[split] Are Questions About God Important?

[h4ym4n]

Nudger, do you think God is a liar? Would God lie?

Do you think god could lie to you and make you believe it didn’t lie to you and it would promise you it would never lie to you?

[Ahriman]

Nudger, do you think God is a liar? Would God lie?

Do you think god could lie to you and make you believe it didn’t lie to you and it would promise you it would never lie to you?

Well sure, but none of that is happening.

[h4ym4n]

Do you think god could lie to you and make you believe it didn’t lie to you and it would promise you it would never lie to you?

Well sure, but none of that is happening.

See. It working perfectly 

Can I get a amen

[Ahriman]

Well sure, but none of that is happening.

See. It working perfectly 

Can I get a amen

Well it's not really a lie if you want to believe it, right?

[h4ym4n]

See. It working perfectly 

Can I get a amen

Well it's not really a lie if you want to believe it, right?

Or god is making you believe you want it, right!

Show me I’m wrong

[The Grand Nudger]

I think the strongest motivations to contemporary theistic belief are all noncognitive. To use pizza as an example of what I mean, let's imagine that you invite sally from somewhere were they don't eat pizza to dinner. Sally says to you at this dinner... that this is the best pizza she's ever had. Here's the kicker. She's never had pizza before. This is something new in her life, additional content.

She can't possibly know as a matter of her own preferences whether it's the best as she's had no other pizza to compare it to, she cant possibly know as a matter of pizzas whether it's the best, as she's had no other pizza to compare it to. Her culture doesn't prime her to expect a certain thing in pizzas, as they don't do pizza at all. Sally is in a position, you are in a position, where no cognitive theory of pizza or pizza statements can explain her statement or whatever content she's trying to communicate. It's not even about any of that.

Sally, is saying she loves it. It makes her feel a way. The same, I think, is true of theistic belief. It's how we introduce it to children. It's not about arguments or supernatural experiences or who gets what detail right or origins or any of that. The answer is love. Why gods, why this god, why anything at all? Love love love. Works on adults too, ofc. Wanting that content, it making you feel a certain way. Worrying that the loss of that thing will mean a loss of the content. Not just love, though, love, life, eternity - all of it..noncognitively. Those other two, or the interplay between them, is probably the second most common thing we hear. That when a person with those sorts of beliefs is talking about meaning, they're talking about a thing that would not exist if we died....even though..they know..we all do die.

I'm going to switch gears from sally or from theism for a moment here to talk about those other two some more - and how, to my mind, they have a different interplay. I also have deeply compelling non cognitive motivations or explanations for some of the things I believe or do (hey..maybe all of them). I'd say things I cannot help but believe, or but act out even if I won't give them the official okay as a belief. While there may be people who feel that if life were not eternal everything would be meaningless, not all of them are theists. I've had many long and wonderful and probing conversations with atheists, on this board, who believe or fear or worry the same. At the end of the day, just accepting the position for what it is - there's really not much I can say other than..yeah..maybe life and things really don't have the kind of meaning that requires you to live forever.

OTOH, life that ends has meaning or content that eternal life does not, cannot. Urgency. In fact there's no other single word I can think of to describe life, like urgent does. Life is urgent. We have to have it. We have to get our hands on it, as much of it as we can, and never let go. Urgency and everything that comes from it is lost if there is no death, if there is no urgency-in-life. Why, for example, would or should I learn a new language in my short earthly life...especially with everything else I have to juggle during that blip in time..when I have an eternity to learn every language in the hereafter - and..presumably, won't have any of those other inconveniences to work around? Why do today what I could put off for forever?

How do we decide, by any metric, in any of the main views of import...what a beautiful life is or who's had one or what that means or the value of striving for it, if all lives could extend into infinity and become homogenized over or by eternity? To my mind, we're not just stuck with death as a matter of biological fact, we're stuck with it as a foundational part of all of our meanings. This is why every religion that we've ever come up with always has a hefty amount of shit about death. If they're not, really..when you boil it down, just cults of death and about death.

It begs the question..why do we desire more of something if we believe it to be meaningless on it's own or if it were shorter rather than longer? Why do we groom and prepare our children to assume our lives and our lives work and all of it's accrued benefits...rightly or wrongly..if we believe it is of no value..and, especially worthless if it is no longer our own? Why do we so often seem to need to believe that..when the party is over for us or nearing over for us, it ought to be over or will soon be over for everyone - the basis of all apocalyptic beliefs...theistic or atheistic...aspirational or fearful...if the party doesn't mean a damned thing, and if it ending is meaning destroying rather than meaning creating?

Here's the real kicker. Very...very often, the things that any person or culture ascribes the most importantance to, and the way they ascribe the most importance to it, is by deeming them thing, and by proving they are things......that you would die for.

[h4ym4n]

See. It working perfectly 

Can I get a amen

Well it's not really a lie if you want to believe it, right?

If this is the bible god you’re referring to then it admits to hardening hearts. 


Isn’t that a form of lying or deceitfulness?

[Ahriman]

Wow, that's a lot of writing. Some good points made.
Honestly I don't care what comes after this life, if anything at all.

[Ahriman]

Well it's not really a lie if you want to believe it, right?

If this is the bible god you’re referring to then it admits to hardening hearts. 


Isn’t that a form of lying or deceitfulness?

No, not really. It's really more just giving people what they ask for. If you ask for something and you get it, don't complain when you don't want it anymore.

[The Grand Nudger]

Just read it in tiny chunks and get back to me when you've finished and absorbed it and have lucid thoughts about it Ahri. Or don't!

Sometime on the other side of the heat death of the universe sound good to you?

A tldr version of the comments, if that helps. Why do we believe that there is or even could be greater and lesser ways to die, if death is meaning destroying? Asking for millions upon millions of friends who've run toward, rather than away..from death.