Does some people need God?

[vulcanlogician]

I've never understood why necroposting is bad. Like, what harm does it do?

I'm not saying it shouldn't be a rule or anything. I just don't understand why it's bad.

[Belacqua]

People only need food, water, sleep, sex, socialising, and things to make sense to survive. 

Many sincere and intelligent people in history have thought that God is a concept that's necessary to meet the last condition in your list. That "things make sense." 

God is a manmade idea, not a need.

The fact that something is a manmade idea doesn't necessarily mean that it's not a need. We all live in a given society. We are thrown into it, and have to adapt.

Working for a living at a job is a manmade idea (as opposed to hunting and gathering, for example) but for most people working at a job is a need. Money, indoor plumbing, etc., are manmade things. They are needs for modern people. 

Nietzsche argues that the world, before it is perceived by people, is chaos. The order we perceive there is man-made. Whether this is true of the behavior of subatomic particles, etc., seems to be an open question. But for lots of things that people need, it is almost certainly true. There is no value in the world, but people need to create value, and hold some things to be valuable. There is no meaning in the world, but people seem to need meaning. There is no such thing as utility, until there are people who want to use things. 

The world as we perceive it and live in it (as opposed to the world as it would be with no people in it) is largely man-made. We need it to be this way.

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I've never understood why necroposting is bad. Like, what harm does it do?

I'm not saying it shouldn't be a rule or anything. I just don't understand why it's bad.

Because the large majority of the conversations here are ones that have occurred many times before. 

If we couldn't repeat ourselves there would be nothing to say.

[AtheisticChick]

Needs are not wants. A lot of people confuse the word needs with wants because of their greed. People saying that they need god are actually saying what they want, not what they need. Because needs are not personal. Wants are only personal.

[Belacqua]

People saying that they need god are actually saying what they want, not what they need.

Is this true of everyone everywhere? 

Is it possible that an individual may need to believe in god to get through the day, or have a happy life?

 Because needs are not personal. Wants are only personal.

But individual persons have needs.

[AtheisticChick]

I've never understood why necroposting is bad. Like, what harm does it do?

I'm not saying it shouldn't be a rule or anything. I just don't understand why it's bad.

A lot of forums are basically killing futuristic discussions because of their rule against necroposting and it has caused a decrease in quality support service when website owner(s), administrator(s), and moderator(s) lock threads or prevent people from talking in older threads. It has caused people to create forums that don't have a rule against necroposting to allow people to talk with each other more efficiently without having to worry about deadlines that make their threads locked or prevent people from talking to each other on older threads, especially when they want to add comments to make the older threads more interesting instead of having to make another thread.

I've never understood why necroposting is necessarily bad, either. Which is why I miss the past when forums weren't so strict with necroposting, especially when I was using forums for customer support service.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I've never understood why necroposting is bad. Like, what harm does it do?

I'm not saying it shouldn't be a rule or anything. I just don't understand why it's bad.

We’re working on modifying it.

Boru

[vulcanlogician]

I've never understood why necroposting is bad. Like, what harm does it do?

I'm not saying it shouldn't be a rule or anything. I just don't understand why it's bad.

A lot of forums are basically killing futuristic discussions because of their rule against necroposting and it has caused a decrease in quality support service when website owner(s), administrator(s), and moderator(s) lock threads or prevent people from talking in older threads. It has caused people to create forums that don't have a rule against necroposting to allow people to talk with each other more efficiently without having to worry about deadlines that make their threads locked or prevent people from talking to each other on older threads, especially when they want to add comments to make the older threads more interesting instead of having to make another thread.

I've never understood why necroposting is necessarily bad, either. Which is why I miss the past when forums weren't so strict with necroposting, especially when I was using forums for customer support service.

Jeez. The chip on your shoulder is so big, it dwarfs your head. 

But lets return to the topic at hand. People needing God. So what if people need God? I need music. That wasn't on your list. But (to me) it's a need. I think that's how I view other people's need of God. It's not on my list of things I need. But if it's on their list. Cool. I understand. The only time I have a problem with it is if their need of God wants to interfere with the course of my life.

Most of the time it doesn't. But if it ever does... rage.

[AtheisticChick]

People saying that they need god are actually saying what they want, not what they need.

Is this true of everyone everywhere? 

Is it possible that an individual may need to believe in god to get through the day, or have a happy life?

If they "need" to believe in god to get through the day, then they are weakminded people with a lower survival rate. Powerful politicians have made the people believe that they need to believe in god to get through the day because religion makes money to exploit the weakminded slaves who are exploited by politicians and religion. God is not a need. The people lie to themselves to make themselves believe that they "need" god because they are weakminded slaves. Religion and god were used to enslave people with weakminded beliefs. In the end, we only have ourselves to help us get us through the day. God is only a manmade idea that only exists in books, the entertainment world, and words. There is no scientific evidence that proves god is not fictitious.

