Assigning Human Qualities to God

[PureX]

What does one have left if he removes qualities like conscious thought, memories, feelings, preferences, desires, and volition from one's god? If one removes those qualities from one's god concept, he is left with the unconscious laws of nature. They also 'just are,' but without personhood, so why call that God?

The unknown. The unknowable. The fundamental questions of our existence. And the mystery of how these questions relate to our lives, our fate, and our loved ones. This is a mystery that all humans perceive. And relabeling it "unconscious nature" or "happenstance" isn't going to resolve the mystery or make it invisible to us. To grapple with it is a fundamental aspect of who and how we are, as humans.

 

[blü 2]

We? Do you have a mouse in your pocket?

Moving forward, I would appreciate if you didn't include me in your personal "truths." You have not shared in my experiences.

No, I haven't shared your experiences.

But unless ─ as I hope ─ you're able to tell me what real thing you intend to denote by the word 'God' such that if we find a real suspect we can determine whether it's God or not, then it would appear to me that no one can do this, and if that's right, so is the use of 'we'.

 

[Left Coast]

I think that's part and parcel, actually, of why the Torah describes God as the One who simply "Is" (YHWH - 'I will be what I will be', 'I AM THAT IS'), precisely because He does not have attributes pertaining to anything that can be described.

It is thus taken as the unconditioned basis of reality – of absolutely everything that is – so one can’t say that God "exists" in the sense that I or Mount Kilimanjaro or photons exist. God is, rather, what grounds the existence of every contingent thing, making it possible, giving actuality: "the possibility of anything existing at all" to quote the Eastern Orthodox scholar David Bentley Hart.

The medieval Dominican friar and Catholic mystic Meister Eckhart (c. 1260 – c. 1328) wrote:

"God wants us to know one thing, that there is no ‘god’... When all images are detached from the soul and she sees nothing but the one alone, then the naked essence of the soul finds the naked, formless essence of the divine unity, the superessential being, passive, reposing in itself...

God works beyond being, in the unconditioned, where He can move. He works in nonbeing. Before ever there was being, God was working. He created being where there was no being...If I were to call God a being it would be as wrong as to say that the sun is white or black. God is neither this nor that.” (Sermon XCIX (83)).​

As one commentator wrote on his theology:

“Eckhart’s experiences are deeply, basically, abundantly rooted in God as Being which is at once being and non-being: he sees in the ‘meanest’ thing among God’s creatures all the glories of his is-ness (isticheit)."

(D. T. Suzuki, Mysticism Christian and Buddhist)​

Comparatively in a non-theist context, I'm thinking of that passage from Udāna 8: Pāṭaligāmiyavaggo in the Pali Canon, where the Buddha is speaking about Nibbana as the unconditioned that does not arise depending on mutable conditions like feelings, transient emotional states, mental formations etc. (a ceaseless cycle of becoming) but rather is a supreme state transcendent to the order of mundane experience and phenomenal existence, precisely because it is not produced by causes and conditions and so cannot be "applied to things with attributes we can describe":

"There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned. If, monks there were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, you could not know an escape here from the born, become, made, and conditioned. But because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, therefore you do know an escape from the born, become, made, and conditioned.”

Compare a church father describing the nature of God:


CHURCH FATHERS: On the Trinity, Book V (St. Augustine)

"We know, or at any rate firmly believe and hold, that whatever is said of a nature, unchangeable, invisible and having life absolutely and sufficient to itself, must not be measured after the custom of things visible, and changeable, and mortal, or not self-sufficient. But although we labor, and yet fail, to grasp and know even those things which are within the scope of our corporeal senses, or what we are ourselves in the inner man; yet it is with no shamelessness that faithful piety burns after those divine and unspeakable things which are above...

He is, however, without doubt, a substance, or, if it be better so to call it, an essence, which the Greeks call οὐσία . For as wisdom is so called from the being wise, and knowledge from knowing; so from being comes that which we call essence. And who is there that is, more than He who said to His servant Moses, "I am that I am" and, Thus shall you say unto the children of Israel, He who is has sent me unto you? But other things that are called essences or substances admit of accidents, whereby a change, whether great or small, is produced in them. But there can be no accident of this kind in respect to God; and therefore 'He who is', God, is the only unchangeable substance or essence, to whom certainly being itself, whence comes the name of essence, most especially and most truly belongs.

For that which is changed does not retain its own being; and that which can be changed, although it be not actually changed, is able not to be that which it had been; and hence that which not only is not changed, but also cannot at all be changed, alone falls most truly, without difficulty or hesitation, under the category of being .

That which is accidental commonly implies that it can be lost by some change of the thing to which it is an accident. For although some accidents are said to be inseparable, which in Greek are called 7χ8ριστα, as the color black is to the feather of a raven; yet the feather loses that color, not indeed so long as it is a feather, but because the feather is not always. Wherefore the matter itself is changeable; and whenever that animal or that feather ceases to be, and the whole of that body is changed and turned into earth, it loses certainly that.

