Benevolent Creator God?

[HappySkeptic]

And yet I do not see these "vast cosmic forces".  Where are they and what are they doing?  That seems like a prerequisite for trying to "align one's life to best account for them".

The number of things we do not know about is vastly greater than even the the few things we think we know...and even those seem tentative. Heck, Jupiter exerts more gavitational pull on my body than the cell phone in my pocket and yet I can pass my days oblivious to the effects of that distant planet. Chance seems to play a pretty big role in life and yet in hindsight it often looks like neccessity. For all it is worth, chance and necessity might as well be gods.

In at least one respect, I consider my intellectual belief in God similar to believing in other intangibles like ownership or virtue...not physically apparent yet seemingly conceptually indispensible.

Just calculated that, and you're right.  By more than 10000 times.

And yes, there are many things we don't know.  Rather than trying to align our life to unknowns, why don't we align it to what is known?  Part of the reason I became a scientist was to be able to understand as much as I can about the universe.  This is both an intellectual and spiritual exercise.

What is known is: we are in many ways separate beings, alone in our mind's simulations of the world around us.  At the same time, we are connected with people, nature, and the universe in real ways.

[pocaracas]

OP's question is precisely why there is scripture, it's precisely why there are prophets. God can't be known through guesswork. Atheists just got it backwards, they think in a vacuum while the answer was there in front of them for dozens of centuries, prophets-simple men like me and you, to whom God revealed his message, already clarified these issues.

Atheists work with what's in front of them, I think.
They simply dismiss prophets as delusional (at best), or charlatans (at worst).
From my point of view, if there was to be a powerful being as god is supposed to be, I'd expect that being to be able to communicate with everyone equally and unequivocally. If the guy is said to be so convincing to those who became known as prophets, what's to stop him/it from doing the same to everyone else? Shyness?..I doubt it. So either there is a god who interacts with the whole of humanity and has done so since the beginning of time (which doesn't seem to have happened), or the god is simply not interacting with anyone... or is non-existent.

The question then seems to become why does anyone accept the messages brought forth by the alleged prophets?

A recent finding of mine which I consider to be a very troublesome issue for atheism: the most prominent explanation of major religious experiences is that there some underlying neurological disorder that prompted some people to think God spoke to them. But here is the dazzling fact that was overlooked:

Any experience has a corresponding neurological state.

The historian W. Montgomery watt, one of the most famous orientalists who wrote about Islam and its prophet, figured this out a while ago: the allegations that Muhammad PBUH suffered from some neurological disorder are at best irrelevant, God might as well comunicate his message to a human being in an altered state of mind, in fact, it's actually what's to be expected, our consciousness can't handle even mundane accidents and miseries of life, let alone divine manifestation.

I think you got it backwards.
Mankind has evolved as a social species. Think that chimps, bonobos, gorillas, etc. have all also evolved as social species. This means that humans were social far before being humans.
As mankind evolved and became aware of the world and its own mortality, along with the desire to remain alive, surely many attempts were made to explain the mind, death, and all the physical phenomena around them. Without the right tools for that job, many of those explanations must have been nothing more than guesswork. Some more outlandish, some less.... some stuck around, some were forever forgotten.

As a social species, one would expect those individuals who were more suited to accept the prevailing explanations to be accepted into the society and thus have better chance at surviving and mating. This forms a feedback loop where selection acts in such a way as to prefer individuals that are ever more accepting of those explanations. This acceptance of the unproven, this belief, became embedded in the human brain and we see it today as a particular structure seemingly dedicated to belief.
With certain aspects of the world explained away by "other worlds", or "big man in the sky", or "animal spirits", or "earth, air, water, and fire", or whatever a specific tribe would have come up with, people would be free to dedicate themselves to more worldly affairs - like hunting, foraging, sleeping, eating, mating, maintaining social hierarchies, etc.

When agriculture comes around, this brain infrastructure has very likely already been there for millennia.... heck, hundreds of thousands of years even!
Cities arise and the poor human brain, well equipped for tribal society, must adapt to hundreds and thousands of people in a small space.
It becomes imperative to impart upon people the need to behave properly so that they are accepted in that particular city...
I'm sure many different places tried different ways to impose their laws and morality.
History speaks only of the victors, so we see which strategy worked best - religion.
Exploiting the pre-existing acceptance of unproven things, and attributing to the ruler of the city or country features of the big giant man in the sky, you could keep the populace below the simmering point and working for the collective good (at least the ruler's good).

Judaism, Chritianity and Islam are simply variations on a theme.
The divine baby sitter, with people's behaviours kept in check by everyone else.

This alone is a devastating blow to atheism. Non-believers are pressed to explain away divine manifestation in prophets' religious experience, and until they do so, they are epistemically obliged to accept their message.

Prophets, like I said, can be charlatans - imposing their own belief systems, intertwined with some common sense ideals, with the purpose of attaining some power over the masses and, I guess, alleviate their workload, while reaping the benefits of others' work.
They can also be delusional themselves with the result being the same.

Until deception can be dismissed, prophets' religious experiences are very likely just that - deception.
While I enjoy playing the lottery, I know my odds are infinitesimal, so I don't expect to win.
For the most part, however, I prefer to side with what is most likely and, in the concept of belief, the most likely seems to be that all religions and divine beliefs are man-made, exploiting brain structures that exist for our sociability.

