To Believe or Not to Believe - Is that the question?

[Navigator]

BINGO!

Well done.... you have just admitted that you think that YHWH is a real god.... and more astoundingly by extension of your illogic EVERY GOD EVER INVENTED by humans is also a real god.

Nope...not quite Leumas.

What I 'admitted' is that these ideas of god(s) (including this YHWH) are inventions of something which for all intent and purpose IS pretty much a 'god'.

They represent the evolution of the ideas of god in relation to the evolution of the fact of human consciousness.

The ideas are not real. They contain approximates and have (as you should be well aware) the taint of individual groups of human manipulations entwined within them.

Thus, some of the ideas are real enough. The human species is still in the process of working out which ones those actually are.

To add more astounding illogic... you have even invented your very own fledgling ragtag god in the making.

Not at all. this 'ragtag fledgling god' as you refer to it, is real enough. It is no invention of mine. If anything it is a realization of mine, due to what information I have available to me to piece together this rather complex puzzle.

So do you still insist you are an atheist?

I hardly insist I am anything...I concur that for the present I am experiencing being human. What else is there to identify with being?

Due to my position others have claimed I am an atheist...which is why I often involve myself in threads discussing and arguing the meaning of the word.

ETA: Nosferatu the vampire is by your above illogic a god too and so is Aslan and Harry Potter and even Gollum and Bilbo Baggins.

Even you are Leumas. How more reasonable can I be?

 

[Navigator]

Outside this thread you have claimed to be consciousness. Are you thus claiming that you are a god?

Nope. Or Yep. depends on your own definition of what a god is.

I will go so far as to say that yes, if human consciousness is a 'god' then I am an aspect of that god.

My position as an aspect or member of the consciousness of the human species is more like a family member.

 

[Navigator]

That's quite an admission for someone who claims to have no beliefs. You believe that earth consciousness is real. I don't. I suppose you'll say that you don't believe earth consciousness is real, you know it is. But the evidence for earth consciousness is the same as what theists claim as evidence for their gods--subjective, personal belief--and they too claim they know god is real based on that evidence. You do have beliefs, in this case a belief in something that's unusual and supernatural.

The evidence for earth consciousness is accessible to you. It is everywhere. You just don't appreciate fully what is going on in relation to birth and death. A life time can seem long and is linear and subjective so it appears to be the main event.

The main event however is the whole process. Life and death flow through the situation referred to as reality and this flow carries with it data necessary for human consciousness (earth consciousness with human consciousness at the helm) to continue evolving and understanding itself.

Part of that process naturally includes god concepts. these are necessarily invented by human consciousness as a means of learning to understand itself in relation to the situation it finds itself within.

Yes - the physical universe.

Thus, the situation is illogical and the response naturally enough irrational, but building upon logic which anchors earth consciousness to its reality - rationalizing itself in relation to its position - its whole wake is evidence of it progress into self realization. It is here whether it appreciates that or not, and no doubt there have been times which can be pinpointed where it hasn't appreciated its position.

Nonetheless, there is nothing else for it but to soldier on and see what can be discovered in that. This obviously includes the need to survive.

So no. It is not a matter of belief but a matter of fact.

Objective fact.

As to whether there is more to this picture than meets the eye in relation to what you refer to as unusual and supernatural, those are just things which happen and are not adequately explained. I tend not to presume anything in regard to the unusual although obviously I have my suspicions.

But no - there is no actual point in believing anything in particular.

 

[annnnoid]

To believe or not to believe seems to matter:

“Spiritually connected teens are, remarkably, 60 per cent less likely to suffer from depression than adolescents who are not spiritually oriented. They’re 40 per cent less likely to abuse alcohol or other substances, and 80 per cent less likely to engage in unprotected sex. Spiritually oriented children, raised to not shy from hard questions or difficult situations, Miller points out, also tend to excel academically.”

Lisa Miller / Director of clinical psychology / Columbia University Teachers College

I wonder…less depression, less substance abuse, less unprotected sex. How can any of that be a good thing?

 

[Leumas]

Nope. Or Yep. depends on your own definition of what a god is.

I will go so far as to say that yes, if human consciousness is a 'god' then I am an aspect of that god.

My position as an aspect or member of the consciousness of the human species is more like a family member.

Could it be more like a termite in a termite hill?

Or maybe a virus in a viral infection?

Or a cell in an animal's body?

And as you know there are many different types of cells in a body.... so this nascent fledgling god in the making you are proposing as being composed of human consciousness must be like say a DOG with numerous cells that constitute its overall body.

