Proofs that God is imaginary

[Plotinus]

Oh - well that's not the same thing as "natural law". You should specify what you're talking about more clearly. There are of course plenty of arguments against the notion that homosexuality is wrong because it is unnatural; this is because it is a very stupid notion. Anyone who, for example, wears clothes or shaves or uses mechanised transport or posts on an Internet forum cannot hold it without inconsistency, because none of these things is natural. But this isn't relevant to the subject of this thread.

Your argument doesn't work, though. You are only entitled to conclude from it that what is natural is not necessarily good. But your conclusion is that what is unnatural is not necessarily bad. That's not the same thing. It could be that all unnatural things are bad, and so are some natural things.

 

[Agent327]

To put it another way, if someone thinks I'm going to hell because of my beliefs, I'd be rather insulted if they didn't try to persuade me out of them. Aren't they bothered?

IMO anyone has a right to go to hell if they want to. (Not to mention that heaven and hell's existence is unproven as well.)

This is probably unrelated, but I came up with a reason why the whole natural law thing is wrong:

• The basis of natural law is that if it is natural, it is god-given, and thus to go against what is natural is a sin.
• However, we know that things evolve through natural selection, which encourages self-supporting traits, for example greed.
• Greed is encouraged by natural selection, and so is natural
• However, it is a deadly sin; so what is unnatural is not inherently wrong.

I'd have to say that:
- there's no relation between natural and "god-given" (one might argue, for instance, that religion is not natural, but is god-given)
- greed might be "encouraged by natural selection", but social behaviour certainly is
- there are no "deadly" sins, only mortal ones.

In addition to Plotinus' remark, I'd like to point out that Natural law or the law of nature (Latin: lex naturalis) is a theory that posits the existence of a law whose content is set by nature and that therefore has validity everywhere. (Wikipedia) Or, according to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: The term "natural law" is ambiguous. It refers to a type of moral theory, as well as to a type of legal theory, but the core claims of the two kinds of theory are logically independent. It does not refer to the laws of nature, the laws that science aims to describe.

It was intended to be pointed at the 'homosexuality is unnatural' people. I think it works there.

Again, in addition to Plotinus' remarks, it is quite plain that homosexuality is natural (it occurs in non-human species as well), but, not to confuse these issues, one might argue that theft is natural for the same reason. Basically though, if anything is natural (or not) has no bearing on it being morally good (or bad).

 

[Plotinus]

IMO anyone has a right to go to hell if they want to.

That's not really relevant though. I don't want to go to hell. If in fact I am going to hell, it's not because I want to do so, but because I'm mistaken in my belief that the way I'm living won't take me there. If someone thinks I am going to hell, I'd say it's their duty at least to inform me that I'm going there so that I can make an informed decision about what I'm going to do about it. As part of this, they'll have to convince me that hell actually exists and that I'm going there because I've rejected God. As part of this, they'll have to convince me that God exists. (This is assuming that their belief that I'm going to hell is based upon the belief that you go to hell if you don't believe in God.) So it's not about whether people have the right to go to hell or not if they want to; it's about whether one has a duty to help people who are headed that way - just as, if I am deluded and believe I can fly, other people have a duty to stop me jumping out of windows.

(Not to mention that heaven and hell's existence is unproven as well.)

That's not relevant either, since the issue was whether someone who believes these things is morally justified in trying to get other people to believe them too. Whether they are rationally justified in believing them in the first place is a completely different issue.

 

[Agent327]

Alright, let's sidetrack a bit. Belief in heaven and hell isn't really related to the existence or belief in God; in fact the belief in heaven and hell is quite a bit older than the belief in God - as a supreme divine being. (Which makes the relevance of someone believing they can fly rather naught.) Now, if someone's belief in God leads them to be convinced of me going to hell simply because of not being convinced of even the existence of God, that's fine, but it's a private belief or disbelief and I don't want to be bothered by such people at all. The matter if I am going (or want to go) to hell again is a private issue and of no concern to others, be they fervently "religious" or not; if I want to discuss it, that's alright; if I do not, this wish should be respected. Just as someone else's religion is a private issue - unless they actually want to discuss it (which, quite frequently, they do not - unless they can interfere with other peoples' lives).