[Belacqua]

I need music.

I've been reading a lot about needs vs. wants lately. Mostly I've been reading philosophers who, if I mention the names, will be instantly rejected on this forum. So I'll paraphrase in my own words.

Human beings have built-in dispositions and aims. Some of these are more obvious than others. Some come earlier on a list of hierarchies. 

One way of ordering the hierarchy is to deprive a person of something, and see how long he lasts. There are lots of things we need at every second that we don't even think about, like gravity, the continued existence of the laws of physics, etc. We need all those things to go on as they are. 

Among the things normally listed as needs, I guess air comes first, then water, then food. We could build a pyramid similar to Maslow's Hierarchy. Shelter, safety, community are low on the pyramid because they are more immediately necessary. Mutual family love, is higher. Maslow puts "self-fulfillment" at the top. 

I think we can agree that nobody NEEDS to be self-fulfilled to live to be 70 years old. So the question arises, how much do we need a need? Does "I need it" only refer to the bottom rungs of the pyramid, as AtheistChick seems to be saying, or are there less tangible needs that are necessary for a good human life? 

In the Philebus, Socrates says that all happiness comes from the relief of discomfort. The easiest case is that of hunger -- being hungry is uncomfortable, and eating relieves that. So eating gives pleasure. 

At first it seems ridiculous to say that ALL happiness is this way. When I look at a great painting, or you listen to music, is this the relief of some discomfort? 

Following Aristotle (oh god, I'm mentioning these people after all) people posited that all human beings, because of the way they're made, do have different kinds of desires, which are analogous to hunger. Being higher on the pyramid of needs, they don't seem so immediate or obvious. But they are built-in, nonetheless. 

One of these hungers is the desire for beauty. We hunger for it, we miss it when it's lacking (though we may not be as aware of this as we are of a rumbling tummy) and when we find it we experience the relief of that hunger. This makes us happy, and it's necessary -- it's a need -- if what we want is a fulfilled human life. You can live a LONG life without it, but possibly not a GOOD life. Where "good," here, means one in which the natural built-in desires are somewhat satisfied.

A lot of people today will oppose this way of thinking, because it might sound too much like teleology. Life AIMS AT certain general outcomes. And of course if we eliminate the idea that humans have built-in needs we can justify a society which doesn't do anything to fulfill them. If beauty is just a personal choice, a non-necessary want, then the people who run society don't have to worry if their actions work against beauty.

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If they "need" to believe in god to get through the day, then they are weakminded people with a lower survival rate. Powerful politicians have made the people believe that they need to believe in god to get through the day because religion makes money to exploit the weakminded slaves who are exploited by politicians and religion. God is not a need. The people lie to themselves to make themselves believe that they "need" god because they are weakminded slaves. Religion and god were used to enslave people with weakminded beliefs. In the end, we only have ourselves to help us get us through the day. God is only a manmade idea that only exists in books, the entertainment world, and words. There is no scientific evidence that proves god is not fictitious.

You are repeating a number of unoriginal ideas here. A lot of people will agree with you on this forum, but that's not the same as having proof. 

Your own ideology is useful for the powerful to control weak-minded people, but I expect you don't see how that's so.

[AtheisticChick]

A lot of forums are basically killing futuristic discussions because of their rule against necroposting and it has caused a decrease in quality support service when website owner(s), administrator(s), and moderator(s) lock threads or prevent people from talking in older threads. It has caused people to create forums that don't have a rule against necroposting to allow people to talk with each other more efficiently without having to worry about deadlines that make their threads locked or prevent people from talking to each other on older threads, especially when they want to add comments to make the older threads more interesting instead of having to make another thread.

I've never understood why necroposting is necessarily bad, either. Which is why I miss the past when forums weren't so strict with necroposting, especially when I was using forums for customer support service.

Jeez. The chip on your shoulder is so big, it dwarfs your head. 

But lets return to the topic at hand. People needing God. So what if people need God? I need music. That wasn't on your list. But (to me) it's a need. I think that's how I view other people's need of God. It's not on my list of things I need. But if it's on their list. Cool. I understand. The only time I have a problem with it is if their need of God wants to interfere with the course of my life.

Most of the time it doesn't. But if it ever does... rage.

There are companies that have replaced quality with quantity and have replaced customer satisfaction with planned obsolescence, customer support service with unhelpful robots, and unreliable forums with rules against necroposting that make it more difficult to get normal conversations and answers to resolve problems without having to deal with deadlines that lock threads when someone has an accident that physically injures them that keeps them from being online for more than a year and they come back to their thread that's been locked because it's been inactive for more than a year.

It's not a chip on my shoulder. It's me displaying companies being inconsiderately and insensitively greedy to their customers.