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Ever notice how atheists are virtually always on the opposite side from God on many issues?
- Thread starter Patrick66
- Start date
So only man is capable of recognizing and revering and worshipping God, in the Bible according to you right?
"All the earth worships you and sings praises to you; they sing praises to your name." Ps. 66:4
"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork." Ps. 19:1
"And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!" Re. 5:13
"Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all deeps,
fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy wind fulfilling his word!
Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars!
Beasts and all livestock, creeping things and flying birds! Ps. 148:7-10
"Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad, let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the Lord." Ps. 96:11-13
One does wonder how you've missed all of these if you've read the Bible before. Clearly, the Bible authors would not find my views strange at all. I have to ask then, why do you? Could it be you're thinking of these things much too narrowly?
It's kind of like putting up painted-over traffic signs, and then putting people in jail for not following them.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Secret Chief
Vetted Member
Yes, I was just omitting the goldfish from consideration.
So: just cats and dogs.
Have you got any?
Have you had any?
If yes, given you consider them just to be things that eat, drink, defaecate, urinate and sleep, how would you characterise your relationship with them? What would be the point in you having a cat or dog?
Secret Chief
Vetted Member
Secret Chief
Vetted Member
Thanks, but I'm not in the market for a new worldview. This one works just fine.
The illusion is that whatever might lie outside of consciousness is more real and more important than our subjective take on it, but not to me. It doesn't even matter what's out there as long as the rules work. Suppose you could somehow know for an iron-clad fact that you were a brain in a vat and had no other body.
Nevertheless, you experience yourself in a body. It has hands and fingers, but now you know they are "illusion." So is the candle there on the table, so you confidently stick your finger in the flame, and it burns and hurts and your imaginary finger develops imaginary blisters. But it's all illusion, you say. What use is knowing that? What would it even mean? Our subjective reality trumps whatever we imagine it derives from.
How have you put your genius to work for you? Are you where you want to be? Are you happy? Do you have love, beauty, and leisure in your life? Do you live life relatively free of shame, regret, anxiety, fear, and guilt?
Here you are adopting the familiar role of the guru or shaman who sees further than those still trapped in dualism or materialism or ego or whatever. From this lofty, self-appointed position, you declare the ideas of others atheistic garbage while you float in a higher, more spiritual plane. The problem for such people is that they can never produce or demonstrate any of this wisdom.
Here we go again. Your thoughts are so complex so you don't even know where to begin to explain them to a simple mind.
How about a rebuttal before taking a victory lap? You still haven't made a case for your deity and man resembling one another enough to say "in his image." You want to make it all lofty and poetic and foggy and transcendent and then say, "We're still in his image. You're too simple to see." Sorry. I need more than that. That's just smoke and mirrors.
Image means something. It can be anatomical or psychological. I have more in common with a bird than this deity by every measure. The bird and I know hunger and fear and the feel of a breeze. We both have mouths to eat and vocalize, and limbs to walk. This god is as alien and different as possible, yet I read, "in his image" and ask in what sense. It always goes like this. Diffuse language.
What you have is a religious belief based in a religion in which man exalts himself - sort of a spiritual Dunning-Kruger syndrome conferring an unearned sense of self-importance. Man floats with the gods and angels, right? He's no ape, right? He has a soul that was made in God's image trapped in wretched flesh, the word flesh uttered with the same contempt as the word world. And the result is people who see animals as there for man to exploit like the entire rest of the earth. It's all inferior and it's all slated for apocalyptic destruction by God.
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So I haven't noticed anyone explain in any factual detail how atheists are "virtually always on the opposite side from God" on any issue.
1. No one has demonstrated there is any actual God existing outside human imagination.
2. Those who claim a God exists externally are inconsistent with each other, and this suggests the God they think exists is just their own adopted version from institutional religion, or God is very confused.
3. Of the many issues that God is supposedly for, or against, no one can show that it is an absolute moral position that is actually endorsed by an actual God, so why should any atheist be impressed?
4. It is more likely that some people have beliefs that they cannot argue for factually or even argumentally so rely on the "authority" that a God would have if it existed.
