Do you wish there's a god?

[Belacqua]

Certainly looks that way:

No, you accused me of saying that only people who believe can study the subject. 

What I really said is that emotions can determine how we study a subject. In many cases people make a serious effort in a field because they love the field. It seems clear to me that many people also fail to study a subject seriously because they already feel they hate it. 

In my case, I learned about theology by studying art and literature. At a certain point, if you want to understand, say, Brueghel, you have to know what his theology is. He paints that way because of what he believes about God. And it's certainly true that I loved painting before I knew anything at all about art history or aesthetics. The beauty of it grabbed me from an early age and it has been my pleasure to work on it all my life. 

And then I learned there are also beautiful ideas. Just as some pictures are good to look at, and some melodies good to hear, there are some ideas that are good to think. Not even to believe, necessarily, just to think. I find most of Plotinus to be this way. It's very beautiful. There is an attraction in it which I call love.

[Catharsis]

When the sun rises over the good and the bad
and the rain pours on the righteous as well as the wicked,
wouldn't you wish there's a god?

Besides all ideas about the creator being a wicked psychopath

wouldn't you wish for a loving god?

Because there'd be nothing for people to strive to learn.

Why do you think that is so?

[Mister Agenda]

As a fantasy, sure. People fantasize about loving gods all the time, today we call them superheroes. They deliver justice, save the innocent, keep the earth from being hit by asteroids; if they weren't invariably accompanied by supervillains and often by hostile alien races; comic books would be about utopias. The downside would be the psychological effect on regular people who can't hope to measure up to benevolent beings with super powers and could get in the habit of depending on them to solve their problems instead of coping on their own. But I think that would be a worthwhile tradeoff for Ultra Woman saving millions of people from disasters, Night Avenger cleaning up the streets, and Dr. Cranium developing an STD that cures AIDS.

It would be nice to have powerful, benevolent, incorruptible beings on the side of ordinary people.

As for a loving god with a capital 'G' that created the universe, sure, it's easy to imagine how the job could have been done better if the creator was all-powerful and all-wise and truly had the welfare of human beings in mind when creating the universe. Evolution is a messy way to get to humans and suffering is at the heart of it, creating us fully-formed and without the need to eat other life to live would be much faster, simpler, and more benevolent. Like being able to just instantiate fictional characters.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Certainly looks that way:

No, you accused me of saying that only people who believe can study the subject. 

What I really said is that emotions can determine how we study a subject. In many cases people make a serious effort in a field because they love the field. It seems clear to me that many people also fail to study a subject seriously because they already feel they hate it. 

In my case, I learned about theology by studying art and literature. At a certain point, if you want to understand, say, Brueghel, you have to know what his theology is. He paints that way because of what he believes about God. And it's certainly true that I loved painting before I knew anything at all about art history or aesthetics. The beauty of it grabbed me from an early age and it has been my pleasure to work on it all my life. 

And then I learned there are also beautiful ideas. Just as some pictures are good to look at, and some melodies good to hear, there are some ideas that are good to think. Not even to believe, necessarily, just to think. I find most of Plotinus to be this way. It's very beautiful. There is an attraction in it which I call love.

Fair point. I should have been clearer that I was using the word 'belief' to mean 'to commit one's life to' (I don't think it's much of a stretch to equate that with 'love').

So, to rephrase:

Only the conclusions reached by people who love God are to be trusted.  Similarly, if someone doesn't already love God, they aren't likely to make a serious effort on the subject.

Even a cursory reading of the history of philosophy will show both of these to be not just wrong, but wrong-headed. 

Boru

[Peebothuhlu]

Because there'd be nothing for people to strive to learn.

Why do you think that is so?

You... seem to have both not read the rest of my reply as well as not bothering to quote it.

Again.

If there were a diety and it were the author of all things, known and unknown to us, then we could simply give up trying to know everything since there would be some... 'Thing' that not only knows every thing we know. BUt it would also know what we do not know on top of it would also know what we could never know.

You then have the problem of discerning such a being's essence/nature.

You assert it's got beneficial properties.

I can assert that Cthuhlu will not be hungry for mortal essences and flesh upon its awakening.

You have no way of knowing the true and total atributes of your diety just as I have no way of knowing the effective 'Waking state' of Cthuhlu.

To which my other point was that, again, if ther were a diety with the properties of the three 'Omnis' then it could simply change reality at its whim for what ever and when ever its whim decreed/decided.

It's just your pesonal guess/wish that said diety does not do so. The diety would be doing what ever it darn well pleases.

Not at work.

[Alan V]

I already spent 25 years of my adult life wishing there was a God, and trying to discover a God-concept that worked with what scientists now understand about reality.

So I'm going to answer "no" to the original question. I no longer wish there was a God, since I think I get along better with reality without such wishing getting in my way.

I no longer see belief in a God or a spiritual dimension as even potentially adaptive, especially given the human problems which have piled up because of such beliefs.

[Belacqua]

Only the conclusions reached by people who love God are to be trusted.  Similarly, if someone doesn't already love God, they aren't likely to make a serious effort on the subject.

This is not what I said. 

If this is what you want to say, OK. But please don't tell people that it's what I say.

[Fake Messiah]

When will people realize that they (humans) are gods, or at least have a potential to become gods.

[The Valkyrie]

When will people realize that they (humans) are gods, or at least have a potential to become gods.

When I was 12.

What?

[The Grand Nudger]

Only the conclusions reached by people who love God are to be trusted.  Similarly, if someone doesn't already love God, they aren't likely to make a serious effort on the subject.

This is not what I said. 

If this is what you want to say, OK. But please don't tell people that it's what I say.

It actually is what you said, Bel.  You explicitly impugned the sincerity of people and the validity of their work, those who didn't believe, on account of the loon theory that non-belief somehow indicated non enjoyment of subject.

If it sounds stupid in retrospect, well..own that..in retrospect, you said something stupid.

I'll just repeat that the majority of acknowledged experts in the field simply don't believe in quetzcoatl. Their non-belief is in no way shape or form indicative of non-enjoyment of subject. Period. That's not how any of this works, it's just a stupid thing that evangelists say...and you..apparently, drank the fuckin koolaid.