Therefore there is nothing accidental in God, because there is nothing changeable or that may be lost.

For all things are accidents to them, which can be either lost or diminished, whether magnitudes or qualities; and so also is that which is said in relation to something, as friendships, relationships, services, likenesses, equalities, and anything else of the kind; so also positions and conditions, places and times, acts and passions. But in God nothing is said to be according to accident, because in Him nothing is changeable; and yet everything that is said, is not said, according to substance"

(St. Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430), Book V De Trinitate)​

Hey Vouth.

I understand the explanation here in the abstract, as I've made it myself before.

The issue is how one would verify an experience of such a God. Our only mechanism for having experiences, so far as I'm aware, is through our physical bodies. Something in our experience would have to be distinct from other things in order to realize we're experiencing it. So how do we experience something that....has no attributes? It would be indistinguishable from experiencing nothing at all.

This realization, as far a I've read (and I have much to learn in the Buddhist department) is why the conception of nirvana in Mahayana Buddhism is that nirvana is samsara. In other words, that "unconditioned" reality is actually indistinguishable from our messy, conditioned reality right here and now. The difference lies in our mindset about it: are we seeing reality as it truly is, or only through our distorted lens of greed hatred and delusion? That's the essence of nondual philosophy and religion: the whole conception of some "other" reality that must underlie this one is alien, and frankly, a distraction (from a Buddhist perspective) from getting past our psychological hangups and just -- being. Reality is simply this, here, now.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

What does one have left if he removes qualities like conscious thought, memories, feelings, preferences, desires, and volition from one's god? If one removes those qualities from one's god concept, he is left with the unconscious laws of nature. They also 'just are,' but without personhood, so why call that God?

The unknown. The unknowable. The fundamental questions of our existence. And the mystery of how these questions relate to our lives, our fate, and our loved ones. This is a mystery that all humans perceive. And relabeling it "unconscious nature" or "happenstance" isn't going to resolve the mystery or make it invisible to us. To grapple with it is a fundamental aspect of who and how we are, as humans.

I don't see an answer there to the question of why call the unconscious laws of nature a god.

Labeling nature "God" also resolves no mysteries, so I don't see the merit in your claim that we ought to call nature God rather than nature if calling it nature resolves no mysteries. Injecting a god in the hypothesis answers no questions. Using the word God resolves no mysteries. Saying "God did it" answers no more than "Norman did it" or "We don't know how it happened"

Furthermore, the history of man reveals that not attributing things to gods pays dividends in understanding nature. Even if correct, the god belief has no utility except to comfort people who would not need such comforting had they matured outside of religion. There is no predictive or explanatory power in the concept. Stick a god wherever you like into any scientific theory, and it does nothing for it, another reason not to insert gods into universes when there are naturalistic alternatives such as abiogenesis and the multiverse hypothesis. Who would feel any need to investigate either if they were satisfied with a supernatural answer?

Incidentally, my original purpose for posting on this thread was to answer the OP by noting that stripping human qualities from a god concept, when taken to he limit, which includes the absence of consciousness and agency, makes that "god" indistinguishable from the unconscious laws of nature. It was not to make an argument for atheism, but includes that now, since you seemed to be making an argument for utility in theistic belief.

 

[Thief]

Do you assign human qualities to God? Why?

God is seeking a reflection

and you are seeking ......what?

 

[thomas t]

I think the majority of believers with a decent grasp of the Bible, are (hopefully) aware of some profound and irreconcilable contradictions in meaning between verses if we fail to see the anthropomorphic descriptions used in some passages as figurative.

there are no contradictions in the Bible, as I see it.
This opinion is not due to a lack of understanding, as I see it.

My take is to understand the Bible in a literal sense. Unless it's prophecy.
My grasp is decent, I think.

 

[Bird123]

Do you assign human qualities to God? Why?

Is it not presumptuous to assume God thinks? Does God have a brain? Because last I checked, one needs a brain to think.

God wants? Why do you assume God has desire?

God gets angry? Anger is a product of ego. Why do you assume God has an ego?

I could go on all day about statements I've heard where people assign such human qualities to God.

Is it not plausible that God has none of these human qualities? Is it not possible that God just is?

When all the facts are not known, people patch the gap with Beliefs. If this did not happen, we would all lock up just like my old computer.

People will patch the missing facts with what they know. Since the human condition is what they know best, it's understandable this is being used. On the other hand, beliefs should never be considered as always being right. One should always be open so when the facts arrive, one won't be locked in beliefs that have never been true.

Does thinking really require a brain? I know this one is not true. We are Spiritual beings in our true natures. I have direct experience to this. Our existence does not depend on any physical body nor any brain.

The physical body and brain are needed for transportation in this physical world. A physical body also traps us within the physical laws of this universe. It restricts us from anything else except the lessons at hand.

It was said we are made in God's image. I see this as true in that God and ourselves are Spiritual Beings. We are all much more alike than you realize. Of course, this has never been about the physical body.

