Greatest Proof of a Lack of a Deity?

[I, Brian]

I'm curious, pseudonymous - do you view nature as evil?

[pseudonymous]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

I'm curious, pseudonymous - do you view nature as evil?

i think evil is not applicable in my perceptions. more like obsolete, as i think it was a vehicle for consciousness to evolve within. and if consciousness had evolved to the point of experiencial knowing that it was not the vehicle it evolved within, then it would be obsolete.

if self awareness, as described in my perceptions, is the goal (whether consciously or an effect) of this evolution, then nature would be a huge distraction in the least, but likewise up to the present evolution, a necessary sensual tool to have gotten us here collectively.

dcv-

[I, Brian]

Then indeed I think you have perhaps argued against your original "proof".

If nature is not evil, then pain and suffering as a result of that Natural System it itself are not gratuitous, but indeed part of the greater vehicle of a higher purpose of being.

I suspect part of the problem is that you see a spiritual universe, but you are trying to rationalise the existence of God using logic alone? I suspect that it takes some interpretation of personal experience to perceive God, and only after then can it seem like a wholly rational position.

Or am I jumping to quick to conclusions again?

[Quahom1]

Originally Posted by pseudonymous

pain & suffering is a universal at least once in any sentient's life, and a deity responsible for the gazillions of past, present, and future experiencers should be ashamed of itself...especially if it were a judgmental deity on top of that. it remains the single greatest argument against a conscious creator.

what are other obvious arguments against the existence of a deity that you ascribe to?

dcv-

How, can I know greatness, unless I learn defeat? How can I express love, unless I feel indifference? How can I know the enemy, unless I am injured by him. How can I rise above Angels, unless I am devastated by them?

The only way to Know the goodness of God is to experience the antithesis of God. Humans need opposites, in order to judge (and according to the Bible, we are supposed to become judges).

We are also told that there will be two choirs in Heaven (music is the ultimate language, math in motion, perfect for judging for there is no interpetation required).

First, the Angeles sing, a sonnet that will cause men to weep, for the exsquisiteness, that only absolute perfection can bring.

Then, it will be Man's turn, the song of which will break the Angels' hearts, for the song of salvation is something they never understood, for they never had to be saved. And the Angels shall bow before Man, finally sensing the relationship between they and the Maker.

What does this have to do with proof of God? I don't know, but I sure as hell didn't come up with this thinking by random chance...

[Adamante]

pseudonymous,

First off to you, I think your posts are very intelligent and I can tell you've thought about this before! You are among a lot of people on this forum that surprise me at how well thought out they are. Some posts from different people directly contradict one another, but both are said in such a way that both seem they could be correct, or going the right direction.

I will return to your original post, asking what evidence is there that a diety does not exist. Pain and suffering is one arguement against (or even for).

The key word I really like that you used, was evidence. I also like some kind of supporting evidence to give anything I think some kind of stronghold. I don't trust myself to go with just "feeling", even though I do of course, I know it is most likely partial.

There are two ways I see to provide evidence of no diety. I can share the world with all of you through my experience or I can stand on the shoulders of great men and women of science, and use what we all now know as fact. (What we hope is fact, in some cases!)

Through my own experience- I can not say there is no diety. As a matter of fact, I am inclined to believe in such a thing. I have no evidence to support what I believe though...and I have no specific reason of why I do. Loosely put, when I find myself in the midst of a an area that is just nature and myself, and is what I percieve as beautiful, I *feel* like something is somewhere. But I have no evidence of that...and that very thing causes even me to doubt what I feel! But it's felt none the less.

Through science- This can get very complicated. The great minds of our time seem to struggle with this. Evolution does state that some don't kill others to survive and some do. Omnivores, carnivores, and herbivores abound in life on Earth from the smallest creature to the largest. Carnivores and omnivores, take life and consume it to survive. It doesn't *seem* too bad when such an animal eats a plant, but then again it's a bit worse if an animal where to eat a man.

Pain receptors in the body of a gazelle are firing mad when a lion takes it down and begins to try and kill it. Such things are in the nature of these animals. Even small things like viruses and bacteria. They do what they were made to do. But man is very different. We do what we are meant to do, but we do much more than that, do we not? Some kill just to kill just as some love just b/c they love. This would mean some things are very against nature and terrible while some things are very beautiful and grand.

This doesn't support a lack of a diety...nor does is support that there is one. It seems in a fashion that either there was a creator, who made, then stepped back and let what he made take it's course...or what is now here is nature taking its course logically.

With our ability to reason above all animals we have ever known...and with mankind instinctivly (sp) seeking a higher being, perhaps this is evidence of a diety or of our evolution. If we continue to evolve, we may find ourselves god-like in our capabilities in the next few million years.

Because we have such an ability to reason, those things we can not explain suddenly become victim to our imagination. A powerful powerful tool, but misleading as well I think. The first men ever on Earth had their diety. They had a story to explain the sun and the stars and the tornado, and the creation of the planet, etc. The more we evolve, so does our diety. Our diety changes with us. THAT in my opinion is the greatest evidence of no diety...in that in our imagination we have created such a thing and over time of mans existence, watch this diety evolve to fit our needs. God/god is who we want it to be. In 2000 years, Christianity will have passed and if we are still alive and not victim to natural selection, what will we believe then? What will suite our purpose?

