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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Is there a God?

In response to some off-topic posts on the achingly relevant and urgent Haiti thread, I’m going to throw out a few tidbits here and turn them into a diary, to leave the other thread unencumbered by this side discussion. Feel free to add anything I might miss, and jump into the discussion!

From Brit:

So I see no moral highground obtained by believing in an afterlife or not.

Neither do I. But is that our aim? Do we believe or disbelieve just to achieve a moral high ground, improve our lives, etc., or because we are simply convinced that our belief is true? I find extremely reprehensible the arguments from the likes of Fox News’s Brit Hume, who told Tiger Woods that he should convert to Christianity in order to sort out his life. How could you convert for such a self-serving reason? Could that even be called a true conversion, if he did? To me, the only valid reason for being a Christian is that you believe it’s true — no other reason. If you don’t, then don’t even try.

But those tunnels of light people see might be due to visual coning thanks to anoxia.

Very well, but what about people who describe in detail various operating room events while they were supposedly dead?

But without believing in a life hereafter, I still believe life is sacred….

Why? What does “sacred” even mean to someone who doesn’t believe in anything holy? The word “sacred” means devoted to, or belonging to, a divine being.

From John Allen:

Many social animals show signs of having a sense of fairness and an understanding of quid pro quo.

I’ll be the first to boast to you that my dog can count, and can definitely call “No fair!” when I’ve “cheated” her on the number of treats she’s earned. She also has a highly evolved moral sense — just last week or so, a mini Jack Russell came up to her, yipping and yapping and generally making a pain of himself. Finally, he bit her squarely on the butt! She, a large yellow Lab, did NOT kill him, but simply turned and warned him away with a growl. I wish I possessed her restraint. I wish our entire country did. But Sage is a special case. I think animals’ souls can develop, just like ours can. What I was saying, though, is that we don’t call a wasp “evil” when it stings us, because that’s just what they do. We don’t curse or outlaw them, but simply try to protect ourselves from them, because they’re just being their waspish selves.

We don’t need a god to tell us that some actions are harmful to social cohesion.

Who says social cohesion is an absolute good? Maybe I disagree, and think sowing fear-mongering and mistrust of one another actually serves my own higher ideals, even if it doesn’t suit yours. Who is right, and why?

On the other hand, we have plenty of research that indicates consciousness is linked to brain function…. Humans are far more than their IQs. It is what a human does with that IQ that differentiates them.

I’m afraid you’re contradicting yourself here. If consciousness (the state of being human?) is linked to brain function, then the better the brain functions, the more “human” the person is, right? But then you turn around and say that humans are more than their IQs… So what about what people do with their IQs? Bernie Madoff sure made some good use of his, didn’t he? Is he more “human” than you or me who never figured out how to attain the wealth and success he did?

From sricki:

I think [murderers] weighed the costs and benefits of a certain situation and made the socially “morally reprehensible” choice for selfish personal reasons.

So you don’t believe in an insanity defense?

To be fair, your original assertion was this:

I don’t think there are any universal laws — not even a universal “standard” of what is right and wrong.

If there’s no universal standard, then how can anyone presume to impose his own moral restraints on someone else? Why shouldn’t I keep slaves, or persecute gays, or prey on gullible seniors, if that benefits me and fits within my personal moral framework? Oh sure, there are laws, but just because it’s not against the law for my lover to tell me he was at his mother’s house helping to install a new fridge, when he was really at his ex-girlfriend’s house, does that make it right? If not, why not? To what higher law do you appeal in circumstances where civil/criminal law don’t apply?

Matter and energy don’t just spring up out of nowhere — so how do you explain the existence of a Prime Mover?

That’s the meaning of a Prime Mover — the initial agent that is the cause of all things. We know that matter, and thus our entire universe, is finite — it has a shape, an ever-changing size, and a density. Whatever created it must lie outside of the universe and greater than its laws, i.e. eternal and infinite.

Science is continually casting doubts on what we thought we knew, and I find it more believable that there is a scientific explanation for the existence of the universe than that a godlike being thrust it into existence.

Sure there is — it’s known as the Big Bang theory. But earthly science and physics will never be able to resolve the question of what brought our universe, with its science of physics, into being in the first place. We’ll never be able to “see,” by any means, past that first moment, before anything as we know it existed. There will be hypotheses, but that’s all they can ever be, because science cannot measure anything ethereal.

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Whew! The above quotes were drawn in perhaps not quite the right order, but I was doing my best to cull what remained to be answered from the thread in question. Like I said, feel free to jump in with anything I might have missed.

Thanks, all!

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219 comments

  1. sricki

    This is precisely the sort of thing I was hoping someone would post! Thank you for taking the time to do it and for drawing a very interesting but off topic discussion away from the Haiti thread.

    I don’t have time to read it in full tonight ’cause I have to go to bed — headed out of town to visit family at 6 AM — but I will get to reading as soon as I settle in tomorrow.

    Hope we can all stay polite and fully respect one another’s opinions. Whatever gets said to my fellow moose, they are still, after all, my fellow moose — and even in contention, I have the utmost respect.

