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The non-existence of Gods
- Thread starter mikkel_the_dane
- Start date
We have ample evidence the Sun exists, no doubt. What we don't have evidence for is that the Sun has any qualities typically associated with a deity, prime among them being, as you said, that the Sun is a person. The Sun is not a person, it has no consciousness, it doesn't answer prayers, it doesn't respond to our pleas or sacrifices for good weather, it has no supernatural abilities. It's an unconscious ball of flaming gas. So it doesn't fit the criteria, either in monotheism or polytheism, for what a god is like, unless you dilute the meaning of "god" to apply to any countless number of things that would never typically qualify in English. Thus my coffee example. If you want to say that because I've meowed before, I'm a "cat," go right ahead. But English-speaking people are gonna look at you funny when you refer to me that way, since...I'm not a cat, by any reasonable use of that word.
ecco
Veteran Member
First off, the questions of gods' existence is more about religious belief than about philosophy. So I don't understand why you started this thread in philosophy rather than religion. This is even more puzzling since the religious threads have far more viewers/posters than do this philosophy thread.
Nevertheless...
My approach is different than Wild Fox's video in post #15 although much in the video does, for all practical purposes, disprove the existence of gods.
I look at it from the standpoint of the origins of the very concept of gods. Where, how, why did the idea of gods originate? When humans developed thinking and speech, they began to have the tools necessary to put curiosity into words...
- Where did we come from?
- Why do some mountains explode?
- Why do bugs eat our food?
- What happens to us when we die?
So, how did our long-gone ancestors address the unanswerable questions? GodDidIt!
- Where did we come from? GodMadeUs
- Why do some mountains explode? GodIsShowingHisPower
- Why do bugs eat our food? WeHaveDispleasedGod
- What happens to us when we die? If we are good - GodRewardsUs. If we are bad - GodPunishesUs - Forever.
God(s) didn't create Man, Man created God(s).
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Yes, but you left some things out.
Can something exist without it been known that exists?
Or are the unknown always a case of non-existence?
And what is knowledge and does it have a limit in answering certain questions?
You take too much for granted in your assumptions about what everything is and if we can know that.
So please start by doing epistemology and logic.
What I said was this:
Personification is a literary device - a metaphor. It doesn't mean something is literally a person, so I'm not sure where you got that from. In any case, while it is worth discussing personhood and personification in more detail, let's table that for now because it's tangential to the point.
The point is - it is not unusual for natural, social, and emotional forces to be considered gods in spite of your insistence otherwise. This describes the vast majority of gods as understood by humans throughout history. This understanding of the gods was the norm for centuries and is still present today. The English-speaking world is notorious for ignoring the fact that these other theological perspectives existed (and still exist). That's what happens when the language you speak has been subject to cultural hegemony. Classical monotheism has dominated the conversation to the point that most English-speakers can't comprehend or approach other ways of thinking.
So again, ignore me. If the gods aren't real and don't exist, neither do I. We're not having this conversation. I, and countless others, have been deleted from existence. I'm used to it by now.
Well, that's largely a product of philosophy at no point being required as part of public education (at least here). Or theology, for that matter. I think if we actually had both of those in public education I might not have to constantly go on about how conceptions of god have been varied throughout history and that gods being personifications of nature/society was the norm until monotheism was invented.
On another level, there comes a point where certain lines of thinking in philosophy use their value. Knowledge certainly has limits, but there comes that point where practicality needs to win out. For all intents and purposes, if we understand that gods throughout history were readily acknowledged as natural/social/emotional forces of our world and we generally accept our observations as reliable, proving the non-existence of all the gods is equivalent to proving the non-existence of all reality (aka, not happening).
The better approach to me is always to make it more personal than that while respecting theological/cultural diversity as much as possible. It helps us move past nonsense like "there's no evidence for gods" when there clearly is and to a more accurate and nuanced "I don't find this compelling" or "to me, gods are this, so that isn't compelling." It forces people to check their assumptions, as it were, I guess?
ecco
Veteran Member
Yes.
Why would you ask such an absurd question?
knowl·edge
/ˈnäləj/facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.
Opposite:
ignorance
Yes.
Another absurd question.
Please specify what I took for granted in my assumptions.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
You have to answer the following. For a deistic creator God, that don't show Herself to humans and have created this universe at the time of the Big Bang by creating the Big Bang, how do you go about showing that this God does not exist and is not just unknown.
Now let me be specific about your problem.
Your hurdle is the cosmological principle as it connects to the Big Bang. Observations confirming the Big Bang rests on the cosmological principle but as a principle it is not science, it is a strong philosophical assumption, so if you claim we can apply pure science on the Big Bang and show there is no God involved, we can't because the proof rests on a strong philosophical assumption.
