Atheists: What Do Gods Do?

[Bthoth]

This thread is inspired by some of the responses I'm reading in Atheists: What would the universe look like if a god existed?.

For this thread, I am intentionally excluding the God of Abraham to get some sort of an idea as to the level of knowledge atheists have about gods beyond the Abrahamic paradigm.

I'm asking atheists to pick any god or gods from any religion beyond the Abrahamic paradigm and list the qualities and/or attributes of that god(s) (without googling) and that god's purpose in that respective paradigm as it relates to that god's followers.

I'm not even challenging atheists to tell me what they lack belief in that particular god...just wanting to see what they know about them.

Are any atheists up to this challenge?

OK, who is atheist? Basically anyone not complying to abrahamic beliefs?

What about people that are realizing that god itself is nature (existence itself)? Does that make a person 'less than'?

Of his dust, eating of his body, living within his body and must maintain personal responsibility or committing a sin to him, directly.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

"If you are trying to say that gods in fact can "exist" as psychological constructs... then sure. Darth Vader exists in the same way"

No one I know believes in, worships or prays to Darth Vader.

Not that that matters to the point that was made at all....

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

No, it doesn’t. Actions and behaviours may be intolerable, but not beliefs, which are generally personal.

Beliefs inform actions and behaviors.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Even so, if a person is to be judged, that judgement should always be on the basis of their actions not their beliefs.

Suppose an ISIS fan boy comes and live next door to your house.
His beliefs = typical fundy ISIS beliefs.

You'ld be find with that? You won't "judge"? You won't be worried about such a guy living in your street?

You'll only judge him once he carries out some semi-suicide mission where he tries to kill as much unbelievers as possible?
You'ld seriously wait for that to occur before treating him any differently then any other person living in your street?


Sure, we shouldn't treat him as if he already committed a terrorist attack. But to say that we should be "tolerant" and "not judge" and thus treat him like any other citizen.... that's just painfully dumb.

IN FACT.... if that is how the dude gets treated and he then does something nasty.... the people will be screaming blood and murder that such a radicalized guy was allowed to go about his business. High level politicians will be forced to step down over such stuff.

 

[LuisDantas]

I am unfamiliar with the phrase "freestyle concept". What does it mean?

In this case, that the word is meaningless in and of itself. All kinds of expectations of what a "god" must be, should be, should not be and cannot possibly be exist. There is no consensus and it is pointless to expect any to ever arise.

 

[Little Dragon]

Beliefs inform actions and behaviors.

That's my overarching concern with article of faith based belief systems, in a nutshell.

 

[RestlessSoul]

We are talking about the existence of entities / things / phenomenon independent of human experience. Or humans, for that matter.

So yeah, I think falsifiability is a very appropriate standard for that type of claim.

I don’t agree that we’re talking about phenomena independent of human experience. Indeed, there can be no possible way of apprehending any phenomena independently of human experience.

 

[Quintessence]

Well, this thread has gone about as I expected.

I'm not sure whether to be relieved or just more frustrated about that.

It confirms that whenever I talk theology to "atheists" (and also some other theists) we are constantly talking past one another because they only think about the divine in Abrahamic or classical monotheist terms. It's why I often just give up on conversations entirely and can't be bothered. Sometimes when I can be bothered, I get told I'm "redefining" things because I'm not Abrahamic or a classical monotheist. So while on the one hand all of this confirms that my frustration comes from constrained approaches to theology born of the Abrahamic cultural hegemony, on the other it does nothing to alleviate the immense frustration I experience as a non-Abrahamic trying to talk theology and be understood or listened to.

Oh well.

 

[Little Dragon]

I don’t agree that we’re talking about phenomena independent of human experience. Indeed, there can be no possible way of apprehending any phenomena independently of human experience.

Well, you and I can both measure the temperature with a thermometer and reach the same conclusions, barring eyesight defects or faulty thermometers. In other words, we have independent verification, to confirm or falsify our own observations. That is good enough for me personally. I don't expect or demand proof I am not enmeshed within a computer simulation, for example. Since such a thing would be almost impossible to test for. So why worry about it?

