This, of course, does happen, but it is not as prevenlant as you would need in order to reduce the question of theism to pure desire and emotion. — Chany
Well, my logic is simple.
There are two parties engaged in debate - theists and atheists. As fate would have it they both inhabit the same world. Yet, they come to antipodal conclusions. In a way, pitifully, their simulataneous existence is sufficient proof that both sides have got it wrong - they simply can't convince each other even when they throw their very best arguments at each other. Am I then mistaken in concluding that there's something else that's driving people into theism and atheism? — TheMadFool
This is one way to look at it. However, those who appeal to Laws of Nature use it as a placeholder for the exact same theme as God, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, that excludes any notion of individual choice. In this regard, whether we discuss God or Determinism we are really discussing the same thing: i.e. no doubt there is no choice. — Rich
Obviously, it does not follow from mere disagreement that both sides ought to embrace agnosticism. — Chany
I disagree that it all comes down to desire. — Chany
Perhaps humans are God shaped, so a religious person is realising this as Wayfarer suggests. — Punshhh
Also if God exists there is a purpose and goal towards which people are moving (as opposed to Nietzsche's vision of the death of God). If God doesn't exist that same purpose and goal is going to be constructive anyway and will result in a better life for people (and the biosphere) in the future. Although people will cease to exist upon death (perhaps), they will have had a constructive enjoyable experience before they die.
Well, if rational inquiry fails to establish god's existence/nonexistence then that, at the risk of repetition, precludes any form or shape of reason playing a part in the minds of theism and atheism. What else is there other than simple desire that makes the theist believe and the atheist disbelieve? — TheMadFool
I'm not sure if I catch your drift. Laws of Nature per se lack that essential feature of a god-being to wit consciousness. — TheMadFool
Do you think calling it a Law vs. God changes anything other than spelling? — Rich
Do you think someone believing in Genesis is any more irrational or rational than someone believing in the Big Bang? — Rich
I have explained why the idea of desire is not sufficient to explain the theist-atheist divide. — Chany
Well, at least, it boils down to personal preference. — TheMadFool
Ha ha.Do your ears not hear what your mouth has spoken? You say you don't believe in God but then straight away add that you can't imagine what a world without God looks like. (Hint - think communist Russia.)
As does everything. That is called 'relativism'. There are some people who really like it, and others who don't, of course. Who's to say? Seems to have been a long road to a trivial conclusion. — Wayfarer
Actually I was thinking of the cosmogenesis when there is no God. Is it turtles all the way down? It appears to be entirely without foundation. If there is no God, where is meaning, is everything meaningless, purposeless? — Punshhh
Yes agreed. This reminds me of a thought technique which I use on ocassion. I don't know if there is a word for it. But, simply, I take two positions, such as Humans are God shaped and God is human shaped, which can be in opposition and bang them together until they become one, a kind of synthesis. Simply by adding the thought that there can be nothing which is not God shaped, because everything that there is was made by God, using bits of God, there is nothing else of which to make anything. So God and humans are one and the same, it is only something about our predicament which results in us not knowing this and knowing God.This is true if "man was made in the image of God'. But then if the image of the human is the image of God, then in a symmetrical sense the image of God is the image of the human. And if the world is the expression of God, and God is the image of the human, the world is also human-shaped. In Heidegger's quite different sense the world is human-shaped, because without the human there is no world (animals are "world-poor" according to Heidegger). At the very least we might feel justified in saying that the world appears in its most comprehensive expression in human experience.
Yes, I can see a non-teleological perspective, with teleological realities on the smaller scale within the cosmos. But then one is confronted with the idea that scale becomes meaningless when talking of the cosmos. So God can then be on the small scale, local, in a much bigger scale, so we are back where we started, the end of days is only a local event.Spinoza's view of God is like the Buddhist vision, non-teleological; in both there is no ultimate overarching purpose; no culmination in an "end of days" or "end of history". I think what you suggest about the human imagination is on the right track. Even Spinoza, for all his rationalism, allows that the human imagination can "feign" in order to gain a richer understanding. Fiction has a profoundly important place in human life. There can be no rigid demarcation between human faculties.
I think the idea of God this OP is attempting to address is the first, and I think belief, in this context, is not predominately determined by purely rational thought, but rather than by convention, emotional need and in general by psychological, rather than logical, influences. — John
First there is the God of organized popular religions. God is represented differently in different religions, and belief in God is not in this context, I would argue, generally determined by reason. — John
But the interesting thing here is that what is intellectually intuited or directly mystically known is not pure; it is culturally mediated. Here it is not so much a matter of belief, but of culture, as to how intuitions and experiences are interpreted. — John
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