The Concept of Being "an atheist to every god but your own"

[LuisDantas]

I don't understand why some polytheist can't see the logic in it, though. Many monotheist can't see the logic in polytheism so I guess it's a tie, I suppose.

If I had to guess, I would venture to say that many polytheists associate their deities to inspiration and form, but not agency, and there monotheism looks pointless and weird by their perspective.

Monotheism may be formally differentiated from polytheism by a simple numerical distinction, but it is really significantly different in nature and goals from it.

The comparison does not make monotheism any favors, far as I can tell. I would even say that proposing monotheism misses the point of the idea of deity entirely.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

...Those are two extremely different positions, and would contradict each other, necessarily. Your theory doesn't even make sense

Not to you, apparently. It's really quite simple if you understand basic epistemology.

All 'theisms' are epistemologically equal, as they are all matters of faith, so to believe in one but not all the others is necessarily inconsistent.

 

[Desert Snake]

Not to you, apparently. It's really quite simple if you understand basic epistemology.

All 'theisms' are epistemologically equal, as they are all matters of faith, so to believe in one but not all the others is necessarily inconsistent.

What a useless discussion/debate form

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

What a useless discussion/debate form

A debate form? Do I need to sign it?

I think you meant to type 'forum', which would also be incorrect as the forum is either the section we are posting in or, more colloquially, the entirety of religious forums(notice the plural).

This is actually a 'thread'.

As for your rejoinders to me, I would agree with your assessment, language bungles aside

 

[Desert Snake]

A debate form? Do I need to sign it?

I think you meant to type 'forum', which would also be incorrect as the forum is either the section we are posting in or, more colloquially, the entirety of religious forums(notice the plural).

This is actually a 'thread'.

As for your rejoinders to me, I would agree with your assessment, language bungles aside

No, 'form'; context that would equate adherence to every deity idea as the same thing as non-adherence to any deity idea,,
call it whatever you want..

 

[Adramelek]

I'm not sure if you have heard this or not, but I often have heard people say that theism does not work because you accept your own god, but not others. First of all, this ignores basically everything but monotheism. I believe many gods exist, I'm not just making an exception for my personal favorite. I also don't think accepting the existence of god X means you accept every claim about it is true.

But I also think it's an interesting question, especially in monotheism. Why one god and not many?

To me gods are like egregores, symbolic divine principles or Forms created by the human mind and brought into meaningful existence by force of will through focused ritual workings.

 

[Gharib]

I'm not sure if you have heard this or not, but I often have heard people say that theism does not work because you accept your own god, but not others. First of all, this ignores basically everything but monotheism. I believe many gods exist, I'm not just making an exception for my personal favorite. I also don't think accepting the existence of god X means you accept every claim about it is true.

But I also think it's an interesting question, especially in monotheism. Why one god and not many?

I believe there is a misunderstanding here. As a Muslim I believe that there is one God who is best portrayed by Islam, other faiths are right in their claim that there is a God, however their portrayal of that one God is incorrect.

 

[Kapalika]

I think a lot of people don't understand that the original context that this was said in was as a rebuttal by Richard Dawkins towards a Christian. The argument is that if one thinks that faith is proof, then all gods must exist, not only the one they personally believe in. This statement is supposed to make the person hearing it consider that if they think that the idea of other gods or religion is rubbish, than maybe theirs is too since it likewise is based solely on faith.

Eh, just another testimony to how useless the terms "theist" and "atheist" are, IMHO.

Essentially, what one might consider a god, another might not. but both might be describing something totally real. Really the question should be "are you a supernaturalist?" It then comes down to specific claims about phenomena and what is and isn't a rational belief about that.

...Those are two extremely different positions, and would contradict each other, necessarily. Your theory doesn't even make sense

What a useless discussion/debate form

HIs arguments on the forum here makes sense in the context of the original quote by Richard Dawkins in the particular fashion that Dawkins used them.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

No, 'form'; context that would equate adherence to every deity idea as the same thing as non-adherence to any deity idea,,
call it whatever you want..

