Quandary

[Cinjin]

Want one or not, we all have a label of some kind assigned to us.  I have warmly carried the label of Deist for many years even though my own definition of it has often evolved with my own perception of the world around me.  Age is a funny thing that way.  Just when you think you know something about a chapter in your life, you find you have misunderstood the entire book.

Anyway, something happened recently ...



While listening in on a friendly debate about all things existential, I made a remark that surprised me a bit.
An acquaintance asked me a question about the existence of god and his roll in whatever rabbit trail their conversation had meandered on to.  
I responded - really with little thought on the matter and in a manner that I thought would make me sound mildly intellectual:  "God is the best part of one's own imagination, but that's probably where all fictional characters should stay."

The problem is, I think I meant it.  Bit of a quandary now.  Am I still a deist or have I given up on all things creator driven?
Am I an atheist?  Am I beginning to convert?  I've never assigned importance to the God I ascribe to, and have even surmised that he/she may have very well died.
None the less, I seem to have turned some sort of corner.  My atheistic leanings may be more than that.
hmm.
Part of me is ready to let go and part of me wonders why I even consider any of it at all.

  

What am I to be?  What do I really believe?

[Minimalist]

Ask yourself a question.

"Do I really think that there is an invisible sky-daddy who started all this bullshit and then went away to jerk off somewhere?"

If the answer is "no" then you are cured.

[Losty]

Cin, I'm so glad you're back

[ignoramus]

Don't sweat it at all Cin.
You haven't invested at all in any of the BS like hell, guilt, afterlife, etc, so really it hasn't affected or guided your life one bit...
It's just an idea you have in your head.
As Rob says, what if we "are" in a computer sim? Well then there is a creator ...it just doesn't have to be an old man in the sky or such nonsense.
That's why the vast majority of us are agnostic. Because ... we ... just ... can't ... know!

[robvalue]

Can you even define "God" in a way that can be distinguished from nothing at all or an imaginary concept? If not, you're probably an atheist

To me, deism seems to be simply putting a face onto "whatever caused all this".

But it begs the question, by missing out this part "...if anything", unless you include "nothing" as a possible definition for God. In which case, you're probably an atheist It fails in the same way as this: let X be the real number such that X^2 = -1.

It also begs the question by assuming that any cause was a sentient being and not some natural process such as the fracturing of a reality.

It also fails as an explanation because of infinite regression unless you invoke special pleading.

However, I don't consider deism and atheism to be very much different in practical terms. So I wouldn't worry about it too much.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Want one or not, we all have a label of some kind assigned to us.  I have warmly carried the label of Deist for many years even though my own definition of it has often evolved with my own perception of the world around me.  Age is a funny thing that way.  Just when you think you know something about a chapter in your life, you find you have misunderstood the entire book.

Anyway, something happened recently ...



While listening in on a friendly debate about all things existential, I made a remark that surprised me a bit.
An acquaintance asked me a question about the existence of god and his roll in whatever rabbit trail their conversation had meandered on to.  
I responded - really with little thought on the matter and in a manner that I thought would make me sound mildly intellectual:  "God is the best part of one's own imagination, but that's probably where all fictional characters should stay."

The problem is, I think I meant it.  Bit of a quandary now.  Am I still a deist or have I given up on all things creator driven?
Am I an atheist?  Am I beginning to convert?  I've never assigned importance to the God I ascribe to, and have even surmised that he/she may have very well died.
None the less, I seem to have turned some sort of corner.  My atheistic leanings may be more than that.
hmm.
Part of me is ready to let go and part of me wonders why I even consider any of it at all.

  

What am I to be?  What do I really believe?

All gods are imaginary.  There is no celestial deity in this solar system.  So tossing all of the gods into the trash can cures one problem.  The other question is do any of the countless religions offer a set of rules a person should try to base his life choices on?  

When you read the books Old Testament Judaism and Islam are both bat shit crazy.  When people follow them as specified they become homicidal maniacs and make regular crazy people look sane.  

The Christian rules incorporate the Old Testament rules and adds maybe 100 more.  So if a person was to really follow the Christian rules he would be a combination Old Testament and Islamic raving lunatic.  

