Why atheists compare God to santa

[Lacewing]

A person without a belief in God cannot believe in MEANING since God is meaning.

god is in your bubble... as he's not allowed to interact or manifest through anything beyond it.

Which God do you refer to?

WHICHEVER God YOU'VE decided is REQUIRED for MEANING.

[Reflex]

Is your logical structure grounded in "we don't know," too? Sad.

Did you think so when you said this?

For all we know, we're a brain in a vat somewhere.

I proffer a working hypothesis, a conceptual frame in which to think that does not include a brain in a vat, not certainty.

What do you put forward for consideration? It doesn't matter if it's provable or even true; it need only provide a conceptual frame in which to think.

Atheists here are very adept at asking questions, but when it comes to answering them, to positing a conceptual frame in which to think, they come across sounding like rocks that quack.

I'll ask again: what do YOU think must be in order for what is to be as it is?

[Arising_uk]

...
My God! You have the audacity to complain about my failure to answer questions? For someone who won't answer my questions, even the few I ask, that takes some real cojones. ...

Show me a question of yours I haven't answered?

What do YOU think must be in order for what is to be as it is? ...

I don't, that's the point. Although this would depend upon what you mean by "what is to be as it is"?

Don't just sit there with 'I don't know' hanging from your lips like a dumb rock, posit something we can work with, something we can compare. ...

I've told you, Kant pretty much convinced me there's a Noumenon and we can say fuck all about it or a lot of fuck all all about it.

I have what I call "God" (for the lack of a better word in spite of all its baggage); what do you have? ...

The Noumenon.

How about positing something so we can have a genuine exchange of ideas? ...

I think such metaphysics a waste of time.

Is that too hard for you?

Nope, just pointless.

Or do you simply prefer making meaningless quacking noises? ...

Says the duck.

Bearing in mind what it entails, try to justify your ignorance, at least.

Why?

After all, this is, as you said, a philosophy forum.

And as such, Kant still pretty much rules in this case.

Still not heard why you don't believe in Santa or Superman?

Or whether you were an ex-theist atheist or an atheist atheist?

Or all the other questions you've ignored.

[Nick_A]

Lacewing wrote:

Nick_A wrote:
Which God do you refer to?

WHICHEVER God YOU'VE decided is REQUIRED for MEANING.

I'm on record as believing in the necessity for a conscious Source for creation beyond the limits of time and space which is the source for the human perception of meaning. Kind of hard to put in a bubble.

What god provides meaning for you? Is it love, power, money, or another? They are all powerful attractions.

[Reflex]

...
My God! You have the audacity to complain about my failure to answer questions? For someone who won't answer my questions, even the few I ask, that takes some real cojones. ...

Show me a question of yours I haven't answered?

The last one:

What do YOU think must be in order for what is to be as it is? ...

I don't, that's the point.

So speaketh the stone: "Quack, quack." Either that, or solipsism.

[Arising_uk]

The last one:

What do YOU think must be in order for what is to be as it is? ...

But I told you? I don't, as I think it the the Noumenon. Have you not read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason?

You also don't say what you mean by "what is to be as it is"? What are the 'to be' and 'it' referring to? Being serious here, as there are a few things this could refer to in my life but I'm not sure what you are referring to.

So speaketh the stone: "Quack, quack."

You think stones speak? That explains a lot.

Try it this way, there's the Noumenon, here's all those who talk about it as though they know something about it, quack, quack, quack...
p.s.
Your edit - no need for solipsism as there's a simple way of getting out of Descartes conundrum without the need for a 'God'.

[Lacewing]

What god provides meaning for you? Is it love, power, money, or another? They are all powerful attractions.

Meaning does not come from a god for me. You clearly are incapable of understanding this... and seem to think that everyone must have a god of some sort. But your conclusion is inaccurate and greatly limited AGAIN, yet all-consuming for you. You are like a drunk who can't understand anything beyond your intoxication, and you keep breathing in everyone's face.

[Greta]

Strictly speaking, formal philosophy is conservative and works from the existing body of philosophical knowledge built by the ancient Greeks, Kant, Wittgenstein, Hume, etc., as opposed to reporting first-hand experiences or speculating without academic basis as we usually do here. At least some of the resistance may come from those who'd prefer a more academic approach.

