Does God Exist?

With they i actually especially ment the ones i myself am confronted with, for instance when trying to philosophize about the concept of god(s), like in this thread. It seems it will always end with denigrating thoughts on theistic belief and theists, and of course with a consequently overgeneralized (as if the facets they are talking about are the only ones) and convicting opinion on religion. It is so terribly subjective and coming from such a clear personal dislike, yet almost always brought with a 'holier than them' attitude (most commonly because they allegedly use more reason than those silly theists).

After all, what makes for example the concept that we are the universe attempting to get conscious of itself or is experiencing itself through us less ludicrous than the concept of a god that created the universe? To me it seems its just the associations with particular worked out theistic concepts that happened to have a lot of influence on societies (and maybe themselves when they were raised with them) that urges them to convict and often ridicule the (on itself very broad) concept, while at the same time applauding this intriguing thought that we might be the conscious part of the universe, maybe emerged by its own urge to experience itself. Fact is that any concept, idea or ideology that gains a lot of support will be tried to be (ab)used for opportunistic reasons (power, control, greed etc). It doesn't make the concept flawed or unworthy or something.


About

 

He mentions North Korea and how we are unified to the (potential) atrocities they commit, but there seems to be more of a laxed stance towards Islam, although not sure when that debate was but this has probably shifted in the past few years.

We are dealing with 2 rather different scenarios here... A holy book for a religion which in some people's estimate, calls for violence when taken literally as opposed to one individual's thoughts and criticism on the topic.

There is nothing Harris has said that I've seen which calls for violence, granted I haven't read his books. I have seen a few provocative comments from him but I don't think it's enough to be a call to arms for the minority of atheists or even to stir up violent Christian pride.

 

I'm not going to go through the whole thread but scanning the first few pages you more or less provoked relaxxx and I am probably the only other American you have had a sharp contrast of opinions with recently.

Of the particular topics we have discussed, I notice you tend to have a reactionary type of style, pretty much only relying on anecdotal experience to support your arguments and on occassion will attempt to bend some words meaning to distort the terms.

I find you have some interesting points and ideas but you don't seem very Structured when addressing particular responses. The main topic of contension was trying to reconcile illogical qualities attributed to God.

If you have some interesting ideas regarding First Cause or Unmoved Mover type notions of theistic argument, I am interested in hearing about that, because those are concepts which I find intriguing and I don't really have a rigid stance on...

 

Read it again, that's not what he said. He said that thinking that there is a god, makes him feel good. I'm saying, uh oh, red flag, be careful now, you wouldn't want to believe something just because it makes you feel good, so you should be extra careful about the evidence you are allowing here, since you now have an emotional motivation to believe this proposition.

I am not completely rationalist, but we haven't the time or space to delve into all my views. They seem to vacillate between the poles of Sam Harris and Alan Watts, depending on which subject we are discussing and what the context is. You speak of avoiding "paralysis" when applying caution, but I think you have called something very wise a bad word; I think "paralysis" is really "caution", or "agnosticism", or simply "engaged ignorace", whereby you are aware that you either don't have enough facts to continue receiving knowledge, or your facts are worrisome due to say, emotional attachment. I am happy not making my way through the world of uncertainty, because as you know with paradigms, today's uncertainty is tomorrow's certainty (is the next century's historical curiosity).

Well I can only speak for myself and the atheists I am most aware of, but none of them grew up religious at all. I lived in a secular household my whole life. I didn't even come into contact with the christian faith until I was about 10 years old and was horrified to see a particularly grisly crucifix hung above a family friends' bed one day; my mom told me the story of jesus and i just had one question at the end, "but is it true? he died and came back?" and she answered "some people believe that, yes". I decided I did not believe that, and that was that.

Sam Harris doesn't even think we should have the word "atheism" around at all, I agree with him. It points to a null set hypothesis, an empty page of theology. If there weren't religions, there wouldn't be atheists.

This is actually the most common attack against atheism and perhaps I'll let Harris defend against it since we're on his topic a little. I encourage you to watch his entire repetoire of videos and read all his books (not to sound like a shill), because his position is impressively researched and nuanced. Also he is absolutely not calling for violence nor trying to incite it; he's trying to get an honest conversation going across cultures about the contents of peoples' beliefs and the consequences of those beliefs.

