Atheists tend to work up the arguer (or lawyer) in me. No I'm not a real lawyer, but I believe I could have been a competent one if I had followed that path. I recently read The Wisdom Of Homer (Simpson) by Larian Lequella on Blogiverse. In it Larian makes a very interesting observation, " I cannot support such a petty, cruel, vindictive, incompetent, and downright stupid creature even if it were to exist." He was talking about God but he used the word creature. I find this statement very important. The statement applied to any intelligent physical entity (human, alien, or otherwise). It is also very universal, that is, most people would not support such a creature. Which begs the question, what is God? In order to explore this question from my own standpoint, I like to touch on the commonality of all major religions, how different people are in perceiving the spiritual realm, and what conclusions can be drawn about the nature of God.
Now contrary to popular beliefs, religions tend to have similar aspects apart from the aspects of controlling their believers. The major religions believe that there are beings that are not physical, not from this world, and live forever. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity have a similar God. They all believe in communication with their God through prayer and/or meditation. They all believe in the betterment of humans. The all believe in the unity or brotherhood of all humans. As an empath I too believe in these things. I can sense emotional communication between people without words. I can sense God. I can perceive that humans are actually becoming better through time (some pulpits may preach otherwise). So I see that the baseline beliefs of the major religions is correct and the religions have more in common than they wish to acknowledge.
Let us talk about people. This science based society loves proofs and they physical. That is fine when you are talking about physical entities, but when your talking about spiritual entities it doesn't work. The spiritual has nothing or little to do with physical perception. Taking the overall population of the Earth and you get a mixed bag of perceptions. I will use the 20/80 percentile rule to explain the situation. 20% of the population perceive the spiritual all the time. 60% can only partially perceive the spiritual realm, and 20% cannot perceive the spiritual realm at all. Now I'm talking in generalized terms not from scientific data or such. That means that we have spiritual people and atheists in the population. In other terms we have sensitives and non-sensitives. I think this difference is due to biology. So if a spiritual God exists, then 20% of the population would attest to it, 20% would deny it and the rest will make up their own minds.
What conclusions can be made then? If God did not exist then nobody would attest to his existence. You may argue that I'm not taking into account of religion being a hoax. If religion was a hoax then it would not have so many followers for so long a time as our history attests. It would have been a passing fad at best. So I see that God exists. I don't see that God is like how he's portrayed by the major religions though. Not in the least. Most things preached to the public is for public control and for continual existence of the religion. Most things preached are not true. To me the best religion is that which helps the needy most. They show faith by helping. If a religion is not helping, what good is it but to serve its own purposes?
I answered the question about God's existence by looking at common religious beliefs, the sensitivity of people to the spiritual realm, and drawing a conclusion. Something I have to say though. I cannot condemn anyone for opinions of non-perception. Many Atheists are honest in that they do not perceive the spiritual realm. How can they be blamed for that? Its the responsibility of the seeing to make sure the blind has their needs met. It is not the responsibility of the seeing to prove or convince the blind that something exists. Each person has their path laid out before them to learn as they can. There are some spiritual things most people acknowledge, these include life, kindness, love, hope. These are my perceptions and I cannot prove any of it.
Nice blog post Eric. A couple of comments.
ReplyDeleteYou say: "If God did not exist then nobody would attest to his existence."
Sadly, that is a bit of a fallacy. Humans have very intense imaginations. When they encounter something they don't know the answer to, that anthropomorphizing you mention kicks in. They want an explanation for a natural phenomenon, or weird feeling, so they make up an answer. I think Douglas Adams said it best:
(Continued in another post because of character limit.)
"Humans have very intense imaginations." This is just a supposition and not a fact. We don't go around inventing stuff to complicate our lives. I think men are fine being the best thing they can imagine.
DeleteI see that inventing God is a thought that is a fallacy of its own.
