What are the best arguments for and against the Abrahamic deity?

[Paul Mawdsley]

If the basis for belief in God is fear of the unknown when scientists and technologists remove the unknown, and thus the fear of it, there will no longer be a basis for supernatural belief. "God" will no longer be necessary. Or are you suggesting that there will always be the unknown, and no matter how safe and secure and predictable man's life becomes there will always be fear of the unknown causing some to reach for the "God" security blanket? (The "why am I here" angst.)

Hey Mike,

I don't think fear is the only basis for a belief in God. I have come to understand that the sense of spiritual connectedness, which comes from a place of seeing the universe through an empathic lens, tends to draw a lot of people towards a belief in God, even those who have discarded traditional church and religion. They see God as becoming closer to a metaphor for universal spirit or wholeness or connectedness, not too different from Einstein's notion of God, but a belief in supernatural existence remains.

Personally, I've never had a need for a God to create a causal explanation for internal or external events. I have always believed my sense of inner spirit and connectedness has a physical explanation that is congruent with the principles that explain the rest of the physical universe, not a supernatural explanation. Part of my view of identity/causality is that there are no unextended entities or disembodied actions. This leaves no room for gods or ghosts. I see a sense of spirit and connectedness growing from our capacity for self-awareness and empathy rather than seeing the existence of a supernatural realm.

There is no need for supernatural explanations. There is no need for entering into the dualism that arises from a belief in the supernatural.

[Dan Haggerty]

the rest is inertia, elaboration and follow-through

Well that’s one way to properly dramatize religion since the Bronze Age

To actually contribute this time there is two separate subjects:

The Abrahamic deity doesn’t stand to logic. It doesn’t even stand against the basic axioms we see perceptibly every day. An omniscient, omnipotent, and unidentifiable entity breaks all the axioms. It is everywhere but nowhere at the same time, can do anything it wants, lives outside of existence somehow, and has a consciousness that is everywhere and in our consciousnesses as well. I mean, let’s be real, if a kid walked up to you and said he had an invisible friend who was all powerful, could read your mind and punish you for it Orwellian style, lived everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and oh by the way his friend kills people and threatens to torture them for eternity if they don’t obey… well you would rightly hope the kid would get help. Thus is the state of the Abrahamic deity.

Don’t even get me started on the parables.

[Brant Gaede]

the rest is inertia, elaboration and follow-through

Well that’s one way to properly dramatize religion since the Bronze Age

To actually contribute this time there is two separate subjects:

The Abrahamic deity doesn’t stand to logic. It doesn’t even stand against the basic axioms we see perceptibly every day. An omniscient, omnipotent, and unidentifiable entity breaks all the axioms. It is everywhere but nowhere at the same time, can do anything it wants, lives outside of existence somehow, and has a consciousness that is everywhere and in our consciousnesses as well. I mean, let’s be real, if a kid walked up to you and said he had an invisible friend who was all powerful, could read your mind and punish you for it Orwellian style, lived everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and oh by the way his friend kills people and threatens to torture them for eternity if they don’t obey… well you would rightly hope the kid would get help. Thus is the state of the Abrahamic deity.

Don’t even get me started on the parables.

Let's keep it simple: God is reality and reality is God which is pantheism. No Supreme Being, just that supreme thing, both the totality and in any particular. Thus you need not say you are an atheist, just say you are a pantheist.

--Brant

[Dan Haggerty]

the rest is inertia, elaboration and follow-through

Well that’s one way to properly dramatize religion since the Bronze Age

To actually contribute this time there is two separate subjects:

The Abrahamic deity doesn’t stand to logic. It doesn’t even stand against the basic axioms we see perceptibly every day. An omniscient, omnipotent, and unidentifiable entity breaks all the axioms. It is everywhere but nowhere at the same time, can do anything it wants, lives outside of existence somehow, and has a consciousness that is everywhere and in our consciousnesses as well. I mean, let’s be real, if a kid walked up to you and said he had an invisible friend who was all powerful, could read your mind and punish you for it Orwellian style, lived everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and oh by the way his friend kills people and threatens to torture them for eternity if they don’t obey… well you would rightly hope the kid would get help. Thus is the state of the Abrahamic deity.