5. Do the believers who use dubious claims of a God existing and having positions really believe what they claim, or just using God as window dressing because they lack facts and an argument?
1. No one has demonstrated there is any actual God existing outside human imagination.
2. Those who claim a God exists externally are inconsistent with each other, and this suggests the God they think exists is just their own adopted version from institutional religion, or God is very confused.
3. Of the many issues that God is supposedly for, or against, no one can show that it is an absolute moral position that is actually endorsed by an actual God, so why should any atheist be impressed?
4. It is more likely that some people have beliefs that they cannot argue for factually or even argumentally so rely on the "authority" that a God would have if it existed.
5. Do the believers who use dubious claims of a God existing and having positions really believe what they claim, or just using God as window dressing because they lack facts and an argument?
Depends on what you mean by authentic. Are they actually raging? Sure. But I make a distinction between that and what is considered authentic emotions. I see them as symptomatic of an emotional dysfunction, and not their authentic selves. Is that truely who and what they are authentically? Are they authentically evil to their core? Or is that living life insincerely? I'm looking at this from a philosophical, psychological, and spiritual sense.
I did in that post explain it quite a bit, actually. In reference to you saying that a child growing up among KKK members will learn that is a deep experience of what God wants, I explained this:
That's not what I mean by a deep experience. That's just cultural programming and the experience of life lived through that programming. That is by definition a shallow experience. It is the unexamined life. By deep experience, I mean something that breaks free from that. I mean something authentic and transcendent to that.
To me I easily understand what authentic, deep, and transcendent mean in contrast to the shallowness of the unexamined, unobserved, and unrecognized assumptions of truth and reality that we just simply adopt and assume through our cultural programs. What I am talking about is that Awakening experience, our eyes being opened to see beyond those filters of reality which colorize truth with their own ideas of reality. It can also mean any major shift if perception.
Those moments can happen in many ways. If you are unfamiliar at all with what I am talking about, then that makes communication of it difficult. If all one has ever seen is the color green, and is told about the color red and blue, they will be incomprehensible to them. It's basically an "ah hah!" moment of realization that what we saw as reality is not as it appeared, and then everything changes. We have "transcended" that mode of perception to a new, more expansive, deeper, richer, fuller view of perceiving, translating, and interpreting reality.
Absolutely not at all. It is open to everyone. But I won't say that it is experienced just simply by calling yourself an atheist, or having an atheistic view of reality. After my deconstructive phase during my atheistic period of post-Christian experience, I soon found myself facing the reality of spirituality in myself that could not be dismissed or denied or repressed through cold hard rationality. So I soften my positions and because calling myself a "spiritual atheist". I consider that absolutely valid, and there are more than a few atheists who share that, even Sam Harris comes to mind.
However, I quickly found that rationality and reason was not as deeply respected by my fellow atheists, and anytime I or other atheists would bring up that spiritual aspect of human beings in any positive light, they were absolutely dismissive of it, and went on the attack, trying to insult and intimidate those of us who dared to give any allowance for religious and spiritual sensibilities in human experience. "Woo woo", they literally would post time and again in nearly every response in lieu of anything rational, trying to drive us all away from their village, or to denounce it and return to the self-proclaimed "skeptics" fold. We were not being True Atheists(tm) like them, in other words.
The "pitchforks and woo" crowd I ended up calling them. It was at this point I realized that their atheism was just their religious fundamentalism changing sides, and it wasn't true or authentic skepticism, rationality, or critical thinking at all. I ended up dropping the atheist label as well, as I began to eventually see it doesn't address anything truly well reasoned and open to truth and knowledge, anymore than dogmatic religion was. It was just doing the same thing with different assumptions of truth and reality.
(There are several others who ended up here on RF after my exodus from over there.
).I coined a saying others like over on that other site. "I feel more a Christian now that I'm not one than I ever did when I was one". Many, many atheists understood exactly what that meant and it resonated deeply with them. In other words, I can just love others authentically now because I am free to choose to do so from myself, rather that because I'm supposed to because I either fear sinning against God, or because I'm supposed to in order to be a good Christian. It other words, I have true freedom of choice, without it being entangled in expectations of compliance and threats and intimidations to conform.
