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The God Question

OrphanSlug said:
That is a tall order for several reasons.

Philosophy as an academia is closer to a system of process than a system of belief, and that is even though philosophy does not follow the same process chain that other sciences use there is plenty of similarity on getting from an an observation or question to a theory or conclusion. What that means is the very nature of the age old question or an alternate question tends to challenge the beliefs people hold from whatever faith they subscribe to. Historically speaking, that is usually not very peaceful.

The age old questions on is there a God (or Gods) and what is God (or Gods) suggests filling a human need to explain something. The theistic argument to these aged old questions are based on another chain of thought. Because there is observable and objective moral reasoning, and a God (or Gods) would provide the best explanation for that moral reasoning being an overarching authority handing that to us, therefor we would not have that moral reasoning without a God (or Gods.) Again, the moral argument that we would not have them without a God (or Gods.)

So, let's change the question to... say... "why do we need a God (or Gods) to tell us what is right and wrong?"

The immediate impact is upsetting everyone in the room who subscribes to a system of belief that holds as truth where they derive moral reasoning.

And one of the things we cannot discount in any regard is the period of human evolution where all these systems of belief came from nor can we ignore that what we call the emergence of modern science was over 1000 years later. Thought, question, and philosophy all took their own paths across multiple periods of human history of course but when looking back to the bronze age there was no such thing as a system of process, no such thing as educated public, and no such thing as a search for answers *without* a system of belief. And that last point is why it became such a force of human history that we still see its properties today.

The age old question ended up giving humanity wide ranging interpretations on the existence of deity, what the nature of deity is, and ultimately what is the source for moral authority. Even though this ultimately lead to enough conflict and loss of life damaging what they thought was being answered. Ironically, moral authority ended up becoming a reason to divide and ultimately take life. On top of that the earliest systems of governance and law predate monotheism by 1000's of years, yet we still see humanity clinging to some of those systems of belief from monotheism today literally answering the age old question the exact same way. Way back then, way before monotheism humanity could objectively design law. Let's not kill one another, steal things, what have you. The concept of moral reasoning predates monotheism yet now it appears monotheism is corner to moral reasoning... let that sink in.

You bet we asked the wrong questions, and on this side of the emergence of modern science we still do.
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Man is brutal and has been since the quest for fire. The irony is the vast majority of the masses don't want conflict and yet it takes so few to create a conflict. The bully types, the people who want more, enough is never enough. These are the folks that seem to rise to power throughout man's history. Conquest. We seem to be hard wired for conflict, greed, our inhumanity towards one another driven by the few. I ask myself this same question over and over. If I had the power that people put onto this god entity, would I create this screwed up mess we call humanity to act the way we do towards one another? I think not. Masters create masterpieces and I'm supposed to believe the ultimate master created the mess we call humanity? If I believed in a god, I would want to give that entity a bit more credit.
 
Angel said:
What did you find off-putting about the OP? I have a personal interest in your answer to this question.
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Half of your OP was about what shouldn't be discussed and who shouldn't answer and you never asked any questions or raised any significant topic beyond the deference between two obviously distinct phrases (regardless of the concept they were referring to). I found it particularly off-putting that you dismissed out of hand any idea of conflating the two propositions when they're obviously linked - you can't talk about something existing without establishing what it is by definition.
 
Angel said:
The God Question involves two propositions that must be distinguished in any discourse that aspires to clarity:

Proposition One

That God is
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False dichotomy

You assume that the Christian god is the only god that can exist.


What about multiple gods of Hinduism ?



Proposition Two

What God is
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What god is or what the gods are ?

Can there be good gods and bad gods ?


Can a human become a god ?
 
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They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt;
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Brahma" (1856)

Brahma by Ralph Waldo Emerson - Poems | Academy of American Poets
​




gfm7175 said:
I noticed that hardly anybody likes reading/discussing in the philosophy forums...
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grip said:
Well, it's a very frustrating subject based in a lot of subjective reality and difficult to set the acceptable discussion parameters....
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OrphanSlug said:
...
The irony is where one is born today often opens up doors to localized takes on both propositions, each one claiming they have it right. And that collides with so many questions on subjects philosophy brings to the table it is ridiculous.
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Much obliged to you good fellows for the short but lively run. Hope to see you again in Philosophy. Peace.
 
Rich2018 said:
False dichotomy

You assume that the Christian god is the only god that can exist.


What about multiple gods of Hinduism ?
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Fallacy Fallacy. He never made that assumption... He didn't present a dichotomy in any way.

You've also lost complete context as to what this thread is about.


Rich2018 said:
What god is or what the gods are ?

Can there be good gods and bad gods ?


Can a human become a god ?
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Shows that god(s) can only be accepted on a faith basis...
 