In order to sell the Christian version the marketers gloss over all of that and try to focus on the blue-bird of happiness = love Jesus and go to heaven.  The problem is according to the story no one will go to heaven.

There might be about a dozen things worthwhile in the Sermon on the Mount that might make you a "better person" if you followed them.  And that's the sum total of things worthwhile in the New Testament.  If you follow what Paul preached you will be a mean, spiteful person.

[robvalue]

It's important to know that atheism isn't about claiming to have all the answers. The sceptical atheist will answer "I don't know" to any number of extremely important questions such as "where did the universe come from". It's simply a (lack of) belief based on the evidence to hand, in what I consider to be an incoherent concept. It's not a statement that further evidence can't arise which could change this.

To make this point: something shows up claiming to be "God". How do you distinguish it from an arbitrarily powerful alien, which is not a god? Many people say they would "just know". Well, the alien has the technology to give you that exact feeling.

What the fuck is a god? If it's simply something that "creates realities" then our brains are gods. They create our own realities that we live in, which may or may not be based on a separate objective reality.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

It's important to know that atheism isn't about claiming to have all the answers. The sceptical atheist will answer "I don't know" to any number of extremely important questions such as "where did the universe come from". It's simply a (lack of) belief based on the evidence to hand, in what I consider to be an incoherent concept. It's not a statement that further evidence can't arise which could change this.

To make this point: something shows up claiming to be "God". How do you distinguish it from an arbitrarily powerful alien, which is not a god? Many people say they would "just know". Well, the alien has the technology to give you that exact feeling.

What the fuck is a god? If it's simply something that "creates realities" then our brains are gods. They create our own realities that we live in, which may or may not be based on a separate objective reality.

Just because a person may not know or understand something it doesn't mean that no one else doesn't know and understand.  If you had the most intelligent person from 2,000 years ago in the modern world today he could go bonkers over the most simple things that we take for granted and don't even think about.  And if the process continues it could be that way in the future.  But we have one major advantage over ancient people.  We can imagine all kinds of things that they were simply incapable of thinking about.  So, for instance, if we went into the future and interstellar space travel was a reality it wouldn't come as a shock to use because we have already been exposed to the possibility by our imagination.

Ancient people and even some modern ones don't understand how stuff came to be.  It came to be through a process of evolution, which is ongoing.  The difficulty is in understanding what Nothing is and what its properties are.  But we do know for a fact that once sufficient amounts of celestial hydrogen is created and clumps together in giant balls it goes nuclear and cooks up new elements.  And the process of cosmic evolution continues.  Planets are formed.  Even more complex elements are created.  The process continues.  Life begins.  But everything is really composed of "dead atoms" of various "dead elements" that all originated from the evolution of hydrogen in stellar furnaces.  

If there is a "god" maybe it's hydrogen and gravity.  They make everything possible.

[brewer]

Change is inevitable. So, you've come to a mental crossroads and there are many paths that you can take. The path you take from here will be the one that works best for you. I suggest you don't try to define yourself to strictly. I like to be open enough to change with the situation.

[RobbyPants]

The problem is, I think I meant it.  Bit of a quandary now.  Am I still a deist or have I given up on all things creator driven?
Am I an atheist?  Am I beginning to convert?  I've never assigned importance to the God I ascribe to, and have even surmised that he/she may have very well died.
None the less, I seem to have turned some sort of corner.  My atheistic leanings may be more than that.
hmm.
Part of me is ready to let go and part of me wonders why I even consider any of it at all.

One thing I've learned about myself is I have the hardest time being honest when I'm evaluating myself. As soon as I question my own motives, I can see the "obvious" answer, but I can also see some reason I might be lying to myself out of convenience. Once I acknowledge that possibility, it becomes next to impossible for me to evaluate why I feel a certain way.

When it came to my own experience of letting go of faith, it was slow-going (taking about two years), and a lot of it was driven by how I felt. If you are losing your faith/in a temporary period of doubt/just asking questions, it's entirely possible you might feel comfortable identifying one way one day, and another the next day. There's no need to rush into it.