what would make you change your beliefs?

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Minimalist -

That's exactly right. I base my faith on what I personally believe and feel, rather than on what others tell me.

Of course you do,as do all adherents to the Abrahamic Faiths; the sacred books are so contradictory that they have no choice.

If god asked me to sacrifice my entire family to him, god would not be asking me to sacrifice my entire family to him, because it would never ask that.

Answer the fucking question!

Umm,what about ONE member,you know like god did to Abraham,proving he is a cruel and sadistic arsehole.

[Godhead]

Padraic -

I don't know what god did to abraham. I'm not a christian. Were you a christian?

[Minimalist]

Minimalist -

That's exactly right. I base my faith on what I personally believe and feel, rather than on what others tell me.

No problem. He's your invisible friend. You can make him whatever you like.

People like you don't worry me. You are a private nut. You are not out there trying to pour your personal divine delusions into the constitution.

[Godhead]

Minimalist -

No I'd never dream of forcing my beliefs onto others.

[Edwardo Piet]

Well good. That's a start. An important start.

I just don't understand how you believe that it's ok to just believe what you 'feel' or 'like' as opposed to what you think is true. What is personal about the truth?

If god asked me to sacrifice my entire family to him, god would not be asking me to sacrifice my entire family to him,

That makes no sense.

To respond to your signature btw....:

Don't ask me for evidence of god's existence. Just look in the mirror.

Evidence for me isn't evidence for God's existence unless I define myself/everything else as God. And saying everything is/I am God is just putting a label on everything/me... it makes no actual difference to saying nothing is God/ I (or anyone else) am not God. It's just labelling.

[The Omnissiunt One]

If god asked me to sacrifice my entire family to him, god would not be asking me to sacrifice my entire family to him, because it would never ask that.

How do you know it would never ask that? If your morality is based on your god's dictates, then there's no way of discerning which of its commands are moral, and which are not. Your god could command that you kill your family, and that would therefore be considered 'good'.

[Edwardo Piet]

Since Godhead believes everything is God... then he must believe that Hitler was God too. And since - I assume! - he wouldn't follow or agree with Hitler... I therefore assume he disagrees with some parts of God/some 'gods' (or people IOW) - seen as 'everyone is God' (which is as completely meaningless as 'no one is God').

So if everyone and everything is God including himself... then any time he doubts himself he is doubting God. Oh ye of little faith!

EvF

[Godhead]

EvF -

Sometimes it can be hard to be a theist on an atheist forum. You have to carefully choose your words. One false move and you create the wrong impression. This has more of an effect on what I say and what I don't say than is immediately apparent. It isn't easy, it's really tricky. With that in mind, I don't want you to read a negative tone into what I'm going to say.

You don't understand how I believe that it's ok to believe what I feel as opposed to what I think is true. Exactly, you don't understand, and it is that which I'm emphasising, your lack of understanding about how I see things. You're tuned differently to me, you see things in a very different way to me, which makes it hard for you to understand me. I'd like to say that I never ignore what I think is true, however I combine what my eyes and my intellect tell me with what I feel, and actually I do think that feeling is a way of thinking and perceiving, a very direct way. Nothing contradicts anything else. The intellect is useful but if left unchecked, it gets in the way of our other means of knowing things.Language is useful, however not every concept can be expressed adequately, certainly not by everyone, so I really can't explain how my way of assessing and seeing things makes sense. Put another way, in my mind I have clear and coherent meanings, but not the words to clothe them in and present them to you. When atheists talk of evidence, and some other things, it strikes me as very simplistic, and I can't always easily break down my beliefs into those predefined boxes.

When I say that everything is god, I'm not merely putting a wishful label on everything / nothing. I really do literally believe that everything is god, everything is conscious, and everything is the same thing, and I do believe that god is the manifestor (what most people would call creator, but there's a difference) of everything. It's not like I woke up one day and decided to have these fancy beliefs. I have thought about it a lot, and here's my reasoning. Even though you disagree, at least you can see that thought has gone into it :

- How could god create things from absolutely nothing? How can you get something from nothing? How can "thingness" exist within nothing? That doesn't make sense.
- In that case, surely, for something to be created, it has to have a source somewhere. If god is the creator of everything, that means that other than god, there's nothing else.
- So, in order to create, god has nowhere to go to get what it needs to create, other than itself.
- In that case, god (rather than creating from nothing) is the essence of everything and anything.
- Therefore, god is (active verb) every and any thing, and every and any thing is what god "is-es".
- Therefore, all things are the symptom and expression of god's existence, and therefore the direct evidence of god's existence.
- To contain the essence of anything, infinitely, god would have to be beyond every and any thing. It would have to be unbound by all things, all rules, and transcendental of everything conceiveable and unconceivable, and beyond all contradiction and paradox

That isn't my argument for god's existence, as it begins with the premise that god exists. That is my argument for panentheism. In other words, if god exists, then the universe is panentheistic.