Don’t even get me started on the parables.

Let's keep it simple: God is reality and reality is God which is pantheism. No Supreme Being, just that supreme thing, both the totality and in any particular. Thus you need not say you are an atheist, just say you are a pantheist.

--Brant

I’ve never understood pantheism. If your opinion is that God is the universe then really what you are saying is that God is existence. I’m God too? I’m part of God? God is in me? We are all part of some universal consciousness? Man kind as mass mind or mass soul is not something I would think of being an ideal. Sort of like the Borg from Star Trek but includes animals, dirt, and random weather patterns in the collective.

- Nah... Still an atheist.

[BaalChatzaf]

I’ve never understood pantheism. If your opinion is that God is the universe then really what you are saying is that God is existence. I’m God too? I’m part of God? God is in me? We are all part of some universal consciousness? Man kind as mass mind or mass soul is not something I would think of being an ideal. Sort of like the Borg from Star Trek but includes animals, dirt, and random weather patterns in the collective.

- Nah... Still an atheist.

G-D's name translated ;literally from the Hebrew is "He is". At another juncture Moses heard the G-D answer to the question: Who should I say sent me. G-D answered "I am sent you"

So G-D's name in Hebrew is IS (or existence).

Rand was not so far off.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

the rest is inertia, elaboration and follow-through

Well that’s one way to properly dramatize religion since the Bronze Age

To actually contribute this time there is two separate subjects:

The Abrahamic deity doesn’t stand to logic. It doesn’t even stand against the basic axioms we see perceptibly every day. An omniscient, omnipotent, and unidentifiable entity breaks all the axioms. It is everywhere but nowhere at the same time, can do anything it wants, lives outside of existence somehow, and has a consciousness that is everywhere and in our consciousnesses as well. I mean, let’s be real, if a kid walked up to you and said he had an invisible friend who was all powerful, could read your mind and punish you for it Orwellian style, lived everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and oh by the way his friend kills people and threatens to torture them for eternity if they don’t obey… well you would rightly hope the kid would get help. Thus is the state of the Abrahamic deity.

Don’t even get me started on the parables.

Let's keep it simple: God is reality and reality is God which is pantheism. No Supreme Being, just that supreme thing, both the totality and in any particular. Thus you need not say you are an atheist, just say you are a pantheist.

--Brant

I’ve never understood pantheism. If your opinion is that God is the universe then really what you are saying is that God is existence. I’m God too? I’m part of God? God is in me? We are all part of some universal consciousness? Man kind as mass mind or mass soul is not something I would think of being an ideal. Sort of like the Borg from Star Trek but includes animals, dirt, and random weather patterns in the collective.

- Nah... Still an atheist.

So am I, actually, but dislike that word. The religious nutters can't deal with me but to call an atheist which is quite different than me calling me that--and they'd first have to think it all through. This is an experiment of mine. I would not tell a child this stuff. I'd tell him I was an atheist.

--Brant

you went too far with your speculative conclusions, in my opinion; pantheism is not a religion, cult, movement or philosophy, not for me--just another word for reality

[Xray]

Let's keep it simple: God is reality and reality is God which is pantheism. No Supreme Being, just that supreme thing, both the totality and in any particular.

Thus you need not say you are an atheist, just say you are a pantheist.

In that case, 'pantheist' would be used as a mere euphemism, to avoid the negative connotation many people have with 'atheist'.

[Paul Mawdsley]

A quick review of wiki suggests pantheism comes in a variety of forms. It can be divided into deterministic vs indeterministic, theistic vs atheistic and monistic vs dualistic. It says: "pantheism denotes the idea that 'God' is best seen as a process of relating to the Universe."