I came to recognize also through this, that atheism can in fact be a spiritual step forward! My atheism was a way for me to break free from the "God of Fear" that my religious experience had poisoned me with, into simply becoming authentically who I am without that. So absolutely yes, I recognize the high potential for atheism to be authentic human beings.
But that certainly does not happen automatically by one choosing atheism as "rational" over religion. I see them as still "true believers" operating at the same level of religious fundamentalists. That's not actual growth. That's just changing religions.
I do not say that the language of God is necessary. It can be important, or it can be a hindrance, depending on the history of it in someone's life. Actually, even for me, there are times thinking of God in the sense of an "other", that traditional theistic sense, causes me struggle. Too much historical baggage.
My true judge of what is valid or legitamate or authenic is the fruits that it bears in that person's life. It doesn't need to use certain language or hold certain symbols. It could be a milk bottle as your deity, if that in fact brings out in you authenticity. If it works in that way, if it bears true connection and respect of self and others and the entire universe, then do it! For God's sake, just do it!
And this is my very point. Why? Why do they simply dismiss those who claim to experience God?
My view of God is not one of a flowing white-bearded old man sitting on a cloud in heaven. I don't believe in that at all. I am an atheist to that view of God. I actively disbelieve in that as reality. However, as an atheist myself in that context, if someone claims to have experienced God that way, do I automatically dismiss them? Absolutely not. Why? Because my I know to much rationally to simply be a cynic like that.
Wrong. I very much assess your views drawing from my knowledge and critical reasoning. Part of that knowledge is knowledge of the spiritual aspects of ourselves. I'm not just going by "feelings". But that said, they are also not excluded from my reasoning mind either. And neither are they for the most hardened cynical atheists. They may like to fancy themselves as Mr. Spock, but that's is a pure myth.
No for myself, I'm much more the musician. I develop my right and left hemispheres of my brain equally, and they mutually inform and interact with each other simultaneously. I'm neither left brain dominant, nor right brain dominant. I respect and embrace each for the strengths and insights they bring to the whole. They are necessary. I seek balance, not lopsided. Intuition and reason are co-creators.
BTW, I am a musician and composer, as well as a practitioner of T'ai Chi. My goal of a true human life of balance between spirit and form. Being all Mr. Logic, is unbalanced. It leads to error. Being all transcendent does as well. Heaven, Man, Earth is the goal of the truly balanced and alive human. That's T'ai Chi. It's body, mind, and spirit. Balance. Harmony.
I argue if you lack those, you can't know what is true about how things truly are. We have to find a balance between these aspects of ourselves, not cut off our nose to spite our face.
But that's the thing, if you don't take into account multiple perspectives and favor only a myopic view of reality, that act in itself creates and illusory reality.
Indeed. They also equally need spiritual intelligence in order to be truly wise. Smart and wise are different things.
I think the only one who questions whether I use reasoning as much as I do is only you. I've been saying all along I am a critical thinker, when time and again you seem to assume I am not because I speak of the transcendent, the spiritual, the transrational, and the like. You assume I am doing what you are, which is one over the other. Reason dominance, over experience dominance.
What you don't see is that I am equally, if not even more rational than you are, because you assume if I were I wouldn't be talking favorably of the spiritual, aspects as at least important as the rational were. They are now talking about things like Atheism 2.0, which is where the spiritual is allowed a bit of of softer but highly guarded allowance in the life of an Atheist. Hell, that's where I was a long time ago. I'm probably at Atheism 8.0, right now
. Which for all intents and purposes transcends atheism and theism both, but includes them in its view of self and reality.I can speak as an atheist as much as I can a theist. But I simply see both as true but partial views of a greater reality which transcends, but can include both. Neither are true, and both are true. I see it much more as rational music. It is both reason and spirit, creating something that transcends both.
