Your experiences of not being a theist (being an atheist).

[Jason]

I'm not discounting polytheism. Within our culture we are more likely to think of God than gods, so I wrote God.

Which Abraham story do you have in mind? Old Testament stories are difficult to interpret precisely because many of them do not appear moral. A response is to see the OT as a people coming to perceive God, but making lots of mistakes along the way. Abraham is wrong in thinking the sacrifice of his son Isaac is required.

God provides a point of origin for morality. In the OT God sets out moral laws. God is not the only possible source of morality, but there is a clarity in the view that morality comes from God. If not God, then from whom? If you take your morality from the laws of a nation then there are problems when those laws go wrong (eg the holocaust was promoted by the law in Germany).

 

[Drifterwood]

Oh well.

It is why you can not run for public office as openly atheist, or rarely, and woe betide if a jury is told of your non believing. Maybe that is why so many seeking parole, have found god.

 

[Drifterwood]

The great sadness of our age is that most people don't even think about these questions. If people do think about them - put hours over time into thinking about it - then the concept of God not existing just becomes a nonsense. It's just inconceivable.

Quite the opposite. But that is not the point of the thread.

 

[Drifterwood]

I disagree (with Drifter's conclusion).
.

I asked a question and quoted some good research.

Are you questioning the findings and conclusions of the research?

BTW, I agree about the Masons. They assume the higher moral ground, though some are very humble people. In the Seventies apparently, their numbers were declining, so they let in car dealers.

 

[englad]

I'm not discounting polytheism. Within our culture we are more likely to think of God than gods, so I wrote God.

Which Abraham story do you have in mind? Old Testament stories are difficult to interpret precisely because many of them do not appear moral. A response is to see the OT as a people coming to perceive God, but making lots of mistakes along the way. Abraham is wrong in thinking the sacrifice of his son Isaac is required.

God provides a point of origin for morality. In the OT God sets out moral laws. God is not the only possible source of morality, but there is a clarity in the view that morality comes from God. If not God, then from whom? If you take your morality from the laws of a nation then there are problems when those laws go wrong (eg the holocaust was promoted by the law in Germany).

That's due to the influence of christianity, yes. Polytheism seems a lot less irrational than monotheism, as polytheistic gods tend to represent human emotions, societal interaction or natural phemonema (gods of love, gods of rain, gods of war, gods of fertility). It also tends to be a lot more tolerant than monotheism, a good example of that would be in Bath in the southwest of England, there's a composite shrine there to Sulis Minerva (Minerva being the roman goddess and sulis a local one)

The story of him and Isaac from a secular perspective reads as a man who based on the voices he heard inside his own head was willing to murder his child.

It doesn't though, one of the world's oldest religions is jainism, which is easily the most pacifistic of any religions around. Jainism is transtheistic, and can be atheistic or polytheistic depending on definition. Both jainism and buddhism reject the notion of a creator deity. Morality develops as societies develop, and morality tends to be the same across human cultures even though they developed from divergent religious sources. To function as a society, a moral code inevitably took shape for the benefit of survival. As for bringing up Nazi Germany, well the origins of anti-semitism stem from christianity.....

 

[Klingsor]

The great sadness of our age is that most people don't even think about these questions. If people do think about them - put hours over time into thinking about it - then the concept of God not existing just becomes a nonsense. It's just inconceivable.

But so is the concept of God existing. So there you go.

 

[Jason]

But so is the concept of God existing. So there you go.

You've quoted the wrong person. I said that!

@Drifterwood wondered if my comments were relevant to the thread. Quite possibly not, but who minds about relevance on this Board?

@Klingsor you might make progress in solving the question if you start with the concept of consciousness. Consciousness is not God, but the two do appear to share characteristics.

 

[malakos]

As for bringing up Nazi Germany, well the origins of anti-semitism stem from christianity.....

Certainly Christians contributed significantly to the quality of medieval and then modern anti-Judaism, but that is not correct to suggest that the origins of it as a system of prejudice were in Christianity. Systematic anti-Judaism was already widespread throughout the Hellenized world several generations before Jesus was born.

 

[185248]

I am interested in the community's experiences of not being a believer in God or Creator.

I don't like the term atheist because that ties me to a definition of what I am not rather than what I am. I feel like that term still controls me to an agenda into which I do not buy.

