting, in part because my relationship with my god is determined in part by psychotic delusions. My psychiatrist at my last appointment asked If I had any doubts about the truth of my delusions. The answer was a flat no. A psychologist once tried to discourage my chronic suicidalism by suggesting that, like the Hindus who revere cows, there's no telling what the truth of the afterlife might be, and therefore I shouldn’t hurry death. I was rather offended, but it's hardly the first time a health care worker has tried to illicitly manipulate me, and it probably won’t be the last. Though if someone were to show me that shri Kali Devi, or more properly, my conception of her, was unreal, I doubt I would care. I love my goddess, but it's a different kind of relationship than that of the Judeo-Christo-Muslim gods. And while my Hinduism certainly has idiosyncratic elements to it, it is largely a Bhakti faith, experiencing the divine through love of the divine. If Kali is ultimately not real, it matters little — my love is real, and I’m not looking for compensation for my belief. And ultimately, I really don’t care. I have no evidence of her existence; I need none. It’s common for atheists and the Abrahamanic faiths to view themselves in a struggle against one another. I don’t. I see both, and others, as the outflowing of biological processes — mostly expressed through psychology — which reflect a different set of truths, a meta-view in which all are both beneficiaries and victims of a biological nature, which, is largely mythologized and misdescribed by both sides. But, in the words of Lou Reed, it’s just a temporary thing. And I am already making plans to end it. There’s little that changing the immediate landscape of my twin faiths would really affect me in any significant way, AFAICT. I’m nothing if not highly adaptive. And I exist in a layer that floats above the specifics of particular beliefs. So, the answer for me would be, a) I don’t know, b) it wouldn’t matter, and c) I don’t believe we can ever truly conceive of the reality of something that is fundamentally at odds with our current beliefs and biases.