Does some people need God?

[vulcanlogician]

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.

Aristotle's teleology is misunderstood by many. I used to misunderstand it myself. It's easy to misunderstand because it's a fairly subtle idea.

I never really liked Aristotle's political theories though. They're pretty weak. I much prefer Plato. Not that I'm unwilling to break with Plato when his ideas are bad. But I'm inclined to stick with him when his ideas are good. And his main thread of thinking... that justice is an intelligible thing... intelligible despite the circumstances in the material world... is a good one.

---

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.

This forum isn't a company. It's just a place where atheists (and others) can connect and discuss their views.

[Belacqua]

It's me displaying companies being inconsiderately and insensitively greedy to their customers.

Nobody NEEDS good service. This is just your desire. You have air, you have food. Don't be greedy.

[GrandizerII]

Ooh a female edgelord. Been a while since I last saw one.

[sdelsolray]

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.

What are your needs?

[Rev. Rye]

The sad thing is I suspect there might be people who are legitimately like this, but, well, I’ll let Rust Cole explain it:

And their baseline for goodness probably isn’t even that good anyway. It’s probably just simple shit like the Ten Commandments, and you can’t even count on them following that.

[Gwaithmir]

"Faith is a critical pillar in religions like Christianity. This entails treating not only doubt and skepticism as enemies, but also nonbelievers asking critical questions, offering reasons to doubt the reliability of religious claims. This attitude towards doubt may be an important reason why atheists and skeptics are so reviled by conservative evangelicals: the mere existence of atheists is a threat because they demonstrate a person can live and even thrive without faith in any gods." (Christopher Hitchens)

[Fake Messiah]

Does this kind of people need God to put their bravery to good use???

Maybe some people do have a need to believe in God, so what? It's probably a sign of psychological problems. Just like many men in Victorian England had a need to be whipped because they were whipped by teachers in schools.
Some people today still have a need to be tied down and whipped, so are we going to make some dumb conclusions that it is a human nature to be slaves? - Hardly, and the same goes with the need to believe in Gods and other fairytales. It's just a way that people were taught to deal with problems either by society or as a cultural meme.
Similar is also with many people who start smoking when they are in stressful situations - it's not because people naturally want to be coal miners and fill their lungs with sut, but that the society fails at teaching people how to deal with stress in other ways than smoking and believing in fairytales.

[xalvador88]

The belief in God can sometimes give people an incentive to be a better person and do good things, but no one truly needs a made up God to tell them everything they need to do with their lives. Some say atheists can't have morals because they don't believe in God, but that's wrong. Humans have come up with morals since before they created religions, they just use religion as a way to convince people there is divine punishment for your actions and also as a way to explain what was, or still is, unexplainable to us.

[zwanzig]

I'm divided on this. Because I see people and know people who thrive and benefit from a belief in God. But there are others, and sometimes even those exact same people, who espouse a different version of reality with a different set of rules and expectations. It makes it difficult to have real conversations across the aisle about how to manage society, how to interact with other people. Not that atheists don't also find justifications for doing harmful things but that belief and justifying action by God creates a barrier. I've gotten to the point in discussions where we just have to end because the other person has said and keeps saying, "I believe ___" . I cannot reason with you or find common ground if you accept a different reality.

We know a lot more about the human mind and emotions now, so, I'll go with a metaphor I've seen GMS use: we could still use candle flames to see in the darkness. But we're all holding a flashlight or capable of using a flashlight, so, why would we push using a candle as the better way or more convenient way to see?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Displaced blame requires a god.