So now again like there are brain cells and tongue cells and heart cells and intestine cells and other cells in a dog's body.... are there the equivalent constituting consciousness in your RAGTAG GOD?

Is your GOD riddled with ROTTEN cells? Or are you proposing that bad consciousness do not get to become part of the body of your patchwork fetus god?

Maybe mass murderers' consciousness get to form the anus of your god and the Banksters become the soles of the feet?

But how does this patchwork ragtag nascent god of yours despite being riddled with rotten and diseased parts, help with these questions of yours?

They are your questions and it is your INVENTED "idea of god".... so how does your invented "god idea" answer these questions?

....universe itself is illogical and consciousness existing within it is irrational....

Tell me why the universe exists and you will tell me also why the existence of the universe is logical.

The existence of consciousness in an illogical universe is irrational.

Show me why consciousness existing in this universe is rational.

 

[Leumas]

....
Thus, the situation is illogical and the response naturally enough irrational, but building upon logic which anchors earth consciousness to its reality - rationalizing itself in relation to its position - its whole wake is evidence of it progress into self realization. It is here whether it appreciates that or not, and no doubt there have been times which can be pinpointed where it hasn't appreciated its position.

Nonetheless, there is nothing else for it but to soldier on and see what can be discovered in that. This obviously includes the need to survive.

So no. It is not a matter of belief but a matter of fact.

Objective fact.

As to whether there is more to this picture than meets the eye in relation to what you refer to as unusual and supernatural, those are just things which happen and are not adequately explained. I tend not to presume anything in regard to the unusual although obviously I have my suspicions.

But no - there is no actual point in believing anything in particular.

Wowi... That is a lot of believing in nonbelieving you are belieiving you do not believe.

....
So no. It is not a matter of belief but a matter of fact.

Objective fact.

Do you even know what those terms actually mean?

....
Thus, the situation is illogical and the response naturally enough irrational, but building upon logic which anchors earth consciousness to its reality - rationalizing itself in relation to its position - its whole wake is evidence of it progress into self realization. It is here whether it appreciates that or not, and no doubt there have been times which can be pinpointed where it hasn't appreciated its position.

Nonetheless, there is nothing else for it but to soldier on and see what can be discovered in that. This obviously includes the need to survive.

The above is just a different way of saying that people are desperate to find meaning in this existence by which they are bewildered and thus MAKE UP ALL SORTS OF IMAGINARY STUFF to try and construe some significance for themselves.

Much like frightened children......wait.... wait... I remember having said something like that before....what could it have been....ah...yes now I remember

...people are willing to delude themselves and let others dupe them because mentally they are frightened pathetic wretched children. They are trembling lumps of insignificant debris floating on the waves of space-time trying to construe by any self-delusion a significance for their fleeting moment of existence punctuated by terror, and inexorable calamities.

Impotent to exact justice or to stem the currents of time, they raise their arms up like children begging in supplication to an imagined sky daddy to lift them up and give them a comforting hug and to beat up the neighboring children.

The major tragedy of course is that this psychological condition was and is viciously and cynically and predatorily exploited by clever brigands and wily poltroons to huckster and bamboozle the quivering shivering sheep. Much like all the other cons, scams and hoaxes discovered or invented by numerous hoodwinkers and mountebanks throughout the ages and are still being utilized even today despite all available knowledge.

But made up tall tales and fables out of the hyper-attributive wishful thinking of benighted frightened imaginations and cynical parasitical shysters exploiting this condition by fabricating myths and religions to dupe and bamboozle do not a GOD make.

The whole total of your own fabrications and wishful thinking is nothing but Special Pleading because if we apply your illogic to other products of the human imagination you yourself would refuse to grant them equal status to your ragtag fetus god in the making.

Do you think Aslan and Nosferatu and Gollum and Harry Potter are also gods?

 

[Leumas]

To believe or not to believe seems to matter:

“Spiritually connected teens are, remarkably, 60 per cent less likely to suffer from depression than adolescents who are not spiritually oriented. They’re 40 per cent less likely to abuse alcohol or other substances, and 80 per cent less likely to engage in unprotected sex. Spiritually oriented children, raised to not shy from hard questions or difficult situations, Miller points out, also tend to excel academically.”

Lisa Miller / Director of clinical psychology / Columbia University Teachers College

I wonder…less depression, less substance abuse, less unprotected sex. How can any of that be a good thing?

Any objective respectable substantiated and verified source for these statistics you claim?

