On Psalm 109 and Faith

[Alex]

Also on the "if proven" side, if proof were indisbutable, I'd believe. But I'd like to think that doesn't mean I would blindly follow. As mentioned above, the god described in the Bible (throughout, not just the Old Testament) is one I find reprehensible. This is true for the holy texts of most other religions as well.

To me, the demands for worship made by gods are no more reasonable than a domineering mother saying "I brought you into this world and therefore I get to pick your clothes and friends and job when your 40."

[Morrigoon]

And no less valuable than the advice of a parent who says: "Get good grades, go to college, shower every day, and don't date a woman just for her good looks" because they love you and genuinely want to see you have a good life.

[Alex]

I've never believed in a god or anything supernatural (being bluntly honest, to me defining god as "the universe" is absurdism) so I can't speak to the benefits of a "conversion." All that happened was eventually I found the nerve to tell my parents I thought it was a crock.

On the topic of labels, I've said previously that if you want to get technical I'm not an atheist. I don't know there is no god, no supernatural entity. So, technically I would be agnostic. It is simply that in the absence of any evidence or reason to assume such an existence I live my life as if there is none (just as I live on the assumption that all the other infinite things for which there is no evidence or reason to assume don't actually exist). I can't recall if I saw someone else say it or I made it up but I refer to this as pragmatic atheism.

As for benefits, to me I see it as not wasting time on things that don't matter. You reference Pascal's Wager in your post (why not believe in God since if you're wrong there's no penalty and if you're right the reward is huge) but the flaw in that is too glaring to me to ignore. Namely that it isn't a binary choice of believe in god or not but rather believe in the wrong god or not. Sure, I could choose to belief (if "choice" is truly possible) in a god that accepts all, but my definition of god does not create such a god. So even if I choose to believe odds are I'll still get it wrong (what if the only people who have it right are one of those uncontacted Amazonian tribes, may decision of faith will not have served me any purpose).

Plus, the big harm I see in the magical thinking of religion (faith in that for which there is no evidence simply because it feels - or someone has convinced you it is - right) is that it conditions people to believe in magical thinking in other areas of life where it most definitely has harmful impacts (water dowsing, psychic healing, and homeopathy are orders of magnitude reasonable, based on available evidence, than god. Also, and while this is not true of everybody, religion misused removes the possibility of debate as a social tool. Received wisdom can not be argued.

Yes, the tools of science can and frequently are misused but it contains within itself a process for debate and while it can be slow it generally works.

Ultimately, though, I just don't see the benefit of believing something to be true simply because it makes me feel better to believe it. And if I did, there are things I'd believe in long before I got around to worrying about what happens after I die. Such as believing that if I'm fat long enough I will eventually gain the power of flight and invisibility (which, from my point of view, isn't any more silly an idea than the thought that God created the universe so that Jews would have somewhere to live).

As for proselytizing atheism, I honestly don't care what other people believe up until they start trying to use those believes as a tool for managing other people (and this is true of religious and non-religious thought). That said, I do like to explore what people, including myself, believe. But me saying "I think you've got it all wrong" does not mean "I think you should change just because I think that."

[flippyshark]

Another note on labels: Richard Dawkins (surely the world's most famous atheist at the moment) posits a 1 to 10 scale of belief, where 1 denotes Ï know there is a god,"" and 10 denotes Ï know that there is not a god." Dawkins points out that the majority of believers have no problem listing themselves at position 1 - they proudly say that they are certain in their knowledge that a god exists, but very few atheists put themselves at position 10 - most acknowledge that we don't yet know enough about the universe to say. Dawkins himself says he is something like an 8.7 - he regards the probability of a deity as vanishingly small. I would feel comfortable putting myself at a 9.

Morigoon - speaking only for myself, I find it refreshing to be invited to even talk about these things openly. In my day to day life, there are very few people who are even interested enough in the topic to engage in a conversation.

Oh! Gotta go!

[flippyshark]

OK - As I was saying:

In my face to face life, I'm never invited or encouraged to talk about this stuff, so it's delightful do so here. I hope I don't come off as proselytizing. I value your input as much as everyone else's.

[€uroMeinke]

I think a trap non-believers get into is the presumption that belief in God is something singular. The various philosophical "proofs" of God seldom provide evidence of the vengeful God of the old testament, or the forgiving God of the new, or even the pantheon of Hindu or polytheistic faiths. Perhaps there are some other 1-10 scales to rank your belief in God on omniscience, omnipotence, benevolence, and singularity.


For myself I take an Occam's razor approach and find the belief in God to be unnecessary for me to live my life and make decisions. But should I have some numinous experience with the mysterium tremebdom, who knows? I can only live out m own life based on my own experiences, I know people who believe they have experienced God as a very real way, and its as fruitless for me to convince them their experiences were not real as it is for them to discount my own experiences.

[flippyshark]

Indeed, the numerical score is of limited utility, mostly just as a way to clarify how I'm using terminology.

Happily, from my own perch, belief is not a precondition for enjoying the numinous. I've brushed against that and want more of it.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I'll try to respond to some of this without too much parroting of what flippy and Alex have already said very well.

Yes, when you get down to it I am technically an agnostic in that I am perfectly willing to accept the possibility that I might one day be handed proof of the existence of a being capable of the things purported by religious folk. However at this point I prefer the term atheist just because "agnostic" to most people seems not to imply, "I do not have any reason to believe a supreme being exists, and won't until presented with evidence," but rather most people seem to take it to mean, "Oh, so you believe in some sort of supreme being you just don't believe in any of the versions codified by organized religion." The latter simply does not fit.

As for the benefit to me in "conversion", see flippy's post. I tried the agnostic thing for a while. But eventually I grew weary of the constant mental dissonance it caused. I found myself continually redefining this nebulous belief in "something greater than me" over and over to try to make it fit what my experience in the world was telling me to be true, that no matter how amazing, beautiful, infinite, spectacular, breathtaking, etc. my experiences, none of it required a supreme being to have occurred. And so I just felt like I was lying to myself, playing mental games simply because I felt like I was supposed to believe in something. Until I just stopped because it was unnecessary.

Yes, the infinite is difficult to ponder. Yes, the existence of something beyond the infinite is something that makes sense. However, there is nothing that says to me that that "something" is any more likely to be something remotely resembling any amalgamation of god figures humans of convinced themselves of than it is to be an all powerful teapot. No more likely to care one bit about, or have the ability to interact with, my daily life and thoughts than I'm able to care about or interact with the firing of a particular single neuron in my brain.

As I've said, I find value in the fact that religions are attempts to synthesize into easy-to-passs-on form theories about how people should comport themselves in order to maintain a functioning society. No less valuable in that sense than the Magna Carta, the US Constitution, what have you. But (parroting Alex some), mistaking the origin of those for magic leads to poor conclusions and prevents people from evaluating things objectively. Yes, we can all cherry pick that which works and that which doesn't, but to my eye, if you are not accepting that what you're cherry picking from is of entirely human origin, that it is the result of an entirely non-supernatural process of evolving into social beings, then you drawing your conclusions starting from a false premise, the same false premise that all of them started from, and aren't likely to improve much on their flaws.

[Morrigoon]

This is fascinating. So where would you guys each rank yourselves on that scale?

[lashbear]

Just popping my head in, I'd say about 7-8. Considering I used to be a 1, that's quite a shift for just one Pastor to facilitate, wouldn't you say?

I would say "So?, their loss", but they've gone on to become a religious juggernaut in the Australian Christian Scene (c)(tm)(please donate 10% at the door for using this term) so I don't think my departure caused much loss to them at all.

Bitter? Much? Heck, not me !!