Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
Atheist Penelope
jtheory:
--- Quote from: Saints on 21 Dec 2008, 02:15 ---What makes you think people didn't reject the idea of god meddling in our affairs on an "hourly basis" 1000 years ago? And no...the idea that there might be a god isn't a scientific hypothesis. Science is the study of the physical world. It has little to do with something based entirely outside of the physical. Perhaps that's the reason many don't feel a need to find physical evidence of a higher power?
--- End quote ---
This has been said already, but the God that most people perform rituals to worship, pray to, curse and fear, is very obviously interventionist, or all of these actions would have no point. Anyone who says "please God, let me pass this test" believes that God intervenes, that God is actively listening to the plea, and that God might *change* his mind after listening to human prayer and thoughtfully considering, however much that contradicts the "omniscient" concept. (Variation: God had already decided, but he also already knew in advance whether you would pray or not).
I think it's important to focus these kinds of discussion on what actual people believe (you should discuss primarily what you personally believe to be true, for example, since that's what you've found most convincing -- and argue against what other profess directly, since that's what they can defend), because gesturing to "theologians" or "some people" gets murky very quickly (particularly when those people's definition of "God" varies hugely from the actual meaning under discussion).
@Jackie Blue, on Death's point: this is "reification", I think.
But there's a huge difference between doing it consciously and either doing it out of ignorance or abusing the ignorance of others to manipulate them. We can hardly use language without reification -- our language is built up fuzzy concepts which we pretend are concrete -- but we need to be aware of that, and not be suckered in by fallacies that rely on ignorance of the nature of language. Language should (and can) be used as a tool for communication -- not a foundation for belief -- and word definitions/boundaries/connotations should be recognized as obvious outgrowths of historical human struggles with reality (as should religious belief, I might add...).
Just because I understand that "justice" and "mercy" and "human rights" and so on and so forth are non-concrete human concepts... that doesn't mean I should ignore them. They're references to a shared human morality (based on simply empathy, at the core of it!) which is both real and observable, so they are useful terms for communication (particularly as long as I understand that they are not supernaturally-sourced). "Tooth fairies", by contrast, are not useful *nor* a reference to anything real.
Dotes:
--- Quote ---What makes you think people didn't reject the idea of god meddling in our fairs on an "hourly basis" 1000 years ago? And no...the idea that there might be a god isn't a scientific hypothesis. Science is the study of the physical world. It has little to do with something based entirely outside of the physical. Perhaps that's the reason many don't feel a need to find physical evidence of a higher power?
--- End quote ---
Please describe to me this world outside the physical.
--- Quote ---First: There is no such thing as "supernatural". It's a buzzword to ghetto-ise a bunch of different potential sciences involving things we don't yet have an explanation for.
Remember what a famous atheist said? "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
"God", as state-of-being, part-of-human-consciousness, "The Kingdom's all inside", etc., could not be observable by traditional science yet for the same reasons that electrons at one point were not known about or detectable.
It doesn't necessarily boil down to "the big Because".
Pratchett, in Hogfather, put it very well:
Death: Humans need fantasy to *be* human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?
Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.
Susan: They're not the same at all.
Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged.
Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what's the point?
Death: You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?
--- End quote ---
Please explain to me the purpose and nature of this "state-of-being, part-of-human-consciousness" God. If you don't completely understand, give me your best guess.
tragic_pizza:
--- Quote from: Dotes on 21 Dec 2008, 16:47 ---Please describe to me this world outside the physical.
--- End quote ---
That which is outside the brackets.
Dotes:
--- Quote from: tragic_pizza on 21 Dec 2008, 17:29 ---
--- Quote from: Dotes on 21 Dec 2008, 16:47 ---Please describe to me this world outside the physical.
--- End quote ---
That which is outside the brackets.
--- End quote ---
Hahaha, of course. I understand now. 8-)
tragic_pizza:
Well, it relates to an earlier post I made.
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