you ever have the feeling that maybe there is a god but he just has a really ****ed up sense of humor and isn't too concerned about random suffering etc cause it's just part of the system?
'have a feeling' is a little bit vague- it makes this pretty simple for genuine atheists. Their thoughts on this would likely be twofold:
1- Yes, they have almost certainly considered it but, as there is no discernible evidence for such a thing, there's no reason to think such a being exists so they stop thinking about it
2- If such a being does exist, there's nothing to be done about it so it does not materially affect how to behave.
Of course, 'atheist' is a bit vague here as well- if you are including, for example, Buddhists, then they may be atheists but they still have a belief system that pretty much makes the concept here irrelevant anyway.
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The bottom line is, genuine atheism is fundamentally about God not existing either because it is not reasonable to believe in the existence of something that there is no evidence for or, if you have stronger views, the idea that the evidence available actively disproves the existence of a God or gods. It's not actually based around whether they think a theoretical God is a jerk or not; it's just that the more combative atheists like to take believers to task on that sort of thing- sometimes just to be jerks themselves, sometimes because it is part of a case they are making that there is no inherent moral superiority in religion.
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Last edited by Ushgarak on Nov 24th, 2014 at 09:46 AM
Failed by standards we invoke on him.
By his standards he may be doing just fine.
Even calling God a he is just us anthropomorphizing something we cant understand.
Same goes for proof. What makes us think we rate getting anything proven to us?
Atheists suffer from the same exact hubris as believers. Thinking that God owes us anything.
i understand it was sort of a vague question, i was tired and a bit too lazy to explain the reasoning that went into it. basically i just had one of those days where i knew i needed to do well at work to preserve my job and yet the most random coincidences kept happening to make my day more difficult than it had to be again and again. and i am the type to take these sort of things as just that - coincidence. it was just the way they kept happening so consistently and relentlessly that i started to find it funny cause i was thinking if there was a god who really controls every event then he was trolling me for fun. i don't necessarily hold it against him if that were true cause i think if i was god i would be the type to do the same shit to people.
then i was thinking about the argument from evil/suffering and how many would say this sort of thing actually disproves a benevolent god etc. but then i was thinking that really we need pain and suffering as a mechanism to help us navigate this existence and how even if it were possible to create a painless world it would sort of render everything kind of meaningless to me. so really i couldn't even hold that against god either cause i would think instead of being benevolent he's just sort of amoral which is how i would expect him to be anyway. sort of how if you're a scientist who is breeding a culture in a petri dish or even just some kid with an ant farm you're not really going to be all that concerned/sympathetic with how the bacteria or ants feel.
not that any of this is enough to convince me to have faith in a god since i know logically it still amounts to nothing. it's just the sort of hypothetical thing i get to thinking about when i am bored.
that's true, it was just amazing me how consistent it was cause it usually doesn't happen to me like that. plus i was bored and really attentive towards it too. but if every day was like that it might actually give me pause.
I am not quite a non-believer in the traditional sense nor am I a believer in the traditional sense. I am a Gnostic Christian and esoteric ecumenist. There is no woo in my belief system so that would put me closer to the non-believer camp.
Regardless, I just wanted you to evaluate this following from a non-believer POV and like me, blame nature and evolution for evil. Please remember as you read that I wrote it to debate believers and not really non-believers. You non-believers might actually get it more than believers.
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Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
And if you cannot, why would God punish you?
Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by putting forward their free will argument and placing all the blame on mankind.
That usually sounds like ----God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy. Such statements simply avoid God's culpability as the author and creator of human nature.
Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose "A" or "B" (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and "free will" means nothing as a response to this problem.
If all do evil/sin by nature then, the evil/sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not do evil/sin. Can we then help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
Having said the above for the God that I do not believe in, I am a Gnostic Christian naturalist, let me tell you that evil and sin is all human generated and in this sense, I agree with Christians, but for completely different reasons. Evil is mankind’s responsibility and not some imaginary God’s. Free will is something that can only be taken. Free will cannot be given not even by a God unless it has been forcibly withheld.
Much has been written to explain evil and sin but I see as a natural part of evolution.
Consider.
First, let us eliminate what some see as evil. Natural disasters. These are unthinking occurrences and are neither good nor evil. There is no intent to do evil even as victims are created. Without intent to do evil, no act should be called evil.
In secular courts, this is called mens rea. Latin for an evil mind or intent and without it, the court will not find someone guilty even if they know that they are the perpetrator of the act.
Evil then is only human to human when they know they are doing evil and intend harm.
As evolving creatures, all we ever do, and ever can do, is compete or cooperate.
Cooperation we would see as good as there are no victims created. Competition would be seen as evil as it creates a victim. We all are either cooperating, doing good, or competing, doing evil, at all times.
Without us doing some of both, we would likely go extinct.
This, to me, explains why there is evil in the world quite well.
Be you a believer in nature, evolution or God, you should see that what Christians see as something to blame, evil, we should see that what we have, competition, deserves a huge thanks for being available to us. Wherever it came from, God or nature, without evolution we would go extinct. We must do good and evil.
There is no conflict between nature and God on this issue. This is how things are and should be. We all must do what some will think is evil as we compete and create losers to this competition.
If theistic evolution is true, then the myth of Eden should be read as a myth and there is not really any original sin.
Doing evil then is actually forced on us by evolution and the need to survive. Our default position is to cooperate or to do good. I offer this clip as proof of this. You will note that we default to good as it is better for survival.
Standards set by the bible that basically establishes all belief we have in him?
Sounds like double-standards then.
His standards?
Once again then that isn't fair...we're expected to worship & have faith but not exactly know by what standards we're being judged by?
Yet he's too omnipresent for us humans to grasp...thus we're meant to fail, no matter what.
So we rate nothing to "Him" that we can ask for proof?
Why does a He need naive sheep to worship him?
Who says he needs anything from us?
Or owes us anything?
My point was that, believers and atheists alike both think in terms of us mattering enough to rate an explanation. Hence why i said hubris.
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I don't think that's accurate. It may seem that way because discussions of Religion cycle around the ones we have, as such thought experiments of atheists often extend the God that we are presented with in Christian mythology. So the hubris is not their own, but just taking the story presented at face value to perform deductions on.
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Nov 24th, 2014 12:32 AM
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