NationStates Jolt Archive

i don't believe in a god, but i'm not an atheist.

i was hoping this thread would have the poll: "do you believe in god" "yes/no/don't know" as that would make more sense.

also, atheism isn't a religion.

Maybe your Agnostic:
You don't know what it is that you don't believe in. :)

I don't believe in any deities because there is insufficient evidence of their existence. It's as simple as that.

What? If someone sitting next to you has a broken heart but does not let on, you cannot say anything meaningful about this reality, neither through objective nor subjective judgement. And the circumstance of broken-heartedness in the one sitting next to you does not depend on your comprehension of it.
Right. *I* cannot say anything meaningful about it, that's my point. The broken heart is a reality to him. So subjective perspectives are relevant to the comprehension of reality subjectively perceived by an individual human.

If a tree stands in the forest it remains a tree standing in the forest, no matter if someone sees it or not. Reality can be described as it is perceived by humans but it does not depend on perception.
If it's never perceived by humans, then reality is not what's described. For instance, go out in a forest, find a tree, come back and tell me about that tree --then we are talking about reality. But the tree you described above is hypothetical, a fiction.

The existence of god is not an issue of "humanity". If god exists that would be reality and if god does not exist that would also be reality, but humans just do not have ANY information on that, so this description of reality cannot be made, although churches and their worshippers try hard to.
The existence of god is totally an issue of humanity as it is only meaningful to humans, and only humans comprehend it. Only humans care.

Religion is not a matter of feelings. Feelings exist only in people's brains and they contain no information, neither about god nor about anything else: they are not substantial. But the answer of the question for the existence of gods and their characteristics requires substantial information.
Feelings are not information? Feelings are a wealth of information --they allow us to anticipate responses in other humans, they inform us of motivations and guide the way we respond to others, with sensitivity, respect, harshness or love. And the way to find god is through the heart.

"But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul." (Deuteronomy 4:29) KJV

Right. *I* cannot say anything meaningful about it, that's my point. The broken heart is a reality to him. So subjective perspectives are relevant to the comprehension of reality subjectively perceived by an individual human.


If it's never perceived by humans, then reality is not what's described. For instance, go out in a forest, find a tree, come back and tell me about that tree --then we are talking about reality. But the tree you described above is hypothetical, a fiction.


The existence of god is totally an issue of humanity as it is only meaningful to humans, and only humans comprehend it. Only humans care.


Feelings are not information? Feelings are a wealth of information --they allow us to anticipate responses in other humans, they inform us of motivations and guide the way we respond to others, with sensitivity, respect, harshness or love. And the way to find god is through the heart.

"But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul." (Deuteronomy 4:29) KJV
You would desparately see humans to be important, don't you? Reality, i.e. the existence of matter and its interactions, does in no way depend on what humans perceive of it and describe it to others. If a tree grows in the rain forest where no human has ever come to, it is just as real as if humans could see it. That is in no way hypothetical.
Your antropocentric view of the world is pure Christian arrogance and the reason for the continuous destruction of nature due to the lack of respect for it. This planet would indeed be better off without any worshippers of Yahweh.

i believe. :headbang:

There is a great spirit, but if its what i belive to be true? Probably not.
The body is filled with electricity and electricity is constant so where does it go when the body dies, and another thing who knows really what electricity is, maybe we feed our household machines with tormented souls. :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

There is a great spirit, but if its what i belive to be true? Probably not.
The body is filled with electricity and electricity is constant so where does it go when the body dies, and another thing who knows really what electricity is, maybe we feed our household machines with tormented souls. :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

*blink* Hell powers my toaster?!?

*blink* Hell powers my toaster?!?
LIMBO ;)

You would desparately see humans to be important, don't you? Reality, i.e. the existence of matter and its interactions, does in no way depend on what humans perceive of it and describe it to others. If a tree grows in the rain forest where no human has ever come to, it is just as real as if humans could see it. That is in no way hypothetical.
Your antropocentric view of the world is pure Christian arrogance and the reason for the continuous destruction of nature due to the lack of respect for it. This planet would indeed be better off without any worshippers of Yahweh.
I don't deny material reality, I simply propose a more realistic way of understanding reality as humans know it, that takes into consideration the human consciousness, and is the only way religious issues can be understood. Humans *are* necessary for this.

By the way, I am not a Christian. I respect nature, and even the deification of nature (for those whom that works, power to them).
EDIT: I quoted the Bible to back up my statement with a reference from an actual religious text.

Have you ever read Descartes? How can you say that physics or chemistry are "real" in the way you want to make it look like? We discovered the "laws" of physics, chemistry or mathematics by our senses, if we discover something by a subjective mean you cannot possibly be sure that it is "real".

That's the point Willamena wanted to make.
Actually, the point I am making is not denying that material reality is in any way real, nor that we can understand it that way, but that a human's understanding of reality must necessarily include both the objective (abstracted) and subjective (experienced) comprehensions of reality in equal measure. This is what it is to be human.

Look at it this way: To see only objective, material reality as "real" is to dehumanize reality, to remove all thoughts and feelings about that reality. You are removing the human --your self --from the picture in order to see reality. But you exist. Your thoughts about reality, your feelings about reality --they exist. So to remove yourself from the picture is to deny yourself, to deny something that exists, so you are not looking at the whole picture of reality.

