The existence of God and the efficacy of prayer

blue triangle said:
Life is nothing else but meaning.
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Seems there were a lot of if-then statements involved in that.

But what I'm curious about... What if that defense fell through, and an external meaning of life couldn't be proven? Would you then no longer have a personal sensation that your life has meaning?

It's a puzzle to me, because I don't need evidence to have that sensation. It reminds me of theists who say morals must come from a god, so if they stopped believing in a god the implication is that they would rape and murder without guilt. If you stopped believing, would you feel your life has no meaning?
 
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blue triangle said:
The word 'meaning' has a fair number if synonyms, such as value, significance, import and purpose.........
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They're not synonyms at all. Thanks for your lengthy reply, but you are explaining something I didn't ask about. "Meaning" has meaning.
 
From what I gather, seeing as how the topic has moved on from prayer, we have all agreed that there is no evidence that prayer heals, correct?
 
blue triangle said:
The word 'meaning' has a fair number if synonyms, such as value, significance, import and purpose.

So what is the value of life? First of all, we cannot avoid value. Even the statement 'life is without value' is itself a value judgment, and value judgements are a part of intellectual life. So right from the start the argument that life has no value is scuppered, because the statement contains a logical paradox, a value judgement that there is no value.

A life has plenty of value. In fact it is nothing else but value at various levels: physical, biological, social and intellectual. Robert Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality calls these static patterns of value (or quality) and says they all trail in the wake of Dynamic Quality itself (which Pirsig says is undefinable but which might be equated with the Tao). That isn't too far away from what religions, not least Christianity, have to say about value, about what is good and what is evil. That's all I want to say about value at the moment, because it will be contained in other parts of the argument - all in fact.

What is the significance of life? If we are eternal souls then life has great significance, because the way it is lived will determine our future state. In fact it will determine the future state of the entire universe, which changes (perhaps only slightly in most instances but occasionally to a greater degree) with every life lived - with every decision we make in fact. Even naturalists will see this, and so even in their atheistic scenario future generations will at least see the significance of lives previously lived - and so in another way the naturalist argument is illogical. And if we live in a 'top-down' universe, created and sustained by a heavenly Father; if lives are guided, if signs and prophecies are given and a 'grand plan' is being fulfilled, then there is infinite significance in each and every life.

Does life have import? If each and every life is significant, if we are all players in the divine drama, then each life has import too, insofar as how much they contribute to the fulfillment of the divine plan. If each life has infinite significance, each too is infinitely important, in that it has the potential to assist of hinder the grand plan (yet the hindering too can be taken into account).

So what is the purpose of life? Our purpose, given everything I've said above, is to contribute our part to the fulfillment of the divine plan. Each has a contribution to make, and each contribution is vital. So each and every life has infinite purpose, just as each molecule in a snowflake is part of its grand design.

So life has value, significance, import and purpose. In fact it is composed of value, significance, import, purpose, and everything else that meaning contains. So, far from being bereft of meaning, as some here have asserted in defiance of logic, life is nothing else but meaning. That can be turned into the sentence you require me to state.

Life is nothing else but meaning.
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Life has no value according to your beloved bible.

Funny that.

Life has no value according to many of it's followers, only the next life has value.

Funny that too.
 
I Am The Scum said:
From what I gather, seeing as how the topic has moved on from prayer, we have all agreed that there is no evidence that prayer heals, correct?
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More than that. There is no evidence that prayer does anything.
 
MikeG said:
They're not synonyms at all.
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Well, you can take that one up with the dictionaries and thesauruses I consulted.

MikeG said:
Thanks for your lengthy reply, but you are explaining something I didn't ask about. "Meaning" has meaning.
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You asked me to sensibly put 'life' and 'meaning' together in a sentence. I did so, and showed why I think they can be put together. Now sir, your answer.
 
I Am The Scum said:
From what I gather, seeing as how the topic has moved on from prayer, we have all agreed that there is no evidence that prayer heals, correct?
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The argument didn't really get going. Bu there is no more agreement now, I'll wager, than there was at the beginning.
 
Pup said:
Seems there were a lot of if-then statements involved in that.
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Yes there are. But even if you take them all away, there is still the fact that statements like 'life has no meaning' are absurd, because in a life without meaning the word itself wouldn't exist. Therefore, the word 'meaning' has to refer to something real, and so the statement 'life is meaningless' is an absurdity, because life refers to everything we know, including whatever it is that we understand to be meaning.

Pup said:
But what I'm curious about... What if that defense fell through, and an external meaning of life couldn't be proven? Would you then no longer have a personal sensation that your life has meaning?
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This lies at the heart of the matter (I will assume that you mean 'meaning' in the theistic sense, rather than some naturalistic sense). Theists (or many of them at least) have had the experience that God is real, but science can neither detect God nor validate the experiences. Between them lies a gulf. Many of us who stand on the theism side have had the existence of God shown to us to our satisfaction (and we're not all stupid and scientifically illiterate). We could no more go back to being atheists, as many of us once were, than deconverted Christians could go back to six-day Creationism. That is the one fact that many atheists cannot stand to hear, but it is the truth.