Or, how to discuss something by refusing to discuss it.

That rutabaga is.

What rutabaga is.

Don't conflate the two.
 
Angel said:
You are using the words in their late and restrictive modern scientific meanings. Our friend grip uses the words in their broader and much older non-scientific meanings.
You need an argument as to why scientific language should be preferred in a discussion of The God Question.
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Then give whatever definitions of these words you are using and stick to those definitions for the rest of the thread (or you will be lying).
 
Angel said:
To be sure, if there are a thousand different religious faiths, there are a thousand more or less different accounts of the nature of God (Proposition Two: What God is).
To reject any one of the thousand accounts and think thereby that this at the same time amounts to a rejection of the existence of God (Proposition One: That God is.) is incoherent.
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If there are a thousand different natures of God they cannot all be right. Only one, a tiny few which describe the same thing from a slightly different choice of words, can possibly be close to right.

Given that, that 999 are wrong, why do you think the thousandth is right?
 
Tim the plumber said:
If there are a thousand different natures of God they cannot all be right. Only one, a tiny few which describe the same thing from a slightly different choice of words, can possibly be close to right.

Given that, that 999 are wrong, why do you think the thousandth is right?
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This is the generic god approach. Remove everything specific from god without actually removing god. But then, what is really left? A generic god is indistinguishable from no god. Once you assign one attribute to a god, it is no longer generic, but then there is nothing that can be claimed about this god. It ceases to exist. Not only does the emperor have no clothes, it has no substance.
 
There is no need for a God. What has god really done for all societies, left death all around there society. God gave us slavery, and the death of the civil war.
 
Atheist 2020 said:
There is no need for a God. What has god really done for all societies, left death all around there ***society. God gave us slavery, and the death of the civil war.
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***Their (possessive case of they)



On the Atheist Experience, it was once claimed that religion exists to control people. I would readily accept that it has been used for that end over the millenia but would dispute that was the reason almost all, if not all, societies had some form of deity.


Imagine you're a stone age hunter-gatherer or even an early form of settler/farmer.
The world gets colder and the nights get longer...then the nights get shorter and it gets warmer again.

There's extreme weather

Earthquakes

Disease

Animals you can eat and those that eat you.

And death. Specifically their death.



The world is chaos and it's a very confusing and terrifying place to live.


You want answers and explanations. People who came up with believable answers (that importantly required no proof) offered comfort. People were given the false idea that they had some sort of control over their lives and their fates.

Prayer, sacrifice, omens, appeasing the god(s)....



So in their search for meaning and comfort, they readily accepted religion and in some cases were willing to go as far as human sacrifice.
 
Rich2018 said:
***Their (possessive case of they)



On the Atheist Experience, it was once claimed that religion exists to control people. I would readily accept that it has been used for that end over the millenia but would dispute that was the reason almost all, if not all, societies had some form of deity.


Imagine you're a stone age hunter-gatherer or even an early form of settler/farmer.
The world gets colder and the nights get longer...then the nights get shorter and it gets warmer again.

There's extreme weather

Earthquakes

Disease

Animals you can eat and those that eat you.

And death. Specifically their death.



The world is chaos and it's a very confusing and terrifying place to live.


You want answers and explanations. People who came up with believable answers (that importantly required no proof) offered comfort. People were given the false idea that they had some sort of control over their lives and their fates.

Prayer, sacrifice, omens, appeasing the god(s)....



So in their search for meaning and comfort, they readily accepted religion and in some cases were willing to go as far as human sacrifice.
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You are proving me right, there is no GOD.
 
Rich2018 said:
Do not say that.

You're just playing into the hands of the Theist straw man argument that states that Atheists say there is no god.


That's not what Atheists say.
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Sorry to tell you this, there is no God. He is made up by the will of man.
 
Atheist 2020 said:
You are thinking as a agnostic
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No, there are many Agnostics who believe in god, despite what devildavid says.


You cannot say that there is no god, because you can never know that.


All you can say is that you do not believe the arguments of the Theists that god and specifically THEIR god exists.
 
Atheist 2020 said:
Sorry to tell you this, there is no God. He is made up by the will of man.
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Which god concept are you refuting? I’m certain there are some god concepts you have never heard of, so on what basis can you say you those gods don’t exist?

While is possible to show some god concepts are disproved by reality, it is not possible to do that for all.
 
pinqy said:
Which god concept are you refuting? I’m certain there are some god concepts you have never heard of, so on what basis can you say you those gods don’t exist?

While is possible to show some god concepts are disproved by reality, it is not possible to do that for all.
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I refute the Christian god the most. Yes, there are other gods and I do not have time to study them all. Once you study to refute one god the others are not that hard.
 
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