Please give a citation we can look at to see how reliable your statistics are.

From Here

Strong spiritual values were positively associated with increased rates of current depressive disorder and decreased rates of current alcohol use disorder. Using "atheist" as the reference category, Catholics had higher lifetime odds of single episodes of depression whilst Protestants had higher lifetime odds of anxiety disorder and lower lifetime odds of alcohol use disorders.​

From Here

Religion & Mental Health: New Study Links Belief In 'Punitive God' To Emotional Problems
...
How about the prevalence of emotional problems in believers and nonbelievers? Overall, the study found no significant difference
....​

 

[Daylightstar]

...
So no. It is not a matter of belief but a matter of fact.

Objective fact.
...

Actually, it is believed by you to be objective fact, not shown.

 

[Daylightstar]

Outside this thread you have claimed to be consciousness. Are you thus claiming that you are a god?

Nope. Or Yep. depends on your own definition of what a god is.

I will go so far as to say that yes, if human consciousness is a 'god' then I am an aspect of that god.

My position as an aspect or member of the consciousness of the human species is more like a family member.

So that's basically a yes.

 

[Daylightstar]

...
As to whether there is more to this picture than meets the eye in relation to what you refer to as unusual and supernatural, those are just things which happen and are not adequately explained. I tend not to presume anything in regard to the unusual although obviously I have my suspicions.

But no - there is no actual point in believing anything in particular.

Except of course that these inadequately explained events are never shown to actually have happened as claimed.

...
I tend not to presume anything in regard to the unusual although obviously I have my suspicions.
...

Except for declaring them to be objective fact.

...
But no - there is no actual point in believing anything in particular.

Unless it brings the believer comfort.
You have quite an elaborate set of beliefs, so they have no point? They don't matter?

 

[Pup]

The evidence for earth consciousness is accessible to you. It is everywhere. You just don't appreciate fully what is going on in relation to birth and death.

That's exactly what religious people say. "Just read the Book of Mormon and pray to ask if it's true." "Just look at the starry sky or a newborn baby and the evidence of God is obvious." And there's the little jab at the end that there's something wrong with me if I'm not convinced to believe the same as them, by their (lack of) objective evidence.

Well, it's apparently obvious to those who already believe in that kind of thing. It's not to those who don't.

So no. It is not a matter of belief but a matter of fact.

Objective fact.

That's what they say too. Except their meaning of objective fact is actually what most non-believers call subjective. But to them, God is real, really really real, "just as real as you and me," as one particularly wild-eyed lady told me when I said I was an atheist.

Yes, it is a matter of belief. That word seems to bother you, though.

 

[dlorde]

Wowi... That is a lot of believing in nonbelieving you are belieiving you do not believe.

Yeah; it's just semantic games. His irregular declension of belief:

"I am rational"
"He has beliefs"
"They are crazy"

The plain fact is (i.e. the evidence overwhelmingly indicates) that humans are irrational creatures with a limited capacity for rational behaviour.

It also seems to me that, by general usage, knowledge is belief based on evidence (i.e. justified belief). If the evidence is misleading or misinterpreted, etc., then the knowledge and the belief based on it may be false.

I believe that many innocent people rot (have rotted) in jail or have died because of this. I know there's no way to prove that.

Belief is an evolutionary strategy for living with uncertainty; it may or may not be rational.

 

[bruto]

Unfortunately people who believe they know do not know they believe.

 

[Navigator]

Could it be more like a termite in a termite hill?

Or maybe a virus in a viral infection?

Or a cell in an animal's body?

And as you know there are many different types of cells in a body.... so this nascent fledgling god in the making you are proposing as being composed of human consciousness must be like say a DOG with numerous cells that constitute its overall body.

So now again like there are brain cells and tongue cells and heart cells and intestine cells and other cells in a dog's body.... are there the equivalent constituting consciousness in your RAGTAG GOD?

Is your GOD riddled with ROTTEN cells? Or are you proposing that bad consciousness do not get to become part of the body of your patchwork fetus god?

Maybe mass murderers' consciousness get to form the anus of your god and the Banksters become the soles of the feet?

But how does this patchwork ragtag nascent god of yours despite being riddled with rotten and diseased parts, help with these questions of yours?

They are your questions and it is your INVENTED "idea of god".... so how does your invented "god idea" answer these questions?

Are you kidding? Your use of such anecdote through your external expression seeks to limit how any such question can be answered.

You have either a deranged understanding of human consciousness or are just amusing yourself with pretense.