 

[Little Dragon]

It confirms that whenever I talk theology to "atheists" (and also some other theists) we are constantly talking past one another because they only think about the divine in Abrahamic or classical monotheist terms

Is the definition of God different for polytheistic faiths then?
Agnostic here.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Suppose an ISIS fan boy comes and live next door to your house.
His beliefs = typical fundy ISIS beliefs.

You'ld be find with that? You won't "judge"? You won't be worried about such a guy living in your street?

You'll only judge him once he carries out some semi-suicide mission where he tries to kill as much unbelievers as possible?
You'ld seriously wait for that to occur before treating him any differently then any other person living in your street?


Sure, we shouldn't treat him as if he already committed a terrorist attack. But to say that we should be "tolerant" and "not judge" and thus treat him like any other citizen.... that's just painfully dumb.

IN FACT.... if that is how the dude gets treated and he then does something nasty.... the people will be screaming blood and murder that such a radicalized guy was allowed to go about his business. High level politicians will be forced to step down over such stuff.

I live in London. One of the most culturally and ethnically diverse cities in the world. If I was to view the world through a lense similar to the one you’ve described above, I’d go around in terror of my neighbours. But I don’t, because there’s nothing to be gained from adopting such a paranoid view of the people around me. For the record, I have several Moslem neighbours and colleagues, and none of them have given me any cause to suspect that they may be ISIS (or Hamas, or Hezbolla) sympathisers.

In short, your prejudice is showing; which speaks directly to my observation about tolerance.

 

[Little Dragon]

In short, your prejudice is showing; which speaks directly to my observation about tolerance

Noted.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Well, you and I can both measure the temperature with a thermometer and reach the same conclusions, barring eyesight defects or faulty thermometers. In other words, we have independent verification, to confirm or falsify our own observations. That is good enough for me personally. I don't expect or demand proof I am not enmeshed within a computer simulation, for example. Since such a thing would be almost impossible to test for. So why worry about it?

Yes, we can weigh, calibrate, and predict the behaviour of material phenomena. We cannot do this in the same way with mental or spiritual phenomena, but that does not mean that there is no meaningful experience at the level of mind or spirit.

It’s my guess you would dismiss even the possibility of a spiritual experience, but that is evidence only of your not yet having had such an experience.

 

[Little Dragon]

It’s my guess you would dismiss even the possibility of a spiritual experience, but that is evidence only of your not yet having had such an experience.

I would not be so hasty. I have seen many a strange thing captured upon recording media and other instrumentation. My objection is to any attempt to qualify or quantify such phenomena, without an objective method of inquiry. Of course the problem with such phenomena, like ghosts et al, is their lack of cooperation when it comes to satisfying the rigorous demands of scientific methodology, such as establishing laboratory conditions, in effect, we are at an impasse, and the study of the supernatural, remains outside of serious scientific investigation, that is, no money is devoted to academic institutions to seriously study it. Instead, amateurs and enthusiasts, get some very odd bits and bobs of data. Interesting, but nothing concrete. Nothing to build any kind of physical theory on. Yet.

 

[PureX]

In this case, that the word is meaningless in and of itself. All kinds of expectations of what a "god" must be, should be, should not be and cannot possibly be exist. There is no consensus and it is pointless to expect any to ever arise.

There is a lot of consensus. And there are also a lot of significant differences. As is the case with all human conceptions of reality.

Elvis, for example. There are a lot of things we would all agree on about him, but there are also a lot of things that we would not agree on about him. And none of us could honestly claim to know the whole truth of Elvis. Not even those who interacted with him personally.

There is plenty of "Elvis evidence" we could look at and use to create a conception of him in our minds. But we won't all have access to the same evidence, and we won't all read the evidence in the same way, so we won't all formulate the same conceptual conclusions. And the idea what we would, or should, is completely unreasonable.