But what I actually wanted to do was to elaborate on this remark:

Again, in addition to Plotinus' remarks, it is quite plain that homosexuality is natural (it occurs in non-human species as well), but, not to confuse these issues, one might argue that theft is natural for the same reason. Basically though, if anything is natural (or not) has no bearing on it being morally good (or bad).

One might even argue that religion and atheism are natural, though not god-given - as religion is older than the belief in a single divine being - God. (Though religion and atheism ofcourse do not occur in nature - except in the nature of man. Along the same lines it is also possible to argue that clothing and weaponry are natural - as they occur naturally in the development of man, and the use of tools is frequent in other species as well, from insects to mammals.)

 

[Flying Pig]

Oh - well that's not the same thing as "natural law". You should specify what you're talking about more clearly. There are of course plenty of arguments against the notion that homosexuality is wrong because it is unnatural; this is because it is a very stupid notion. Anyone who, for example, wears clothes or shaves or uses mechanised transport or posts on an Internet forum cannot hold it without inconsistency, because none of these things is natural. But this isn't relevant to the subject of this thread.

Your argument doesn't work, though. You are only entitled to conclude from it that what is natural is not necessarily good. But your conclusion is that what is unnatural is not necessarily bad. That's not the same thing. It could be that all unnatural things are bad, and so are some natural things.

I suppose; but if it is not necessarily good to do what is natural and it is natural to be hetrosexual, then it is not necessarily right to be hetrosexual so it is not neccessarily wrong to be homosexual.

I think that works.

 

[Plotinus]

Alright, let's sidetrack a bit. Belief in heaven and hell isn't really related to the existence or belief in God; in fact the belief in heaven and hell is quite a bit older than the belief in God - as a supreme divine being. (Which makes the relevance of someone believing they can fly rather naught.) Now, if someone's belief in God leads them to be convinced of me going to hell simply because of not being convinced of even the existence of God, that's fine, but it's a private belief or disbelief and I don't want to be bothered by such people at all. The matter if I am going (or want to go) to hell again is a private issue and of no concern to others, be they fervently "religious" or not; if I want to discuss it, that's alright; if I do not, this wish should be respected. Just as someone else's religion is a private issue - unless they actually want to discuss it (which, quite frequently, they do not - unless they can interfere with other peoples' lives).

So if you saw someone doing something which you knew to be very dangerous to their health, but which they didn't realise was so dangerous, would you reason that their belief that they are safe is a "private belief" and none of your business? That seems to me quite an immoral attitude.

I suppose; but if it is not necessarily good to do what is natural and it is natural to be hetrosexual, then it is not necessarily right to be hetrosexual so it is not neccessarily wrong to be homosexual.

I think that works.

That works only if homosexuality and heterosexuality are (a) mutually exclusive and (b) jointly exhaustive possibilities. But there are other possibilities, such as being asexual, being bisexual, and so on. So it could be the case that it's not right to be heterosexual but not right to be homosexual either. Which would be a bit grim, but there you go.

 

[Flying Pig]

So if you saw someone doing something which you knew to be very dangerous to their health, but which they didn't realise was so dangerous, would you reason that their belief that they are safe is a "private belief" and none of your business? That seems to me quite an immoral attitude.

There the line blurrs. To tell them that it is dangerous is fine, but to stop them doing it (on the condition that those around them are not affected by it) is not good.

That works only if homosexuality and heterosexuality are (a) mutually exclusive and (b) jointly exhaustive possibilities. But there are other possibilities, such as being asexual, being bisexual, and so on. So it could be the case that it's not right to be heterosexual but not right to be homosexual either. Which would be a bit grim, but there you go.

True; I didn't get that far in terms of building an argument, but I think that I proved that to say xyz is un-natural does not neccessarily mean 'xyz is bad'

 

[Agent327]

There the line blurrs. To tell them that it is dangerous is fine, but to stop them doing it (on the condition that those around them are not affected by it) is not good.

I'd have to agree. (See below.)

So if you saw someone doing something which you knew to be very dangerous to their health, but which they didn't realise was so dangerous, would you reason that their belief that they are safe is a "private belief" and none of your business? That seems to me quite an immoral attitude.

