The Atheist Thread (Long Time Coming)
January 2nd, 2023 at 1:18:39 AM permalink | |
rxwine Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 167 Posts: 15945 |
Why does it have to be God or something else? Why can't there be more than a couple possibilities? Perhaps it's something else we have no concept of at all. No words for. Nothing to describe it. Like an unknown property. |
January 2nd, 2023 at 2:04:54 AM permalink | |
1nickelmiracle Member since: Mar 5, 2013 Threads: 21 Posts: 596 | It feels like an infinite rabbit hole to me no matter the direction we go. |
January 2nd, 2023 at 3:21:54 AM permalink | |
odiousgambit Member since: Oct 28, 2012 Threads: 144 Posts: 3883 | There is a certain argument out there to just go ahead and pick a religion and stick with it, even if you don't buy into it all that much. Otherwise, the argument goes, you will find yourself trying to figure it out yourself and get into that rabbit hole you mentioned. Don't be out there Wandering in a Wilderness ... some of the best advice I've ever gotten, though I didn't immediately buy into it. Naturally many agnostics just stay with the one they grew up with, which to some degree is where I've wound up. I finished the book about the Old Testament stories for adults. I guess different people get different reactions, but to me it largely was a story about one god amongst many becoming first the dominant god to this one group of people, to finally God in a monotheistic religion. Today I think Jews say without reservation that it's the God of the universe, not just their god. The angle that's sort of interesting to me is knowing the role having a written language played. This time around I could really follow it, since, you know, the ones who were literate were the priests, probably something close to exclusively so. For the reader, it is a constant cycle of these priests writing a history from their perspective. We think of the Hebrews as clinging exclusively to this one god, but outside of the priests, the Levites, other gods sometimes came into the picture. Naturally, sometimes the Hebrews were doing well, then something happens like defeat in war, or famine, whatever. The written record becomes: "hey, we told you those other priests and their gods were going to make our god punish everybody, see! And it is written here, look, our god is supposed to be the only god we worship, get back to your roots, people!" This is just repeated over and over again, and I believe it is true that the other priests did not have a written language for the most part. When this becomes such a tome of writing, it's going to prevail, that's just a fact. In these written histories designed to emphasize their interests, they would sometimes take a shot at some venerated people. King David is portrayed as a great man, beloved. But they stick in there a 'but' ... surely written down only after he was dead. Yep, apparently he had his faults and if I remember right, those times he dallied with some other gods and their priests were firmly noted with great disapproval. The prominent men had a lot of wives and concubines and this seemed to be one big way they would wander off into examining these other ways, as such women often were not Hebrews and would want to keep hold of that, bring the children up in it, etc. Interestingly, monotheism became regarded in the Western world and the Islamic world as a profound revelation. To a degree it has been internalized in almost all of us raised even tangentially in those traditions. Politics! Imagine any other activity where it is OK to openly obsess over race and ethnicity |
January 2nd, 2023 at 10:52:16 AM permalink | |
1nickelmiracle Member since: Mar 5, 2013 Threads: 21 Posts: 596 | People don't ask the right questions. The question shouldn't be, if there is a God. The questions should be what is God, where is God, when is God, how is God, why is God. It gets a little tricky once again with language limitations to the point it seems to be excuses. Process of elimination doesn't work because we cannot pin down all of reality or even really know what exists beyond the Earth, let alone the universe, let alone beyond the universe. Right now the universe itself we mostly believe it came from nothing and will return to nothing. We will be left without an observer, which is necessary for existence, because if something is not observable, it does not exist. This sounds fallacious but it might not be. |