Affirming the Nonexistence of God

I've got to say that I'm impressed with this discussion. Not swayed one whit by anything said here, but impressed. Far too many people confuse a faith with the followers. One of the things I've had problems with over the years with a number of atheists I've know has been that the mere existence of various faiths is anathema to them. They are as fervent in their non-belief as the most devout of the faiths they decry.

Here at least, the level of discourse has been intelligent and non-offensive. I like it.

But I have nothing to add.

 

I'm curious how you square this:

with this:

Considering that a majority of the world's population believes not only in a god, but one that takes explicit interest in human affairs, surely the latter statement isn't reflective of equal respect for their differing perspective. Do you really believe that no theological position is worthy of disdain? Even when you consider the consequences of following through on that position, such as innocents being burned alive as witches?

 

It would seem to me then, that you're perfectly fine with hammering on a person's faith when that faith is actually causing problems in the world. Is that a fair assessment? It seems like the last part of your previous post has this hint of a kind relativist imperialism to it, but that could just be me unfairly impugning it with my hackles already being raised (at something else) today.

 

My opinion is that our higher thinking is still part of our evolutionary inheritance. Thinking, emotion, empathy, reason: they all evolved to help us survive and to provide a framework for cooperation in a group. This doesnt mean that our actions are preprogrammed or that free will does not exist. It is not intended to give everyone a free pass on misdeeds; it just is.

Not just fear: sexual desire.

You said that the imperitaves we once needed to survive don't fit well into the societies that we have created. I think that you're right. We developed when we needed to balance our individual interests and values (a complicated word) against those of just a few groups - pairs of lovers, our family, our tribe of fewer than 100 people and perhaps a few others. Now we have our lovers, our families, our friends, our work colleagues, our governments, our social clubs, our clubs related to intellectual interests... not to mention ourselves... its a lot to juggle.

 

in xtianity, you've got maybe three main ways to address this existence of god matter. this is different from belief (pascal again)....anyway, onward into the muck of plot summaries:

(a) the god character is presupposed in any proof because but nothing about the god character can be demonstrated from within the proofs that pressuppose the god character not because there's anything super-awesome about the god character but because that's the relation of proofs to the axioms that are presupposed by proofs.

If you're metaphysically inclined and so are interested in the notion of proof in general and axioms in general, within this rule set that is arbitrary outside it's own cultural framework which there's no chance of even stipulating from inside a metaphysical game that excludes it (because we're talking about Metaphysics, so universals and not particulars, like what actual human beings do), you land with the hoary old ontological proof.

the ontological proof is a restatement of the problem of demonstrating axioms from inside the proof that presupposes them.

so in the most logical version of xtianity you run into the problem that logical systems are not and cannot be closed and this idea of a demonstration, past a certain point, is demonstrated to be not demonstrable.
problem problem but one not only for these goofy metaphysical proofs but for any logical system. next stop gödel, i guess.

OR:

(b) you can take a nominalist approach, which supposes that if there is an infinite god we can't imagine what that would mean because of our finite understanding. we wouldn't know what infinite means and the word god would not refer to anything beyond the implications that come along with the name god which refers to some empty or imaginary space in our conceptual framework and not necessarily to anything beyond that. although it could refer to something outside the imaginary space we create within a conceptual framework using the name god and modifying it with the adjective infinite. but we can't know that. and, on it's own grounds, we never will.

so either

(1) thinking about words and other symbols, their natures and limits (like as forms, you know?) is a worthwhile pursuit because, while you can't know anything that lay beyond them, you can know something of the extent of their capacities to formalize and so at least know something, even if that something is about words

(2) believe as if none of that obtains (welcome to pascal's world)

(3) don't believe not because you know anything in particular beyond maybe (1) but rather because the material evidence concerning the consequences of belief---actually existing believers---tend to suck so much. this is a separation of belief from knowing of course, which allows you to think about belief as a matter of community formation and social reproduction.

all without necessarily having to claim to know anything beyond the initial hypothesis---if the name god refers to anything, and that anything is modified as "infinite" which is the inverse of "finite" which our understanding ends up being by default (god is the Big Not Us) then we can't know anything of it, not even whether our starting position is true or not.

OR you can:
(3) go the martin luther route of saying yes yes all that may be true or not depending but it doesn't matter because there's grace or inspiration or whatever and I FEEL IT MAN and that becomes the center of the relationship with whatever these words refer to , that I FEEL IT MAN. which is, of course, irrational. irrational can be batshit crazy or it can be just not amenable to proof. I FEEL IT MAN can neither be demonstrated or falsified.

A. I FEEL IT MAN.
B. no you don't.

if beverages are involved a donnybrook could ensue.

but i digress.

 

I gotta agree with Patton Oswalt on this one:

"I'm gonna have rape for dinner"

 

You look at Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi, and so on men who truly lived by their beliefs, never once did they say in public "God told me to do this, or God told me we should do that, or God wants me to rule the lands under his auspices and what is written in this great book of his." Nor did they ever turn someone away because of a different faith.

I think God is a closet Obama supporter.

 

I don't see the ambiguity in my previous post that led you to believe that I'm accusing you of being too readily judgemental about groups of people based on a small sample of their membership, does that mean I can now muse about whether or not you're trolling?

I'm just trying to understand what exactly it is you're on about. Were I to write a cliff notes version of your posts, at this point it would read "It is not ok to pester a person about their faith, except when it is ok." Which while not an unreasonable position, I don't find it to be particularly enlightening. So I asked a simple question about it, and you make the effort to say both 'no' and 'yes', not exactly adding clarity. Which I guess leaves me with giving up or asking again, but perhaps in a different way.

When a person's faith is causing them to act like a world-class asshole is it acceptable to call them down on it or not?

 

By "faith" I'm assuming you mean one's religious beliefs.

An individual's religious beliefs are not a problem unless that individual holds a position of power and has the means to force others to live by moral and legal dictates not of their own choosing.

or

If the religion is so widespread and it's believers so fervent as to pose a significant threat to non-believers by tirelessly seeking out ways to inflict their indoctrinated social and moral ideals on others.

I accept and tolerate religious faith at the individual level. It's the Borg mentality and it's need for conquest and integration into the whole, that I find so disturbing. I'm specifically referring to Fundamentalist Christianity and Fundamentalist Islam with this comment.

 

Two more articles about the Reason Rally from sources that don't have an ideological bias hostile to the mere existence of atheists, let alone any rally they might hold:
Reason Rally: 30k godless undeterred by rain - National atheism | Examiner.com
‘Godless’ rally for recognition - The Washington Post

I was there and to say that it was just a big religious hate-fest is not accurate. To be fair, there was some hating going on, but the point was not that hating religion is somehow a worthwhile goal all by itself. Honestly, 'the point' of the rally as stated positively by the many speakers was more than a bit inchoate, much like the 'movement' itself. If I were to try to summarise the day I would say it was more about recognition that religious world views needlessly cause a lot of misery and secularists are not going to be quiet about it. Also, just as importantly, that there are enough of us that we needn't worry about being bullied into keeping our mouths shut because we also have numbers.

 

It seems to me that a lot of atheists make it a religion in itself. Being evangelists for no god.

Unless religious nuts threaten me or innocent people with more than threat of indoctrination, I'm not going to stress about them. Let people believe what they like unless it spills on to me.