Oh, my bad..you actually did mean to say that. A debate form would indicate how I am doing it rather than the message, so ya. What?
Anyway,

"Adherence to every deity idea as the same thing as non adherence to any deity idea"

You seem lost. Who said that, or anything like it, or anything that implies anything like it? Certainly not me. What thread are you reading? You are so far from my point you couldn't find it on a map. Seriously.

 

[Jumi]

I believe there is a misunderstanding here. As a Muslim I believe that there is one God who is best portrayed by Islam, other faiths are right in their claim that there is a God, however their portrayal of that one God is incorrect.

I think the view in the OP comes from the Bible. When Christianity arrived, the previous gods were called false gods.

 

[ukok102nak]

~;> if one thinks that faith is proof, then all gods must exist, not only the one they personally believe in.
what a wrong mistake as that joker brethren of ours always says
in this kind of situation
faith unto god or gods is something that cannot be prove by means of any instrumental material things
because to have faith is someone must experience it first by means of any human senses

could those people who are mentally retarded can have faith
for faith is someting to hold on until as long as anyone could handle it
somehow some are not understanding
the very foundation of faith
with god or without god

like that joker brethren of ours who is a former agnostic thinks before that he could hang on unto his faith that there is no god coz he always says
no god no mercy no faith nothing at all
but he knows mercy then he knows god for god is define as mercy
so who ever thinks that god is with them but not showing any mercy
then god or gods is not existing on them
and we really hate
how those terrorist acts without mercy
so if we are wrong then kindly correct us
and its all our pleasure
to share this little information that we have

as we love science we also have a
faith on it
thats why we learn not to assume too much for
not even the thing that we called matter which is compose of solid liquid and gas
cannot give any proof that it is came from nothing as in nothing literally
without form nor shape and color
and even such a withou a thing that is known as movement
While the premises stand firm, it is impossible to shake the conclusion.

can something be existing without the tendency of not moving at all at any time nor anywhere
literally

same as thr beginning of this thing that we numeros or numbers
that not even a single one would not exist
if it has no origin as what we call
the number zero or this 0
as we all can see it and write it
literally again

as they say and somehow weve heard
so we tell this thing not to bring confusion
but to bring hope faith and love
as it is written
:read: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2004/hendrikshontrans.shtml)
The Dark Secret of Hendrik Schön - transcript
NARRATOR (JACK FORTUNE): This is the story of the man behind the most remarkable discovery. His breakthrough seemed so revolutionary it could have created an extraordinary new world. A world where disease could be destroyed before the first symptoms appear. Where nothing would be beyond the boundaries of human knowledge. But others thought it could also be a world where the darkest evil could be unleashed. Where microscopic machines would link up to destroy us all.

IAN PEARSON (Futurist, British Telecom): It could solve all of our technology problems and give us a technia-utopia or it could wipe us out and cause complete extinction. We really have to think very carefully before we go down that sort of a road.

NARRATOR: This amazing world could have been brought a step closer by the brilliant mind of Jan Hendrik Schön.

Prof DAVID MULLER (Former colleague of Schön’s): What Hendrik had reported was just so amazing that we used to joke at lunch that either he’s going to Stockholm to pick up that Nobel Prize or he’s going to jail.

NARRATOR: Tonight Horizon tells the astonishing saga or Jan Hendrik Schön and his discovery that could have changed everything.

Our day of reckoning has come and gone. Most of life has literally been devoured by something called nanotechnology. Tiny machines that were designed to save the human race. But instead, they turned on us. Human life has been wiped out by the nanobot.

DR JOHN ALEXANDER (Adviser to US Special Operations): The size of nanobots are hard for most people to imagine because we’re talking about instruments that are designed literally atom by atom and molecule by molecule so they’re below what you can see. That if you can think of a speck of dust that would be a very large nanobot.

NARRATOR: Nanobots were created to be like life. To be able to reproduce to serve our needs.

RAY KURZWEIL (Kurzweil Technologies): The intelligence of nanotechnology will not be in one nanorobot or nanobot. It will be a collective intelligence of millions, actually trillions of nanobots working together and pooling their thinking resources.

