And, as I keep pointing out, literally nothing other discussion has us break down stances this way.
Split Thread Atheism and lack of belief in the afterlife
- Thread starter psionl0
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And, as I keep pointing out, literally nothing other discussion has us break down stances this way.
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
They are all the same God. It is just different religions with different opinions about him.
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
The Abrahamic religions all believe in the God that created the universe. Your attempts to construct a bunch of d-gods is a massive fail.
This makes no sense. Literally wars have been fought continuously from when we were barely human until now over who's God is the right God. Nothing in logic, history, or even theology backs this up.
"LOL it's all the same LOL" is a copout because all the apologetics only work if you can default to god and you can't do that if there is more than one.
Steve
Penultimate Amazing
You have previously espoused at great length regarding beliefs. Could these various opinions on this particular god be beliefs? Or, if they are merely opinions, can an atheist hold an opinion that there are no gods without any application of belief to that opinion?
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
The former is vague enough to admit agnosticism. The latter is specific enough to prompt atheistic rejection of the specific claims either for lack of supporting evidence or for contrary evidence.
wareyin
Penultimate Amazing
By using general "atheism/atheist" rather than "strong atheism/gnostic atheist/what have you", when he only meant the more narrow definition, Sagan was using the word incorrectly. Sagan, like the OP, was ignoring the general definition of the word.
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
This is true. Even when it comes to the Biblical God, few people agree on what he expects.
But I don't know of anybody who says that the God of the Talmud is a different God to the one the Old Testament who is different to the God of the New Testament who is different to the God of the Quran. This is just some BS being made up by posters here who just want to be disagreeable.
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
I'd say it's a trick question, because it is either true or untrue depending on how you spin it and how serious the error is.
If one person speculates that you have brown hair and one black, we are speaking of the same person, even though only one description is correct. I can be quite sure you exist. I might even have met you but it was too dark to see your hair, or have forgotten what color it is, or you were wearing a hat.
But what if one person says you're a human being with certain political beliefs, etc. etc., and another person says you're a drooling crocodilian alien from Tralfamadore who drinks the blood of virgins? Are they talking about the same person because their subject is nominally the same, or are they talking about different persons because at least one is talking about a fictitious character that cannot exist?
Abrahamic religions all name the same god but claim only their version is correct. None have met this god, none have proof that any god exists, but each has a story which describes the unknown god behind the curtain, beginning with some common features but diverging seriously. They can't all be right, so the wrong ones are not describing any actual god. How wrong is too wrong? You decide, based on your starting point.
If you believe there is a God, and he's like a man hiding behind a curtain, then the differences of guesses are guesses about the properties of the same God.
If you don't believe there are any gods, all those accounts are more or less like being asked to write a story whose central character is a hippogriff. All the resulting hippogriffs will be different, despite sharing a name.
wareyin
Penultimate Amazing
You also don't know of anyone who says atheism is a lack of belief in god, despite that being the dictionary definition. I don't think who you know is indicative of any philosophical questions.
That said, what makes you believe all those various gods are the same? They have different attributes, different desires, and each one is worshipped by vastly different cultures from the others.
Thermal
August Member
"Are you a Democrat?"
"Yeah."
"But you are a gun rights advocate and have argued for fiscal restraint?"
"Well, yeah. I guess I'm a conservative Democrat."
"No wait...let's break out our Cartesian coordinate grid for the Democrat-Republican axis with the Socialism-Liberatarisn axis..."
Yeah, literally never happens.
Thermal
August Member
If you asked people across different cultures and times what beauty was, do you think you would get answers that share common elements but have pronounced differences?
I mean, I get your point, but I think there is room to say that claims about an ethereal god will be subjective. That's why the hard line specific God advocates fail so spectacularly.
It isn't.
The issue isn't really that they have different definitions of gods - that's just a by-the-way sort of comment and its more directed at those that try to do the motte-and-bailey dance with regards to the what god means in the real world. The issue is given how they define their gods we can say we know their gods don't exist. Because those defintions contradict or are otherwise are not compatible with what we know. So there is no "scepticism fail", no belief involved, no uncertainty, no can't-prove-a-negatove preventing us saying those gods do not exist.
Subjective meaning different in that context. And remember that for the religions of the world they have defined gods - their gods aren't some wishy-washy can't be pinned-down scoop of blancmange.
wareyin
Penultimate Amazing
Yes, I very much would get different answers. And anyone saying that beauty was the same thing would be just as incorrect as psionl0 is in saying that all of the very different gods he listed are somehow the same thing.
Which brings us right back to the invisible dragon.
In "The Blind Men and the Elephant," different observers, unable to see the whole, describe the same thing, an elephant, differently depending on which part of it each of them encounters by touch. The implication is that there is an actual God or real truth of the world or something of that nature (depending on the culture using the metaphor) represented by the elephant, but no one is capable of perceiving the whole so our individual perceptions of it will differ. As a parable for e.g. "it is unwise to dismiss others' lived experience because ones own experiences are different" this is all well and good.