Intellect exists far beyond that of mankind. God works on multiple levels with multiple views. Yes, it's thinking far beyond our capabilities.

As far as feelings, what would existence be without them? On the other hand, God is at a Higher Level of understanding beyond so many of those petty things mankind holds so dear like anger, wrath, hate, greed, intimidation, coercing, ruling, controlling, revenge, pay back and etc. When one really understands what these petty things are, one realizes these are not the Best choices that will bring the Best results. Since God is High Intelligence, why would God choose these petty things? God would not. We do only from a lack of true understanding. Of course, we are all on own journeys to Learn, Grow, Understand, and Discover what the Best choices really are.

So patch the gap with beliefs when things are unknown but only until the Truth is Discovered. It you must paint a picture of God, leave out all those petty things, add Unconditional Love and an Intellect off the scale and you might at least be getting close to the Real Truth.

One thing you mentioned is true. God is Big on what IS. Maybe you would have to have been there to understand, however this too gives insight into Who God really is.

That's what I see. It's very clear!!

 

[SalixIncendium]

Hi, Namaste @SalixIncendium ,
I really don't want to argue with you, just want to explain what I wrote.

Apologies if my post came across as argumentative. That wasn't my intent. I was merely sharing my understanding for the sake of discussion. So please don't take my responses to you as argument or debate.

Before that, just 2 points:
1. Arguing from the paramArtha platform that there are no divine qualities observed in vyavahAr is N/A or a moot point.
2. You are free to stay in paramArtha forever, I love parmArtha myself.
That does not negate the ontological existence of this universe, nor does it negate simultaneous omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence.

I agree that it doesn't negate the existence of this universe, but that existence is an appearance resulting from Maya and is therefore avidya. The universe may exist within Brahman, but the perceived existence lies within vyavaharika. Omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence, as I see it, are not a part of Maya.

So you acknowledge that SaguNa Brahman does appear in vyAvahArika satya.
(Between parmArtha and vyavahAr lies Leela.)

Yes.

So you are essentially an atheist and saying that Parameshwar has no role to play in vyavahAr mode, or rather that there is no Parameshwar at all - It is all just poetry. (although poetry came from Brahman)
You are essentially saying your Natraj is fake. Brahman' is not VishNu, Mahesh and Devi, or Jehovah, Allah

Not exactly. Parameshwara's role is to facilitate realization for those on the path of Bhakti. I consider myself more of a transtheist. I acknowledge the existence of Saguna Brahman in vyavaharika, and the necessity for it, but it's not relevant to my path.

As far as my Nataraja being "fake," that is not at all the case. It has served to remind me of what I appear as in vyavaharika, and what I am in my true nature, and has been paramount to my becoming stabilized in this knowledge.

 

[ameyAtmA]

Apologies if my post came across as argumentative. That wasn't my intent. I was merely sharing my understanding for the sake of discussion. So please don't take my responses to you as argument or debate.

Not at all! I only said that because I was writing these long posts, but only wanted to explain "nirguN has potential for saguN in dormant state", didn't want it to sound like a debate.
Also had a few questions because it was not clear where you were coming from.

I agree that it doesn't negate the existence of this universe, but that existence is an appearance resulting from Maya and is therefore avidya. The universe may exist within Brahman, but the perceived existence lies within vyavaharika. Omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence, as I see it, are not a part of Maya.

Not exactly. Parameshwara's role is to facilitate realization for those on the path of Bhakti. I consider myself more of a transtheist. I acknowledge the existence of Saguna Brahman in vyavaharika, and the necessity for it, but it's not relevant to my path.

As far as my Nataraja being "fake," that is not at all the case. It has served to remind me of what I appear as in vyavaharika, and what I am in my true nature, and has been paramount to my becoming stabilized in this knowledge.

That's very nice. So I have a few questions - and they are not just to you. Sorry about the long list

1. If I tell you NaTaraja IS Parameshwar , being Shiva as Shankar/Rudra, a role in SaguNa Brahman' alongside VishNu, will that change your answer? Is Nataraj a form of Brahman? Does Nataraj have a mind? Is He intelligent? OR is Nataraj a symbol ?

2. Should existence and nature of Parameshwar / ParamAtmA depend on an individual seeker's need and spiritual path? If Parameshwar (whether as VishNu-tattva, Shiv-tattva or Ambe Maa ), reveals such glorious divine qualities to others, including others on the path of jnAna, would you say humans imposed that on Him?

People have experienced communication with SaguNa-Brahman' first-hand, or reciprocation to their devotion, although this is rare. His-Her parental love (vAtsalya), outreach, direct experience as one's Dear-most Witness-Companion-Guide, Guru, and been instructed in specific things. God walks with you patiently and His Godliness itself takes away negative traits one by one, sends them meditating, sends motherly love to jump-start your lost motivation in the world since the world has to go on, and to instill instant peace in the heart. His supra-supra intelligence, unconditional love, wit, otherworldly patience (never rolls His/her eyes) and transcendental humor too.

