Belief in God

[wwwcounsellorpublishingco]

An excellent book is If There Is No God:Meditations On Believing by Daniel M Keeranavailable at www.counsellorpublishing.comThe main theme is that belief is a necessary part of everyday life and that the existence of God can be concluded from reason alone. There are many things everyone believes that are not scientific fact and that are taken for granted as true. For example, humans have greater value than other life and non-life forms. This is the basis of all social law and is communicated in the words of the first book of the Torah that man was made in the image of God. If anyone is interested, I could elaborate on this and add other topics covered in the book. Edited to make the link active. Edited by: Chris OConnor  at: 9/23/05 7:32 pm

[Mr. P]

Dissident...can you ad your thoughts?Mr. P. The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

[Jeremy1952]

WwwcounsellorpublishingcomQuote: Imagine a society in which humans do not possess superior value. What would the laws and the society be like? Maybe something similar to cultures . . . such as Hindu society . . .This is exactly the kind of xenophobic thinking that has convinces me that religious people can never be truly moral. Hindu bad, me good.Quote:The belief that humans do not possess superior valueStraw man alert... how did we get from "humans are valuable to humans" to, "humans do not possess ... value? Let's look for truth, and not rhetorical advantage by twisting other people's views, shall we?Quote:Would it be accurate in your view to say . . .there is . . . no instrinsic right and wrong "moral" behaviour?Human morality is intrinsic to human beings. If you ate your mother you would be considered a very bad person indeed, especially if she were still alive when you did it. But some species of spider do exactly that... the mother calmly allows herself to be eaten, alive, by her progeny, and propagates their kind successfully. Is the mother acting immorally, because we have agreed that it would be wrong for a human to do the same? Of course not. Nor would it be wrong for a shark to eat your mother. That's what sharks do. Since we are, in fact, both human beings, we both know that humans are valuable and we both know that it is necessary for most people, most of the time, to act ethically and to be guided by morality. I know that the source of this innate urge to do the right thing is the powerful selection pressure applied to our forbears to cooperate with one another. Cooperation is more powerful than conflict. You think that some alien other (which you call, I would guess, "God"), imbued us with a desire to know right from wrong. Two problems with this hypothesis immediately jump out at me. The first is, since this is a different species altogether, what ever makes you think that it's priorities are the same as ours? Why should we expect this "god" character to be any more considerate than the aforementioned bear?The other is a biological analogy. Organs, behaviours, attributes not subject to selection pressure get very weird, very quickly. The parts of our genome that are not used deteriorate over time. To substitute a superstitious basis for morality does exactly the same thing. "Fucking from behind is immoral, only face to face is right" "Why?" "Cause god said so". See? No selection pressure. The goofy idea does not have to justify itself against any intrinsic moral purpose, and therefore, all sorts of craziness persists. In and among this mish-mash of meaningful, formerly meaningful, useful, neutral, and harmful prescriptions and proscriptions that the world's various religions have accumulated are surely some sound moral guidelines. But its very apparent to any neutral observer that there is no rational rhyme or reason to the overall exercise, and that it is more likely to get worse, rather than better. You may not suffer a witch to live. If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything. Daniel Dennett, 1984

[de dominee]

Dear Nick,I am new in Booktalk, and this is the first a reply to an article in a specific forum. But I hope I make some sence in doing so.I, being a minister, you can imagine, am very atrackted to the topic: Belief in God. Ans as a believer I think that I know how it works. And I am glad to give you my vision about what believing is and how it works.The title suggests that every knows what you mean by 'God'. That, of course is not the case. Actualy I want to state that as many persons are belivers, there are gods. Because everyoned creates his own god. Not out of the blue, but still. The notion of the existance of a god, or gods, is as old as mankind. you will find it everywhere. Every civilization has a kind of religion. In one way or another people need to believe in more then only themselves. Until a few decades ago most of the time paople believed in the excistance of a supernatural being, who, in one way or another interferes with the lives of people. The reason is, that there always happened and still happens things that people don't understand. they cannot find an explanation in acts or acting of man, so there must be 'something, or someone else' who acts in the world.But since sciense has explaned a lot of these things, people started to think that there is no 'higher power', we just don't know everything. But that is only a matter of time.Well this exactly the point!There is no god, who ties any lose ends together. For ages people did 'use' god for the wrong purpose. God was not and never will be the one who interferes in the lives of humans. (I know that a lot of christians and muslims and jews will disagree with me). God is not the miracleworker of the world; and he is not (thank God!) the one who punishes people with floods or other disasters.But what remains then?As God is not the creator, and does not sustain our world, what does he do. Or better: is there at the end a god?My answer, and it will not surprise you: Yes there is a God. The God of all the old stories. And the God of modern times.I belief that God is the spirit which lives in all our spirits. And through that spirit we are connected to one another. God is the spirit through which we are spiritual people. Wheter we are christians, or believers in Ashanti. It makes that people are equal. We are human beings with bodies and spirits. That makes us different from animals. They have bodies and they are able to think, more or less. But they have no spirits that help them to ponder the things of live. People and animals are products of the same evolotion. But as a result of one twist in development we started to use with our brains our spirit, to think about our lives.In my opinion the brain is the instrument with which we can think, feel, live, and be spiritual. But what is the use of a god?Well, he will not reward nor olunish you for the things you do or did in your live. There is no hell, nor there is a heaven. Is there an afterlive? I realy would not know: I never be there. The use of God is the he can help me in becoming and being a happy and whole human being, that loves to be in God (in this manner) and loves his nabour as he loves himself. And don't you agree when every one lives his life that way, that there would not be any hostility amongst people but respect. Respect to one another as parts of the one spirit.We (most of us) manage to do so for the members of our own people, being Americans, Dutch or whatever.When belief in God functions in this way, then there will be reasons to be against this belief, I would think. What do you think?Rolf Venema, Holland

[GOD defiles Reason]

wwwcounsellorpublishingcom, what are your answers to these questions?Quote:Thought Questions1. Do you believe humans are superior to or more important than other species? Explain.2. Do you believe it should be considered murder to kill an animal? Explain.3. Describe a society in which humans possess no special value, any more than bacteria or sand.4. Why should people not be bought and sold as one would sell a horse, a cat, or a dog?And I'm just curious, how does comparing the value of bacteria to human beings relate or correspond to this thread? What brought that on?

[GOD defiles Reason]

So you believe in the god described in the bible?

[GOD defiles Reason]

If you believe that man is made in the "image of God," does that mean that you believe god has a penis?

[Chris OConnor]

KeithQuote:I can easily see that a belief in human value is the function of enlightened self interest among gregarious beings without requiring a divine belief.Well said!I've been working all day and just came home to all these posts in this thread. You made the above comment a few pages back.Chris

[Keith and Company]

Quote:Yet this belief is only a belief, entirely without any scientific evidence. It is an arbitrary valueThe belief is not arbitrary. Humans hold humans to be valuable. Except for those that hold either all animals or some animals to be of equal or greater value than humans. I know people who own horses that will rush into burning barns to save the horse, but won't cross the street to give a sandwich to a homeless person.That's not an arbitrary choice either, but one developed by their familiarity with the animal in question, versus their disdain for all but a few of their fellow man. Keith's Place

[Chris OConnor]

NickQuote:Phooey!ROFLMAO Chris