"Where does the idea of God come from? Well, I think we have a very skewed point of view on an awful lot of things, but let's try and see where our point of view comes from. Imagine early man. Early man is, like everything else, an evolved creature and he finds himself in a world that he's begun to take a little charge of; he's begun to be a tool-maker, a changer of his environment with the tools that he's made and he makes tools, when he does, in order to make changes in his environment. To give an example of the way man operates compared to other animals, consider speciation, which, as we know, tends to occur when a small group of animals gets separated from the rest of the herd by some geological upheaval, population pressure, food shortage or whatever and finds itself in a new environment with maybe something different going on. Take a very simple example; maybe a bunch of animals suddenly finds itself in a place where the weather is rather colder. We know that in a few generations those genes which favour a thicker coat will have come to the fore and we'll come and we'll find that the animals have now got thicker coats. Early man, who's a tool maker, doesn't have to do this: he can inhabit an extraordinarily wide range of habitats on earth, from tundra to the Gobi Desert - he even manages to live in New York for heaven's sake - and the reason is that when he arrives in a new environment he doesn't have to wait for several generations; if he arrives in a colder environment and sees an animal that has those genes which favour a thicker coat, he says “I'll have it off him”. Tools have enabled us to think intentionally, to make things and to do things to create a world that fits us better. Now imagine an early man surveying his surroundings at the end of a happy day's tool making. He looks around and he sees a world which pleases him mightily: behind him are mountains with caves in - mountains are great because you can go and hide in the caves and you are out of the rain and the bears can't get you; in front of him there's the forest - it's got nuts and berries and delicious food; there's a stream going by, which is full of water - water's delicious to drink, you can float your boats in it and do all sorts of stuff with it; here's cousin Ug and he's caught a mammoth - mammoth's are great, you can eat them, you can wear their coats, you can use their bones to create weapons to catch other mammoths. I mean this is a great world, it's fantastic. But our early man has a moment to reflect and he thinks to himself, 'well, this is an interesting world that I find myself in' and then he asks himself a very treacherous question, a question which is totally meaningless and fallacious, but only comes about because of the nature of the sort of person he is, the sort of person he has evolved into and the sort of person who has thrived because he thinks this particular way. Man the maker looks at his world and says 'So who made this then?' Who made this? - you can see why it's a treacherous question. Early man thinks, 'Well, because there's only one sort of being I know about who makes things, whoever made all this must therefore be a much bigger, much more powerful and necessarily invisible, one of me and because I tend to be the strong one who does all the stuff, he's probably male'. And so we have the idea of a god. Then, because when we make things we do it with the intention of doing something with them, early man asks himself , 'If he made it, what did he make it for?' Now the real trap springs, because early man is thinking, 'This world fits me very well. Here are all these things that support me and feed me and look after me; yes, this world fits me nicely' and he reaches the inescapable conclusion that whoever made it, made it for him."
ReplyDeleteWe really don't know what early man was like. But this analogy can be applied to present man. We are still toolmakers and we are still at the mercy of natural disasters. "Thinking intentionally" is relative to the technology you have, as in tools. People still ask today is life meaningless. But I hold that instead of just inventing God, man sensed God.
DeleteYou say: "Many Atheists are honest in that they do not perceive the spiritual realm."
ReplyDeleteThat presupposes that there actually is such a thing as a "spiritual" realm. There is no evidence for such. If you are just "redefining" the word spiritual to mean intense emotions, understand that those are all inside one's head. And science can manipulate those (see the "god helmet" experiments). It is a totally unnecessary and frivolous requirement to define intense emotions as "spiritual", and leads down the path of making more out of nothing which is the basic gist of religions out there.
I appreciate your comments. Thanks.
DeleteJust for the record:Lack of any evidence is not evidence to the non existence of such a thing. It is unreasonable to look for physical evidence of something that is spiritual.
Nevertheless, I do respect your position, Larian.
You are correct in that the lack of evidence isn't always evidence of non-existence. However, many specific claims are made about the "spiritual", and ALL tests of those claims have failed. After a while, the consistent failure paints a picture as well. :)
Delete"Many specific claims are made about the 'spiritual', and ALL tests of those claims have failed."
DeleteI wouldn't know of any claims and less of any tests. But both claims and tests made in the analytical realm would not work to test something intuitive. As I have mentioned before, "The spiritual has nothing or little to do with physical perception."