So in the end, I don't even know if there is a diety...I'm just inclined to believe there is for no reason!

[Anzac]

If the suffering argument is the case then there is an obvious conclusion that I draw from it every time:

If God created evil and suffering (which to most eyes they did) then surely God is a hypocrite? Saying not to harm each other, to love and care, to treat one other with deceny and then to destroy thousands of lives everyday is the same as the Westerns who bomb the crap out of nations on a daily basis and are horrified when forty people are shot by a gun-toting child. To me this is a POSSIBLE argument, but not one that I totally agree with due to the ominpotence and infallibility coupled with the idea of free will among humanity - it is our choice to do something and whether God was involved with the consequences is another matter. He set the ball rolling and it goes, whether we get in the way or move aside (with or without our knowledge) is our decision.

After all aren't good and evil two sides of the same coin, they face away from each other yet in reality they are back to back and closer than you could ever think. Is there really a dividing line set in stone of good and evil? Who made it?

[juantoo3]

I see I'm a little late to the party, may I join in with some observations?

Since the fundamentals have been dispensed with, I will forgo my opinions for the moment. I have found an interesting line of thought here that coincides with my current line of investigation. Please accept my post as much in the form of a question as statement, as what I have written here are only thoughts.

Pseudonymous, I hope you will forgive me for pulling a collection of your posts for the sake of discussion. It's late, so I am going to approach this randomly. I hope it will make sense in the end.

as humans, all we really have to contemplate our reality is the "as above, so below" rosetta stone. for a truth to be a absolute truth, it must reflect all the way up and all the way down. this tool has always been one of my greatest assets in discovering the mechanics of the unknown. it has also been a way for exploration using what logic & reason we have...our ability to imagine stems from reflecting on the known as to how it might point to the unknown.

I see you looking outward, as I am looking back. Therefore, if "as above, so below", then let us consider. First, we both recognize that we can only speculate, neither of us has any firm proof. Since that has been dispensed with, allow me to postulate.

The creatures that were to become man at an early stage of development had no cognitive ability, and were not capable of rational thought. Suffering, to them, wouldn't exist in any sense we are familiar with, merely a prelude to certain death. Somehow, somewhere, sometime, increasingly supported by archeological evidences, man gained rational thought. Along with that rational thought, archeologically simultaneously, he also gained tools, weapons, primitive social morality, likely communication, and spiritual awareness. With this dawning compassion, came what we could call suffering. That is, fighting through the pain to keep on existing for the sake of those you "loved" and for the sake of those who "loved" you.

i think evil is not applicable in my perceptions. more like obsolete, as i think it was a vehicle for consciousness to evolve within. and if consciousness had evolved to the point of experiencial knowing that it was not the vehicle it evolved within, then it would be obsolete.

This dealt with a question as to whether or not nature was evil. Nature is nature (yeah, that's really profound...LOL). It is neither good nor bad, yet it is both. Chi requires chi, life feeds on life. That is the circle of life, and depending on your vantage, whether you are eating supper or being eaten for supper, is whether or not it seems good or bad. But stepping back from that vantage, it is simply the way it is. It is satisfying the natural bodily mechanisms for converting "food" into "energy".

if self awareness, as described in my perceptions, is the goal (whether consciously or an effect) of this evolution, then nature would be a huge distraction in the least, but likewise up to the present evolution, a necessary sensual tool to have gotten us here collectively.

Certainly, pain induces fight or flight responses. While animals have been known to survive while injured (such as the bear that roams the woods somewhere south of here dragging a broken leg), typically such injuries are a prelude to becoming somebody's lunch. Suffering, then, is quite limited in the natural order of things, existing primarily in humans. I will go along with the argument about suffering being a component of self-awareness (dawning of conscious rational reasoning), but I am inclined to think it is not the primary one, or even a significant one.

i would state that it is nerve endings that define suffering and/or pain. there seems ample evidence that pain and suffering are a universal of all sentient forms that have a nervous system.

it is a considerable amount of contemplation and reasoning which returns me to the original post. i notice everyone tends to answer human-centrically, as if we were here since the first single celled organism decided to dine on its neighbor. pain and suffering, existing perhaps for billions of years, in countless experiences, exposes a not so nice deity...which of course might be the case. but to say that any conscious being would allow such a billions of year stretch so that humans could come along and learn from it seems arrogant in the least.

Biologically, these two statements contradict each other at the elemental stages. If nerves are required for pain (and physical suffering) then single celled creatures would not feel pain. At best some simple creatures have an instinctive reflex for survival reasons. But nervous systems are not developed until much farther up the chain, reducing the billions of years to perhaps 1 billion at best (I would have to consult the chart). Simple nervous systems I believe were primarily reflex and musculature, pain receptors did not form until much later.