It is disheartening to understand all this (and much more that I left unsaid) and see otherwise smart, educated, intelligent people fall prey to these old religious ideas. For the most part, it is the exploitation of childhood indoctrination to blame, another brain mechanism that has been hijacked.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The number of things we do not know about is vastly greater than even the the few things we think we know...and even those seem tentative. Heck, Jupiter exerts more gavitational pull on my body than the cell phone in my pocket and yet I can pass my days oblivious to the effects of that distant planet. Chance seems to play a pretty big role in life and yet in hindsight it often looks like neccessity. For all it is worth, chance and necessity might as well be gods.

In at least one respect, I consider my intellectual belief in God similar to believing in other intangibles like ownership or virtue...not physically apparent yet seemingly conceptually indispensible.

Just calculated that, and you're right.  By more than 10000 times.

And yes, there are many things we don't know.  Rather than trying to align our life to unknowns, why don't we align it to what is known?  Part of the reason I became a scientist was to be able to understand as much as I can about the universe.  This is both an intellectual and spiritual exercise.

What is known is: we are in many ways separate beings, alone in our mind's simulations of the world around us.  At the same time, we are connected with people, nature, and the universe in real ways.

Yeah, the Jupiter thing is just so wild to me.

[LadyForCamus]

Why would you make that assumption?

Even if you had evidence of such a Creator telling us that they're good and intend good for us, what evidence do you have of that actually being true?

I have no reason to assume God, Jesus or anyone else is good. I define God as good because the Bible defines Him as good. I believe God is good, because of His graciousness and mercy I have experienced in my life and attribute as the work of His hand. If zenulbub the alien show up and claimed that all those thoughts and attributions were his doing then I would assume zenulbub was good and reassess my beliefs in zenulbub and God.

How do you know that these experiences were caused by a god?

[Angrboda]

I have no reason to assume God, Jesus or anyone else is good. I define God as good because the Bible defines Him as good. I believe God is good, because of His graciousness and mercy I have experienced in my life and attribute as the work of His hand. If zenulbub the alien show up and claimed that all those thoughts and attributions were his doing then I would assume zenulbub was good and reassess my beliefs in zenulbub and God.

How do you know that these experiences were caused by a god?

[tackattack]

I have no reason to assume God, Jesus or anyone else is good. I define God as good because the Bible defines Him as good. I believe God is good, because of His graciousness and mercy I have experienced in my life and attribute as the work of His hand. If zenulbub the alien show up and claimed that all those thoughts and attributions were his doing then I would assume zenulbub was good and reassess my beliefs in zenulbub and God.

How do you know that these experiences were caused by a god?

I do not know that it necessarily was a God, Thor or just some unexplained particle in the universe. I intuit it most likely is God. I have a definition of what I believe God is. It is an inadequate definition, but sufficient for relative classification. Nothing I’m aware of that is naturalistically or materialistically meet that definition. If zenelbub meets that definition when he comes to claim it was him, then as I said before I would reassess my definition of God and zenelbub.

[Foxaèr]

People will resort to referring to something others have already given a name to despite there being zero evidence of its existence. The error is in thinking it exists just because the concept was created, although our imagination is so colorful that it can be called anything and still be as relevant in its non-existence.

[vulcanlogician]

How do you know that these experiences were caused by a god?

I do not know that it necessarily was a God, Thor or just some unexplained particle in the universe.  I intuit it most likely is God. I have a definition of what I believe God is. It is an inadequate definition, but sufficient for relative classification. Nothing I’m aware of that is naturalistically or materialistically meet that definition. If zenelbub meets that definition when he comes to claim it was him, then as I said before I would reassess my definition of God and zenelbub.

Interesting. I think your position qualifies as reasonable. (Not in a more reasonable/less reasonable than X sort of way. Just in a "basically reasonable" sort of way.)

I don't have these "intuitions" of God that you have, though. I mean, I've had certain feelings (in church or while chanting mantras) that I formerly used to think might be intuitions of God, but skeptical analysis has led me to question those assumptions.

Also interesting is you saying that a meeting with Zenelbub would probably change your mind about things. But it WOULD TAKE such a meeting to change your mind.

... I feel the same way about God. At this point, it would take something like an in-person meeting to sway me away from agnosticism toward theism.

[Foxaèr]

I don't have these "intuitions" of God that you have, though. I mean, I've had certain feelings (in church or while chanting mantras)

We already know that our neurological preceptors affect our chemical makeup in a way that people tend to misconstrue experiences for something supernatural. Many activities heighten our emotions, and we have to be honest enough with our objectivity to perceive what we are experiencing as merely mundane on the very cellular level.

[LadyForCamus]

How do you know that these experiences were caused by a god?

I do not know that it necessarily was a God, Thor or just some unexplained particle in the universe.  I intuit it most likely is God. I have a definition of what I believe God is. It is an inadequate definition, but sufficient for relative classification. Nothing I’m aware of that is naturalistically or materialistically meet that definition. If zenelbub meets that definition when he comes to claim it was him, then as I said before I would reassess my definition of God and zenelbub.

What I mean is, how can you differentiate between your own mind in action and a god acting upon you?