  2. creamer

     This topic has been on my mind for a few days, proably longer.

    I think a lot of people who believe in a deity can proably point to a time or event that reinforces or marks the begining of their belief. I can. It doesnt mean I fully understand or can define and characterize it. Maybe enlightenment is concluding I  can’t and don’t need to. The place I occupy seems to be in the middle, those who our very pious and strict in their interpetation pray that I will find my way back and save my soul.  I thank them for praying for me. For those who proclaim there is no G/god, I thank for raising questions and helping me to examine myself and my beliefs.

    I once attended a meeting of the Free Thought Society. I really didn’t know who they were, I was bored and saw that they were having a meeting on God and AA(somthing I know a little about). I came away with the distinct impression that most of theese people had a grievance with God and wanted a place to safely vent and share their displeasure. They talked about g/God in the first person, wich seemed odd coming from those who claimed he did not exist.

    I share that simply because when I listen to a professed agnostic or athiest talk of G/god, do they have this moment in their lives that is significant in their disbelief? Or is it just a rational mind looking at the availible evidence and reaching a conclusion?

  3. Peter Jukes

    Thanks for posting this.

    On the two points of mine you respond to.

    1. Out of Body Experiences

    There’s actually quite a lot of medical and neuroscientific literature on this. The book I have to hand is by Susan Blackmore, but it’s all over the web too.

    Basically, though patients have technically died because their hearts have stopped, there is still enough oxygen in the brain for about 5 minutes for a residual consciousness. So though in cardiac arrest, the brain is still functioning, though slowly dying of anoxia. The feeling of being above your own body – depersonalisation – is part of the collapse of the mental software which processes all the various visual and auditory inputs, and amalgamates them into a sense of person and place. People with TLE can get these out of body experiences without cardiac arrest. The tunnels of light are the affect of the retina being deprived of oxygen – it reduces to simple coning of light. The feeling of bliss is something else, and might be the natural analgesics of th mind – or indeed a Buddhist or Christian experience of finally losing the concerns and anxieties of the ego, a complicated construction which begins to fail as consciousness wanes.

    2. On Life Being Sacred

    Religion has been an indispensable part of our history, and that cannot be done away with. It also leaves a legacy in our languages and values. I think you can still use words like exodus, genesis, revelation, redemption etc. without subscribing to their original Judaic meanings.

    On Sacred – it’s quite interesting. It actually comes from the same root as ‘scared’. The idea that something was holy and special was, for most the history of Christianity, also greeted with fear, awe and trembling.

    Just some brief replies. Sure I’ll have more to say later.  

  4. Chris Blask

    What does “sacred” even mean to someone who doesn’t believe in anything holy?

    The concept of what accounts for the right words to use in discussing these and related issues has been on my mind since engaging with the local Unitarian “church”.  There are “worship” services led by a “minister”, and “spirituality”, “holiness” and what is “sacred” are common topics.  As with “progressive”, I think I have to question the definitions of these words – and if necessary craft my own – if I am going to use them.

    The first “worship” service I attended contained a definition of “spirituality” that I like and have since adopted – likely to the contradiction of how many would see the word.  The “minister” said: “Spirituality is how you relate to yourself, to those around you, and to the world[universe].”  There is nothing supernatural in that, and I find it to be useful in thinking about this process.

    “Church” is by common definition a place where you go to “worship” your Deity.  I don’t know that I can accept that definition – in fact I do not – and the act of “worshiping” has always to me included an act of professing your inferiority to some Greater being, something I don’t for a moment accept as necessary or positive.

    “Holy” and “sacred” both in my experience have embodied veneration of one sort or another – whether to a being “more worthy” than oneself or to an idea that is greater than any other.  The latter is perhaps workable – the ideas of positivity, hope, cherishing and so forth are worth more in absolute terms than those involving negativity, narcissism or despair.  Generally, however, I would avoid using “holy” or “sacred” because I just don’t believe the words can be used in most conversation without carrying the baggage of theism with them.

    So, for my part, I try to avoid words that are likely to be misinterpreted by others.  However, because we have a language built on theistic memes, some words (like “church”) don’t have reasonable non-theistic partners.

  5. hubiestubert

    but rather what they do with that belief.

    Robert Heinlein summed it up very succinctly.

    There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know. So why fret about it?

    Well, that and:

    “All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly, which can – and must – be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a “perfect society” on any foundation other than “Women and children first!” is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly – and no doubt will keep on trying.”

    My own view is that the Universe is fairly impersonal. Good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to the good. There are cascades of reactions, and causality rules our lives, and if we’re bright, we look ahead to how our actions will affect others, and ourselves. Ultimately, we will fade away, and even our greatest accomplishments will be swallowed by the heat death of the Universe, so really the important stuff is right now. But despite this impersonal nature, I do remain convinced that the Universe is at least pulling for us. Is at least hopeful that we’ll figure things out, and do well. Not that the Universe will bend the laws of physics to turn an asteroid or dark matter body that would plunge through our atmosphere or sun and extinguish all life as we know it, but at least that it is hopeful that we will understand the nature of things. Our only real form of immortality is how we affect folks right here and now. Those actions will have effect and fruits long after we pass, and those actions will mesh with others, and affect how folks live, how our children and their children pass on the lessons we teach–whether or not those lessons were intentional or not.  Do we harm those around us? Do we comfort and help those who are just like ourselves?  We have to look at how we make that dividing line of who is “us” and “other” and at some point, make a decision or eleventy on who deserves to be treated with respect and dignity.