My initial sense of it is that it is simply an alternative way of looking at our relationship to the universe. When we look at the universe one way we see light (or electrons) as having particle properties-- existing separately and acting locally, and when looked at another way we see it has wave-like characteristics, existing in a way that is connected to the whole and acting non-locally. Similarly with pantheism, we can see a universe in balance between how the behaviour of it's parts (ourselves) contribute to the identity and state of the whole and as a whole system influencing the behaviour of it's parts (us again). We can see ourselves as nodes in an intricate universe-web; both influencing and being influenced by our relationship to the web.

I don't see this as being in conflict with the sense of separateness, independence and autonomy that may have drawn many of us to Objectivism. In fact, our separateness, independence and autonomy is strengthened by reflecting on and coming to better understand how we are influenced by our connectedness to larger systems and coming to see our own built in responses to forces that shape our options. I actually see this as the same principles as is found in quantum reality filtering their way through to our metaphysics. It's one universe with different ways of looking at it. We become weaker when we see conflict between different ways of looking at the world, when we act on the need to take sides and when we need to exclude ways of looking at the world. We damage our own tool kit for rationality, effectively throwing out one set of tools. It's like fighting over whether it's more right to consider light to be particles or waves and not discovering the richness of embracing both. We become richer and more informed by embracing paradoxical views and seeking a dialectical resolution.

I would say I have a pantheistic lens that I can use when my context deems it appropriate. I have come to appreciate the idea that the energy we put into the universe tends to shape what we get back from the universe. I don't see this as some sort of supernatural phenomenon. People (and animals--see Dog Whisperer) read each other's energy signatures, as manifested in subliminal behavioral cues, and react to such cues according to individual genetic makeup and conditioning. With practice we can raise awareness to these subtle communications from others, break the reactive chains and choose alternate responses. We can also raise awareness to and come to understand the energy that flows through us and is expressed through our subtle communications, thus allowing us to take control of our flow. This is how we can empower our separateness, independence and autonomy by embracing our pantheistic connectedness lens.

I tend to atheistic and monistic ends of the spectrum because of the metaphysical conclusions I have drawn. I fit neither the deterministic nor the indeterministic categories. I find this to be a false dichotomy. Rather, I tend towards proactive causation instead of reactive causation (determinism and indeterminism are subcategories of the latter).

[Brant Gaede]

Let's keep it simple: God is reality and reality is God which is pantheism. No Supreme Being, just that supreme thing, both the totality and in any particular.

Thus you need not say you are an atheist, just say you are a pantheist.

In that case, 'pantheist' would be used as a mere euphemism, to avoid the negative connotation many people have with 'atheist'.

And to re-enforce submission to reality and implicitly attack religion's mystical basis. Pantheist is a positive statement, atheist, negative.

--Brant

looking it over

[anthony]

Right, 'atheism' is negative, and it presupposes the existence of god too.

I'm not in favor of reducing the impact of a concept for other people's consumption.

If pantheism is how one perceives existence, well fine, that is how you describe

yourself. However, the theist premise is still contained in it, and it seems a little disingenuous, so it's not my cup of tea.

For a 'positive' name, I would prefer 'gnostic', although it is not sufficiently self-explanatory. With knowledge, by and through knowledge - is my interpretation. Hm.

Ah... atheist it'll have to stay for me.

[Dan Haggerty]

the rest is inertia, elaboration and follow-through

Well that’s one way to properly dramatize religion since the Bronze Age

To actually contribute this time there is two separate subjects:

The Abrahamic deity doesn’t stand to logic. It doesn’t even stand against the basic axioms we see perceptibly every day. An omniscient, omnipotent, and unidentifiable entity breaks all the axioms. It is everywhere but nowhere at the same time, can do anything it wants, lives outside of existence somehow, and has a consciousness that is everywhere and in our consciousnesses as well. I mean, let’s be real, if a kid walked up to you and said he had an invisible friend who was all powerful, could read your mind and punish you for it Orwellian style, lived everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and oh by the way his friend kills people and threatens to torture them for eternity if they don’t obey… well you would rightly hope the kid would get help. Thus is the state of the Abrahamic deity.