Yes, I believe that Hitler is god. I wouldn't follow Hitler. Hitler, and every other thing in the universe, is a symptom of god. When I say that every thing is god, I don't mean that every thing is literally the whole of god, what I mean is that the drop is the ocean, and the ocean is the drop. They are the same, but one is a part, the other is the whole. There's a relationship. Asking me if I'd follow Hitler (because I said that everything is god) shows a lack of understanding of what I mean by "every thing is god". Everything is literally god, yes, in the sense that it is made out of god. A house is made from bricks, but you can't live in bricks.


Omnissiunt -

My morality is not based on god's dictates. God doesn't dictate or command me.

[Edwardo Piet]

Thank you for your response.

I can accept that everything is to be labelled God but I don't understand where you get the "everything is conscious" part from. Other than the "everything is conscious" part - it is really just labelling is it not?

You say that when atheists ask for evidence they are putting it into a box. But, no, not really. Because evidence=reason to believe. So asking for evidence is asking for a reason to believe. It's fine to put feelings into the equation if you genuinely believe they add to the truth of the matter of your beliefs... but if you don't believe they do - then you're essentially happily believing in something that you don't honestly think is true which kind of confuses me.

I never asked if you followed Hitler... I made the point that I assume that you obviously wouldn't and so there therefore are parts of 'God' you wouldn't follow... and yet, yes, Hitler would still be a part as everything is God and everything that has existed is God, according to you.

I accept that you understand that I don't (at least fully) understand your position... but I hope you do also accept that I am genuinely trying to.

For you it seems to me that God=the universe/multiverse... the cosmos... existence/essence itself etc.... I just don't understand where the "all is conscious" part comes from. If everything is one and the same then the conciousness would have to be the same too... so there would only be one consciousness.... so that's like... solipsism?

If there is not one consciousness but many.... then where does the belief that everything is concious come from? So it seems to me that either you have an unexplained belief in everything being consciousness... or you are in some way solipsist or something to that effect. It almost sounds like some sort of bizzare polysolipsism where there is only one consciousness but it is spread over many different dimensions LOL... and if so - why? How?

EvF

[Godhead]

EvF -

The reason why I think everything is conscious is very hard to explain fully. If I tried, I'd come off as even crazier than I already do, and after the effort it would take and the responses that I'd get, I just don't think it's worth the energy. But I'm going to try anyway, just for you, and I'll only respond to you. Get ready for some weird stuff, but it's the only way I know how to put it. I'm obviously not proving anything, I'm just explaining what you're asking me to explain, ie why I believe what I do about consciousness, why is everything conscious. It would be best if you read what I'm going to say as though it were one of those zen puzzles, designed to (hopefully0 make you go "aha" rather than any kind of scientific explanation.

I exist, I'm conscious. Everything about me and everything about what I do, feel, think, believe, perceive, boils down to me and my consciousness / awareness. That's the common denominator. In terms of my experience and existence, I'm the centre of the universe. That means that everything that I'm aware of, is "happening" to me. I see everything with my eyes, no one else's. If I'm aware, then there is something to be aware of. There's a conscious-er and a conscious-ed. I'm both, because the conscious-ed only exists while I, the conscious-er, exist. That's my experience, as a conscious-er. I am everything about me, I'm everything I see, if I cease, it ceases, that's my experience as a conscious-er. Things either exist, or they don't. If they exist, they exist absolutely, they can't partly exist. A house exists, and it's made of bricks. The bricks are the house and the house is the bricks, collectively. Without the bricks, there's no house, and without the house, the bricks aren't bricks, they're just whatever they're made of, in whatever shape they're in. A brick is only a brick when it is being a brick and fulfilling the purpose of a brick. Everything is interdependent, therefore part of a whole. Nothing exists in isolation, there are relationships, and awareness. Just as I am aware of a brick, the brick is aware of me, and of itself, otherwise, neither of us would exist. Existence is tied in with awareness of one's existence. You can't exist without knowing it. There has to be a knower, and so if walk away from a brick, the brick still exists. So everything is conscious. And if god is the source of everything, and god is conscious of itself and its own manifestation, then all things are the same consciousness. Yes, there is one consciousness, and yes, there are many consciousnesses. Simultaneously. Each consciousness is an aspect, an angle, of the whole consciousness. We are the experience and manifestation of god. We are god. My consciousness is what god experiences through me, and yours is what god experiences through you. Add up the consciousness of every thing + any (potential) thing, and you get the whole consciousness. Why is god's consciousness spread out this way, among everything that exists plus everything that could exist? Because it is experiencing itself. How? By manifesting itself, out of every/nothingness, and every thing is that manifestation.

If evidence means reason (motive) to believe, then that's my evidence. You may not share that evidence. I can't give you your evidence (reason (motive) to believe), I can only tell you mine. I feel convinced by my reasoning, and my feeling that this is how it is likewise feeds my reasoning. It's a cycle. You have your cycle too.

So, going back to the question posed in the title of this thread : What would make one change their beliefs / disbeliefs? Their own personal cycle of reasoning-emotion would have to change.