    We are clever apes. We see patterns and extrapolate information with rapidity and we connect disparate pieces of data to form larger pictures. In part, that is our strength as a species. It is also part of our greatest of problems. Sometimes we read far too much into things. We are always looking for reasons for things. We tend to look for the origins of actions. We are, often, the exact opposite of the cat looking at the finger instead of the food, or the hand pointing towards the sky and all its heavenly glory–sometimes the finger is important too. Sometimes you need to concentrate on the here and now, and part of the problem we seem to have with religions, is that so many of us are looking so far down the road, that we tend to miss the potholes and gullies and curves that are right in front of us. We often get lost in our own cleverness in how we navigate and explain things, as opposed to being present in the moments, and worrying about here and now. This is the same with religion, as much as raising our children or in our jobs.

    Call it the Golden Rule, or karma, or just plain horse sense, does it matter who thought of it first?  Does it matter so much what you call your path, or rather what you actually do on it?

    Our ability to extrapolate and see down the road is a great tool, but even the best tool isn’t right for every job. I again fall back to RAH:

    “Logic is a feeble reed, friend. “Logic” proved that airplanes can’t fly and that H-bombs won’t work and that stones don’t fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn’t happen yesterday won’t happen tomorrow.”

    Some of the most skilled practitioners of logic have been in the clergy of various churches and faiths.

    “Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.”

    James Harvey Robinson

    Sometimes you just have to be in this moment, and sometimes you have to let go of preconception, teachings, and all the certitude that go with them. Sometimes you simply have to make your own decisions based on what you know, and trust that you’re doing the right thing, and worry less about what to call the whole decision tree. We can easily get ourselves in trouble by thinking too far ahead, or over thinking things.

    I am reminded of the of this tale: The Buddha met an ascetic who sat by the bank of a river. This ascetic had practised austerities for 25 years. The Buddha asked him what he had received for all his labor. The ascetic proudly replied that, now at last, he could cross the river by walking on the water. The Buddha wept for his labor and pointed down to the river dock, since he could cross using a ferry for one penny.

    Likewise, if a raft is so great for getting around, why don’t we carry one everywhere, all the time, lugging one with us on dry land? Because sometimes, things are useful for making crossings, but not for holding onto.

    At some point, we can get lost in our own cleverness in making links and assumptions. And what we call that framework to put all those assumptions in, and all the extra importance we ascribe to these things by who revealed or gave them to us.

    In the end, I think that the best guide is to worry less about what others think, and what others project, but rather using your own faculties to parse things down.

    “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

    Guatama Buddha

    If there is no God, does that really affect how you treat and are treated by others right now? We will know for certain one day, but until then, we have other concerns, and that is  one another.

  6. Kysen

    something that may or may not exist and that there is no way to know or not know proof of this existence. And I am ok with that…not something I fuss over (anymore). By definition, I guess that makes me an agnostic…but, honestly, I don’t really even care over much about that either.

    I have had an interesting relationship (or maybe it is a non-relationship) with ‘God’ over the years. I grew up in a VERY non-religious household…raised by parents who themselves had been raised in mainstream protestant churches but had long ago left the faith (if ever they’d ‘had’ it). Grew up with more Jewish friends than from any other faith so attended synagogue more than any other ‘religious service’ (bar and bat mitzvahs included. I attended parochial school for a few years, attending mass every Wednesday and snoozing thru Religion class daily. Attended a local ‘youth group’ at a Presbyterian Church on occasion. Was exposed to a pretty well-rounded array of Judeo-Christian though and faith…but never really took any of it unto myself. Just never felt the need or urge to think on it beyond entertainment or grades (and thought very very little on the grade).

    Then we lost my older brother. Believe you me, I thought about a ‘God’ then, and hated him with every fiber in my body…and remained as such for a very very long time. I read A LOT, though, and over the years that avarice mellowed and I took on a sort of ‘Journeyman’s’ approach to faith…’apprenticing’ and then moving on. At varying points in my life could have been labeled, among other things, as Atheist, Jew’ish’, Thelemite/a follower of Crowley and his ways (“do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”), a ‘student’ of (very western) Eastern Thought, and yes, even a Jesus Freak. For well over a decade now, though, I have been accepting of other’s faiths but hold none of my own.