This is hardly people projecting their wishes and human emotions on God. This is supernatural and unexpected.

3. Doesn't omniscience-omnipotence automatically imply a transcendental supra-intelligence? Isn't this universe and many others, a product of intelligent design, process, plan and "hooks" in place?

 

[SA Huguenot]

Do you assign human qualities to God? Why?

Is it not presumptuous to assume God thinks? Does God have a brain? Because last I checked, one needs a brain to think.

God wants? Why do you assume God has desire?

God gets angry? Anger is a product of ego. Why do you assume God has an ego?

I could go on all day about statements I've heard where people assign such human qualities to God.

Is it not plausible that God has none of these human qualities? Is it not possible that God just is?

It is nice to get the information of God from the Bible, and to understand who He is.
1. God has an existence, a body of light in which He lives.
2. A Mind, or as the Bible calls, His Word, that left this existance, and came to the world in a human body, to age, and die, to become the first ressurrected human, to return to the existence to be God again.
3. A Spirit, that also left the existence and entered into the creation to "Hover above the face of the waters" for instance.

This is called the Trinity, and this God is called YHWH, who made :

...Man in His immage!....
which mean that Man has the traits of God, which means, God has "Human traits".
YHWH has a Body, a Spirit, and a Mind, just as we have, because He made us in His immage.

 

[PureX]

I don't see an answer there to the question of why call the unconscious laws of nature a god.

I wrote: "... we seek a way of making this profoundly uncomfortable mystery more tenable. (The mystery of being.) We seek some way, even if illusory, of rendering this great mystery interactive, so that we may gain some sense of control in relation to it. And this is why we very often endow this great mystery, in our minds, with human characteristics. So that we can feel that we can "understand" it, somewhat, and perhaps manipulate it as we can understand and manipulate each other."

No one is calling the "unconscious laws of nature, God". They are attributing a willful intention to those laws, and then by default, to their result. The "laws of nature" are just the mechanism. What people are calling "God" is the mysterious source, sustenance, and purpose of those natural mechanisms.

Labeling nature "God" also resolves no mysteries, so I don't see the merit in your claim that we ought to call nature God rather than nature if calling it nature resolves no mysteries. Injecting a god in the hypothesis answers no questions. Using the word God resolves no mysteries. Saying "God did it" answers no more than "Norman did it" or "We don't know how it happened".

That's WHY people universally tend to endow their god-concepts with human characteristics. It gives them a means of relating to the mystery. A way of feeling that they can understand it, at least somewhat, and can therefor interact with it, and control it. Or at least control themselves in relation to it. It's what we humans do. It's how we survive, and thrive in the world.

Furthermore, the history of man reveals that not attributing things to gods pays dividends in understanding nature.

You're not understanding that the idea of "God" is not about understanding nature. Nature is just the mechanism. "God" is about the source of that mechanism. The purpose of it. These are the great mysteries that the ideal of "God" embodies for us. And how we conceive of God reflects how we are choosing to deal with this mystery.

Even if correct, the god belief has no utility except to comfort people who would not need such comforting had they matured outside of religion.

That's both absurd and insulting. People fear what they don't understand because they know they are vulnerable to it. So they generate ways to deal with that fear and ignorance that works best for them. Your way is no better or honest than anyone else's (presuming there is no mystery). In fact, it's a handicap if it fosters this kind of arrogant bias in favor of itself. Just as any theist's religion becomes a handicap if it fosters that same arrogant bias in favor of itself.

There is no predictive or explanatory power in the concept. Stick a god wherever you like into any scientific theory, and it does nothing for it, another reason not to insert gods into universes when there are naturalistic alternatives such as abiogenesis and the multiverse hypothesis. Who would feel any need to investigate either if they were satisfied with a supernatural answer?

Science can only investigate the mechanisms of existence. It cannot investigate the source, sustenance, or purpose of existence. So science is of no use to us in addressing the mystery of source, sustenance, and purpose of existence. Nor in addressing our innate fear and vulnerability in relation to those mysteries.

Incidentally, my original purpose for posting on this thread was to answer the OP by noting that stripping human qualities from a god concept, when taken to he limit, which includes the absence of consciousness and agency, makes that "god" indistinguishable from the unconscious laws of nature. It was not to make an argument for atheism, but includes that now, since you seemed to be making an argument for utility in theistic belief.

That's because your bias is blinding you to the real reasons that humans conceive of God, and why they overwhelmingly do so by endowing God with human characteristics. I have explained why we do this, but you're missing the explanation because you think God = nature. And science deals with nature, better. But God is not a representation for nature. And that's why you're confused.

 

[SalixIncendium]

1. If I tell you NaTaraja IS Parameshwar , being Shiva as Shankar/Rudra, a role in SaguNa Brahman' alongside VishNu, will that change your answer? Is Nataraj a form of Brahman? Does Nataraj have a mind? Is He intelligent? OR is Nataraj a symbol ?

I understand that Nataraja is Parameshwar, so no, this does not change my answer. Nataraja is Shiva is Brahman manifest as Saguna.