You mean like smoking? You seem to be prone to confusing issues. But, as fate would have it, there's actually a court procedure started against a "medium", who convinced a TV star that her cancer wasn't lifethreatening at all and could be cured by alternative healing techniques. Sadly, the starette died and the medium is now being prosecuted. (She didn't appear in court's first session, preferring to remain in Canada following an "alarming message" she claimed to have received - on her private line to God, no doubt.)

As concerns the "immorality" of my attitude, I'm quite adamant that moral issues are a public responsibility. If society fails to address certain moral issues, I'm not personally resonsible, but collectively. (Germany accepted such a responsibility after WW II, Japan - and, less known, Italy - did not.)

Finally, I think the word is amoral. (IMO, morality is highly misrated by so-called monotheists and atheists alike. An agnost should know better, though, than to point a moral finger - just my personal opinion, ofcourse.)

 

[Birdjaguar]

Two other concepts are buried in the definition, but perhaps not obviously so. Some of you have noted them. One is “Real” with a capital R and the other is “Everything” with a capital E. The use of capitals refers to an absolute rather than relative use of the word.

I'm still wondering what this part means. You say that God, as you believe him to be, is "Real" and "Everything", but in God's case these terms do not mean the same as the ordinary terms "real" or "everything". The difference is that in God's case they are absolute rather than relative. But what does this mean? There are of course well-known difficulties with the claim that terms mean something different when applied to God from what they mean normally, but in this case the difficulties seem greater. In what sense are the ordinary terms "real" and "everything" relative at all? To my mind, to say that something is real is not to make a relational statement at all; it is to attribute a property to the thing itself. For example, if I say that Obama is real but Gandalf is not real, I am not saying that Obama bears some kind of relation to something which Gandalf does not bear. I am saying that Obama has an intrinsic property which Gandalf lacks, the property of being actually instantiated. I don't see how that is a relational statement. If you think it is a relational statement, then what is the thing (or things) that Obama is related to that Gandalf isn't, in virtue of which the former is real and the latter is not? Furthermore, if (ordinary) reality is a relational matter, then if what God has is not relational, how is it similar to (ordinary) reality at all?

"Everything" is even harder, in my view, because this isn't even an adjective, but a sort of noun. Now some nouns can be relative, or at least express relations, such as "father". I suppose you could see "everything", in the ordinary sense, in this way. "Everything" is the thing or set that, for any given X, bears the relation of whole to part to X. But if that is what it means to say that "everything" is a relational term, what does it mean to say that God is "Everything" in a non-relational way?

Basically, what I'm saying here is that if you define these terms in a relational way, it is difficult to see what you mean by saying that God instantiates them in an absolute way. That's not to say that this can't be explained, but I'd like it more clearly set out!

Let me try again. Real means permanent and unchanging: a characteristic of god. "real" is what we call all the various things we find in our world. They appear real to us and if I hit you with a hammer, it will break your skull. That is a real effect for us. But the hammer is not Real, because in time it will stop being a hammer and become something else. The effect of being struck on the head is also not Real for the same reason.

"Everything" here means all there is; there is nothing more; god alone is. It does not mean a collection of separate things. "everything" means the collection of all finite things. The finite individuality and separateness we see as "everything "are manifestations of the "Everything" that we cannot see.

I would find it difficult to hold both as true. They are very different types assumptions. My definition of god has utility in shaping a view of existence. Your ideas about the number 2 leads to expanding itself to an infinity of numbers and I do not see what that buys you in terms of making sense of things. Maybe you can build a model of existence from it, but I'm not sure I could. I can see how such a discussion would fit into a philosophy class, but it doesn't seem to me to answer any of life's questions. Assumptions that don't lead to where they can affect one's life, seem pretty silly. That is how I see the FSM and pink unicorn arguments.