... I intend to pick up where I left off, but I'm going to be out of town for a couple days, but I wished to start my response before I left. I really do enjoy our discussions. I respect your mind.
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What you are not understanding here is that reason and logic within the context of a certain system of thought may be perfectly rational. They may follow all the rules of logic and evidence and come to sound conclusions, and be absolutely wrong in the end. Why? Because of context.
I recall this debate against Galileo's views using the rules of logic. And if you look at his detractor's arguments, they were all rational and logical, but only within the system of thought he had available to him. But once you added the higher perspective that Galileo had over him, that of being able to see planets through a telescope, those arguments fell apart! In other words, Galileo out-contextualized him!
This is what is meant by logic is the art of going wrong with confidence. If someone has data you don't understand, or that goes outside the system of reality you contextual truth from fiction within, your rationality hits a wall and goes wrong. You may be 100% logical, yet completely wrong.
No, it's a fact. and it is not selfish. It's just the very thing I said. The world seen the eyes of a bird, is not the same world seen through the eyes of a fish. Think the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Each used reason to its fullest, and each were right within their limited perspectives. But none had the larger perspective, and as such, were wrong.
I'm all for honing reasoning skills. That is exactly what my aim is here. Pointing out hidden assumptions that dull the edge of that blade of reason.
Not easily. Are you familiar with the Stages of Moral development? Black and white answers are simple and functional, but they don't comport with reality seen through larger and wider perspectives. One of the questions on that test is, "Is it wrong for a man to steal drugs that will save his child's life if he doesn't have the money to pay for them".
Black and white thinkers will say things like, yes stealing is wrong. Or at a stage early to that would see that just taking what you want is fine as long as you don't get caught. But a more highly development stage of morality wrestles with the question and sees morality as anything but black and white.
So moral dilemmas are actually a sign of higher moral development. Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development
Someone asked me recently, "Do you believe evolution is true, or that God created everything?" My answer to her was simply, Yes. That stopped her in her tracks. She thought I misunderstood the question, so she repeated it. I again answer the same. "Yes. I believe both are true."
But specifically here, "Creationism" which is not theology but simply a pseudoscience, (bad science and bad theology), is not true in the scientific sense. It pretends to be science, but fails the measure of science. It also pretends to be religious, but fails that as well. It's just confused faith.
I always become a little annoyed that while I'm talking about subtle and nuanced shades to understanding truth and reality, invariably the other tries to come back to black and white examples as somehow suggesting that since there are clearly right and wrong examples, that therefore all of reality can somehow magically be reduced down to these.
While science can predict with high precision exactly where a moon of Jupiter will be 10,000 years from now, good luck with them predicting where my dog with be 10 minutes from now!
Stable systems are not a measure of the rest of reality where we actually live in a world of much more chaos than that.But I don't see reason and rationality as what will persuade others as much as some atheists believe. I think it is something else than needs to be developed. Reason doesn't lead the way. Unless the human will is motivated, reason only serves its current ends.
I've asked this question of fellow atheists many times and have yet to see many get it yet. I ask what was it that led you to change your views from religion to atheism? They seem to always answer, "Reason and evidence showed me those views were wrong". I then ask them, "You saw that evidence before, and you were capable of reason before too, but you didn't act on either at that time. What is it that actually changed that made you open and willing to use those then whereas previously you hadn't?"
That's my point. Reason and logic is only a tool of the mind to justify it's choices, or a tool to help it find its way to a new destination that something at a deeper level was opened and willing to make that change occured. It starts in the heart, not in the head in other words. But this is something those who have not developed heart knowledge can see.
They wrongly assume is was reason and logic that saved them, when in fact is was something before and beyond those. Willingness is a spiritual and emotional matter, not a matter of logic and reason.
A favorite saying of mine captures this to a T. "A man convinced against his will, remains of same opinion still".
I would argue it certainly has. Just as all religions have. But if you expect religion alone to be the savior of us all, that is as mistaken a view as believing science and reason will be. It the exact same error, looking outside ourselves for an external agent to do it for us. "Just tell me what is true, and I'll believe it". Will you? Will anyone?