So you have to prove the cosmological principle, but you can't. It is unprovable.
In essence I chose a part of science that relies on an unproveable assumption.
Now if you are unfamiliar with the cosmological principle, that is your problem. So just go and learn about it.
No matter that, your proof rests on philosophy and not science and you have failed using science and logic.
Secret Chief
nirvana is samsara
I'm guessing decaff is the antichrist.
Abrahamic cultural imperialism has certainly taken its toll.
Polytheism is tied to an animist worldview. In animism, everything has (or is) a spirit. These spirits are viewed as persons with their own wants and needs. It is the spirit that is worshipped and offerings are made to. It is the spirit of the Sun that is worshipped. Same for rivers, mountains, trees, etc. We're worshipping or having a relationship with the animating spirit(s) of these natural bodies. In this worldview, a god is basically a big spirit that has a large impact in the life of the tribe and becomes widely revered.
It is a completely different worldview than the near-atheism and materialism that the classical monotheistic worldview leads to, which has desacralized nature and the physical cosmos, viewing it as "lifeless matter", and made the divine wholly invisible and transcendent (distant).
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Bear Wild
Well-Known Member
Please use the term "he who should not be named" for all of our safety.
Yes, I understand the basic idea of animism. But there's no evidence that everything has a spirit and/or is a person. That's why atheists reject both polytheistic and monotheistic conceptions of god(s).
Yes, I know why they reject it. Modern atheism (it's more accurately called physicalism) is largely an outgrowth of the Abrahamic worldview as well as a reaction to it, for the reason I mentioned. But I posted that because you said the Sun doesn't fit the criteria for a deity in theism, which is simply wrong.
What criteria does the Sun meet for calling it a God? Is the Sun a person? Does it have a spirit?
Bear Wild
Well-Known Member
Animism can be seen as the relationship of an individual to the other aspects of their world and conferring and equal importance to that relationship by attributing spiritual importance (spirit) to each aspect of the natural world without anything supernatural. It seems that humans are neurologically set up for anthropomorphism via our mechanisms for empathy and theory of mind and I do not mean this in a bad way. Thus we give human like attributes to other animals, plants, and natural features. Hurricanes have names to them originally female (no there is some symbolism) as well as rivers. The river then takes on more than just a body of water flowing and can be seen as nurturing to the life in it and to those on land sharing the water. This attribution creates a different relationship including one of respect and even making the other sacred. Thus rivers can be sacred an thus associated with a female goddess.
Again I argue that since no one can truly explain what a god or goddess is one could certainly include a natural goddess into the definition without the need for supernatural.
To me, the Sun is a person and has a spirit (or is a spirit, but that's another conversation). The Sun is the most widely worshipped deity in human history, so I'm not sure what's why this is hard to understand.
Secret Chief
nirvana is samsara
I think the issue is not one of failure to understand, the issue is the non-acceptance that deities exist at all, of whatever definition, category or type.
Abrahamic cultural imperialism has certainly taken its toll.
I try not to get to bent out of shape about it; folks don't really choose the cultural environment they grow up in and the legacy of Abrahamic influence is very powerful. It has shaped the foundational assumptions of the Western worldview and is very deeply-engrained. So much so that this shaping isn't recognized by those who are shaped by it. Been there, done that - then started challenging foundational assumptions and went "wait a sec... there's other types of theism that don't require X, Y, Z?" Yes, yes there are.
But we can't talk about those, yeah? It gets in the way of retreading the same tired ground of "humans invented gods" (yup, humans invented the sun!) and "gods don't exist" (yup, our planet is orbiting around... nothing!) and "there's no evidence for gods" (that sunburn came out of nowhere, huh?). Oh, and we can't forget "evil exists and therefore gods aren't real" (yup, war gods not a thing apparently).
Since we're going there, to add:
There's no (materialist) evidence anything is a person, humans or otherwise. Rather like deification, ascribing personhood is an attributive exercise or a title granted to something subjectively. It's a way of designating something as worthy of ethical consideration by acknowledging it as an independent force/power/entity/spirit/character (whatever word one wants to use, honestly). It starkly contrasts to impersonal, mechanistic materialism whereby personhood is reserved for an elite few (often not even all humans) and everything else is a cog in the machine to be used and abused as needed.
There's no (materialist) evidence for either of these perspectives. Not for the mechanistic, soulless materialism or the organic, soulful animism. It all rests on unprovable philosophical assumptions (or evidence-as-logic). Ultimately we just pick the story we like best.... or perhaps more accurately, the story chooses us (subject to change) based on life experiences and cultural background.
No, that's not the issue in that conversation.