NARRATOR: But then the machines began to change, and as they changed we found that we could not control them. They began to take on a life of their own.

RAY KURZWEIL: And if that gets out of control we would have essentially a non-biological cancer that could just eat up you know the natural world, that’s the so-called grey goo problems.

NARRATOR: This creeping grey goo stripped bare all life, devouring it to create more nanobots. In this future world your only defence would be to pray that grey goo will not arrive at your door. So great is this fear of the grey goo that eminent figures around the world such as Prince Charles have raised concerns about it. The British Government have asked the royal society to investigate nanotechnology. And while to most it may seem that this world of grey goo is nothing more than science fiction it all seemed to take a step closer thanks to a discovery by a brilliant young physicists. His name was Jan Hendrik Schön. Hendrik Schön was one of the greatest minds the world of physics had seen for years.

Prof LYDIA SOHN (University of California at Berkley): Was he like David Beckham and soccer? Yes. Was he like um some major rock star? Yes. He could actually go by his first name, Hendrik, and we would all know who he was.

NARRATOR: By the tender age of thirty-one Hendrik had already made breakthroughs in the world of lasers and superconductors.

Prof PAUL McEUEN (Cornell University): The amazing thing about Hendrik was that everything he touched seemed to work.

Prof JEREMY BAUMBERG (University of Southampton): It blew everybody away.

Prof DAVID MULLER: We thought we were pretty good and, and we just couldn’t touch this guy, he was coming up with a brainstorm every few weeks.

NARRATOR: He seemed to be showing many with vastly more experience than him how to do science.

Prof PAUL McEUEN: We all have ideas about experiments and unfortunately they never work out as planned but in his case they always seemed to work out just as planned.

Prof JEREMY BAUMBERG: What was amazing about Schön is he got them all to work. You know five or ten experiments, twenty experiments, all of them incredibly difficult in different areas, and they all worked.

NARRATOR: And his breakthroughs were reflected by a prolific rate in publishing. At one point he was producing a paper every eight days. He barely seemed to pause for breath.

Prof JEREMY BAUMBERG: This was the new level of science that you had to match yourself against. And everybody knew they couldn’t, they couldn’t meet that. It was like competing against a god really.

we have also faith unto this kind of thing
but it doesnt mean everyone could have the same faith as we have and
it existed but not everyone knew anything about this

as not everyone who has faith in god knew their god if we may say so
but thats another story
so lets stick unto what the OP says

as that ... . :smoke: told us that its only
the inner darkness of the evil one is not moving since the birth of light in this reality and aside from that
everyone could think what else are available unto their thoughts

as if we have some faith to move us
from wanting to be alive
everyday as possible as we can
and that almost everyone here would seems to agree if we may so
but it doesnt mean
those faith could lead anyone to be alive as long as they want
for this reality is only temporal and what
eternal is . . ...
... . it is eternal indeed


:ty:



godbless
unto all always

 

[LuisDantas]

I think a lot of people don't understand that the original context that this was said in was as a rebuttal by Richard Dawkins towards a Christian. The argument is that if one thinks that faith is proof, then all gods must exist, not only the one they personally believe in. This statement is supposed to make the person hearing it consider that if they think that the idea of other gods or religion is rubbish, than maybe theirs is too since it likewise is based solely on faith.

Quite right.
It may go back to a scene in the original "Cosmos" where Carl Sagan discusses the reasons to choose between Thunder Gods, as well.