I can understand that. I do wonder, though, about the intrigue of chewing on the same old ideas over and over. Why would we think the most profound insights and questions remain THERE? Isn't that similar to how a religion keeps looking to the past?

Until recently I'd been avoiding religion threads because it's largely pointless, but there's so many of them it's either that or STFU - the latter, alas, probably not a realistic option for me :)

Like many I suppose, I find it hard to muster much enthusiasm in others for my main areas of interest, such as humanity's role in a rapidly changing biosphere beyond the usual "We're terrible and now we're all rooned!" cries. Yes, yes, we know. C'est la vie. That's politics. What of the philosophy?

Evolution is littered with extinctions and species bifurcations. When the biosphere as a whole today is considered against its apparent state in earlier times, it now has dense areas of high complexity and intelligence and increasingly desertified elsewhere. This concentration and particulation of a previously relatively homogeneous arena is seen all through nature - the formation of galaxies, stars, planets, populations, encephalisation, and so on. No doubt food will eventually be synthesised from non-food materials as at least some humans increasingly live in environments isolated from nature.

While this amazingly weird, yet familiar, event is taking place many people seem too distracted by intellectual and emotional playthings to much care.

[Greta]

A person without a belief in God cannot believe in MEANING since God is meaning. Philosophy is the love of wisdom. How can acceptance of the human condition and what it deprives a person of be considered an expression of the love of wisdom?

Tell us more about how God is meaning.

A lot of people live laudable and meaningful lives without believing in deities. How can that be, if God is meaning?

[Reflex]

What the world to us, according to Kant, is not the world as it is within itself; the world as it is within itself, the noumenal world, is inaccessible to our senses. So, where do you start? Kant starts from the idea that our perceptions are mediated through innate cognitions, like space and time. That much is a working hypothesis (though studies have called this assumption into question), but how do we know it is reliable? Perhaps the mystics are right. But to say that there is only the noumenal is to deny the very mind making the claim. (Hence, the quack, quack.) And how do we know that the noumenal is inaccessible as Kant claims? We don't.

This thread touched, if only a little, on the possibility of other ways of knowing, ways of knowing that Kant denies. He had no (scientific) way of knowing that other ways of knowing may indeed be possible through the Great Chain of Being.

So, I'll ask again: what do you think must be in order for what is to be as it is?

[Nick_A]

Greta wrote:

Tell us more about how God is meaning.

A lot of people live laudable and meaningful lives without believing in deities. How can that be, if God is meaning?

God is an offensive word to many making discussion impossible. So instead of the word God, I sometimes use word meaning. Do you believe in meaning? Have you felt meaning? What most provides meaning for you? That is your God.

Meaning is a relative concept. The superficial often provides the experience of meaning and sometimes that is all that is needed and a person lives a good life believing in this quality of meaning.. There is also a minority whose need for meaning awakens the very depth of their being. Those content with the superficial can never appreciate the God the depth of another's being is attracted to. Superficial meaning is created by the Great Beast. The need for meaning at the depth of ones being always was and just needs to be awakened.

[sthitapragya]

I already told you I am bad at profound. You will have to be more lucid than that. Put it in simple words like you would to a 12 year old with an IQ of about 80. But if you are asking what I think you are asking, then the only logical answer is, WE DON'T KNOW. Nothing more and nothing less.

Then everything that follows is arbitrary and quite meaningless. Nothing more and nothing less.

And therein lies your problem. You assume that saying "i don't know" without concluding "God did it" makes everything arbitrary and meaningless. Saying I don't know just raises the question, "Then what is it?" And to answer that question you can start with the assumption "It could be God" and then follow it up. Instead, you have concluded "therefore God did it" and that is my problem. There is no concrete undeniable proof that the conclusion is true. It remains a hypothesis which you mistakenly take as a conclusion, and then arrive at all kinds of theories which results in a multitude of Gods. The reason there are so many Gods is simply due to the mistake you made in concluding "there is a God" instead of assuming there was one. You have closed your mind to all other concepts.

I think it odd that someone posting in a philosophy forum would be so quick to use 'we don't know' without taking into consideration the logical consequences. ....Oh, wait. ....Nevermind. ...There are no logical consequences to hanging everything -- science, philosophy, truth, goodness and beauty-- on thin air because logic is arbitrary and consequences meaningless.

