Spirituality
12 Feb 16
- Joined
- 31 May 06
- Moves
- 1795
[Speaking as the thread suggests for myself and without claiming my views as anything other than my own personal views with no claim to speak for anyone else]
'Unbelievers' is such a clunky [and indeed pejorative term]... 'Atheists' will do.
[capitalised only at the start of a sentence]
What is god to you?
'God' is a nebulous and ill-defined concept that has many meanings to different people in different contexts.
I view 'god' as a label for a purportedly very powerful and often immortal supernatural* being that may variously;
Be a/the creator of the entire universe or some subsection of it,
Often be claimed as the ruler of same,
Be the anthropomorphic representation and intelligent controller of one, some, or all the natural forces/processes in the world**,
And/Or the embodiment of some artificial distinction to reality created by our mental categorisation of reality***,
Be the gatekeeper to an afterlife or afterlives,
Be the focus of worship of some or all members of a religion or religions and such worship may or may not be required by that
god or gods.
[this list is indicative but not exhaustive of the proposed properties of gods]
In reality there are no known existent entities that can act as an applicable referent for such a being and as such all
god concepts are [and must be considered to be] fictional and non-existent. And indeed many gods do indeed exist
in fiction and all gods claimed to be real have similar or lesser levels of veracity.
Throughout most of history and most cultures people have believed in the existence of multiple co-existing deities in a pantheon
where different gods have reflected different aspects of reality and had different roles, responsibilities, and personalities.
Only relatively recently has monotheism with a focus on only one god [often claimed to be the only god] become popular
helped largely by it's success in being coupled with the most powerful civilisations of the time.
These monotheistic singular gods try to combine the attributes of many/all of the polytheistic gods into one which results in
a less coherent and more logically implausible being. Making such monotheistic religions inherently less plausible and
intellectually satisfying as well as increasing scope for conflict as such religions cannot accept the possibility of other gods
as polytheistic religions can.
Whereas a good god or gods could exist in a pantheon but be unable to stop all evil because of the existence of bad gods
working against them, a monotheistic god has no such limitations and by extension of the 'problem of evil' can only possibly
be evil by any objective moral standard. As such all monotheistic religions promote an evil god at their core and contain
beliefs that are immoral in part or in total.
I hold that all such beliefs in the existence of evidently non-existent beings to both irrational and harmful to both those
who hold such beliefs and to society as a whole. Impeding moral, philosophical, and scientific/technological growth and progress.
And that the methods of forming and maintaining/justifying such beliefs are inherently and by definition opposed to and
antagonistic towards the methods of belief formation and justification of science and rationality.
*Using Richard Carriers definition of 'Supernatural'.
**E.G. Thor, god of thunder and lightning [as well as war], Ra, god of the sun, etc.
***E.G. Hades, god of death and the underworld. Death being an emergent phenomena that we as living beings care about
but doesn't represent some fundamental or isolatable physical process or 'force of nature'.
Originally posted by DeepThoughtAs of your post there are only four posts you must be referring to. Three of which seem to denounce God as merely the figment of the imagination.
Judging by some of the posts in this forum, an excuse for sanctimony.
Aside from the other three posts, how is my declaration that God is the creator sanctimonious? After all, I'm not the author of such a claim, but merely one who believes in it. Assuming you are referring to me, how am I being sanctimonious by simply stating what I believe to be true?
Aside from that, how is leveling the charge of sanctimony facilitate a discussion about "what is God to you"?
It appears that the rest of my post was deleted based on it's inappropriateness. Essentially I had said that it would be good if we could get beyond the bs word play, and that I think you are admittedly better educated, and I wouldn't stand a chance debating with you.
13 Feb 16
Originally posted by josephwYou misunderstood him. He was not referring exclusively to posts in this thread, but rather posts in this forum. I rather doubt that any post in this thread triggered his response.
As of your post there are only four posts you must be referring to. Three of which seem to denounce God as merely the figment of the imagination.
13 Feb 16
Originally posted by josephwThat is the whole point. "God" IS a figment of the imagination.
As of your post there are only four posts you must be referring to. Three of which seem to denounce God as merely the figment of the imagination.
Aside from the other three posts, how is my declaration that God is the creator sanctimonious? After all, I'm not the author of such a claim, but merely one who believes in it. Assuming you are referring to me, ...[text shortened]... nk you are admittedly better educated, and I wouldn't stand a chance debating with you.[/hidden]
It doesn't take anything more than looking at the 100 million killed in WW2 to see this alleged god cares less about the lives of people. We are on our own and the sooner we figure that out as a species, the more likely we will be to survive the next few thousand years.
Originally posted by black beetleYep, that is the bottom line. But in modern religion "modern' meaning anything in the last 5000 years or so, they are all scams, 100% made up by men, mostly men, I would say 99% male dominated since that is what the effect is in any of the Abrahamic religions, where it is oh so co-incidental that men are just accidentally in charge of almost everything including what happens to a woman's body.
An illusion😵
How CONVENIENT, for men anyway.
It's no coincidence that these alleged god's ALWAYS takes the form of some kind of male and these alleged god's just coincidentally happen to have human attributes.
Wow, how convenient. SO convincing.
Like 'my god is a jealous god'. What a ripoff. RIGHT. Like a frigging GOD capable of waving its rhetorical fingers and a whole universe is born. SURE, it could happen, a being that powerful actually JEALOUS of humans?
What a laugh.