Starts at 3:20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLIKAyzeIw4

 

He doesn't call for violence, but his demonization of Islam creates and atmosphere of fear and animosity that could lead to that.

 

I don't think my response to Harris' claim that "religion is the most destructive ideology" is an attack on atheism. I don't think "atheism" per se is responsible for the atheist regimes of Stalin, Pol Pot or Mao, but they weren't Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist, were they? It was Harris who didn't hesitate to claim that "religion" is responsible for destructive violence. To apply such a claim to Quakers, Disciples of Christ, Amish, Methodists, or so many other Christian denominations today is absurd. To imply that I should give up or question a belief that I've thought about intensely and that seems to make me a more charitable person to others outside my faith is untenable. I just came from a class on moral theology in which the theme was our duty to show hospitality toward strangers. How violent is that? Harris suggests that the explicitly atheist regimes which have produced staggering body counts are actually like religions. I'd agree with him on that. They are secular religions. So is nationalism. So is objectivism. That's what seems to happen often in societies that reject traditional religion. Arguably, these secular faiths appear to fill a void of meaning that secularism is unable to provide. What I did like about the Harris video is the first part, where he talks about spirituality and transcendental meaning and how these are possible for atheists. I agree. Humanist systems of belief and value don't have to be based on belief in God. What is objectionable about Harris is his propensity toward sterotyping of religion.. i doubt that he's "trying to get an honest conversation going across cultures about the contents of peoples' beliefs and the consequences of those beliefs". He says that the consequences of Christian beliefs, for which he holds Christians responsible, include opposition to stem cell research. Neither I nor most members of mainline Protestant denominations hold such views. My own views aren't much different from those of other Progressive Christians, who preach Jesus's message of peace, love and understanding, welcome homosexuals and gay marriage, and encourage critical thinking. So he's essentially slandered us. So much for "honest conversation".

 

While I think it may be oversimplified, your assessment speaks to Harris view that religion is often an off topic area to criticize.


Another example, which exemplifies this pampered status of religion is with the Native American Church and Uníão do Vegetal which are organizations that get to use the powerful Hallucinogens Peyote and Ayahuasca respectively, due to appealing to the Freedom of Religion Act in the US. Yet until a few years ago and still in many places, smoking and possessing marijuana carries significant legal ramifications and the view of it as a scheddule 1 drug is that it has no medicinal properties, contrary to the overwhelming scientific evidence which suggests otherwise. But I digress..

Why shouldn't I be able to dose Psilocybin Mushrooms or even use the same sacraments as those religious organizations under a similar context of spiritual exploration? or how about even simply wanting to explore consciousness?


You must have glossed over my post a few comments up speaking in regards to Amish and certain religious beliefs...

 

I'm agnostic. I don't think God exists, but who knows? Stranger things have happened.

 

You want to talk about an atmosphere of fear and animosity? Go for a stroll in Tehran. Bonus points: be a woman.

Also, why should demonizing islam lead to violence? Is it because there are people who harm other people for mere discourse? Is it because there are religious fanatics who will murder cartoonists? Yeah, that's exactly what the problem is. The fact that you feel the need to tiptoe around Islam should tell you something.

You are being very loose with your analysis. Sam harris says, as a general statement, that religion is the source of great conflict in the world. You point to a quaker and say, "what violence"? and think you have prove harris wrong.

What if I told you "Carnivores are responsible for many human deaths every year" and you pointed to a house cat and said "zero human deaths from house cats last year, therefore carnivores are not eating people and your argument is wrong". That's the mistake you're making. Harris isn't talking about quakers, amish, or jains. In fact he frequently brings up just how different jains and buddhists are from muslims and christians. Two great thought experiments I've heard from him:

1) Imagine a Jain fundamentalist. What would that look like? It would be somebody almost paralyzed by fear of doing harm to another creature. Now look at a muslim fundamentalist. Beheadings, honor killings, subjugation, and Jihad. Why the big difference? Could it be because people actually believe the contents of their beliefs?