I am repeating the argument because I know you will ignore it in your reply which will probably be just an insult to athiest, But here goes anyway. And therein lies your problem. You assume that saying "i don't know" without concluding "God did it" makes everything arbitrary and meaningless. Saying I don't know just raises the question, "Then what is it?" And to answer that question you can start with the assumption "It could be God" and then follow it up. Instead, you have concluded "therefore God did it" and that is my problem. There is no concrete undeniable proof that the conclusion is true. It remains a hypothesis which you mistakenly take as a conclusion, and then arrive at all kinds of theories which results in a multitude of Gods. The reason there are so many Gods is simply due to the mistake you made in concluding "there is a God" instead of assuming there was one. You have closed your mind to all other concepts.

The truth of the matter is that you DO know what must be in order for what is to be as it is, or at least have an unconscious belief regarding it.

Nope. The truth of the matter is that you know that there is a possibility that there is no God and the possibility scares the hell out of you. So you stick to your belief regardless of the other possibilities.

And you also need to question this desperate need you have to insist that I believe exactly what you believe. Why the insistence? Why is it so important to you? Could it be that unconsciously you are ashamed at your need to stick to a position that you know in your mind to be irrational just because of your need for a father figure at your age? Is it possible?

Otherwise, you would not be able to formulate the first (assumed) rational thought.

You, as usual, have not clarified what you mean by the first (assumed) rational thought. I am assume you mean, "therefore God did it." Well, for your information, it is not even a first assumed rational thought you get. It is a thought created in the mind of some superstitious ancestor who had no science to understand and has been passed down from generation to generation as a brainwash and to hold power over you. And it seems to have succeeded. What you call the first assumed rational thought is in reality just a neanderthal's concept which you claim is a superior concept.

That's what I find so interesting about atheists: they talk about reason and logic all the time but have no basis for doing so. I might as well strike up a conversation with a duck.

So you rely on insults to cover up your own absence of logic. Which, pathetically, is not even yours. You are defending the position of a neanderthal as a higher concept and don't even realize it. And that is what I find interesting about theists. The psychological need for God is so great they are willing to do anything for it. (My apologies to other theists who do not insult athiests in general. This guy keeps doing it, so I give it back to him. And it applies perfectly to him too).

As Socrates so famously put it many hundreds of years ago: "The unexamined life is not worth living." So, I'll ask again: what do YOU think must be in order for what is to be as it is? If you refuse to answer or stick with "we don't know," then I can only assume your words are nothing more than noises a rock would make if it could talk.

So I tell you again. What should have been an assumption "God did it" has been turned into the conclusion "God did it" just to support the concept of a superstitious neanderthal who did not have science to rely on and thought even lightening was the wrath of God. That is what you are supporting. Obviously to you the idea of "I don't know. Let me find out what it actually is" is very scary because you might lose big daddy in the process.

[Reflex]

And therein lies your problem. You assume that saying "i don't know" without concluding "God did it" makes everything arbitrary and meaningless.

You've gotta start somewhere. Evaluation demands a frame of reference, be it cultural or scientific. Without a frame of reference, without some some kind of preconceived structure, everything IS arbitrary and meaningless. Even the scientific endeavor is based on unproved and unprovable assumptions. If you can't see this, then what the hell are you doing in a philosophy forum if not trolling?

Saying I don't know just raises the question, "Then what is it?" And to answer that question you can start with the assumption "It could be God" and then follow it up.

I can, and I did. There is no proof that my intellections are true, but your “problem” is imaginary. Remember my comment about the brain in the cat problem. But when I ask for an alternative to my hypothesis, your answer is a dogmatic, “I don't know, but not that,” which is to say, “Quack, quack.”

The reason there are so many Gods is simply due to the mistake you made in concluding "there is a God" instead of assuming there was one.

That's a silly superstition, one based on the inability to grasp finite entities looking to the infinite will necessarily have different conceptual interpretations.

The truth of the matter is that you know that there is a possibility that there is no God and the possibility scares the hell out of you. So you stick to your belief regardless of the other possibilities.

What other possibilities? “Quack, quack”?

And you also need to question this desperate need you have to insist that I believe exactly what you believe. Why the insistence? Why is it so important to you? Could it be that unconsciously you are ashamed at your need to stick to a position that you know in your mind to be irrational just because of your need for a father figure at your age? Is it possible?

Is "quack quack" all you got?