Don’t even get me started on the parables.

Let's keep it simple: God is reality and reality is God which is pantheism. No Supreme Being, just that supreme thing, both the totality and in any particular. Thus you need not say you are an atheist, just say you are a pantheist.

--Brant

I’ve never understood pantheism. If your opinion is that God is the universe then really what you are saying is that God is existence. I’m God too? I’m part of God? God is in me? We are all part of some universal consciousness? Man kind as mass mind or mass soul is not something I would think of being an ideal. Sort of like the Borg from Star Trek but includes animals, dirt, and random weather patterns in the collective.

- Nah... Still an atheist.

So am I, actually, but dislike that word. The religious nutters can't deal with me but to call an atheist which is quite different than me calling me that--and they'd first have to think it all through. This is an experiment of mine. I would not tell a child this stuff. I'd tell him I was an atheist.

--Brant

you went too far with your speculative conclusions, in my opinion; pantheism is not a religion, cult, movement or philosophy, not for me--just another word for reality

Ah, I see. You were being poetic and to be positive. Actually, I like that, it’s pretty cool. I like doing that too but unfortunately I missed it here since this is a personal pet-peeve issue.

[Xray]

I don't think fear is the only basis for a belief in God. I have come to understand that the sense of spiritual connectedness, which comes from a place of seeing the universe through an empathic lens, tends to draw a lot of people towards a belief in God, even those who have discarded traditional church and religion.

While I think empathy is an absolute essential in developing a secular ethics in the world we live in, I have problems seeing through an empathic lens when it comes to nature as such. Nature is pretty insentient, with life living from killing other life. "One big restaurant" as Woody Allen said one of his films.

The same goes for seeing the universe through an empathic lens: whole galaxies vanish in black holes, stars perish, etc.

I can relate to a feeling connectedness to the universe since I am part of it (I call this the 'cosmic feeling' which I sometimes get when gazing at the stars) but I also know the feeling of sadness in view of the inevitable suffering which existence also entails.

We can see ourselves as nodes in an intricate universe-web; both influencing and being influenced by our relationship to the web.

I too often try to look at if from this perspective: everything being connected with everything.

Maybe our descendants in future times will be able 'lift the veil' more and more, with phenomena like e. g. quantum entanglement no longer being a mystery to them.

P. S. In your profile, you have listed "the Church of Ayn Rand" in the 'article' section. What exactly do you mean by that?

[Paul Mawdsley]

P. S. In your profile, you have listed "the Church of Ayn Rand" in the 'article' section. What exactly do you mean by that?

Xray,

Here is the original thread: http://www.objectivi...235

I hope to respond to other points shortly.

Paul

[BaalChatzaf]

Right, 'atheism' is negative, and it presupposes the existence of god too.

Atheism in no way asserts that God exists.

There are two flavors of atheism: 1. Deny that sufficient evidence exists to justify a belief in God. 2. Deny that God exists outright.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[anthony]

Right, 'atheism' is negative, and it presupposes the existence of god too.

Atheism in no way asserts that God exists.

There are two flavors of atheism: 1. Deny that sufficient evidence exists to justify a belief in God. 2. Deny that God exists outright.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Who said it did? A-theism = without God, right? An "a-theist" then, implicitly

acknowledges the premise of God, but rejects the concept. So atheism is presupposed

by theism -- the premise had to exist first. Which is why we've been calling it "negative" as a referent, comparable to Bob Kolker calling himself "non-North Korean" by nationality.

(Your No.1 flavor is not atheist, it's agnostic I'd say.)

[Xray]

Right, 'atheism' is negative, and it presupposes the existence of god too.

Atheism in no way asserts that God exists.

There are two flavors of atheism: 1. Deny that sufficient evidence exists to justify a belief in God. 2. Deny that God exists outright.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Who said it did? A-theism = without God, right? An "a-theist" then, implicitly

acknowledges the premise of God, but rejects the concept. So atheism is presupposed

by theism -- the premise had to exist first. Which is why we've been calling it "negative" as a referent, comparable to Bob Kolker calling himself "non-North Korean" by nationality.