    More than having things that I believe about God, I guess you could say that I have things I don’t believe that a God would be if one existed. Honestly, ‘Father figure’ tops the list. I flatly do not believe that if there were a God, ‘he’ would not give a flip about the ants in his farm. Perhaps ‘he’ may have been the one that put the farm together, but, ‘he’ would have to be a mighty bored Almighty Being to concern himself with the hot mess that humanity is. As such I do not believe that, even if there were a God, there is any sort of Divine Punishment or Hell or great battle with a naughty angel who sits on human’s shoulders and gives then something/someone to blame their bad behavior on. The closest I can come to belief in any sort of a ‘God’, is that maybe some greater power billions of years ago snapped fingers on a whim….but has long since turned that ‘eye’ elsewhere. I find it extremely ‘ethnocentric’ (planetcentric?) to think that in this vast universe…and all that we know exists beyond it…such a powerful entity would waste so much time on this blue marble and the ants scurrying across it.

    That having been said, the way I look at life…mine and those around me…has been affected by all I have experienced and learned from the various faiths, non-faiths, and belief structures. Faith and theology are interesting topics and I find such discussions entertaining.

    Abridged version: I do not know what I cannot know and I will not know until I am dead…so I just don’t bother fussin’ on it.

    Sorry for the ramble.

  7. Cheryl Kopec

    What a fascinating collection of ideas and dialogue in response to a few jottings I dashed off last night when I should have been heading to bed. Hubie, yours is going to take some further digesting — there are more than a few gleaming pearls in there!

    I’ll respond to individual posts to make it easier…

  8. sricki

    Regarding my belief in the insanity defense — yes, I believe that in very rare instances a plea of NGBRI is warranted. As a rule, however, murder (in the conventional sense that we generally think of it) is not committed due to insanity.

    If there’s no universal standard, then how can anyone presume to impose his own moral restraints on someone else? Why shouldn’t I keep slaves, or persecute gays, or prey on gullible seniors, if that benefits me and fits within my personal moral framework? Oh sure, there are laws, but just because it’s not against the law for my lover to tell me he was at his mother’s house helping to install a new fridge, when he was really at his ex-girlfriend’s house, does that make it right? If not, why not? To what higher law do you appeal in circumstances where civil/criminal law don’t apply?

    I don’t know exactly how we can presume to impose our moral restraints on others — I just know that we do, and very often without true justification. And truly, I mean most of us do it, whether we are religious or not. What are you suggesting here exactly — that religion provides a universal standard for right/wrong or good/evil? Where? You mentioned owning slaves — but civilizations have enslaved captured peoples for thousands of years, and at the time, it did not seem to offend everyone’s sense of universal morality. How could so many people violate a universal standard for so long without clear consequences? Because there isn’t one. Things that we today think wrong were once thought perfectly acceptable — and that was with plenty of religions already out there to choose from, by the way. So who sets this universal standard? What is it?

    When human-made laws don’t apply to a dilemma in which I have found myself, I appeal to my own reason and personal sense of justice. I am not in need of a higher law. I have found that my mind makes more sense to me, as a rule, than most things codified by the state — and far more than anything found in a religious text. I do not believe that I would be any better person or any more adept at solving problems by appealing to laws provided by some sort of deity.

    I don’t really know where you’re going with the ex-girlfriend thing, but I’m not sure you’ve shown how god, religion, or universal standards would improve the situation.

    That’s the meaning of a Prime Mover — the initial agent that is the cause of all things. We know that matter, and thus our entire universe, is finite — it has a shape, an ever-changing size, and a density. Whatever created it must lie outside of the universe and greater than its laws, i.e. eternal and infinite.

    But you seem so willing to accept that at face value — that there is an infinite, eternal being existing outside the laws of the universe, which seems to me such a slim possibility. Why do you find such an abstract concept more logical, palatable, or acceptable than the possibility that we do not yet understand how our universe truly functions? It can’t be proven either way, of course, but I have never really understood the affinity so many people seem to have with the idea of a creator as an “explanation” for why/how things are.

    But earthly science and physics will never be able to resolve the question of what brought our universe, with its science of physics, into being in the first place. We’ll never be able to “see,” by any means, past that first moment, before anything as we know it existed. There will be hypotheses, but that’s all they can ever be, because science cannot measure anything ethereal.

    But even if I accept your every word at face value, you still have not shown us how religion explains things better. Just because one believes science can’t explain something, one must find something that can? Even if we accept that a Prime Mover created the universe, we still can’t explain the existence and creation of the Prime Mover itself. If one is looking for explanations for the way things are and adds a deity to the equation, it seems to me one has simply added a middle man. Now there are just a bunch of how/why/where questions about the Creator itself. What has been solved? I think it’s fine to acknowledge that there are a lot of things we don’t know — I just don’t see the point of creating additional things for us not to know. What is the point of the added confusion?

  9. John Allen

    with the addition of the “absolute good” strawman.

    We don’t need a god to tell us that some actions are harmful to social cohesion.

    Who says social cohesion is an absolute good? Maybe I disagree, and think sowing fear-mongering and mistrust of one another actually serves my own higher ideals, even if it doesn’t suit yours. Who is right, and why?

    You can disagree all you want. It is society that determines what is good and what is bad. We have a whole legal system that was built up over the course of all human history to use as a guide. All of our laws and most of our religious beliefs are designed to promote social cohesion. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his… Thou shalt honor they mother and father. Need I go on?

