Atheism vs Antideity
Offline I have been struggling with this concept, because why I agree of much what atheists believe, I disagree with some as well. I discovered what my issues are based around is definition, before I get blasted away with comments that I am fility theist, I encourage any responders to read my entire post. The first things I am going to state is what I agree with and these are:
- The bible is not infalliable, and is not divine.
- God is not an eternal human.
- The universe was not created in a mature state.
- God does interfer.
- God is not provable.
Now what I disagree with, and I will expand my reasoning:
Conciousness is only the result of evolution
Even if humans did not exist, all the building blocks for capability of conciousness would have to exist within the universe. The core values of the universe remain the same, they do not alter. The capaiblity for evolution was not accidental, there are no accidents. Random is simply ignorance of the variables involved.
Creation is impossible
Humans alone are starting to create artificial universes, and artificial intelligence. Now I don't want to launch into a huge phillosphical debate, but if it is possible for something like us to do this, isn't it possible for something else to do it as well? Now this can always launch the argument, we are a figment of some other humans imagination, but I am not trying to say this is a definative reality, I am just trying to say creation by intelligence happens every day.
Further extending on this argument, many things in life are fractal, for instance a tree with a large branch contains smaller branches. It is very possible that this universe is the exstension of another universe, and that our parent universe "created" us.
God is an impossibility
An argument I often hear from atheists is one where God is compared to Santa Clause or, I believe Dawkins said, "Flying Spagetti Monster". Now I completely agree that God can very well be fictional idea, however, God has a characteristic that none of these other fictional things have, and that is tangibility. Theoretically if santa clause actually existed, you would be able to kidnap him, touch him, or interact in someway. However, keeping to the definition that God is infinite, you would never be able to fully interact with God. The tangibility characteristic is what seperates God from any other fictional creation.
So when comparing God to anything, God should never be compared to santa clause. God can be compared to something like Karma, comparing God to fictional tangible ideas and entities doesn't make logical sense. However, not only do I embrace that karma can also a bs concept, I also embrace the fact that to most christians, God is a very tangible thing, and the christian God is what atheists target.
Atheism vs Antideity
Atheists target christians, yes they do make logical and philosophical arguments, but a large amount of arguments are targetted at christians. I consider myself a philosophical theist, and I believe in God -Theory-, and the main point in believing in God Theory has nothing to do with an actual God, but to dictate if humans were a "God" to something, how should we act, because this can help guide human morality. I believe that God represents the epitome of human aspiration, infinite life, all knowing, loving (sometimes), for the most part humans want to believe in a God that is "good". Even though christian's own literature illustrates God doing mass killings, the main points they amplify are only the good ones. It is also interesting to note that a common argument atheists make is, "somewhere someone is getting raped and murdered." Indicating that if God exists, God is very sick, and God should be benevolent.
The issue I have is that the majority of Atheism doesn't target the philosophical idea of Theism, it targets deities. I believe that most atheists are not atheists as much as they are Antideity.
Jonathan
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You are going to have to be a lot clearer by what you mean here. There is no scientific way to support this.
I don't know who is arguing this.
Most atheists dont believe this. Only that God is unprovable, especially since there is not meaningful definition for God yet that we can all agree on.
Atheists target fundamentalism because the more fundamentalist, the more irrational the belief. We just happen to be in america surrounded by more of one than the other.
I agree somewhat with this. The more "defined" the deity the more the adhocism necessary to support the belief. As far as more general the theism goes, its more a question of "so what" and "does that mean anything?"
I had no idea humans had created artificial universes; can you point me to your source for this?
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
You have the makings of a determinism there. If I understand your argument correctly, then you're saying "it is what it is" which it's difficult to argue with. If consciousness is contained in the universe (which it is) and human beings express that consciousness, and human beings have evolved, I'm not sure what other thing you need to add to the picture. In that framework, evolution is simply an expression of the universe doing what the universe does. I doubt you'd have an argument with any scientist that the universe is just as we experience it.