The analogy does not fit. For atheism does not presuppose the existence of a god - it presupposes merely the existence of a belief in a god (i.e. it acknowledges the fact that there obviously exist individuals (called theists) who believe in a god), and this belief is rejected; an a-theist is someone who is without a belief in a god.

This is the denominator all atheists have in common, whatever their individual atheism may look like.

[Brant Gaede]

It's a cheap and specious circular argument that an atheist is really a theist. It's all epistemological trickery.

--Brant

[Mikee]

"For atheism does not presuppose the existence of a god"

That is not what Tony said. He said it presupposes the premise of the existence of a God. There would be no necessity of a word or concept for "atheist" unless there were first a "theist". Accepting a "premise" doesn't mean you accept the conclusion. Premises are often false.

[anthony]

Right, 'atheism' is negative, and it presupposes the existence of god too.

Atheism in no way asserts that God exists.

There are two flavors of atheism: 1. Deny that sufficient evidence exists to justify a belief in God. 2. Deny that God exists outright.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Who said it did? A-theism = without God, right? An "a-theist" then, implicitly

acknowledges the premise of God, but rejects the concept. So atheism is presupposed

by theism -- the premise had to exist first. Which is why we've been calling it "negative" as a referent, comparable to Bob Kolker calling himself "non-North Korean" by nationality.

The analogy does not fit. For atheism does not presuppose the existence of a god - it presupposes merely the existence of a belief in a god (i.e. it acknowledges the fact that there obviously exist individuals (called theists) who believe in a god), and this belief is rejected; an a-theist is someone who is without a belief in a god.

This is the denominator all atheists have in common, whatever their individual atheism may look like.

A concrete view. I obviously used "premise" to indicate that the premise

of god's existence, exists - held by certain people, and THIS fact is

acknowledged by atheists.

Without theism, would there be atheism?

Geez...

No "analogy", just a statement of fact. Objectivism: entities exist independent of one's consciousness.

e.g. things you might not approve of, such as animal cruelty or- theism. There does not have to be the reality of god, for the reality of the premise of god, to exist.

A thought or a concept- whether true or fallacious- is still an entity.

[Xray]

[quoting Xray]: "For atheism does not presuppose the existence of a god"

That is not what Tony said. He said it presupposes the premise of the existence of a God.

Tony verbatim stated:

Right, 'atheism' is negative, and it presupposes the existence of god too.

He then presented the following analogy:

Which is why we've been calling it "negative" as a referent, comparable to Bob Kolker calling himself "non-North Korean" by nationality.

The term "non-North-Korean" implies that North-Koreans do exist, but the term "atheist" does not imply that god exists.

[Mikee]

Perhaps Tony's analogy would have been more apt if he had said "...comparable to Bob Kolker calling himself "non-human" by species." Assuming Bob [falsely?] claimed to be a representative of an alien species...

[anthony]

You're combining two different thoughts of mine:

1. The 'premise of god's existence', exists.

2. 'Atheism' is negative because the word/concept is dependent upon 'theism' (its root).

Plus, it only identifies what one is not, not what one is. Which has to be inferred.

But to make you happy, I'll change the analogy to "it is comparable to Bob calling

himself 'not a resident of Mars' [negative identity]- instead of 'a resident of the USA, Earth.'[positive identity]".)

[anthony]

Wow! That's amazing, Mike. You've pipped me by seconds twice in a row with very

similar thoughts.

[Mikee]

Oops! Sorry. Just trying to stick up for you; clearly not necessary!. ["pipped" doesn't mean anything bad does it?]

[anthony]

Oops! Sorry. Just trying to stick up for you; clearly not necessary!. ["pipped" doesn't mean anything bad does it?]

No - fully appreciated it. Support isn't too common on forums(in my experience anyway.)

Pipped, like a race horse on the finish line.