As I see it, Nataraja would have a mind and would be intelligent when manifest in vyavaharika, same as you. But who is it that manifests Nataraja? Why?

2. Should existence and nature of Parameshwar / ParamAtmA depend on an individual seeker's need and spiritual path? If Parameshwar (whether as VishNu-tattva, Shiv-tattva or Ambe Maa ), reveals such glorious divine qualities to others, including others on the path of jnAna, would you say humans imposed that on Him?

People have experienced communication with SaguNa-Brahman' first-hand, or reciprocation to their devotion, although this is rare. His-Her parental love (vAtsalya), outreach, direct experience as one's Dear-most Witness-Companion-Guide, Guru, and been instructed in specific things. God walks with you patiently and His Godliness itself takes away negative traits one by one, sends them meditating, sends motherly love to jump-start your lost motivation in the world since the world has to go on, and to instill instant peace in the heart. His supra-supra intelligence, unconditional love, wit, otherworldly patience (never rolls His/her eyes) and transcendental humor too.

This is hardly people projecting their wishes and human emotions on God. This is supernatural and unexpected.

Impose isn't the word I would use. In my experience, there are those (perhaps even me at some point in my "time" in vyavaharika ) that seek Parameshwara to guide them on their path to Moksha. I don't consider this to be an imposition.

3. Doesn't omniscience-omnipotence automatically imply a transcendental supra-intelligence? Isn't this universe and many others, a product of intelligent design, process, plan and "hooks" in place?

No. Tat tvam asi. I don't think this universe (or any others) is a product of intelligent design. It is a product of time/space/causation (Maya).

 

[SalixIncendium]

Does thinking really require a brain? I know this one is not true. We are Spiritual beings in our true natures. I have direct experience to this. Our existence does not depend on any physical body nor any brain.

Intellect exists far beyond that of mankind.

I think a sticking point here is defining terms. Thinking is a process of the brain. Plain and simple. It would appear you are conflating "thinking" with "sentience" or "existence." I never said one needed a brain to exist or even to be sentient. However, one does need a brain to think or to have intellect. My true nature has not brain, because I have yet to figure out a way to keep it alive and bring it with me when my body dies.

 

[SalixIncendium]

No, I haven't shared your experiences.

But unless ─ as I hope ─ you're able to tell me what real thing you intend to denote by the word 'God' such that if we find a real suspect we can determine whether it's God or not, then it would appear to me that no one can do this, and if that's right, so is the use of 'we'.

"We" don't have to determine anything for "me" to know what is or isn't regardless of what appears to "you." So no, use of the term "we" isn't "right."

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

That is the exact wording that many of the medieval scholastics used. To understand the import of that claim, it is important to understand what a "mode" is in this context (i.e. I'm not talking about "modalism").

Boethius contrasts God's timeless 'mode' of being with a temporal mode. To be his own subsisting existence is the proper "mode" of God alone, because He is his own explanation, His own act of existing.

That's what I was saying in that instance. Pretty standard definition.

That wasn't what I was getting at. Maybe I should do a better job of explaining:

Presumably, there are things that you might consider to qualify as "God" and things you wouldn't. For instance, for me, a toaster would not be something I would consider to be God.

... So what do you have in mind for what God would and wouldn't be that a "mode of being" would qualify as God?

BTW: your reply confused things more, since you seem to have tried to explain why God has a different "mode of being" than other stuff and not that God is somehow a "mode of being" in his own right.

It is to say that one can only define God by what He "isn't" (not made, not conditioned, not changeable, not originated, not become), not that one cannot saying anything at all. Negation is itself still defining Him, albeit by what He isn't.

"All the major theistic traditions insist at some point that our language about God consists mostly in conceptual restrictions and fruitful negations. “Cataphatic” (or affirmative) theology must always be chastened and corrected by “apophatic” (or negative) theology. We cannot speak of God in his own nature directly, but only at best analogously, and even then only in such a way that the conceptual content of our analogies consists largely in our knowledge of all the things that God is not." (David Bentley Hart)

The simple, underlying logic is that in contradistinction to a conditioned phenomenal existence, there must exist a non-conditioned, eternal and unchanging existence that self-subsists as its own explanation and provides a context for understanding why there is something rather than nothing.

Yesterday, I was listening to a podcast about the history of Arianism; the disputes between Arian Christians and Nicene Christians featured heavily in it. They - and I'd argue virtually every mainstream denomination of every mainstream monotheistic religion on the planet - have no issue with defining God in terms of what God is (and then often trying to shun or kill people who hold different views about what God is).

Someone who merely defined God in terms of "what God is not" wouldn't have enough of a basis to build an entire working religion on.

 

[blü 2]

"We" don't have to determine anything for "me" to know what is or isn't regardless of what appears to "you." So no, use of the term "we" isn't "right."

"We" ─ you nor I nor anyone else I've met ─ have a definition of 'God' appropriate to a god with objective existence, such that we could determine whether any real candidate were God or not.