You might want to read up on that. What we call "artificial universes" and "artificial intelligence" aren't actually recreations of either. The terms are used because they sound exciting, but unfortunately give the wrong impression.
Dividing reality into universes doesn't mean that we were "created", it simply means that the universe we know had a different form before.
Pardon? What god has tangibility? There's nothing tangible about something that never shows up.
No, atheists don't just target the Christian God, it's any invisible intangible imaginary creature. To most humans, the desire for a personally validating fiction is tangible. Tangible means you can touch it. Plain and simple.
It makes a lot of sense if you think about God as an expression of the superego, the adult's remnant of the parental influence, whence comes a facet of morality. There would be little point in believing your sense of morality was anything but good.
These are the same thing. God as a theory is weak in the extreme. God as even a hypothesis is weak. How do we test for God?
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Even if we assume, just for the sake of argument, that god is intangible, all she would have to do is bend the laws to allow us some measure of perception. After all, intangibility only defines that which we, as humans, are currently unable to percieve, right? That is, intangibility by definition makes no claims to future possibilities.
For instance, some animals, humans included, have developed their "senses" far beyond that of what the average should be. In other instances, evolution has taken the necessary steps forward to produce an entirely "new" sense, where one previously did not exist. With that new sense in place, life is able to percieve things in a whole new way.
Of course, if you are the xian type who disagrees with the statement that "with god, ALL things are possible", then you will disagree with what I've postulated here, especially regarding a god having powers over nature, logic and reason as we humans currently know them.
All of this leads me to a question I've wondered about every so often...
If two separate identities are both intangible, could they be aware of each other?
I have several answers in mind but would love to hear from everyone else.
I believe by intangible the OP meant supernatural and not something like air. That is how I took it to be meant in the context as otherwise the OP has little basis for his argument because a god that were intangible like air or like ultraviolet radiation would still be detectable. I may well be wrong, but the OP hasn't been back to respond at all yet.
I suspect that if two entities were mutually incapable of being aware of each other they would not be able to have awareness of each other, if you'll forgive the redundancy. Two entities that are mutually intanglible, as you've put it, however, could potentially be aware of each other in the same fashion that we are able to use a tool so that we can see that which cannot be seen (ultraviolet radiation or subatomic particles, for instance).
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
Thom,
Thank you.
Yes, I agree the OP meant supernatural and that is the type of deity I am referencing as well in my previous post. It is not reasonable to believe in a god when we can only imagine one. That is to say, a god should, in some way, be either natural at some point(s) in time, as opposed to entirely and forever supernatural, OR occasionally tangible, as opposed to forever intangible. When I had tangibility in mind, I was referring to that which we can sense (with the 5 ordinary senses) as well as those things that have measure-ability, which again goes back to our brains capability of understanding such measurements.
To go completely off theme here for a moment... have you ever looked at a word and it appeared very strange, very funny to you? Just a moment ago, as I typed it, I wondered whether 'measure-ability', was actually a word. It still doesn't look quite right to me.
The terms supernatural and intangible as we now know them, are of a certain meaning to we humans. But what if that meaning changed due to, as I pointed out before, heightened senses or even additional senses through the evolutionary process. That is, senses that could be unknown to us at this time. Or maybe new ways, new tools we would fashion to observe phenomenon previously unrevealed, previously assumed to be supernatural.
In essence, we would begin to know of things in a natural way that previously were only deemed supernatural. Ditto intangibility.
Your answer (that I 'bold' above) to my question is precisely my first answer, though again, I have a couple others in mind.