I like this and it makes a lot of sense. But I'm not really sure it answers Fifty's point. As I understand it, Fifty is saying that your definition of God could equally well apply to other things, which are not God. If that's true then it must be at best insufficient as a definition and you need to add something which distinguishes God from those other things. Now you're saying that God, for you, shapes a view of existence, whereas the number two does not. But are saying that this is part of the definition of God? If you're not saying this, then you haven't answered Fifty, because it's still the case that your definition of God applies to things that aren't God. The fact that God has properties that those other things don't have (such as the property of shaping your view of existence) is neither here nor there as far as that problem goes, because if this property is not part of God's definition then it is a non-essential property, and numbers could still be God (on this definition) even without that property. So it seems that to address Fifty's problem (at least in this way) you need to say that shaping a view of existence is part of the definition of God. The problem with that is that it makes God's existence dependent on the existence of other people, because if other people didn't exist, God couldn't shape their existence. But depending upon the existence of other people does not seem compatible with the divine perfection.

I did not say that "shaping my view of existence" is a property of god. My experience is what creates it for me. Now, I will say that since god is all that is Real and is a all encompassing unity, it is not absent from any part of the multitude of separate things we call everything. God, therefore, by its very nature influences everything from the inanimate subatomic particles to the most evolved forms of life.

Personally, my objection to your definition of God is that it doesn't seem to capture the notion of a perfect being. It seems to me that if God is anything he is a perfect being, such that a more perfect being not only does not exist but could not exist. He is, as they say, that than which no greater can be conceived. But your definition seems to me to leave out key perfections. I can imagine a being greater than your God, namely exactly the same thing but perfectly good, who always does what is best. I suppose you would respond to this by rejecting the definition of God as maximally perfect.

Use of the word "Perfection" is a slippery path and leads one quickly into the duality of opposites which run contrary to the "infinite, eternal, permanent and unchanging" characterisitcs I've used. Perfection and imperfection, more perfect and less perfect, good and not good are part of our "everything" but not god's Everything.

HAHA, you think you're a nothing.

No, I'm Everything and you're nothing.

My definition “points to” something that exists that is not bound by time or space or any physical dimensionality or physical properties, and that is permanent and never changes. It is all (Everything) that is Real (permanent and unchanging). Hence my frequent “God alone is,” posts. God is all that is Real. God is all encompassing in all dimensions, Everything with a capital E.

How do you reconsile the two bolded (bolding mine) ideas. Obviously stuff in the world changes, or I would never be able to type this.

Are you saying that the passage of time is an illusion and that the universe is at a stand-still, somehow?

I hope I answered your Everything questions above.

Time is part of the physical universe. It is not Real in spite of it seeming to be real to us. To us the universe appears to unfold as time passes and we see it as real.

BirdJaguar's definition of "god", as a sentient being, is simply a complete impossibility. The creature he describes cannot, and does not exist.

Also, if X = Everything, then why call it X? It simply needs no other name. "The universe" is a good enough name.

Well, I have not talked about "sentient" and I'm not sure exactly what you mean by it. Using god is convenient and tends to get people's goat. As I have described god, it is "larger than" the universe and not so limited.

 

[warpus]

If it isn't sentient, why call it God?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Just out of intrest, how many of the people here defending belief in God actaully believe in Him?

I would be one.

If it isn't sentient, why call it God?

I never brought it up because I am not sure what "sentient" means to this crowd.

 

[Birdjaguar]

This is an odd sort of quasi-nihilism. I wonder if you actually have internalized this thought process and accept it throughout your life, or is it just a useful recourse to be reserved for academic discussions? Its one thing to say that there is no fundamental difference between an assumption that reason leads to truth or that the caterpillar leads to truth when we're just idly discussing these things on the forums, but how do you square that with your everyday existence?

Suppose some subordinate at work came in and told you that the caterpillar says to give him a raise... do you really think that he is fundamentally just as right as you are, and that the only grounds on which you refuse his request is that you just don't accept his worldview, while acknowledging that it is equal to yours on intellectual grounds? What an odd way to live. Of course, I can't convince you of the irrationality of such a manner of thinking because you refuse to accept rationality as a starting point, but that strikes me as rather like someone just insisting that 2+2=5... I might not be able to convince him but that doesn't make him right, and that doesn't put his position on equal intellectual grounds with the position that 2+2=4

People make irrational decisions all the time. They make what appear to be rational decisons based on irrational ideas all the time too. I would even venture to say that most, probably substantially more than most of the decisions made in the world by people are based on something other than clearly reasoned thought. Life is not a philosophy class. My assumptions and the implications of those assumptions guide many of my decisions about people and about how I should act. Rational acts can be built upon a base of irrational assumptions.