    If, as you postulate, someone works against social cohesion they will more than likely find themselves ostracized.

    Wasps are not evil when they act like wasps. However, they have a code of conduct that applies to their interaction with other wasps. Ants and bees are the same. If an ant acts out of character then it will likely be killed by the other ants.

    There is plenty of research into the social behavior of primates and other social animals. These clearly show a system of group behavior that is a prototype of human moral systems. It is highly likely that the earliest hominids had already developed these interactive skills before they became human. Our moral system is more highly evolved, but it clearly arose from such predecessors.

    As for this, the only contradiction is the assumption you make here.

    I’m afraid you’re contradicting yourself here. If consciousness (the state of being human?) is linked to brain function, then the better the brain functions, the more “human” the person is, right?

    Consciousness is linked to the state of being. Notice the period there. A goat is conscious. So is a frog. Being human is connected to being born as a human. They are two different things. And, if you don’t believe consciousness is linked to the brain then how do you explain the fact that consciousness can be altered by drugs that affect brain chemistry?

    Why the fixation on intelligence? Do you think a human is nothing more than his/her ability to solve problems? That’s all IQ measures. Humans are also empathic. Perhaps that trait most defines who is a “better” human.

    and this brings us back to social cohesion.

    If there’s no universal standard, then how can anyone presume to impose his own moral restraints on someone else? Why shouldn’t I keep slaves, or persecute gays, or prey on gullible seniors, if that benefits me and fits within my personal moral framework?

    Society determines what is right and what is wrong, just like it has since the very beginning. Humans are social animals. If something promotes social cohesion then it is considered beneficial. If it harms social cohesion it is bad. Our entire legal code developed over 10’s of thousands of years is based on this concept. Each group of humans worked out what they thought was best for their society. Some of those methods worked for small groups and became outdated when groups began to interact on a regular basis.

    Do you really thing we need a superior being to tell us some things are bad? Things like cannibalism, murder, human sacrifice, theft, adultery, etc…

  10. HappyinVT

    I find it amusing that there is an ad to view a trailer for “The God Who Wasn’t There” on the right-hand side of the screen.

    In no way should my amusement be seen as approval or condemnation of same.  ðŸ™‚

  11. sricki

    to claim to know what you think of those of us who are disagreeing with you, but I’d like to make a couple of points of clarification just in case. From certain “tones” I am “hearing” (inasmuch as such things can be perceived through text) and certain offhand statements dropped here and there in your comments, I get the impression that you may consider some of us somehow lacking in overall understanding, curiosity, or feeling about life and the world because of our lack of belief in a higher power.

    Let me first say that despite our non-belief, you will hardly find a more curious bunch on the face of the planet than the atheist/agnostic denizens of Motley Moose. I know myself to be intellectually curious, emotionally curious, and curious for the curious sake of curiosity. Many atheists and agnostics are more curious for the fact that we do not have an explanation for why things are as they are. When we don’t know something, we can’t fall back on, “There is a reason for everything, and god has a plan.” Instead, we are left to question and wonder and postulate. Our curiosity is broad and, for me at least, sometimes near overwhelming. I am curious about chemistry and physics — history and language — philosophy and theology — politics and sociology — life and death — love and hate — justice and morality — the hearts and minds of both people and animals… The list is truly near infinite — limited only by the constraints of my (admittedly very fallible, human, finite) mind. I challenge anyone to find a topic about which I do not have a question. And if you find a topic I know so little about that I have no opinion on it, I will read and search and think until I know enough to formulate one. I am curious, even, about a god in which I do not believe and all the hypotheticals that could exist. There is no dearth of inquisitiveness here, on my part or the part of any of the others in this thread.

    You speak of wonder and beauty and miracles and love, as if these are things best understood through some knowledge of or belief in a higher power.

    But where will you find more wonder than in a person who believes that there is no plan for the universe? For such a person, everything we call “good” is a wonder — a miracle. It is all the more beautiful for existing at random or without purpose — for having no “value” other than its beauty. And for the things that we do understand on a scientific level, they are not any less beautiful or miraculous for that understanding. A sunrise has the power to stir the heart and mind in a way that few things can. Knowing why the sun “rises” and how the earth moves without believing that a god designed those things for a reason does not diminish their beauty or miraculousness — rather, it amplifies them. I look at the ocean, and my heart soars to see something of such vast, great beauty. I love this planet — love nature and the environment — not because god told me I should or even because my family or society/country told me that I should. I care for things that the people in my immediate surroundings don’t care for (I am in the South, so not so big on environmental issues) because I look at them and feel awe and wonder and love. This does not imply any universal standard of anything — plenty of people look at the ocean or a tree and go, “Meh, water and leaves.” My genetic make-up combined with my experiences simply coalesced in such a way that I became the sort of person who appreciates this particular type of beauty and life. For that I am grateful — just not to any particular higher power.