One problem: the 'supernatural' is that which does not exist. The supernatural just doesn't exist. If you mean something that we cannot detect now, but may be able to due to an advance in technology (I won't speculate on evolution), sure. Something that is supernatural would necessarily be intangible. That which is intangible, however, is not something that is necessarily supernatural. Air is intangible, but it exists (natural). God could be intangible, but it doesn't exist (supernatural). See? Stop using the words supernatural and intangible interchangeably. Actually, stop using the word supernatural. (The OP used intangible and likely meant supernatural, that was apparent in context and it's the only reason I addressed his statement as though he meant supernatural. Don't make the same mistake.)
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
I've checked several sources....Merriam, Cambridge, Wiktionary etc. and can't seem to find a definition that states that supernatural is that which does not exist.
Please direct me to a source on this.
Your following sentence, particulary where I have bold, :
"If you mean something that we cannot detect now, but may be able to due to an advance in technology (I won't speculate on evolution), sure."
comes much closer to the definitions of supernatural that I have seen.
Perhaps we atheists, myself included, would be better off not using this word at all if indeed most atheists view the word as you do. Certainly a qualifier of some sort would be in order.
Also, I'm well aware of tangible vs. intangible when it comes to god and air , but I'm not the one putting on airs.
I mean that the supernatural doesn't exist... it just doesn't exist. It's not real. There is nothing that is supernatural. It's a broken concept, negatively defined and without any universe of discourse. You can't point to something and say, 'That's supernatural!' because it wouldn't be because you could point to it. If the supernatural is supposed to be 'above or beyond that which is natural' then you can't interact with it at all, ever, because all that exists is natural. I'm sorry if I'm not getting that point across to you very well so read this thread. Literally, the supernatural is composed of those things that don't exist. The very idea of something that is supernatural is mind boggling, likely because as the word itself is defined nothing can actually be supernatural and... this is going to become very circular.
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
Yes Thomathy,
You and I can both agree that supernatural is a broken concept, and as such it is not real and negatively defined. Indeed, discourse in this arena would be ill-advised at best.
However, you and I are atheists and have a better grasp on the concept than the average Joe, or at least we should, IMO. And if we drag the average christian into discussion, many, in my experience, love to talk about the supernatural as if it were a property or 'being of' god. Which, yes, definitions within some dictionaries do align.
This is why my earlier response, with the person who started this thread, included both intangible and supernatural, even though as you noted, he didn't use the term supernatural. Frankly, many christians I've dealt with don't fully comprehend the word supernatural, at least not in the way you and I see it. I was hoping to see exactly where the OP'er was at ... in terms of his belief system.
I did not intend to bother you or confuse anyone reading the thread into thinking I was creating "hoops", circular or otherwise.
I'll say this as plainly as I can... I wanted to see if christians would agree upon a definition of supernatural (is their chosen god in or out) and stick with it. And no, I don't feel I'm baiting anyone. Theists aren't descending on this thread like flies on____ ,but perhaps that is still to come. Well, my beeper is beeping so I gotta go to work.
Oh and thanks for the link to the thread. There were a couple of points made that I hadn't previously considered.
OP- "Atheists target christians"
.... Well yes in the west, and in the mideast , Islam
OP - "God Theory"
.... Science is the highest study of gawed theory
OP - "I believe that most atheists are not atheists as much as they are Antideity."
.... start with NO MASTER, ONE, EQUAL .....
Atheism Books.
I agree, with the right variables life and eventually conciousness will occur. That has nothing to do with god.
Sure, but creation from nothing is impossible. So the point is: if god created us, where did god come from?
Are you saying that god is tangible because we can't touch him? That means that god is tangible because he is intangible. god is a fictional entitiy, that is the point. That is exactly the point of the FSM and the invisible pink unicorn, they are just as likely to be real as your god. The fact that christians believe that god is tangible and real means nothing.
Atheist actually means without god, antideist would mean against god. I don't believe in god, so I can't be antideist. We do tend to argue philosophy as well, any topic will do actually. Start a post with your god theory and I will be happy to discuss it with you.
Zen-atheist wielding Occam's katana.
Jesus said, "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division." - Luke 12:51