Unless you're the exception, why should you not be included in "we" here?

 

[SalixIncendium]

"We" ─ you nor I nor anyone else I've met ─ have a definition of 'God' appropriate to a god with objective existence, such that we could determine whether any real candidate were God or not.

Unless you're the exception, why should you not be included in "we" here?

Because you do not know something or have not been shown something does not render it nonexistent.

"We" don't need to determine anything. You do you. I'll do me.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

No one is calling the "unconscious laws of nature, God". They are attributing a willful intention to those laws

And I have argued that there is no justification in doing that, that it is just an ancient instinct to impute agency where there is action. This proclivity is so ingrained into humanity (and much of the animal kingdom). It helps creatures that can't make considered judgments. Type II errors, or believing that there is agency where there is none, are survivable. Type I errors are not.

But man can transcend this if he is trained to. The majority of people assign agency to the universe, or to some spirit that they think moves it. Before any other means was known for the sun to pass from the eastern sky to the western, people thought that the sun was a being that moved itself, or an inanimate object moved through the skies due to an agent such as Apollo and his chariot. Eventually, most of humanity transcended this thought, and conceived of a sun that required no agent to rise and set. But the proclivity to assign agency runs deep, and has remained with other phenomena not yet understood, such as how this all got here.

Man tends to impute a god whenever he hits the limits of his knowledge, a god that is later replaced with an unintentional mechanism. Tyson did a nice video on this topic called the perimeters of ignorance, in which he demonstrates many scientists of the past explaining what they could through naturalistic mean, until they hit the limits of their knowledge, at which point they inserted a god. Here's Newton doing just that, when he realized that his mathematics predicted that the orbits of planets like earth should not be stable, that larger planets like Jupiter and Saturn ought to toss it into the sun or out of the solar system altogether. At this point, at the boundary of his knowledge (and not before), Newton inserts the ghost into the machine:

"The six primary Planets are revolv’d about the Sun, in circles concentric with the Sun, and with motions directed towards the same parts, and almost in the same plane… But it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions… This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."

About 100 years later, Laplace developed the mathematics necessary to solve the three body gravitational problem, and the god of the gaps was displaced once again, not needed to keep the solar system intact. Interestingly, when Napoleon asked Laplace what role God played in his celestial mechanics, and he answered, "Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis."

So it is not surprising that this goes on all around us every day. Here you are using gods to answer your unanswerable questions. But there is nothing desirable about it. It is possible to remove the ghost from the machine until such time as there is a better reason to reinsert it than having unanswered questions.

What people are calling "God" is the mysterious source, sustenance, and purpose of those natural mechanisms. That's WHY people universally tend to endow their god-concepts with human characteristics. It gives them a means of relating to the mystery. A way of feeling that they can understand it, at least somewhat, and can therefor interact with it, and control it. Or at least control themselves in relation to it. It's what we humans do. It's how we survive, and thrive in the world.

Yes, I understand that. But its not what I do. I have no need of that hypothesis.

You're not understanding that the idea of "God" is not about understanding nature.

So your god concept is causally disconnected from nature and cannot be observed affecting it at all? The ID people are presumably still studying nature in search of the fingerprint of their god in it, irreducible complexity. They seem to think God has had an observable effect on the universe.

How about the people that pray for observable outcomes, like rain, or the victory of their favorite sports teams? They also seem to thin their god is causally connected to physical reality.

So I disagree that people's god concept is not about understanding nature. More than that, it is about controlling it, or at the least, fending it off.

That's both absurd and insulting.

It's insulting to you that I wrote, "Even if correct, the god belief has no utility except to comfort people who would not need such comforting had they matured outside of religion"? That's on you if you choose to be insulted by that. You haven't rebutted the idea. I, like other atheists, am the living embodiment that that statement is correct. Believing in a god does nothing for me, even if one actually exists. I am not afraid that death may be the end of my conscious existence because I have had decades to make that adjustment, something that somebody who has always believed he will be preserved after death has not done. I am also fine with the idea that there may be nobody protecting us or answering our prayers, and that I may never see those that have died again.

You'll probably be insulted by this as well, but I liken it to being raised without cigarettes and not needing one. The one who was taken to Smoking School every Sunday morning to be indoctrinated in smoking tells me that cigarettes bring him comfort. They relieve a certain need that arises. OK, you need a smoke. I don't. And the argument that the cigarettes bring comfort does not make me want to need that comforting. This is why I say that religion comforts the need it creates by preventing one from maturing outside of it and having no such need.

I have uncertainties as well that are existential threats to existence, including this virus and worsening climate change. But like other unbelievers, I am experienced in facing these problems without injecting a god into the works.