Your question itself hinges on what 'proven' means, but it isn't difficult for many theists to see that what has been personally shown to them has proven the opposite, that life does have great meaning. You wouldn't accept that as being proven because there are no research papers to validate it (and even then it wouldn't be proven in a strict sense). But we do not need everything to be scientifically validated before we act on it. If we do we are dehumanising ourselves, by giving our authority over to science - which makes a good servant, but a poor master.

Pup said:
It's a puzzle to me, because I don't need evidence to have that sensation. It reminds me of theists who say morals must come from a god, so if they stopped believing in a god the implication is that they would rape and murder without guilt. If you stopped believing, would you feel your life has no meaning?
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That is too big a question to go into here, but remember that for many theists God is not some external being, but the Ground of Being. Could not our conscience, our sense of what is right, ethical, moral, in part come from our connection with God?
 
blue triangle said:
Many of us who stand on the theism side have had the existence of God shown to us to our satisfaction (and we're not all stupid and scientifically illiterate). We could no more go back to being atheists, as many of us once were, than deconverted Christians could go back to six-day Creationism. That is the one fact that many atheists cannot stand to hear, but it is the truth.
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Why would that bother atheists? I think most are well aware that many theists never deconvert. But other theists do. It's possible, because it happens. Do theists not want to admit that?

Hint: Theists who become atheists do not, by definition, feel their life is meaningless, any more than lifelong atheists do, though anyone may have that sensation, which I feel is probably linked to depression which anyone may be subject to.
 
Pup said:
Why would that bother atheists? I think most are well aware that many theists never deconvert. But other theists do. It's possible, because it happens. Do theists not want to admit that?
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It seems to bother many atheists I've spoken to, who congratulate themselves for having given up traditional Christian belief and imagine that they are now seeing clearly and thinking rationally. It bothers them that some of us have had the experience of discarding atheism, for a larger, richer and much more meaningful worldview. In fact some of us have had both experiences, rejecting biblical literalism and embracing scientific naturalism, then eventually rejecting scientific materialism and embracing spirituality, and for exactly the same reason, because the old worldview became too small.

The theists who deconvert are in my experience usually those who were brought up as Christians or who converted fairly early on, without really engaging with naturalism. In modern society, it's a road many will have to travel though.

Pup said:
Hint: Theists who become atheists do not, by definition, feel their life is meaningless, any more than lifelong atheists do, though anyone may have that sensation, which I feel is probably linked to depression which anyone may be subject to.
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Hint: if you want to avoid giving offense, you might want to lay aside the 'hint' tactic.

As for having a sense that life has meaning, atheists are hampered there. They may have some sense of it, but there is more to be had, much more.
 
blue triangle said:
.........As for having a sense that life has meaning, atheists are hampered there. They may have some sense of it, but there is more to be had, much more.
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In the sense you are meaning, no-one here has yet even begun to approach the provision of anything which contradicts my understanding that the notion of "much more to be had" is entirely in the minds of theists. You've kidded yourselves already that there is a deity overseeing things, and you're kidding yourselves that there is "more to be had".
 
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MikeG said:
In the sense you are meaning, no-one here has yet even begun to approach the provision of anything which contradicts my understanding that the notion of "much more to be had" is entirely in the minds of theists. You've kidded yourselves already that there is a deity overseeing things, and you're kidding yourselves that there is "more to be had".
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I could easily reverse your entire argument. Let's see.

In the sense you are meaning, no-one here has yet even begun to approach the provision of anything which contradicts my understanding that the notion of "much more to be had" is entirely true. I've already been shown that there is a deity overseeing things, and I know from experience that there is "more to be had".

Many theists could make the same claim.
 
blue triangle said:
...... I've already been shown that there is a deity overseeing things, and I know from experience that there is "more to be had".........
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This is just assertion. When will you guys ever understand that stating stuff like this as fact without any evidence is futile? You think you've been in touch with god? Prove it. Yours is the burden of proof.
 
blue triangle said:
As for having a sense that life has meaning, atheists are hampered there. They may have some sense of it, but there is more to be had, much more.
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If I understand correctly, you went from atheism to theism. So of course you believe your new way is so much superior to the way you used to think. Otherwise you wouldn't have changed.

I hear that same sort of egotism from lots of people who move on to something new. They assume that what's true for them must be true for everybody, and that everyone who hasn't experienced the wonders they have, is living a deprived life, just like they used to before they saw the light.

Yet it seems to me that people are able to find wonder in so many individual ways. What works for one might do nothing for another, but each can find their own meaning.

You can tell me that you'll always, by definition, have a better sense of meaning in life than me, but to me, that seems more like an inability to value others' outlook, than an objective assessment.
 
MikeG said:
This is just assertion. When will you guys ever understand that stating stuff like this as fact without any evidence is futile? You think you've been in touch with god? Prove it. Yours is the burden of proof.
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You've misunderstood what i was doing. I was simply turning your own argument on its head to show how ridiculous it is.

And the burden of proof argument can be turned on its head too. Whoever is making a point has the burden of proof, not theists, so it's time to give it up.
 
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