Do you believe in God?

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OK, there is an emotion, but can emotions only be the product of an actual god? Is it possible to have a strong emotion about wanting something to be true, whether or not it is true?

Oh absolutely, it's the reason I said 'when I believed in God' as I don't anymore. But people have strong emotions all the time and it alters their thoughts even while their thoughts alter their emotions. Eg: people with eating disorders who think they are fat regardless of their body fat.

True. I wonder if fine tuning is really Deltaville's reason for his belief. Did he not believe before then? Would he give up theism if fine tuning were shown to be false?

My feeling says that life is hard and I need support of God
This feeds the idea that nothing can exist without God
This feeds the idea that I need support of God
This feeds the idea that nothing can exist without God
etc etc
like this?

Personally I'm still a believer though, perhaps "at the bare minimum" of belief, but need to keep a little bit. Don't know how the non believers cope with hardship in life (not secretly calling out to God when in severe pain?) and/or do not end up with nihilism

Last edited by Grischa on 09 May 2016, 2:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

We can create individual meanings, quite apart from whether reality as a whole has meaning. Maybe you are stronger than you think.

Tell me what you think happens to your consciousness when you die.... what do imagine is the fate of humanity and its creations... what is the fate of the universe according to your own understanding? Are you proud of the consequences of atheism? Do you feel superior intellectually? Let us say God does not exist... its merely a Freudian desire for an eternal father figure and something to provide meaning to our brief and infinitesimally small and insignificant part in a vast and stupid universe that is simply the result of an accident... a sort of foam that arises deterministically out of chaos by necessity. We are dust in the wind... are you proud of this? This is where Nietzsche got it right. If God does not exist we live in an unspeakably horrible reality. You can deny it all you want, but this is the conclusion of that worldview. You accept this as true and high five?! This is extremely puzzling. As Alan Watts would say... that is a myth. People who believe that are actually the ones who are the farthest out on the tight rope...

Quote "We can create individual meanings, quite apart from whether reality as a whole has meaning."
Difficult one. I guess that reality as a whole does not have meaning as a whole. Too many examples, but one familiar to all: Auschwitz, nothing can make up for that, it should just never have happened, whatever comes next, whatever justification God could come up with.
Noah gave a long quote from "Job" in this thread, but I don't like the Job Answer.
The only thing I am not sure of is whether the alternative, our individual meanings, are not somehow sanctioned, justified, originated, etc in a divine realm.

Quote "Tell me what you think happens to your consciousness when you die."
Question shall not be for me, but give my opinion anyway: blackout, total end. Need to find something divine in this world, this life, but still something divine.

Probably nothing. It was an illusion to start with.

Extinction, erosion, corrosion... perhaps evolution if we are extremely lucky.

Don't know for sure, probably it will fade away

What are those?

I'm not superior, but theism is not intellectually defensible.

Neither proud nor ashamed, it's just the way it is.

A reality in which we are slaves to a divine will is a horror. I'm quite happy there is no evidence for that. If we are the result of particles dancing unguided in a cosmic foam, I find that beautiful.

Don't presume to speak for Alan Watts.

I can speak very well for Alan.

I wish I was young enough to be that arrogant.

I am a student of his... and I can certainly speak for him better than you. You have attempted to co-opt him to support your arguments earlier in this thread and in-so-doing have exposed your ignorance and/or misunderstanding of his entire project. What I said regarding the myth of material naturalism and Freudian reductionism can be found in his literature and lectures in many places. As I have repeatedly reminded you... you need to brush up on your Watts, because you clearly have not studied him rigorously.

I don't even believe that you believe in god.

Now that's a pretty big claim.

I can't tell if that is a joke or he is serious.


He may mean to imply that he has read/studied Alan Watts... "If I haven't read Alan Watts then you don't believe in God" type thing... But the problem is he has already made claims that demonstrate his total misunderstanding of Watts many times during this thread. I think he is particularly shaken by this fact, because he had always considered Alan to be one of his heroes. Now that I have shown him to be misguided he has even tried to say that Alan himself was a liar and was basically just trying to fool people to make money.

the immensity and order behind all that came from nothing requires a miracle to instantiate. miracles are excepted from the dimension of reason or description. they can not be forthcoming without insensible origin.

i guess that is what faith is. if you believe what you see exists, then you believe it without knowing how it all came to be, or else if you tried to estimate what exists, then you would see nothing.

Now... Interestingly, this whole issue of emotion is actually the number one issue that causes "doubt" for me. There is only one argument against the existence of God as far as I am concerned... and it just so happens that the force of this argument comes entirely from the emotional consequences. This is the argument from pain and suffering or argument from evil. Intellectually, I am fairly confident in my intuition that there is an ultimate animating creative intelligence that all of matter, energy, space, time, and are derivative from. This intuition is supported by the bulk of my "knowledge." However, it is the emotional disgust at gratuitous pain and suffering of creatures that is the only* obstacle for trust in the existence of an all loving and all-good creator. So in summary... when conducting an argument in order to rationally demonstrate a point, it is considered good practice to leave emotion aside when evaluating truth. The only half way "compelling" argument against the existence of God is the argument form pain and suffering, which is entirely rooted in emotion. The atheist is prone to complain that the theist has an emotional need for God, and will ridicule the theist for this "emotional" thinking clouding rationality. However, the atheist will then attempt to present as their strongest argument against the existence of God the "suffering of innocent people and animals." There is no explicit intellectual reason that the existence of pain and suffering preclude the existence of God. It simply leaves a bad taste on an emotional level.