People fear what they don't understand because they know they are vulnerable to it. So they generate ways to deal with that fear and ignorance that works best for them. Your way is no better or honest than anyone else's

You seem to think that these religious beliefs are harmless, and that my way is no better. I disagree. Facing this pandemic with no god belief is wiser than believing that there is a god watching over you whose will must be accepted. That's a big issue here in Mexico, and the main reason to not take a vaccine. They think God is watching over them, and whatever happens is God's will. That would not be a problem if it didn't prevent them from taking the vaccine, but when your beliefs bleed into daily life, it's a lot better to be correct about how reality works than to settle on some comforting belief that is incorrect.

Here's another example of how this defeatist belief that God is watching over us translates into dangerous inaction:

• "We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand" - James Watt, Secretary of the Interior under Reagan (note his position ad responsibilities)

• "My point is, God's still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous." - Sen. Inhofe, R-Okla

• "The Earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth. This Earth will not be destroyed by a flood. . . . I do believe God's word is infallible, unchanging, perfect." - Rep John Shimkus, R-Ill.

These are all very bad ideas. How much better off we all would be if these people had learned to live without their religion.

I don't suppose you need to be told how this so-called equally good way of looking at the world through the eyes of faith worked out for the people at Guyana, Waco, and Heaven's Gate. Atheists don't make these mistakes.

In fact, it's a handicap if it fosters this kind of arrogant bias in favor of itself

Arrogant bias? My bias is in being correct - being rigorously logical. I am telling you about a better way to think. You are telling me that there are people that need a god belief anyway. I don't disagree, but I don't see them as better off or even as well off as the one who doesn't need that. Somehow, that is arrogant to you. Worse, you see it as a handicap without bothering to state why, as I just did explaining why I believe the opposite.

This is a recurring theme in your writing - that somehow people like me are missing out by dismissing gods, that we are foolishly closing the door on something wonderful and beneficial, that we are closed-minded and short-sighted. But you don't make the case, just the claim. I have told you repeatedly that I have explored that path and found that there is nothing there for me, that belief in gods meets no needs and solves no problems. Theists have done nothing to move me from that position not because of closed-mindedness on my part, but because of the lack evidence and sound argument on theirs. Nothing else can modify the thinking of a critical thinker. Unsupported claims have no persuasive power.

And so, I have no reason to believe you that there is anything for me in believing in gods or even exploring the area more. Nor have you done anything to make me think that you are better off as a theist than you would be as a mature atheist.

One more metaphor. Glasses are great for people who need them to see clearly, but if someone with glasses tells me that I would also be better off with glasses, I'd explain why glasses do nothing for people that don't need them to see clearly, and that it's great that there exists the means to treat his visual defect, it's actually better to not need help seeing clearly. To make the metaphor more apt, imagine that the reason he needs glasses to see is because he was fitted with a device in childhood that prevented his eyes and vision from maturing normally as they would have had he been raised outside of a family that fitted him with these lenses. And now he sings the praises of glasses, and tells me I should get a pair because of the wonderful things they did for him. He goes knocking door-to-door extoling the use of glasses, frustrated by people that say they don't want or need them, lamenting what they are missing out on.

your bias is blinding you to the real reasons that humans conceive of God, and why they overwhelmingly do so by endowing God with human characteristics

My bias? You mean the one for requiring sufficient evidence before believing in gods? Or perhaps you mean my bias in favor of being correct. Or maybe you think it's a bias to think that one is better off not needing a god belief.

Whatever you mean, of course I know the reasons people cling to a god belief. And I know that the more powerless they feel, the more they want it. Also, the less they understand, the more they need it. This is why evangelists do so much better recruiting people on Death Row and Skid Row than on Restaurant Row. This is why they do better in rural areas than urban, with the uneducated than the educated, with children than adults. Ignorance and poverty are forms of powerlessness. So is incarceration. I'd likely be the same if I had been born into a poor, primitive society, having little control over my life, and living in fear of the unknown.

But my position remains unchanged, since nothing has been offered to change it: it is better not to need a god belief (or any other faith-based belief) than to need one.

 

[PureX]

And I have argued that there is no justification in doing that, that it is just an ancient instinct to impute agency where there is action. This proclivity is so ingrained into humanity (and much of the animal kingdom). It helps creatures that can't make considered judgments. Type II errors, or believing that there is agency where there is none, are survivable. Type I errors are not.

There clearly is 'agency' being expressed through the nature of existence. That you refuse to acknowledge this, is your own issue. The vast majority of your fellow human do recognize that that agency, and are uneasy in not knowing it's source, maintenance, or intent. That agency, by the way, is being manifested via the possible, and not possible expression of energy, as existence. The nature of existence is not random. It is organized. And that organization is the abject manifestation of 'agency' in the minds of nearly all your fellow humans.

But man can transcend this if he is trained to. The majority of people assign agency to the universe, or to some spirit that they think moves it. Before any other means was known for the sun to pass from the eastern sky to the western, people thought that the sun was a being that moved itself, or an inanimate object moved through the skies due to an agent such as Apollo and his chariot. Eventually, most of humanity transcended this thought, and conceived of a sun that required no agent to rise and set. But the proclivity to assign agency runs deep, and has remained with other phenomena not yet understood, such as how this all got here.