Your 2+2=5 vs 2+2=4 example is interesting, but not very relevant. How about this?

You say the universe exists by chance and reason is the key to truth.
I say God alone is and you cannot experience it through reason.

How does one judge which position is superior? Why would you even want to make such a judgement?

 

[Plotinus]

There the line blurrs. To tell them that it is dangerous is fine, but to stop them doing it (on the condition that those around them are not affected by it) is not good.

Well then, that's just what I was saying: to tell someone that they're doing something dangerous is fine. In the religious case, that's precisely what those religious people who go around trying to persuade people of God's existence are doing.

True; I didn't get that far in terms of building an argument, but I think that I proved that to say xyz is un-natural does not neccessarily mean 'xyz is bad'

No, all you proved is that to say xyz is natural does not necessarily mean "xyz is good". You'd need further argument to derive from this what you just said.

Of course there are perfectly good arguments to show that what is unnatural is not necessarily bad, to the extent that really it's surprising that anyone would think that naturalness/unnaturalness map onto goodness/badness at all.

But I don't really see the relevance of this in a thread that's supposed to be about disproofs of God's existence.

You mean like smoking? You seem to be prone to confusing issues. But, as fate would have it, there's actually a court procedure started against a "medium", who convinced a TV star that her cancer wasn't lifethreatening at all and could be cured by alternative healing techniques. Sadly, the starette died and the medium is now being prosecuted. (She didn't appear in court's first session, preferring to remain in Canada following an "alarming message" she claimed to have received - on her private line to God, no doubt.)

I'm not "confusing issues", I'm drawing parallels. If the parallel between one case and another is accurate, and you have a moral intuition about what the right or wrong behaviour in one case is, then that intuition should also carry over to the other case unless you have some good reason for saying otherwise. Here I'm saying that our intuition in the drugs case is that it is right to inform the person that what they're doing will have dangerous consequences. If that is so, then we ought also to think that in the religious case it is right to inform people that their beliefs will have dangerous consequences. I don't see any significant structural differences between the two cases.

As concerns the "immorality" of my attitude, I'm quite adamant that moral issues are a public responsibility. If society fails to address certain moral issues, I'm not personally resonsible, but collectively. (Germany accepted such a responsibility after WW II, Japan - and, less known, Italy - did not.)

I'm afraid I don't understand what you're saying here at all. It sounds like you're denying that individuals can behave morally or immorally at all, or like you're claiming that moral categories don't apply to individuals - but that they do apply to groups. Since that's probably the most absurd thing I've seen on this thread so far I can't imagine it's what you really mean. Surely you don't think that, for example, if I murder someone this has no moral significance, but if society as a whole murders someone it does.

Finally, I think the word is amoral.

You can call it being amoral if you like. But often, a claim of amorality is itself immoral. If, for example, you see someone being gang-raped and you don't intervene on the grounds that you are amoral and therefore see no reason to interfere with other people's actions, I'd say that you are behaving not amorally but outright immorally, and I think most people would say that too.

(IMO, morality is highly misrated by so-called monotheists and atheists alike. An agnost should know better, though, than to point a moral finger - just my personal opinion, ofcourse.)

I don't know why someone who's agnostic about God can't talk about morality. What's your reasoning behind that one?

 

[Atticus]

Just out of intrest, how many of the people here defending belief in God actaully believe in Him?

I'm just playing devil's advocate as usual...

 

[Phlegmak]

EDIT: Nevermind.

 

[Agent327]

But I don't really see the relevance of this in a thread that's supposed to be about disproofs of God's existence.

I'm not "confusing issues", I'm drawing parallels. If the parallel between one case and another is accurate, and you have a moral intuition about what the right or wrong behaviour in one case is, then that intuition should also carry over to the other case unless you have some good reason for saying otherwise. Here I'm saying that our intuition in the drugs case is that it is right to inform the person that what they're doing will have dangerous consequences. If that is so, then we ought also to think that in the religious case it is right to inform people that their beliefs will have dangerous consequences. I don't see any significant structural differences between the two cases.

