What If This Is It? What If There Is No God Or Afterlife?

You are 99% as atheistic as I am, denying the validity of Zeus, Thor, Mithra, Isis, and the million dead gods before us littering the holy graveyard we call History. These were all once gods in good standing with the best and brightest people on earth, now they are housed under "M" for "Mythology". One day too, your religion will cease to be housed under "Philosophy" and enter "Mythology".

 

true, but that still does not in itself negate the existence of a God, it merely calls into question our understanding and interpretation of said phenomena, if said phenomena does in fact exist, correct?

Zzap is correct in the basic premise, the existence of God can not be proven to be true nor can it be proven to be false.

 

Theists have to rely on moving the goal post fallacy when confronting with the Problem of Evil, reconciling their "atheism" towards other God's they don't believe in, etc. I don't really see Zzap's premise maintaining much weight under that.

 

until you remove the very human concepts of "good" vs "evil" then it all kinda works out.

the biggest arguments are always based on an anthropomorphic conception of God and assigning such human qualifications to God when in reality in all the religions I'm familiar with, the concept of good or evil is not a fixed point, but rather more dependent on situation, intention and motive.
until we lose the self centered attitude that all this shit should conform to our ideas of "good" or "bad", which is utterly silly and the height of arrogance, only after losing that arrogance can the idea of God be reconciled with the reality we experience.
It's not all about us.

concerning what people do/say, as I have said countless times, you need to separate the actual teachings/text from the actions/interpretations of it's practitioners as they are rarely in full agreement with one another.

 

The concepts of "good" vs "evil" in a deity have been proposed by theists, probably what 98% of all believers that have ever lived? Ergo the theist has to move the goal posts to redefine attributes of God, if you are to remove those concepts they are attributing to God. I don't see how relying on fallacious thinking "works out".

 

but isn't that giving more credence to the practitioners interpretation rather than the actual teachings, text or whatever?
a separation needs to be made between what a particular belief system actually teaches/purports and what/how the practitioners interpret it.
Christianity and it's opponents is a perfect example. More often than not, anti-theist who begin going on about the religion usually know very, very little about what it actually teaches but rather use practitioners behavior to support a premise denouncing the teachings.
that is just foolish, unless that is specifically what one is focusing on, but usually it is presented in this manner, "Look what dumb ass Jerry Falwell said, See, that proves the Bible is false and it's all bullshit"
you don't see the problem there?


for example people whine "how can God allow suffering, disease and death and be good?"

well if we remove all the human quantification of suffering, disease and death and realize these things are simply part of the overall puzzle, then shit begins to make sense.
it is often OUR myopic perceptions that get in the way of understanding shit.
If there weren't disease and death, than there wouldn't be the same evolutionary pressures to overcome such obstacles to reproduction and the overall vitality of life would suffer.

It's kinda like the notion of there ultimately being a time of reconciliation, the end of oppositions, end to suffering, end of disparity and a peace and neutrality to the universe.
Only problem is such a state is the end of everything, not heaven, nirvana, peace or whatever.
It is the disparity of things that keeps shit going. All chemical reactions are the result of the atoms trying to achieve balance and equilibrium. ALL functions of the known universe are an attempt to achieve equilibrium.
If total universal balance and equilibrium were achieved, the universe would be a very cold and rather dead place.
it is the constant struggle of opposing forces to achieve equilibrium that keeps the engine churning along.
that basic principle applies to all facets and layers of existence and is why our notions of "good" and "evil" are silly and myopic
IMHO.

 

To remove the human aspects of the topic renders it unintelligible. Unless someone wants to attempt to go off on some tangent like solipsism, all we can know is human perceptions and the human quantifications of such phenomena.

I don't really follow the distinction you are making between the practitioner's interpretation vs the "actual teachings". Stuff like attributes of God are readily available at the click of a button across many theological oriented sites. If there is a lot of erroneous material out there, that seems more like an ingroup problem and perhaps provides some justification why an outgroup, whether it be an atheist or those who believe in a different God may have difficulty understanding the "actual teachings."

 

Oh there are Gods. It is survival of the religiousist, and these Gods want blood.

 

It seems that way....