    John and Brit are poets, and I have visited both their websites and read a good deal (if not all) of what they have posted. They both write eloquently and poignantly of love, loss, and beauty. And yet they do not believe in a god. Can you read their words, which reflect such terribly lovely and exquisitely painful human experiences, and say that they need to “get god” (or however one would put it) in order to understand those concepts or the world around them? Do religious people understand these things better? I may be a heathen, but I love intensely and am loved deeply — I am not so blind that I cannot see how wonderful and miraculous that is.

    You seem to think that we view the world as so hostile and perilous. And yes, there is hostility and peril in the world — and no belief in god in my life to make it all better and reassure me whenever I have doubts — and yet, people like me… who you might find jaded or cynical — people like Brit and John and Kysen and Chris, who also don’t “believe” — still know and understand love and beauty. And the fact that such things could exist in the world without the planning or purpose of a divine being makes them so very spectacular and special. The fact that there sometimes is pointless peril — or even senseless hostility — in my surroundings makes the things that are good all the more astonishing. They exist in spite of adversity — on their own, without divine cause. What greater wonder or marvel could there be?

    All of this requires faith, too, Cheryl. Just imagine the faith required to believe that good and beauty and love can exist in a world that was not designed for those particular purposes — or for any purpose: To believe that they just are.

    Now that is a miracle.

  12. Cheryl Kopec

    We can “debate without hate,” as Brit’s tagline states, and I was afraid we were actually getting perilously close to personal acrimony there for a while. It was actually giving me a headache, and in traffic today, I mindlessly proceeded from a red-light stop while furiously pondering the contents of this thread. Yikes!!! I was deservedly honked at, of course….

    Okay. So let’s consider something brand new. Imagine you’re walking down a woodland path, and every ten feet, you encounter three flat stones stacked neatly on top of one another. You don’t know how they got that way, but there are only two possibilities: either somebody placed them there, or somehow they just “landed” that way in the same way rocks are strewn along the beach. You weren’t there at the time, so you can’t prove either scenario. If someone who knew the answer held a gun to your head and asked you which was true, on pain of death if you got it wrong, which would you choose? Would you say that since we can’t prove anybody set them up that way, the answer is the “accidental” theory?

    My point being (and this isn’t equivalent to the false argument that we have nothing to lose if we believe and everything if we don’t) that if you really take the matter seriously, something has to account for the exquisite order of our physical world. Please watch this video. I guarantee it will appeal to the scientific/mathematical-minded among us.

    If you answered that you would have told the gunman that somebody placed the rocks in that arrangement, then I believe you’d be in the majority — and would, barring the most bizarre coincidence, be correct. However, if somebody found a way to exploit that belief in order to control you or oppress you, it is natural that you would want to find ways to discount it.

    Many people have been hurt by those proclaiming to represent some religion or another. We saw that in the Crusades, and on Sep 11th, and in the Inquisition, and you guys can probably add many more examples. But we have to look at the bigger picture. Take politics — do I refuse to participate in a particular campaign effort just because some local campaign reps have snubbed or offended me, or do I carry on because I believe in the cause? How many have abandoned their faith merely because of bad experiences with so-called representatives of that faith?

    In the end, we are all called to respond to the truth as we know it. And this is a very serious matter. If you honestly believe that God doesn’t exist, it would be as much a sin for you to pretend He does as it would for a believer to claim He doesn’t.  

  14. spacemanspiff

    This thread is incredible.

    As far as spiff (yeah I do the third person thing, badass).

    I don’t try to explain or care for others to “get” it.

    It’s what I tell born again Christians.

    According to your ( “our) theory then Madre Teresa and Ghandi are going to hell.

    Whatever hell is, it is bad. So these 2 people will be punished for eternity because they weren’t “born again” (which basically boils down to accepting Jesus Christ as your savior (really?).

    Again. I believe that everybody has their reasons to believe (or not) and I respect that.

    I understand them even if I don’t agree with all of them.

    I can’t defend half the theories my church stands on but I still consider myself a Christian. I enjoy walking in to a place where everybody is happy. I’m big on the placebo effect and believing you will be happy makes you happy. The energy and warmth when one enters a huge Baptist church is incredible. Again, I am totally selfish. It’s all about the vibe and how it concerns me. Nostalgia and all that good stuff. I love the hymns and the great lessons we can learn from The Bible. An engaging pastor has to be a great storyteller. As for the rest of the stuff I don’t pay attention to it. My whole thing is listening to a great lecturer whom I agree with only half the time. Still makes me think. I don’t know. Maybe I’m weak or whatever. But I get along fine believing I’m “sharing the load” in life. When shit hits the fan I find great comfort in prayer.

    So yeah. I just do my own thing here. Seems to be working out.

    Hope that all made sense.

    p.s. This thread will never die so I thought … What the hell (pun intended) let me get my 0.02 cents in.

  16. creamer

     Cheryl, a remarkable display of patience and passion. I’m not sure why you headed down this path but it was somthing to watch. I think a few of our Moosey brothers and sisters were just waitng for a reason to explain to you why you are wrong and you held up quite nicely.