I was enjoying a beer recently with a very nice guy from the United Arab Emirates. I spend quite a lot of time there and never discuss religious beliefs, because basically my lack of belief could technically attract the death penalty in several of the Emirates. But being in SEA, neutral territory, I decided to tell him that I was not a theist to see his reaction. Bottom line is that he couldn't deal with the revelation and made his excuses and left.

Several Masons have seen me as a standard Masonic type until I tell them that I do not believe in a creator. You would not believe how quickly they drop you. Apart from women of course, the only people excluded totally from the brotherhood are non theists.

Funny, when I told women I was a brick layer way back then, they just wanted it. Maybe they confused "Brick" with "Dick"?

 

[Klingsor]

You've quoted the wrong person. I said that!

Sorry, I knew it was you. When I hit "Reply," I was presented not only with your text but also with some stray text from a previous, half-finished reply, and managed to conflate the two without noticing.

You might make progress in solving the question if you start with the concept of consciousness. Consciousness is not God, but the two do appear to share characteristics.

But what sort of consciousness? The kind we can verify scientifically, which is invariably dependent on some kind of physical body? That sort of consciousness has at least one crucial difference from the concept of God.

 

[Jason]

... of course some faiths do believe God has a physical body.

 

[Drifterwood]

When you can agree what god is, I will consider the proposition.

 

[Klingsor]

... of course some faiths do believe God has a physical body.

Habeas corpus.

 

[Jason]

When you can agree what god is, I will consider the proposition.

Can we agree what virtue is? Justice? Courage? We routinely work with concepts that are problematics to define and have no agreed definition. I trust you don't refuse to consider the existence of morality because of problems of definition.

 

[Industrialsize]

I'm not discounting polytheism. Within our culture we are more likely to think of God than gods, so I wrote God.

Which Abraham story do you have in mind? Old Testament stories are difficult to interpret precisely because many of them do not appear moral. A response is to see the OT as a people coming to perceive God, but making lots of mistakes along the way. Abraham is wrong in thinking the sacrifice of his son Isaac is required.

God provides a point of origin for morality. In the OT God sets out moral laws. God is not the only possible source of morality, but there is a clarity in the view that morality comes from God. If not God, then from whom? If you take your morality from the laws of a nation then there are problems when those laws go wrong (eg the holocaust was promoted by the law in Germany).

I am a practicing Buddhist. I do not believe in a supreme being. I'm a moral person. My morality comes from neither a god nor a nation.

 

[Klingsor]

Can we agree what virtue is? Justice? Courage? We routinely work with concepts that are problematics to define and have no agreed definition. I trust you don't refuse to consider the existence of morality because of problems of definition.

We don't see the concepts of virtue, justice, or courage as disembodied consciousnesses that created the universe and seek love and worship from humanity--so the analogy is of limited use.

 

[Jason]

I am a practicing Buddhist. I do not believe in a supreme being. I'm a moral person. My morality comes from neither a god nor a nation.

Yes, and I did make the point that morality doesn't have to come from belief in God/gods. Buddhist ideas of morality don't come from God or from society. Perhaps from the teachings of the Buddha? I really don't know. Or from nature?

 

[Jason]

We don't see the concepts of virtue, justice, or courage as disembodied consciousnesses that created the universe and seek love and worship from humanity--so the analogy is of limited use.

The analogy is that we use everyday concepts we struggle to define, and struggle to have an agreed definition. It is certainly true that definitions of God don't agree, but this doesn't mean we cannot discuss the concept.

 

[Industrialsize]

I'm not discounting polytheism. Within our culture we are more likely to think of God than gods, so I wrote God.

Which Abraham story do you have in mind? Old Testament stories are difficult to interpret precisely because many of them do not appear moral. A response is to see the OT as a people coming to perceive God, but making lots of mistakes along the way. Abraham is wrong in thinking the sacrifice of his son Isaac is required.

God provides a point of origin for morality. In the OT God sets out moral laws. God is not the only possible source of morality, but there is a clarity in the view that morality comes from God. If not God, then from whom? If you take your morality from the laws of a nation then there are problems when those laws go wrong (eg the holocaust was promoted by the law in Germany).

The implication here is that a sense of morality that comes from anyplace BUT god is somehow not clear and therefore inferior.

 

[Jason]

The implication here is that a sense of morality that comes from anyplace BUT god is somehow not clear and therefore inferior.

There is a clarity in a morality that comes from God. If you believe in God and God gives a moral code, well you have a God-given moral code. Simples!

However I'm not saying that any other source of morality is inferior, though I suppose it is inevitably more complicated. There's nothing wrong with complexity.