And yet I see this "no consensus" argument being posed all the time against anyone that dares to offer their own theistic conception of God.

 

[Quintessence]

Is the definition of God different for polytheistic faiths then?
Agnostic here.

Understanding of gods in general is different among different religions, many of which are poorly-characterized as being "faiths" to begin with (that is, they are not about what is "believed"). Polytheism on the whole is a lot more about cultivating relationships with the gods, lived experience, and practice. What is "believed" about the gods isn't what matters. So polytheists will approach the nature of the gods in different ways.

But one thing that is important to understand is that the gods of indigenous and polytheistic traditions were an expression of the relationships humanity has with powers greater than themselves. These are not gods that are separate from nature and the universe and reality itself, they are the forces of nature and the universe and reality itself. This is how most religion worked until Abrahamic religions came along and tore the divine out of nature and the universe. This eviction of the divine from nature was reinforced further in Western culture by The Enlightenment and related movements. It's a story that is better told by the scholars that have recounted it than I - I recently finished Armstrong's "Sacred Nature" which was a fair enough (if simplistic) telling of the tale.

I still kinda remember that moment in my journey where I finally got it into my skull that gods could be nature (and were nature for the majority of human history). It flew in the face of what I grew up with in an Abrahamic household where I was constantly told god is not nature and the creation is not creator and god is supernatural and blah, blah, blah. No. No, that's the Abrahamic way of looking at things. It's not the only way. And humanity has found sacred connections and meaning in nature for a very, very long time. It was coming home.

 

[Alien826]

What happens in the mind also "exists". All the more so when it effects activity beyond the mind's imagination.

Fiction is real. You seem not to understand this. Being 'representational' does not mean that it's not real. A newspaper drawing of Donald Trump is not Donald Trump. But it's a representation of Donald Trump. And it is just as 'real' as Donald Trump. Likewise, the idea of Donald Trump in our mind is not Donald Trump. It's an imagined representation. But it's still just as real as Donald Trump is.

@RealDonaldTrump is on Twitter (now X) if that helps.

 

[PureX]

@RealDonaldTrump is on Twitter (now X) if that helps.

So you are choosing to believe.

 

[SalixIncendium]

I still think this question of mine has yet to be adequately addressed.

It was addressed in the subsequent post (#24). I'm sorry you don't think that response was adequate.

We've strayed from the original thread topic, and have gone back and forth on a side-track that really hasn't accomplished anything, which began with your calling gods a fiction. I think doing so is an affront to theists, and I don't think we are going to find a common ground here on the matter.

Thank you for the discussion.

 

[Erebus]

As an atheist i take all gods seriously in the sense that people live by their dictates. Imagination is a part of how people govern themselves and other people. Things imagined can be forms of someone's ideals. I am always open to hear about these other gods. Im very tired of doom gods, and one's that expect others to follow their dictates.

Of things imagined such as democracy, money, politics, i want to know the values, ideologies, and stories that people live by to act as they do. Gods drive actions in the world so it can be important to know people by the gods they choose. The world was built on imagination just as much as it was built on science.

Also it would be good to know how any gods are able to exist.

Some gods i can assign truth values too even though i don't see them as real. Its entirely possible that people have gods they don't believe are existent, but nonetheless provide them with motivations to live by. Gods are like peope, it's worthwhile to get to know the ones that wield power in people's minds. In some sense anyone can give something god status in the scale of importance in their lives; even some atheists have an all important set of ideas, facts, values that they find to be supreme.

I meant to reply to this earlier but got side-tracked.

Honestly, this post was genuinely refreshing to see. I fully expect atheists to view gods as imaginary and that fact doesn't bother me. I do wince a little when people equate imaginary with childish or unimportant though. As you say, our world is at least in part built on imagination.

I also think you're spot on in your assessment that many things can ultimately be given godlike status, even if the person in question doesn't view that thing as an actual deity.