<<<E, I see you've abandoned your argument that...... JUST KIDDING>>>
LOL. Do you admit it's Saturday?
<< I would be interested in hearing why you find the proposition that God exists to be so hard to accept. >>
I've written a LOT about this subject on the feelies thread in the last couple of years and have sort of run out of steam on it, but i'll try.
I guess the first point to make is that it's an unverifiable proposition, though it would be easy enough for a deity to provide decent verification.
Many people postulate a God because they think it provides answers to mysteries-- to big questions like "How did we get here?"
To me that is just wrapping up a bunch of questions and putting them in a folder called God, a folder which then raises the question, "How did it get here?"...
It answers that question, too; the God folder got here because human beings made it. They made it because they deeply liked having a neat folder that "felt" like an answer, and for various other (to me pathetic) reasons.
I personally feel no need for such a belief. Neither did my parents or grandparents or greatgrandparents on the side of the family we were close to. I believe I comprehend the need -- comprehend the way the religious feel when they think they are communing with, affiliated with, obeying, an external God-consciousness. And I am touched by the idea of them needing that feeling. But I don't. I have a world-view, values, and feelings about life and death on this planet that brings me peace and satisfaction, including intellectual peace and satisfaction.
I don't like, often, what belief in an omnipotent God does to people's moral sense. Here's an example. There was an article in the NYT two years ago. During a discussion on Feelies (going back a couple of years on feelies would provide a whole lot of grist for the God-mill here) with a deeply religious Christian named Rick Julian about the old philosophical problem suggested by postulating a God who is omniscient and omnipotent but who nonetheless allows the innocent to suffer, I posted the article below.
Rick's response to the article was what it had to be, I guess, since he accepted the idea of an omnipotent/omniscient God, and had to reconcile it with such fates as Pinjira Begum's. It's fair to say it boiled down to "It is God's will." I will say only that he said that he said he did not "rue" what was happening to Pinjira Begum. "Rue" was the verb he used. Because it was God's will. I think a concept like Karma entered into it, too.
He didn't rue it.
Greg, I felt faint when I read that Rick Julian, whom I had, before that, liked, however much we argued, did not even rue what he read about in the article below.
I can't exactly explicate why this event is emblematic of something that strikes me as deeply wrong with a belief in the God of the Christians. Rick was very intelligent, and perceived the logical necessity of his lack of rue for God's will.
And Allah?....
And then there are major problems with taking the Bible seriously as the word of God.
And the fact that every major religion has had believers, devout believers. And texts, rules, saint-figures, prayers, miracles, martyrs, and a subset of believers with access to a hefty share of goods and power because of the credulity of others, and with, therefore, very strong motivation to be especially credulous about the religion-project themselves. It's not a persuasive picture, for religion generically or any specific one, to me.
There's the incidental fact that I, personally, would have to see a beneficial moral effect on the human beings who affiliate with, or have historically affiliated with, with a religion to even begin to assess it seriously as a possible connection or link to goodness and truth.
I believe that everything we think and feel has evolved in our human selves, over eons, and resides there -- including religion, including morality, including philosophies, including love -- and there's no reason, none, to think otherwise.
I could go on, but won't. When you come right down to it, the answer to your question boils down to "I don't believe it and don't need it."
And then there's this: If there were proof that a God willed this for Pinjira Begum, and millions of others, I would refuse to worship him. Unless of course he began to burn me in a fire and torture me, or threatened to. Then I would pretend to worship him until I was worn down and successfully brainwashed. Then "I" would be gone, and the person who remained would be pitiable, a fragment.
EDIT: This is too long a post. I'm going to paste the article into a second post.... |