Your "parallels" move from religion to people who think they can fly to murder and gang-rape, though. Perhaps we can call this the "Plotinus parallel" principle. But joking apart, I like my issues to stay focused.

I'm afraid I don't understand what you're saying here at all. It sounds like you're denying that individuals can behave morally or immorally at all, or like you're claiming that moral categories don't apply to individuals - but that they do apply to groups. Since that's probably the most absurd thing I've seen on this thread so far I can't imagine it's what you really mean. Surely you don't think that, for example, if I murder someone this has no moral significance, but if society as a whole murders someone it does.

"It sounds like"? But to address your example here: collective murder is usually referred to as war. In time of war, such collective murder is "morally justified", but individual murder is still punishable by law. If something is already punishable by law, I see no need to have or express a personal opinion in addition on the matter. (I'd like to add, for clarity's sake, that if I commit murder there is a severe moral consequence to myself and that I do not take into consideration genocide, which might also considered collective murder.)

You can call it being amoral if you like. But often, a claim of amorality is itself immoral. If, for example, you see someone being gang-raped and you don't intervene on the grounds that you are amoral and therefore see no reason to interfere with other people's actions, I'd say that you are behaving not amorally but outright immorally, and I think most people would say that too.

The reasoning here is quite flawd: "often, a claim of morality is [in] itself immoral." (Already a bold statement.) The example of a gang-rape witnessed by someone not intervening (on whatever grounds) may be qualified as immoral, but it might just as well be a matter of cowardice ("I'm not doing anything about it, because of fear for what might happen to me") or neglicence (I fail to alert the police of a crime in progress). I fail to see how this proves anything about amorality. (One might conclude something about the nature of man, perhaps.)

I don't know why someone who's agnostic about God can't talk about morality. What's your reasoning behind that one?

Again, not what I said. But someone who does not know if God exists (and accepts that God is perfectly good, for one) should be more careful when addressing issues concerning morals than the average person, IMO. As should a theologian or a priest -of whatever conviction. (I'm sure you can understand why without me explaining my reasoning in any detail.)

Having with this returned to the topic of this thread, I quite like Birdjaguar's definition of God as

"that which is infinite, eternal, permanent and unchanging."

Taking into account the comments provided by Fifty, Plotinus, Birdjaguar himself a.o. it seems to me a fairly adequate definition. While it lacks certain traditional attributes such as perfection, goodness, etc. it is much closer to what an accurate decription of God might be, precisley because it lacks any anthropomorphic qualities.

 

[Perfection]

No, I'm Everything and you're nothing.

So basicly your opinions are meaningless poetics devoid of any rigorous thought.

 

[Traitorfish]

Finally, I think the word is amoral.

Amorality applies to motivation, rather than action. It implies a lack of awareness of morality, a self-interested rather than altruistic motivation. If any given situation allows a moral choice to be made, it must also offer a corresponding immoral choice; an amoral person will merely make this decision based on self-interest, rather than morality, and so they may still commit an immoral act.
In this case, a person who fails to inform you that you are putting yourself in unknowing danger is failing to follow a moral course of action, and so is following an immoral course of action. Whether their lack of motivation to follow the moral course is rooted in an immoral judgement or an amoral attitude, the act, or, rather, the lack of one is, in itself, immoral.

 

[Naskra]

I don't know why someone who's agnostic about God can't talk about morality.

For SHAME, Mr. Plotinus, any theologian should know that agnostics speaking about good and evil are deaf men speaking about music.

 

[BasketCase]

M1A1 tanks are old, and the Tomahawk is sea-launched - where do you get this stuff?

And the F-16 has been in active service for thirty years. So what? It works. The F-16, and the M1A1 Abrams, and the Tomahawk missile, work because the Bad Guys' weapons are even older.

The basic point I was trying to get across is that if somebody tries to force religion upon somebody else, I want the person doing the forcing to DIE. If they see it coming and suffer a great deal of pain in the process, so much the better.

Edit:

I really think the tank discussion can go somewhere else, if it really matters.

Blargh. That's what happens when I don't read ahead.