 

[Kapalika]

~;> if one thinks that faith is proof, then all gods must exist, not only the one they personally believe in.
what a wrong mistake as that joker brethren of ours always says
in this kind of situation
faith unto god or gods is something that cannot be prove by means of any instrumental material things
because to have faith is someone must experience it first by means of any human senses

could those people who are mentally retarded can have faith
for faith is someting to hold on until as long as anyone could handle it
somehow some are not understanding
the very foundation of faith
with god or without god

like that joker brethren of ours who is a former agnostic thinks before that he could hang on unto his faith that there is no god coz he always says
no god no mercy no faith nothing at all
but he knows mercy then he knows god for god is define as mercy
so who ever thinks that god is with them but not showing any mercy
then god or gods is not existing on them
and we really hate
how those terrorist acts without mercy
so if we are wrong then kindly correct us
and its all our pleasure
to share this little information that we have

as we love science we also have a
faith on it
thats why we learn not to assume too much for
not even the thing that we called matter which is compose of solid liquid and gas
cannot give any proof that it is came from nothing as in nothing literally
without form nor shape and color
and even such a withou a thing that is known as movement
While the premises stand firm, it is impossible to shake the conclusion.

can something be existing without the tendency of not moving at all at any time nor anywhere
literally

same as thr beginning of this thing that we numeros or numbers
that not even a single one would not exist
if it has no origin as what we call
the number zero or this 0
as we all can see it and write it
literally again

as they say and somehow weve heard
so we tell this thing not to bring confusion
but to bring hope faith and love
as it is written
:read: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2004/hendrikshontrans.shtml)
The Dark Secret of Hendrik Schön - transcript
NARRATOR (JACK FORTUNE): This is the story of the man behind the most remarkable discovery. His breakthrough seemed so revolutionary it could have created an extraordinary new world. A world where disease could be destroyed before the first symptoms appear. Where nothing would be beyond the boundaries of human knowledge. But others thought it could also be a world where the darkest evil could be unleashed. Where microscopic machines would link up to destroy us all.

IAN PEARSON (Futurist, British Telecom): It could solve all of our technology problems and give us a technia-utopia or it could wipe us out and cause complete extinction. We really have to think very carefully before we go down that sort of a road.

NARRATOR: This amazing world could have been brought a step closer by the brilliant mind of Jan Hendrik Schön.

Prof DAVID MULLER (Former colleague of Schön’s): What Hendrik had reported was just so amazing that we used to joke at lunch that either he’s going to Stockholm to pick up that Nobel Prize or he’s going to jail.

NARRATOR: Tonight Horizon tells the astonishing saga or Jan Hendrik Schön and his discovery that could have changed everything.

Our day of reckoning has come and gone. Most of life has literally been devoured by something called nanotechnology. Tiny machines that were designed to save the human race. But instead, they turned on us. Human life has been wiped out by the nanobot.

DR JOHN ALEXANDER (Adviser to US Special Operations): The size of nanobots are hard for most people to imagine because we’re talking about instruments that are designed literally atom by atom and molecule by molecule so they’re below what you can see. That if you can think of a speck of dust that would be a very large nanobot.

NARRATOR: Nanobots were created to be like life. To be able to reproduce to serve our needs.

RAY KURZWEIL (Kurzweil Technologies): The intelligence of nanotechnology will not be in one nanorobot or nanobot. It will be a collective intelligence of millions, actually trillions of nanobots working together and pooling their thinking resources.

NARRATOR: But then the machines began to change, and as they changed we found that we could not control them. They began to take on a life of their own.

RAY KURZWEIL: And if that gets out of control we would have essentially a non-biological cancer that could just eat up you know the natural world, that’s the so-called grey goo problems.

NARRATOR: This creeping grey goo stripped bare all life, devouring it to create more nanobots. In this future world your only defence would be to pray that grey goo will not arrive at your door. So great is this fear of the grey goo that eminent figures around the world such as Prince Charles have raised concerns about it. The British Government have asked the royal society to investigate nanotechnology. And while to most it may seem that this world of grey goo is nothing more than science fiction it all seemed to take a step closer thanks to a discovery by a brilliant young physicists. His name was Jan Hendrik Schön. Hendrik Schön was one of the greatest minds the world of physics had seen for years.

Prof LYDIA SOHN (University of California at Berkley): Was he like David Beckham and soccer? Yes. Was he like um some major rock star? Yes. He could actually go by his first name, Hendrik, and we would all know who he was.

NARRATOR: By the tender age of thirty-one Hendrik had already made breakthroughs in the world of lasers and superconductors.