 

I'm not saying to remove all human aspects from the topic, what I am saying is being able to discern what is being filtered through our own sense of morality, ideals and wishes as opposed to what is actually going on.
Example:
going with the disease thing, From our perspective which is rooted in our own survival, disease is "bad" and a good and loving God would do certainly something about it.
But in reality if we didn't have disease, there also wouldn't be the same pressures for evolutionary advancement and or, as we are currently seeing, run-away populations.
But many people's conception of God is so far removed from the entirety and reality of shit, that disease seems to be "bad" and "evil". Why I say we are myopic.
very simplistic example, but I hope you get my intention.

That is what I was referring to above about the whole mechanism of the universe runs on opposing forces and unbalance.
in our myopic naivete, we wish for harmony and balance to preside, for the lion to lie down with the lamb, failing to recognize that as far as we know based on what we have observed/experienced thus far, that is when everything comes to a grinding halt.
If the universal soup is homogeneous, it's dead.

and if that sounds loony, remember when considering a phenomena such as God, EVERYTHING must be taken into consideration and accounted for, not just the things that conform to our model of things and accompanying morality.

 

oh and concerning actual teaching vs interpretations and views based on behavior.

how many times in these forums has someone brought up some atrocity in the Old Testament to condemn and denounce modern Christianity????
Just by doing so indicates the person lacks even the most basic and fundamental understanding of the teachings and is basing their opinion of the teaching on what some asshole on Sunday morning TV or youtube is saying.
Seriously, how often do we see, "the religion is all bullshit because Joe Blow did XYZ"
or how often do folks like Dawkins denounce the validity of the religion based on the loony hardcore beliefs of some of it's practitioners.

The creation one is a good example.
Dawkins and similar would say it's all bullshit based on the sad fact that many morons believe in an actual 6 days creation, Earth is only 6,000 years old and all that malarky.
problem is that is only what a certain percentage of Christians believe that and it is NOT what the text records or states.
Just because a bunch of idiots think the world was created in 6 24 hour days does not necessarily mean that is what is actually written.
In original language "day" in some passages merely denotes a period of time with NO definition of how long that period was/is. could have been a day, could have been a billion years.
That is why it pays to know the actual material if one is serious about the topic.

ps. I DO NOT want to get into any debate/debacle over religion, merely using simple and accessible examples.




and in response to the OP, given the predominance of cycles in most phenomena we observe/experience, I'm not so sure we don't keep going, but maybe on a different loop of the spiral.

 

That certainly makes notions of an afterlife where those underlying mechanisms supposedly all of a sudden go uniformed seem really bogus.

 

I agree

 

If there is God suerly it has a reason for all this and i will definately ask if i get the chance
If there is one life i think it is so unfair to the ones who can't really enjoy it
What bothers me in scientists now say everything is on our brain
they can play with our brain and trigger all kinds of things
So, was it all in our head to begin with?
If part of our brain can be triggeres to see spirits or feel one is it in our head?
There is so many unanswered questions and a billion religions have diffrent ones
If there is a God it must be watching us and not interfering
We would probally be pretty interesting to watch
Or Maybe, God is playing through whatever we come up with
who knows

 

If it's all "in our brain" who are these "scientists" and what are they "triggering"? :dizzy2:

 

Look up brain helmet or what scientists say about near death experiances.

 

his name is Dr. Micheal Persinger. I have posted about his work many times over the years.
The helmet produces mild electromagnetic fields over specific areas of the brain and it illicit an experience of being in the presence of an "other" or some entity, with emotional responses that often compel the person describe the experience as a spiritual or religious one.
some folks have a "meh" experience, others have a full blown "religious" one.

 

My point is being missed.... If "it's all in the brain" then there is no Dr., nor helmet and none of you guys exist either. I'm making this all up...



So are you!

 

Sometimes deep in a meditation that all started after a pedro experience. I close my eyes and deeply I see what feels like Universes on strings. Very old universes but I have no idea what they are coming down from.

I just don't agree with the Christian concept of God being a man and we are all one jolly gay family.

 

There was at least one major society in ancient times that for centuries believed in God but no afterlife to speak of: the Jews. There was Sheol, a place where souls were essentially warehoused. People or their descendants were rewarded and punished during life on this earth. But Heaven and Hell as places to go to were not part of the religion until late in the game--the Second Temple era (516 B.C.E.-70 C.E)., when Judea was essentially a Persian protectorate. Jews may have taken the afterlife from the Persians, or developed the concept as a means of bringing just rewards to the dead heroes of the Maccabees uprisings against the Selucids. And only some Jews, notably the Pharisees and Essenes, accepted the new beliefs. The Sadducees who ran the Temple and the priesthood did not.