     I am seriously awed by the intelligence and education many of you have and would never think of discussing scientific theory with you. Higgs bosun and sub-atomic particles, some of you all are seriously geeky.

     After all of that, the comments that I can most relate too were Spiffy’s. Religion, spirituality or not, is a me thing.

    I’m glad we all have the humility to recognize that we might not be right.

  17. rfahey22

    Here are my thoughts – I don’t mean to offend anyone of faith, but to describe my own personal experience.

    Growing up, I was bothered by questions that were never answered in Sunday school, such as: why would God wait until many generations of humans had come and gone before announcing (or re-announcing) himself?  What happened to the people who died before then?  What happens to people who still have never heard of Judaism/Christianity (like some remote culture in a rainforest)?  Why would God reveal himself to only a single people, then rely on them to spread the word?  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Why do bad things happen to people who were never given a chance (babies born with AIDS)?  It seemed that no one seriously wrestled with these questions, or had satisfactory answers (free will does not explain why hundreds of thousands of people would die in an earthquake or typhoon, for instance).    

    I went on to study Roman history in college, with a focus on church history. The construction of the New Testament left me highly doubtful that it is the product of divine hands.  What we know as the four gospels were written decades after the death of Jesus, while Revelation may have been written sometime between 100 and 120 CE (and is likely a work about the Emperor Nero – the number of the beast in early manuscripts is either 666 or 616 – in Hebrew numerology, one corresponds to Nero and the other corresponds to Neron, the Greek spelling of his name).  Anyone who has ever played a game of telephone knows how much a story can change when it is relayed from person to person – in this case, many years passed before the stories were collected and recorded.  They also contain possible errors – there is no apparent reason for the Roman Empire to have required that its subjects return to their ancestral home to register for the census, as suggested in Luke, since the main purpose of the census was to determine where people were living so that they could be taxed.  

    Additionally, in the first few centuries there were many religious texts relied upon by various Christian communities that didn’t make the cut when religious leaders decided to create a definitive set of Christian texts in the fourth century.  The New Testament, as we have inherited it, was subject to substantial revision centuries after the death of Jesus.  The Old Testament was also edited and revised by Jewish religious communities until it coalesced into the collection of writings with which we’re familiar today.  I guess I just don’t see divine fingerprints on these works.  Instead, I see a collection of works that were selected, over time, by religious leaders in an effort to construct the kind of God that they idealized.

    The accuracy of the Bible or other religious texts doesn’t necessarily tell us whether a divine being exists, but it’s not clear to me that a derelict God, who has not attempted to contact us and who allows so much suffering in the world, either cares about us or would even be worthy of worship if it existed.  I would be grateful if there was a heaven for the sake of my own friends and relatives, but I don’t think it exists, and that’s unfortunate.    

    • sricki

      where do you get most of those clues about god? From church or the Bible or nature? Because certainly based on texts like the Old Testament, god does not seem to me to be such a loving god. Nor does he seem like such a loving, joyful, or compassionate god when I look at what’s going on around me. And this is coming from someone who has a great appreciation for the wonders of nature and the human experience.

      I do agree with Kysen in the sense that I think it’s presumptuous to make any assumptions about what god is or thinks or feels. So I always wonder where exactly people get those beliefs.

  18. Peter Jukes

    …it’s patently obvious to any outside observer that the conversation is long over – how can you debate God, or argue anyone into believing/not believing in Him/Her/It.

    I know what’s going on. You’re all trying to get this diary to 200 hundred comments. Now stop it! How childish and trivial can you get. Anyone who just puts a comment here to make it 200 hundred, is banal, simplistic and not a serious blogger and deserves to be ignored for the rest of their online life.

    Ooops. That’s me. Comment 200!

    • Cheryl Kopec

      Where do I get my clues? I have a reverence for the world’s great sacred writings, and have copies of all of them that I can think of, especially the Bible (notwithstanding some of the OT passages that apparently trouble you). I have studied many of the saints and wise men of various traditions. But what I rely on mostly is what I see with my own eyes. Starting from the premise that the universe is indeed created and governed by a God (which would not be your starting place, I understand), I look at the stubbornness of Life breaking through the toughest of barriers — grass that can crack concrete to reach the sunlight, or rats that can gnaw through iron pipes. I see stories of elephants befriending dogs, and I notice how my bond with my own dog cannot be explained or understood even by me, let alone anyone else. I mean, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you she understands plain English, spoken by anybody, not just me, but she does. I marvel at how, unencumbered by man’s interference, the systems on our globe are a marvelous example of finely-tuned engineering, cleansing, and regeneration. And so on. And all of these speak to me of a deep drive from within everything to grow and prosper, to cooperate and thrive and joyfully exist in whatever form it was created to exist in, maybe even better, with the addition of lots of love (in the case of my dog).

      Yes, there is more than enough cause for despair in our world today. And it’s certainly a call to action and an opportunity for us to push the limits of our own generosity and courage. But I don’t believe that is the true “signature” of the universe. Of course, I can’t prove that, so all I can offer are my feeble examples. You, on the other hand, may believe the universe is inherently hostile and perilous. I have no answer other than that I hope never to reach that same conclusion myself.