Prof PAUL McEUEN (Cornell University): The amazing thing about Hendrik was that everything he touched seemed to work.

Prof JEREMY BAUMBERG (University of Southampton): It blew everybody away.

Prof DAVID MULLER: We thought we were pretty good and, and we just couldn’t touch this guy, he was coming up with a brainstorm every few weeks.

NARRATOR: He seemed to be showing many with vastly more experience than him how to do science.

Prof PAUL McEUEN: We all have ideas about experiments and unfortunately they never work out as planned but in his case they always seemed to work out just as planned.

Prof JEREMY BAUMBERG: What was amazing about Schön is he got them all to work. You know five or ten experiments, twenty experiments, all of them incredibly difficult in different areas, and they all worked.

NARRATOR: And his breakthroughs were reflected by a prolific rate in publishing. At one point he was producing a paper every eight days. He barely seemed to pause for breath.

Prof JEREMY BAUMBERG: This was the new level of science that you had to match yourself against. And everybody knew they couldn’t, they couldn’t meet that. It was like competing against a god really.

we have also faith unto this kind of thing
but it doesnt mean everyone could have the same faith as we have and
it existed but not everyone knew anything about this

as not everyone who has faith in god knew their god if we may say so
but thats another story
so lets stick unto what the OP says

as that ... . :smoke: told us that its only
the inner darkness of the evil one is not moving since the birth of light in this reality and aside from that
everyone could think what else are available unto their thoughts

as if we have some faith to move us
from wanting to be alive
everyday as possible as we can
and that almost everyone here would seems to agree if we may so
but it doesnt mean
those faith could lead anyone to be alive as long as they want
for this reality is only temporal and what
eternal is . . ...
... . it is eternal indeed


:ty:



godbless
unto all always

I really, really tried to understand what you were saying, but after about 20 lines I started to feel like I was reading horribly translated lyrics of some Christian metal band from eastern Europe or something like that (Seriously on the English I've seen it in metal bands in that region they sing in the bad English too and it's awesome).

Then I skimmed the rest and it just seemed more and more incoherent. Could you actually make an understandable point in less than 2,000 words? Because your current method isn't only incomprehensible, it's extraneously long.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

The Concept of Being "an atheist to every god but your own" is sophistry.

A nice rhetorical flourish no doubt, but it is sophistry.



So he dismisses other people's gods because he has already found the 'One True God'?

It was a discussion about the quality of evidences for various gods, and the lack of clear or even non-arbitrary reasoning behind rejections of other gods, or whole pantheon, or specific attributes and qualities of a god or gods.

Roberts would argue they have no persuasive argument for why this one is a true one and others are false. That it's a personal preference that is individualistic and arbitrary, not logical. Which means for the same reason Christians say their god is the 'one true' a non-dualist pantheist could say their god is the 'one true.'

 

[ADigitalArtist]

@Mandi @Satans_Serrated_Edge @LuisDantas Just so you guys know, if you're talking about the quote specifically "I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours," the quote originates from a man named Stephen Roberts. Dawkins used (a paraphrased version of) it and some other close incarnations have risen, but I just wanted to give the real quote and who penned it.

 

[ukok102nak]

~;> by the way
as we have faith that all your words are true
we are very greatful that you notice some differences coz some words where been put in there intentionaly by some brethren of ours who were a former things of themselves
for they renew their mind and spirit within every moment of their existence in this reality

as they say
when you KNOW what the specific differences are...
you have the obligation of the informed to pass that along.


:ty:



godbless
unto all always

I really, really tried to understand what you were saying, but after about 20 lines I started to feel like I was reading horribly translated lyrics of some Christian metal band from eastern Europe or something like that (Seriously on the English I've seen it in metal bands in that region they sing in the bad English too and it's awesome).

Then I skimmed the rest and it just seemed more and more incoherent. Could you actually make an understandable point in less than 2,000 words? Because your current method isn't only incomprehensible, it's extraneously long.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

I think the view in the OP comes from the Bible. When Christianity arrived, the previous gods were called false gods.

Yes, polytheism was widely suppressed in order to gain market share for the new "product".