Either way, it (your expression regarding earth consciousness) isn't that balanced or well thought out.

However - as far as ideas of god(s) go - at least it exists to examine. Your focus seems to be on the 'bad' sectors, as if somehow an idea of god has to be only 'good.'

Even so, your are assuming that humanity as a whole will cease to get its **** together eventually and is destined to failure through eventual self destruction.

 

[Navigator]

Wowi... That is a lot of believing in nonbelieving you are belieiving you do not believe.




Do you even know what those terms actually mean?




The above is just a different way of saying that people are desperate to find meaning in this existence by which they are bewildered and thus MAKE UP ALL SORTS OF IMAGINARY STUFF to try and construe some significance for themselves.

Much like frightened children......wait.... wait... I remember having said something like that before....what could it have been....ah...yes now I remember




But made up tall tales and fables out of the hyper-attributive wishful thinking of benighted frightened imaginations and cynical parasitical shysters exploiting this condition by fabricating myths and religions to dupe and bamboozle do not a GOD make.

The whole total of your own fabrications and wishful thinking is nothing but Special Pleading because if we apply your illogic to other products of the human imagination you yourself would refuse to grant them equal status to your ragtag fetus god in the making.

Do you think Aslan and Nosferatu and Gollum and Harry Potter are also gods?

Do you have children yourself? That is a fair question in regard to your vehement expression relating to children.

Do you not understand that earth consciousness is not something which had parental guidance (like a 'sky-daddy") and that it is natural enough that stories would be created in order to fill that necessary niche?

The mythology acts as a buffer which helps to preserve the will to continue by offering reason to do so. Reason which was absent from the awareness of that consciousness.

Almost everything involved in mythology can be connected to actual things, derived from the reality consciousness is involved with - especially the earth.

All those things which you say 'do not a god make' it not absolutely true because they along with everything else human consciousness is involved with are exactly the process in which a god is made, in relation to the fact that consciousness exists and exists in this universe and potentially is a god for that.

As I have said (and thus remind you) Earth consciousness is something of a god in the making. It may not have all the attributes in which the mythological gods have been granted BUT it is responsibly for creating every god concept known AND it (unlike those concepts) does exist. It is real.

Now I am fine with agreeing with you that in relation to linear time and space, it is still perhaps in the 'womb' but I do not agree that it is some kind of evil monster for that.

Not that this is clearly what you are suggesting. It is just your fondness for expressing the way you do which gives me the impression you are not overly impressed with being human, or part of the consciousness of humanity.

 

[Navigator]

None of what I have said here can be considered belief. It is just observing the facts and seeing how human consciousness is evolving into a potential god.

Potentially it can even outshine all the god concepts it ever created.

That is not a statement of belief. If something can potential evolve into a god, it likely always potential has been a god.

 

[Daylightstar]

...
You have either a deranged understanding of human consciousness or are just amusing yourself with pretense.
...

Individual humans are conscious, no global human consciousness is shown to exist.

 

[Daylightstar]

None of what I have said here can be considered belief. It is just observing the facts and seeing how human consciousness is evolving into a potential god.

Potentially it can even outshine all the god concepts it ever created.

That is not a statement of belief. If something can potential evolve into a god, it likely always potential has been a god.

Yes, it is a statement of belief. No substantiated counter indication exists.

 

[Navigator]

Yeah; it's just semantic games. His irregular declension of belief:

"I am rational"
"He has beliefs"
"They are crazy"

The plain fact is (i.e. the evidence overwhelmingly indicates) that humans are irrational creatures with a limited capacity for rational behaviour.

It also seems to me that, by general usage, knowledge is belief based on evidence (i.e. justified belief). If the evidence is misleading or misinterpreted, etc., then the knowledge and the belief based on it may be false.

I believe that many innocent people rot (have rotted) in jail or have died because of this. I know there's no way to prove that.

Belief is an evolutionary strategy for living with uncertainty; it may or may not be rational.

...

Belief is an evolutionary strategy for living with uncertainty; it may or may not be rational.

It is irrational.

It was just semantic games which created the ability to allow words to be used interchangeably.

We do know that many innocent people rot (have rotted) in jail or have died because of this. You know there's no way to prove that?
Belief has nothing to do with that.
What are your thoughts on the Nazi Death Camps? Are you one of those deniers?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Agnosticism: uses the principle one cannot prove gods don't exist.
Atheism: uses the principle the evidence best explains gods as human generated fiction.

Both are valid positions. I happen to buy into the second one, but I get it when people chant the first one.