  19. Cheryl Kopec

    Logging back in here to see 46 new comments was not a little daunting, so please allow me to wrap up just a few hanging strands in this one message.

    And, before I begin, we all know the saying, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” Well, my version is “Playfulness is next to godliness” (which should tell you how many times I’ve pulled out the refrigerator to vacuum behind it). I’m very glad to see a sense of humor still springing up in such a long-running thread about a topic so serious (at least I hope we all seriously think about the deep things of life from time to time!)

    I appreciate everyone who has contributed here, and trust me, my mind has been challenged in ways I have seldom before encountered. And that’s a good thing! For a bunch o’ godless heathens, you guys certainly have a way of putting the likes of me on our toes! 😉

    Okay, a few parting notes:

    From Brit:

    Sorry I call it myth, but I mean that in a mythopoeic way.

    No worries, mate — I called it a myth myself. I’m not one of those literalists who believe the world was created in six 24-hour days as we know it. 🙂

    From fogiv:

    To some extent it all boils down to the ‘why’.  The theist requires an answer (or at the least the pursuit) to this question, where the athesit does not.

    I think this is the entire dilemma, or more properly conflict, in a nutshell, right here.

    From Chris:

    If something like Brane Theory is correct – i.e. that universes pop into existence in virtually infinite quantity – then it is not at all surprising that one would pop into existence with the physical laws we observe around us.

    I wasn’t aware of that part of Brane Theory, but if it is true (and how could we ever prove it?) that only puts me more in awe of the infinitely creative power of whatever/Whomever is behind it. Was God content to create our world and surround it with lots of pretty stars and planets for our enjoyment, and then sit back and watch us and wait for us to get things halfway right? Or does He continually delight in creating whole new universes, simply for the joy of creation? (No need to answer this, just saying where your comment takes me at this moment.)

    From John:

    I’ll answer this, but I don’t expect a reply back, really, because we’ve covered this over and over again:

    If something has always existed outside of space and time, which I’m only offering as a possibility, why should we believe that it has intelligence and purpose?

    I believe (and this is just me, in my Very Humblest of Opinions) that anything that exists must have a cause. The fact that I have a personal will, intentions, purposes, and hopefully a bit of intelligence tells me that there must have been a Source for those. That’s it.

    From Brit:

    For all these reasons, the interiority of God, his humanity, the salient contradictions of the Four Gospels, we have doubt – we await evidence, confirmation, and rather than the edicts of authorities, our personal validation and experience.

    Boy, I had a really hard time selecting just a few lines from your post, because the whole thing was just beautiful. What a wonderful way to agree to disagree… **hugs**

    From Chris:

    I really don’t want to come off as condescending, but as far as I can tell belief in religion is entirely a matter of addressing personal emotional needs.

    I don’t want to start another debate on this, but I can say that for me personally, my belief in God is more disquieting than comforting, for several reasons, but chief among them is the fact that since my tour in Iraq, my emotional connection to God has become very weak, but my intellect continues to stubbornly insist on His existence. I just can’t see any other way for things to be. Sometimes I wish I could. Sort of… 🙂

    Spiff, I love that “Pants On The Ground” video, but you put up the abridged version! Ya really gotta watch the whole thing. (I wonder if Simon Cowell was thinking of pants in the British sense?)

    From rfahey22:

    The accuracy of the Bible or other religious texts doesn’t necessarily tell us whether a divine being exists, but it’s not clear to me that a derelict God, who has not attempted to contact us and who allows so much suffering in the world, either cares about us or would even be worthy of worship if it existed.

    Oh my, it sounds like you’ve encountered some unfortunate beliefs along the way! And we’ve been all over the suffering question in a different thread, not that there will ever be any wholly satisfactory answer, at least on  this side of the grave. But this was in no way an attempt to argue for Christianity or the Christian God — it was a heavy enough lift to simply debate the question of whether a sentient Supreme Being exists at all. And it seems that at long last, we’ve come down solidly on the answer, “We can’t know for sure.” 🙂

  20. louisprandtl

    can be offensive to another, one’s deeply held religious conviction can be yet another superstitious value for another…

    My grandparents on both sides of my family were deeply religious folks but my parents, uncles, aunts are all mostly secular, non-religious, atheist kind. So growing up we (me and my siblings, cousins) were a non-religious bunch although we were taught about religious diversity and tolerance towards each other. When I was just getting into middle school, my Dad handed me a book by Bertrand Russell entitled “Why I Am Not a Christian”. I went to a Roman Catholic (Irish) school. Before I left school, I told my Irish Principal that twelve years of this Catholic school turned me into an atheist. Br. Mac laughed heartily as he always did.

    So part of my non-religiosity, atheism, secularism, whatever you choose to call it, belongs to my upbringing, and part of it because of the scientist backgroud. It does not offend me to see others wearing their religion on their sleeve, however I respect more who respect my space too. The only thing I don’t tolerate anymore is the patronizing tone of some who think that I need to be saved. I tend to tell them to save it for themselves..

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