Materialism is an inadequate tool to describe all of reality; it cannot tell me what a broken heart feels like, what that brilliant idea you had yesterday (and didn't voice) was. It cannot tell me which relationships you have formed with which humans, nor what the nature of your relationship with god is (which is what religion is about). It cannot even tell me what gravity is.

Athiest does sorta sounds like you are clumping all of us into a beleif group. No two non-believers believe the same things, because we dont HAVE a unified organization.

On the other hand, i guess that there really isnt a better way to go about creating lines, something the fundamentalist religious LOVE to do. The more Divisive the better.

I guess athiest probly works for me, but I am a pretty steriotypical athiest. I dont beleive in god, I dont like fundamentalists, and I love sticking my "blasphemous" beleifs right in the face of the "religious"

Why? 'Cause Im an asshole who enjoys seeing the religous conservatives flinch. That said I like seeing anyone who I think isnt being reasonable flinch.

Look at it this way: To see only objective, material reality as "real" is to dehumanize reality, to remove all thoughts and feelings about that reality. You are removing the human --your self --from the picture in order to see reality. But you exist. Your thoughts about reality, your feelings about reality --they exist. So to remove yourself from the picture is to deny yourself, to deny something that exists, so you are not looking at the whole picture of reality.
Materialism is an inadequate tool to describe all of reality; it cannot tell me what a broken heart feels like, what that brilliant idea you had yesterday (and didn't voice) was. It cannot tell me which relationships you have formed with which humans, nor what the nature of your relationship with god is (which is what religion is about). It cannot even tell me what gravity is.
dehumanize reality? Are you sane? There is no humanization in reality. And that has nothing to do with denial. What feelings or ideas you have is restricted to your own mind and has no relevance for the world in such terms as we are talking about here.
You might say that god is a reality because so many people "perceive" it, but is that really true? Would people also perceive god if the Bible didn't exist?
First of all, before one can talk about an alleged relationship with god (which after your idea of it is what religion is about) you must sort out what the other end of this relationship actually is. Christians do not even know that they are worshipping the Irano-Mesopotamian god of the abyss, instead they have a strange idea of the Israelite/Jewish version of that god and then again replace that idea with the alleged incarnate manifestation of that god. There is no consistency in Christianity at all, due to their ignoring of historic facts and a strange way of perceiving reality by adjusting everything to what they already believe.

Which candidate, according to recent polls, do gods and goddesses support?

The latest Zogby poll shows that when all gods and goddesses are polled the race is evenly divided with 46% supporting Kerry, 46% in favor of Bush, 1% leaning toward Nader (mostly Wiccan, Voodoo, and Santerian deities), and 7% undecided.

The Heavenly electorate break down further:

Kerry’s lead over Bush among goddesses is 57% to 38% in a two person race, although Bush has made significant inroads into Mayan, Aztec, and Incan goddesses.

Bush continues to lead among gods 53% to 46% in a two person race, although Kerry’s support is strong among African and Hindu gods. Bush has lost significant support among Mesopotamian and Persian male deities, who supported him overwhelmingly in 2000.

The election could hinge on the undecideds in swing regions of heaven with Japanese Shinto deities and the retired Greek and Roman pantheon playing a significant role.

I believe in God, and I believe that God believes in Claude (that's me).

dehumanize reality? Are you sane? There is no humanization in reality. And that has nothing to do with denial. What feelings or ideas you have is restricted to your own mind and has no relevance for the world in such terms as we are talking about here.
The terms we are talking about here, as you said yourself, is comprehension of reality. This requires a mind to comprehend it with. For this mind to see only the abstract objective and ignore the experiential subjective is to deny itself.

You might say that god is a reality because so many people "perceive" it, but is that really true?
Well, *I* wouldn't say that. The amount of people perceiving god has no effect on the state of its objective reality if those people are perceiving something entirely subjective, which I believe they are.

Would people also perceive god if the Bible didn't exist?
I'm sure they would. Archaeology has shown that comprehension of god predates the book, predates Judaism at least as far back as 25,000 BC.

First of all, before one can talk about an alleged relationship with god (which after your idea of it is what religion is about) you must sort out what the other end of this relationship actually is.
Right. The other end of the relationship is alternately felt as a feeling/force or conceptualized as an ideal, such as moral good, or as spirit or animating life-force, very often personified and/or anthropomophized, and abstracted, by some, into the real world. This is how god is described by the majority of people describing it, through many religions.

Christians do not even know that they are worshipping the Irano-Mesopotamian god of the abyss, instead they have a strange idea of the Israelite/Jewish version of that god and then again replace that idea with the alleged incarnate manifestation of that god. There is no consistency in Christianity at all, due to their ignoring of historic facts and a strange way of perceiving reality by adjusting everything to what they already believe.
Yahweh/Elohim had much in common with his counterparts from other cultures, but that doesn’t mean that Jews or Christians are actually worshipping a borrowed deity. Yahweh really does belong solely to the mythology of Judah, as their tribal god, and Elohim to Israel, just as Tammuz belongs to Babylon, Dumuzi to Sumeria, and Baal to Canaan.

Concepts of god evolve as human consciousness evolves, and advancements in man’s defining the physical world play some part in that, as they affect consciousness too. The philosophy of materialism is a good example. If one’s society buys into that, and that eventually means everyone buys into that even if it takes a few generations, then eventually god *must* be abstracted into some physical form in order to match the currently accepted world view. So yes, inconsistencies crept in.