You, as usual, have not clarified what you mean by the first (assumed) rational thought. I am assume you mean, "therefore God did it." Well, for your information, it is not even a first assumed rational thought you get. It is a thought created in the mind of some superstitious ancestor who had no science to understand and has been passed down from generation to generation as a brainwash and to hold power over you. And it seems to have succeeded. What you call the first assumed rational thought is in reality just a neanderthal's concept which you claim is a superior concept.

Communication, in its simplest sense, describes a process of delivering something. What is being delivered? Information. The difference between random signs and information that makes sense is meaning. There is no meaning without a frame of reference. And like quacking noises from a rock, “I don't know” delivers no frame of reference and communicates nothing.

And that is what I find interesting about theists. The psychological need for God is so great they are willing to do anything for it.

My, my. A presumptuous little fellow, aren't you?

So I tell you again. What should have been an assumption "God did it" has been turned into the conclusion "God did it" just to support the concept of a superstitious neanderthal who did not have science to rely on and thought even lightening was the wrath of God. That is what you are supporting. Obviously to you the idea of "I don't know. Let me find out what it actually is" is very scary because you might lose big daddy in the process.

I'm not asking for certainty, only for other possibilities to consider: something more than a dogmatic "I don't know, but not that"; something more than “Quack, quack.” So, what must be in order for what is to be as it is? You say "no God"? Fine. Then what? What other possibilities do you propose? What's your frame of reference? Scientific materialism (an oxymoron if there ever was one)? What?

[sthitapragya]

I'm not asking for certainty, only for other possibilities to consider: something more than a dogmatic "I don't know, but not that"; something more than “Quack, quack.” So, what must be in order for what is to be as it is? You say "no God"? Fine. Then what? What other possibilities do you propose? What's your frame of reference? Scientific materialism (an oxymoron if there ever was one)? What?

Here is another possibility, which I have given before but you have pointedly ignored. 13.8 billion years ago, this universe of time and space came into being. This happened due to a change of state of EXISTENCE. Now you will ask, what was before this universe came into being. This is where your limitation of understand of science will hinder you and make you see God. The answer is, there was no before as there was no time. If however you insist on wanting a hypothesis for before then the answer is that EXISTENCE had some other state without time and space. What that was we cannot intuit nor do we have the technology to intuit. So we will have to wait to find out what it was and will figure that out if and when we develop the technology or science for it.

Now this is a hypothesis just like your God is. I have no way to conclude that this is what actually happened. But to me it seems far more likely than a magical being working his transcendent magic to create idiots like us. I could be wrong. But my hypotheses does not become a conclusion which I try and shove down your throat because I don't have daddy issues.

Your God is a hypothesis. How the hell he turned into a conclusion when you cannot even describe him and have no evidence to prove your hypothesiscis beyond ridiculous.


When I ask you, describe your God, your answer is He is unknowable Which in other words is "I don't know". Quack Quack????? If I don't know is not an acceptable answer then describe your God to me in detail. Otherwise, quack, quack.

Who is your God? You don't know.

What does He look like? You dont' know.

What is Is purpose? You don't know

How and why is he transcendent? You don't know.

Why did he create you? To bug the hell out of atheists. So that is one.

Why did He create the universe? You don't know.

Quack!!!! Quack?????????????????????????

Basically I am trying to point out to you that your argument that I don't know is unacceptable is so pathetically stupid that I am amazed that you even raised it. I rarely underestimate stupidity because I am quite stupid so I know my kind of people. But you are a whole new level.

[Reflex]

Notwithstanding their primitive nature, Neanderthals could think because they had a conceptual frame or model in which to think. Interestingly (or pathetically), atheists here do not think that's important.

Here is another possibility, which I have given before but you have pointedly ignored. 13.8 billion years ago, this universe of time and space came into being. This happened due to a change of state of EXISTENCE. Now you will ask, what was before this universe came into being. This is where your limitation of understand of science will hinder you and make you see God. The answer is, there was no before as there was no time.

True, but there was something. What must it have been in order for what is to be as it is?

If however you insist on wanting a hypothesis for before then the answer is that EXISTENCE had some other state without time and space.

Obviously.

What that was we cannot intuit nor do we have the technology to intuit.

Debatable, but irrelevant to the act of positing something.

So we will have to wait to find out what it was and will figure that out if and when we develop the technology or science for it.

That;s called "promissory materialism" or "scientism." I'll be back to discuss that particular religion later, if you like.