2) Imagine creating a social experiment; an artificial society on a secluded island. We put 100 children there with no kind of education except for the Discourses of the Buddha. The only written material they have to build their life is the Pali Canon. If we come back in a 100 years, to look at how this society is faring, and find that they are comporting themselves exactly like ISIS, we would be absolutely flabbergasted, because we could find no way to figuring out where on earth they got those ideas from. Now imagine the same experiment, but replace the Pali Canon with the Quran and the Hadiths. Come back in a 100 years, and you find a little microcosm of ISIS, would you be as surprised? You really shouldn't be; they would be following a fairly direct and literal interpretation of those texts, just as many millions of muslims do today.

You're making the same mistake on the christian and stem cell argument; fine, your particular demonination of christianity is not a part of the opposition he is describing. That doesn't mean his argument is invalid, it means it doesn't apply to your demonination. Finally you agree with Harris that all those "atheist mass murderers" are not actually motivated by atheism (funny, you sure got convinced your argument was wrong quickly!), but then you slip your argument right back in by saying that obviously there was some kind of hole not filled by traditional religion.

Fine, lets look at modern, non-mass murdering secular societies; Scandinavia. They lead the world on virtually every measure of health and well being that we can concoct. The only list on which Sweden, Norway, Finland, et all, are not at or near the top, is not a list you want to be on.

So please, tell me more about how Pol Pot killed intellectuals and farmers because he was being too much of a critical thinker and if only he had blindly believed some dogma about the age of the earth and the virgin birth of a particular child, he would have been just a jolly good fellow.

 

The problem is that Sam seems to contradict himself in his various pronouncements. He made the statement that "religion" is the most destructive ideology. That was on the first of Mr. Writer's You Tube entries. On the second, where he is talking mainly about Islam, he makes distinctions. "you don't see Palestinian Christians blowing things up, etc. The trouble is, when he's talking about how dangerous religion is, he's talking about Quakers, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, United Church of Christ, etc., and me. There are so many exceptions to his reckless generalizations that they fail on logical grounds. Yet people are impressed enough that they post his pearls of wisdom on discussion forums. Does Mr. Writer make distinctions and exceptions for the Amish?

As for peyote, free exercise of religion is one of the outstanding positive features of our constitution. It goes hand in hand with freedom of speech. Both are often exercised in ways many find distasteful. But if it weren't for free exercise, the freedom of atheists would be impacted, since they are also protected and are a vulnerable minority. Without the protection of the free exercise clause, the government would simply take away the Native American's access to peyote, not give it to others.

 

I sincerely pose a question to space?, and listen for an answer not knowing what it will be. Something responds with an answer in a form I can recognize. Perhaps the sense of other is simply a bicameral sensation but I am skeptical because the information comes from a larger sphere than just self reflection and in the example of life situations. That is you are not just a dream figure in my dream. We stand in real relation to real things.

Information flows into this open minded state and I cannot tell from where. Obviously quality of attention is involved but it seems our bright ideas just come to us. How does order emerge from the chaos of open mindedness. What is filling in the blanks? I get the impression of attractors. That the question serves like a mathematical value in a dynamic system in the form of quantum psychic landscape and this shape or larger pattern is formed around the locus. A point becomes a shape of fractal geometry through motion through a medium.

 

The way some people form an open question will not allow an open answer . One rather common way
is to demand a yes or a no . Should this not be productive , please rephrase the question . A yes or no
must be deserved - which may be - the result of considerately thoughtful work already done .

I would not ask does God exist . I would intersect as fully with existence as I can tolerate it , not
freakin' out , extending into space to ?ask? what is this feeling . oo hah .

 

"You are being very loose with your analysis. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_rights_in_Iran.

You want to talk about fear and animosity that is a different subject than does god exist or what role does religion play. Fear and animosity is caused by the idea of specialness. By people thinking that they have access to or are denied access to, (scarcity,) special qualities or information. For example a government with a secrets classification system is founded on fear, and propagates fear and suspicion as a matter of habit. The same things happens in personal relationships as we keep secret true positions even in the guise of political correctness and suspect others of lying.

Faith in the paradigm of rule of law is the same whether the rule be gods or mans and this is human arrogance simply. In both instances if you break the law you are subject to punishment. In the case of religious example you are judged at some future point and in the criminal justice example you have the potential to be caught. So both are held up as a kind of scare tactic in hopes of influencing human behavior. On a fearful basis these things seem reasonable but on the basis of sound apprehension they are preposterous. Faith in fundamental energetic principles gives us a more proportionate focus. Being able to achieve and teach mastery of your own nervous system is an example of apprehending fundamental principles in a practical way.