But note that the context of the parable is invariably a world in which we know for certain, via reliable evidence, that actual elephants possessing ears, trunks, legs, tails, tusks and torsos exist. It's not "The Blind Men and the Beast of Unfathomable Greatness." If it was, and the blind men went out into a courtyard and described respective encounters with things resembling a snake, tree, wall, fan, rope, and spear, then it's worth considering whether they actually encountered a snake, tree, wall, fan, rope, and spear. Even if after comparing their stories they all collapsed in spasms of awe over having personally met what was obviously in retrospect the B.U.G. We would not be justified in taking the diversity of their accounts as evidence that a B.U.G. exists, or that if it does, it has those particular (snake-like, tree-like, etc.) parts.
If you're running a monotheistic religion it behooves you to give everyone in your congregation similar experiences of what you're presenting as divine, to the extent that that's possible. Elaborate lengthy services with low-key participation (just a step above the congregation being an entirely passive audience) is what you'd expect to settle on. But you also turn your god-of-everything into an elephant, a B.U.G. that encompasses a variety of different life experiences. Creatively inspired? That's God's "creator of everything" trunk. Martial fervor? That's God's "slayer of Amalekites" tusk. Amorous? That's God's "so loved the world" ear. Guilty? That's God's "stern fearsome judge" leg. (In a different era it might have been Apollo, Ares, Aphrodite, and Zeus respectively instead. Or it could be the influences of Mercury, Mars, Venus, and Saturn respectively in your astrological chart for this week.)
The obvious conclusion is,polytheism is the way to go one monotheistic religion's B.U.G. is going to end up looking similar to another's, at least from the accounts of their respective cadres of blind men. That isn't evidence that they're all the same B.U.G. or that any B.U.G. actually exists.
But note that the context of the parable is invariably a world in which we know for certain, via reliable evidence, that actual elephants possessing ears, trunks, legs, tails, tusks and torsos exist. It's not "The Blind Men and the Beast of Unfathomable Greatness." If it was, and the blind men went out into a courtyard and described respective encounters with things resembling a snake, tree, wall, fan, rope, and spear, then it's worth considering whether they actually encountered a snake, tree, wall, fan, rope, and spear. Even if after comparing their stories they all collapsed in spasms of awe over having personally met what was obviously in retrospect the B.U.G. We would not be justified in taking the diversity of their accounts as evidence that a B.U.G. exists, or that if it does, it has those particular (snake-like, tree-like, etc.) parts.
If you're running a monotheistic religion it behooves you to give everyone in your congregation similar experiences of what you're presenting as divine, to the extent that that's possible. Elaborate lengthy services with low-key participation (just a step above the congregation being an entirely passive audience) is what you'd expect to settle on. But you also turn your god-of-everything into an elephant, a B.U.G. that encompasses a variety of different life experiences. Creatively inspired? That's God's "creator of everything" trunk. Martial fervor? That's God's "slayer of Amalekites" tusk. Amorous? That's God's "so loved the world" ear. Guilty? That's God's "stern fearsome judge" leg. (In a different era it might have been Apollo, Ares, Aphrodite, and Zeus respectively instead. Or it could be the influences of Mercury, Mars, Venus, and Saturn respectively in your astrological chart for this week.)
The obvious conclusion is,
acbytesla
Penultimate Amazing
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Are they the same God? Not according to the scriptures of most religions. Christianity, Islam and Judaism lay claim to supposedly the same god, but each has very different ideas.
You prove the point. God is simply one's own creation. There are as many different concepts of god as there are believers.
What I am 100 percent sure about is even if there is a creator not a single one of the believers can honestly say they have a clue about what God thinks or wants. Not a one.
Thermal
August Member
Agreed, rigidly defined organized religion is self defeating.
I've been around religious folk all my life. Most take the wishy washy salad bar approach that you seem to think is a rare outlier. I don't entirely get why they identify with a religion that they have major issues with, but it's pretty commonplace over here in the States.
My wife and one of my kids are RC CCD teachers, but are strong liberals with all the pro-choice stances that come with that. They don't believe in papal infallibility or any of that. Yet there they are, still identifying as Catholics. What a lot of people get out of their religious identification is far less s theological position and far more about a vague kind of "spirituality".
We're getting pulled into the weeds and the people pulling us know it.
You could believe in anything if you put this much effort into making excuses for it. That's sort of the point.
If I keep looking for a dragon in my garage (I'm going to keep using this, die mad about it) for years despite never being able to explain what made me even start looking for a dragon and after a while all I have is "Well I wouldn't be looking for a dragon THIS long if there wasn't something to it" I'd be sanctioned under the Mental Health Act.
That's all THIS is, just on a bigger level.
You could believe in anything if you put this much effort into making excuses for it. That's sort of the point.
If I keep looking for a dragon in my garage (I'm going to keep using this, die mad about it) for years despite never being able to explain what made me even start looking for a dragon and after a while all I have is "Well I wouldn't be looking for a dragon THIS long if there wasn't something to it" I'd be sanctioned under the Mental Health Act.
That's all THIS is, just on a bigger level.
Thermal
August Member
Beauty: that which is pleasing to the eye. Same thing across cultures.
I dunno, I'm ok with disparate interpretations of a god, filtered through an individual or group's culture.
Which, as I've said since the original thread, works when you are refuting a specific God with claimed known attributes. It doesn't work against the broad concept of a god.