Alight, now I really am going to be out for a few days. I'll respond the other post when I return.
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Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
Many of them are true believers in that nonsense. The White Supremacists I've known are proud "Aryans" who worship what they sees as whitness and their Protestant religion, and these (typically) men seem to be living authentically in accordance to their beliefs. They may be misguided, wrong, and destructive, but they aren't thiughtlessly drifting with the flow of mainstream society.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
This assumes they were all presented with that evidence and it was presented in a non-biased way. Yes, reason and logic are what both welded me tl Christianity amd what would separate me from it amd have me becoming a don't know/don't carist. Yes, evolution was presented to me before and after. Bit when you're educated in a strict bubble that throws away literature just for being of a different denomination you aren't being presented with the same evidence and what you get is heavily biased. But when presented with evidence in history that is less biased and science without an agenda then, yes, it is logic and reason is what assured me it's not real and is what let me feel safe leaving it and not look back or doubt myself once I dropped Christianity (many exs are tormented with fears of Hell after they leave).
And I know I'm not the only one who's went through this.
Ostronomos
Well-Known Member
BUT LOOK AT THIS:
GOD IS REAL BECAUSE HE WAS PROVEN USING LOGIC. AND IT WAS SHOWN THAT LOGIC MIGHT BE REALITY.
IT WAS ALSO DEMOSTRATED THAT REALITY IS THE SET OF ALL THINGS THAT EXIST. THEREFORE QUANTUM WAVEFUNCTIONS HINT AT A REALITY FROM BEYOND WHICH THEY ENTER INTO THIS ONE FROM THE ASTRAL REALM.
AGAIN, IT IS ATHEISM AND SOMETIMES THEISM THAT MAKES WILD CLAIMS AND APPEALS TO THE IMAGINARY, NOT THE HARD LOGIC AND EMPIRICISM OF METAPHYSICS (A WELL-ESTABLISHED PHILOSOPHICAL BRANCH THAT LENDS CREDENCE TO 21ST CENTURY SCIENCE).
ONE THING ABOUT GOD IS HE IS NOT UPTIGHT. HE LIKES OUR MUSIC AND EVEN PLAYS SPECIFICALLY SELECTED SONGS APPROPRIATE FOR THE SITUATION WHEN THE OBSERVER OCCASIONALLY ENTERS A HIGHER DIMENSION. FOR EXAMPLE, LET US SAY YOU WERE IN A HOMELESS SHELTER LEANING AGAINST A WALL BECAUSE YOU HAD A BROKEN BONE YET YOU ENTERED "THAT HIGHER DIMENSION". GOD MIGHT PLAY ON A TELEVISION NEARBY ALICIA KEYS' "NO ONE NO ONE NO ONNNNNE, CAN GET IN THE WAY OF WHAT I FEEL FOR YOU... EVERYTHING'S GONNA BE ALRIIIIGHT"... AS A WAY OF COMFORTING YOU AND LETTING YOU KNOW THAT HE WILL AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN THERE (EXCEPT NOW YOU'RE INTERACTING WITH HIM).
Dang, if only you had bolded this I would have been convinced!!!!
This is the third time you posted this claim. Still no evidence. No argument. No explanation. No logic. Just religious nonsense. You were asked for evidence twice. You were asked for an explanation twice. You didn’t respect the request and just repeat yourself as if propaganda works on critical thinkers. Why can’t you understand how discourse works?
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
But it is in all caps!! Doesn't that mean that it is true?
More nonsense. None of this is using accepted facts. I'm sure you like believing all this for personal reasons, but it doesn't work logically for critical thinkers.
That rules you out as God.
Yeah. I read this and my first impression is that it's a joke. What song does God play for a child dying of cancer because that is how he created her? God cares so much about discomfort so plays songs for us, but doesn't bother to eliminate cancer as a reality. It's either a cruel or incompetent God. I prefer not having the head noise of pondering a God that doesn't make sense with reality.
So, are you finished with your case for God?
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Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
Reminds me, Jane Goodall believes chimps have a sense of spirituality.