Since the law of the jungle, fight or flight, survival of the fittest was required by nature to balance the "orgy of bloodlust" (I believe is how you phrased it) necessary for survival (sustenance, chi requires chi), pain was probably an inducement to stay alive. That is, when overwhelmed by pain, the creature was no longer in a state to survive. Now, I see it could be argued about parasitic feedings (worms, disease, flesh eating maggots) that might cause discomfort that could be termed suffering. But if that suffering became overwhelming rather than nuisance, or the effects of parasitism overwhelming, then once again that critter becomes supper for someone.

As humans, it is not natural for us to want to view anything other than in a human-centric manner. That is our point of reference, and it is to that that we must return, until the spirit passes to its next vantage of reality.

this is exactly what my contemplations over the past several months have been about. is the duality the cause, or is it an effect of evolution of awareness? is there a deity behind the duality, or it is a natural and inherent manifestation of sentient life? evolution has, whether by design or not, led us to experiencially know (for some) that consciousness exists beyond the physical body's demise...that the body is but a vehicle for consciousness, and not consciousness itself.

When all is said and done, I don't think this collective line of reasoning points to whether or not "God" is "conscious". I have my personal inclinations, which I have deliberately avoided for this thought exercise. Logically, God, consciously or unconsciously, could create such a self-sustaining enterprise as nature. Just as well logically, nature "just happened." Likewise, logically, good and evil as such might not exist. Of course, I think the collected experiences of the multitudes of humans through the centuries would tend to negate such a contention.

Some matters are probably best left to individual experience. Experience is not always the most pleasant teacher, but her lessons are seldom forgotten by anyone with a lick of sense.

P.S. I found some of the "suffering beyond the body" concepts intriguing, another line of thought for another day.

P.P.S. I like your e.e.cummings writing style, it takes getting used to though.

[Susma Rio Sep]

Originally Posted by pseudonymous

pain & suffering is a universal at least once in any sentient's life, and a deity responsible for the gazillions of past, present, and future experiencers should be ashamed of itself...especially if it were a judgmental deity on top of that. it remains the single greatest argument against a conscious creator.

what are other obvious arguments against the existence of a deity that you ascribe to?

dcv-

I think Buddha and the Buddhists are very good at the psychology of suffering: overcome desire and you abolish suffering.

About pain, that is now conquered with anaesthesia.

But there is the distress of being snubbed, rejected, someone cutting into your lane, shouting at you, the sorrow of loneliness, etc. Buddha and Buddhists can help in this department also. Otherwise, try mood enhancing and mood modifying drugs; but don't get addicted which is more pain and suffering.

The ancient wisdom teachers I think have similar ideas to Buddha's. The Stoic philosophers? No, I am wrong...?


Pain and suffering exist, therefore God does not exist; or He’s a hypocrite?

For me it’s very simple: just believe it: that God exists. But pain and suffering still exist. Then He must be punishing us for the sin of our first parents, taught in the Bible as understood by Christians. But Christ has reconciled us with God by His redemptive death on the cross. Forgiveness yes, but there is still penance to be done.

Anyway, you believe in God, believe also that in the next life He will free you of all pains and sufferings.

You don’t believe in God, then just bear your pain and suffering without explanation, just a fact of life, period. And when you die it is no longer a concern of yours, you are not around any longer.

As for me: yes, I believe in God and in the next life after death, when there is no more pain and suffering. But it does not mean that I have to belong to a religion headed by some other humans.

My suggestion: Have you own DIY religion.

Susma Rio Sep

[Anzac]

Originally Posted by Susma Rio Sep

Pain and suffering exist, therefore God does not exist; or He’s a hypocrite?

Which therefore means God is fallible which means God could have made a few errors while creating the world which accounts for all the suffering which in turns allows for God's mistakes. This to me seems as always a flawed argument - if God gave is free will then we have the choice to accept pain and suffering, I also have the same choice with free will to accept that God does not exist bu seeing as God is a forgiving God I will still recieve ascension otherwise God is not a just God which brings into question all kinda of ideas...

[JJM]

I believe that God gives us Free will to keep himself from sinning. If he didn't he'd be a fascist forcing us into his will. I think that that is wrong thus he couldn't do it. So he gave us free choice and it is through that that pain and suffering exists. For if god takes away pain and suffering then he takes away the freedom of choice which is in fact suffering. Which is also why I think that he created hell so that after death those who wished to live with out suffering could go to heaven and those who couldn't help but cause suffering for other could go to hell. Just what I think.

________________________________________
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
Socrates

[juantoo3]

"I've come to the conclusion, that a man is about as happy as he makes his mind up to be." -Abraham Lincoln

[Pagan-prophet]

I have always believed,
God is flawed.

[Quahom1]

Originally Posted by Pagan-prophet

I have always believed,
God is flawed.

I think you may be right for one simple reason which has no known reason behind it...

He seems to love us.

[Pagan-prophet]

Originally Posted by Quahom1

I think you may be right for one simple reason which has no known reason behind it...

He seems to love us.

I have no reason to believe that he is not flawed. Every living thing in the universe has its faults.

[juantoo3]

Then I suppose the better question is: Who made whom?