Hi! I'm an #atheist #humanist and #skeptic looking to respectfully engage online here with people I disagree with. And maybe people who agree with me too!
I don't believe in #god , and in fact I'm pretty sure no such thing exists, but I'm willing to consider the alternatives and change my mind.
Are you a #christian who believes in #jesus , or any other #religion , and want to explore whether or not you have good reasons to think that it's true? I'm happy to have that conversation!
I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong. Are you?
@lack picking up the gauntlet: I am a pantheistic agnostic. I unironically believe that hard atheism is a heretical branch of Christianity.
@b_chocolatey I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I usually associate the phrase "hard atheism" to mean "the positive belief that there is no God or gods". Do you mean something different?
@lack if you ignore the improbability of literalist young-earth creationism and the miraculous described in the #Bible, you will find that it’s actually quite difficult to really rule out the existence of both a creator God and lesser “gods”, souls, ghosts, spirit ancestors. You are left both with the origins-of-the-Big-Bang problem (why is there something rather than nothing?) and the consciousness problem (why can I feel sensation, memory, reasoning, desire, fear, hate, love? Mechanical contraptions can’t have any of this)
@b_chocolatey
I'm curious why you rule them in!
I agree that there are interesting questions that we don't fully understand, and some that maybe we will never actually understand. But I think it's okay to just say "we don't know" when we don't know.
Why do you think God or gods or souls are good answers to these questions?
@lack another viable worldview pantheism - the belief that there is a God - an animating, intelligent ghost in the machine - and the physical universe and spacetime is God. The God inhabits and moves the physical universe, just no different that how grandma “lives in” grandma’s arms and legs and brain. Grandma’s soul and personality is just a tiny, tiny piece of God’s intelligence, God’s creativity, God’s love.
@b_chocolatey I agree that this is a possibility, sure! But how do we know if it is actually true?
@lack I would say that you are half-agnostic, or soft atheist, in that case.
@lack As for myself, I would say that I am a post-modernist, in the sense that I have two different definitions of “god” which seem to mostly overlap. If you ever have seen #MattWalsh do his troll routine of “what is a woman?” I would say that my own belief system can boil down to “What is a god?” Trolls #Christians and #atheists equally. #woman #women #adulthumanfemale …
@lack As for myself, I would say that I am a post-modernist, in the sense that I have two different definitions of “god” which seem to mostly overlap. If you ever have seen #MattWalsh do his troll routine of “what is a woman?” I would say that my own belief system can boil down to “What is a god?” Trolls #Christians and #atheists equally. #woman #women #adulthumanfemale …
@lack definition 1: God is Soul. God is Person. God is Life. God is Mind. The origin of the inner experience of sentient organisms. Sensation, memory, intention, emotion, survival instinct… love, bonding, companionship. Everything that separates us from mere mechanical cause-and-effect that controls steam engines and stopwatches.
@lack definition 1: God is Soul. God is Person. God is Life. God is Mind. The origin of the inner experience of sentient organisms. Sensation, memory, intention, emotion, survival instinct… love, bonding, companionship. Everything that separates us from mere mechanical cause-and-effect that controls steam engines and stopwatches.
@lack Perhaps a third definition is in order, which somewhat overlaps with the first two. The symbolic, the sympathetic magic, that points to the first two. The Statue of Liberty is an example of this: a personified, anthromorphized representation of a philosophical abstraction, namely, liberty. The statue is beautiful and well-made, and is intended to refer to an Idea that is beautiful and timeless. This is, after all, why religious icons were first introduced in pre-Abrahamic times. The Statue of Liberty is a goddess in the literal, historical sense.
@b_chocolatey I agree that those things exist, (at least if you are keeping the physicslist-compatible definition of "soul" = "self") but I am not sure what is "godly" about them. I'm also not sure that those separate us from cause and effect. I think all the things you mentioned are part of a very complicated web of causes and effects.
@lack That having been said, it is possible that Consciousness has naturalistic origins that have yet to be discovered, at the quantum level. That, for example, it arises when energy is transformed into information, passes through logic-gates on very very fast timescales - that certain types of computers are naturally sentient. I think the odds are against it; I think that the problem of consciousness will remain a hard problem that is never cracked via scientific inquiry.
@b_chocolatey can you help me understand why? What is it about consciousness that you think makes it unlikely or impossible to be understood from a purely physical or scientific stance?
@lack definition 2: God is what is rightfully deserving of worship - that which is encountered through religious experience. Certain things people naturally discuss- and should discuss, in reverential tones, when they try to describe it accurately. When people speak of the Vastness of the Universe, the Beauty of Music, the Finality of Death, and so forth; these are things that, when I capitalize them, you know why. These are all emanations of God. It has always been understood thus.
@b_chocolatey I wonder how you feel about the fact that different cultures at different times have had different things they hold reverent? Do these "emanations of God" change over time? Or are you more referring to the fact that humans have a "reverence" emotion?
@lack what I’m saying is that the reverence emotion is morally correct, objectively speaking; and that somebody totally lacking it is morally defective. There is of course some level of reasonable disagreement over how to express it and to what end; because “now we see through a glass, darkly”. #1Cor13 #1Corinthians13 #Bible
@lack this second and third definition seems to be what Kipling was referring to in the poetic demand to “take up the white man’s burden.” Look closely at the line, “and weigh your gods, and you.”
@b_chocolatey A good question!
The answer is that it depends on exactly what we're talking about and what exactly we mean by those words.
For some definitions of God I positively believe those do not exist. This might be because they are impossible or self-contradictory.
For other definitions of God, I just do not hold the belief that they exist. This might be for a of reasons... Sometimes they're not well defined. Sometimes the person proposing the idea hasn't shown me a good enough reason to believe it's true.
I'm honestly confused why people claim to believe in gods when they don't have a good reason, or don't have a clear idea of what even it is to make a determination as to if it's real or not.
So I do not believe in any God or gods, and I am pretty sure there aren't any, but I also have enough epistemic humility to admit I could be wrong.
What would you call that?