As it stands now mandated education systems focus on behavioral modification to the point of automatic reaction to established authority. What gives that established authority power is your conviction in it's power. It doesn't take twelve plus years to learn to read or do math. It does take programming through the entire developmental stage to create automatons. Mind crippling cultural paradigms are the rule far and away from just religious doctrine.

 

I understand that there can be reasons other than religious for some of the behavior we see in the middle east; but somehow I think that if the predominant religion there was Jainism, we wouldn't see quite as much bloodshed and fear. That is the only point I am ever making, and it's really quite astounding how badly it rubs 99% of people.

 

what happened to New Ageism?Would that qualify as religious belief or are they a bunch of deluded quacks.It doesn't seem like such a big movement today,and is maybe composed of too many disparate parts.I sympathise with the New Agers but don't align myself with movements.Like I practice elements of Buddhism but don't call myself one,because I lack the ability to prescribe to a fixed identity.Anyway the current crises in the world have rather dampened the ascensionists and the dream of a New Age utopia.I think the best thing going for them though is that they generally are ready to entertain complex physics,evolution and the realities of hard science.

Classical religion is just to old and horrifically deep for me,it actually scares me.I like a smattering of Krsna consciousness,to read as texts,because I like the simple morality of it and the precepts of just being happy and Jolly and as a moral guidance.Of course there have been scandals in the Krsna movement and that is a travesty of abuses of power.Basically my position is one of agnosticism and I believe in a form of material spiritualism.

 

That is not to say I believe in the myth of Krsna as that figure has maybe evolved from an original mythical figure.I just gloss over all of the wacky stuff and accept the core central tenets.I also eat me so that kind of counts me out.
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I find your statistic of 99% far more astounding than the appearance of a predictable response. It is predictable because we know that we find those most agreeable whom agree with us. So you think certain religions are more culpable than others? On what basis do you think we would see less bloodshed and fear? I know you say somehow. I see perhaps one less excuse or justification for it but there has been no statistical analysis on the subject so while you do make a point it is one of conjecture.

 

Your response betrays a tad of Islamophobia worthy of FOX news or the Rev. Franklin Graham. Yes, Tehran is an oppressive place, no denying that. Iran is run by a Shiite theocracy. Is that inherent in Islam? If so, why would a stroll through the streets of Amman, Rabat, Dubai, Istanbul, or Kuala Lumpur be as fear and animosity prone? How did Iran get that way? I'd look at its history, demography, geology, and social background, with special attention to western overthrow of Mossadeq and support of the former Shah.

Why should demonizing Islam lead to violence? It's been my observation as a student of history that that often happens when groups are demonized. When "mere discourse" is another word for hate speech, it can contribute to an atmosphere of mistrust in which violence can easily happen. I don't want to censor Harris, but I do think his reckless comments contribute to negative stereotyping of a large, complex group. Religious and secular fanatics are in no short supply in many parts of the world. Was the atheist who is on trial for the murder of that unfortunate Muslim couple at all influenced by animosity toward Muslims? Who knows? Was the poor Muslim who was recently gunned down in Texas while taking photos of his first snowfall a victim of a hate crime. Tune in for further developments. I think we all need to be careful with our language and our stereotypes, if we're really concerned about justice and "Truth".

 

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/08/opinions/bergen-isis-boko-haram/index.html

 

I think I pointed to more than a Quaker. i pointed to a whole section of Christianity, including mainline Protestantism and myself. At the very least, Harris, champion of Truth that he claims to be, might be more careful in distinguishing fundamentalists from Progressives. That kind of categorical thinking is the hallmark of bigotry. He does not do this for reasons that are clear in his book The End of Faith in which he argues that moderate believers are as "guilty" as fundamentalists, since they somehow "enable" the religious right. I'd argue that actually Harris and those who think like him enable the religious right by convincing moderates that he is the common enemy. This is a mentality reminiscent of the Cold War when the Dulles brothers were running foreign policy and there could be no neutrals. If a nation wasn't for us, we considered it to be against us. In the current complex environment of Middle East politics, I think we need to be especially careful in making distinctions among different kinds of Muslims. ISIS would love the "Crusaders" to come barging in as we've done so often in the past, so that they can make Sam Harris's words a self-fulfilling prophecy.