Pretending that agency is not being manifested as existential order is not "transcending it". It's just ignoring it.

Man tends to impute a god whenever he hits the limits of his knowledge, a god that is later replaced with an unintentional mechanism.

That only happens to foolish men who don't understand what God is, and so become atheists.

Tyson did a nice video on this topic called the perimeters of ignorance, in which he demonstrates many scientists of the past explaining what they could through naturalistic mean, until they hit the limits of their knowledge, at which point they inserted a god.

The idea of God has developed and transcended as we humans have developed. For mankind, now, God is the ultimate unknown/unknowable. Science will no longer be able to 'explain' these unknowns away, as you seem to be imagining.

So your god concept is causally disconnected from nature and cannot be observed affecting it at all? The ID people are presumably still studying nature in search of the fingerprint of their god in it, irreducible complexity. They seem to think God has had an observable effect on the universe.

Humans have always looked at what is, and asked why it is this way. Because they can see that what is, is ordered, and that order implies a purpose. But we don't know what that purpose might be, and we very much want to. In a lot of ways, how we respond to this conundrum defines who we are as individuals. Including you.

So I disagree that people's god concept is not about understanding nature. More than that, it is about controlling it, or at the least, fending it off.

Yes, I said that. We humans survive and thrive by being able to control our circumstances, or ourselves in relation to our circumstances. So we become fundamentally frighted by aspects of our circumstances that we don't understand, and thereby cannot control. And this is the realm of existence that we call "God". Now days that realm of our unknowing is centered around the mystery source, sustenance, and purpose of existence, itself.

You seem to think that these religious beliefs are harmless, and that my way is no better.

Your 'beliefs' are no different than anyone else's. You hold them for exactly the same reasons as any theist holds theirs, and you are just as susceptible to the exact same blinding arrogance, and self-righteousness, as they are.

Arrogant bias? My bias is in being correct - being rigorously logical. I am telling you about a better way to think.

You haven't yet even fully understood what God is to people, let alone provide a reasonable, functional alternative. You still think God is an ideological characterization of nature, which can successfully be dispelled by science. And I suspect you are going to continue insisting on this no matter how many times I explain to you that it's not the case. Because your "righteousness" depends on it. And you are dependent upon that illusion of righteousness. Just as so many religious theists are dependent on theirs.

You are telling me that there are people that need a god belief anyway. I don't disagree, but I don't see them as better off or even as well off as the one who doesn't need that. Somehow, that is arrogant to you. Worse, you see it as a handicap without bothering to state why, as I just did explaining why I believe the opposite.

It's the same handicap either way. You have not escaped the unknown any more than they have. Or than anyone else has.

But my position remains unchanged, since nothing has been offered to change it: it is better not to need a god belief (or any other faith-based belief) than to need one.

You have a god, you just choose to call it 'nature', and characterize it as "random", and worship it through science. 'Scientism' is no different from any other religion, really. Except that it closes off the mind to the fundamental mysteries of life as a human. The mysteries of meaning and purpose.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

There clearly is 'agency' being expressed through the nature of existence. That you refuse to acknowledge this, is your own issue.

Not clearly to me.

Perhaps we aren't referring to the same thing with the word agency. I'm talking about a conscious agent. There very well may be no such thing that isn't a product of this universe like man and my dog. To say that there clearly is more is to be claiming that one's psychological tendencies can't possibly be deceiving him, that his intuition are clearly correct.

To be clear, if we compare a god to a multiverse, only the former has agency, consciousness, thoughts, intentions, etc.. The other is conceived of as an unconscious object passively following the laws it is subject to, budding off uncountable numbers of every kind of universe possible, including this one. No design, no purpose, no agency involved..

The vast majority of your fellow human do recognize that that agency, and are uneasy in not knowing it's source, maintenance, or intent.

That's irrelevant to me. The vast majority aren't rigorously logical or able to transcend their psychological proclivities. If evolution selected for populations that instinctively assign agency to such things as rustling leaves or thunder, of course the majority will come under the sway of such instincts. I'm talking about rising above that, something being seen more commonly as people become better educated.

As I mentioned, secular humanism flourishes where education and critical thinking flourishes.

For mankind, now, God is the ultimate unknown/unknowable. Science will no longer be able to 'explain' these unknowns away, as you seem to be imagining.

God concepts were never able to explain anything. They just provide succor to those who need an answer to the unanswered. It is the sign of an evolved mind to be able to say, "We don't know" rather than "God did it." It is the sign of an evolved mind to not feel a need to guess.

Humans have always looked at what is, and asked why it is this way. Because they can see that what is, is ordered, and that order implies a purpose.

Order implies purpose? Not to me. That's a creationist argument. Neither order, pattern, nor complexity guarantee an intelligent designer.

We humans survive and thrive by being able to control our circumstances, or ourselves in relation to our circumstances. So we become fundamentally frighted by aspects of our circumstances that we don't understand, and thereby cannot control. And this is the realm of existence that we call "God".

Agreed, but you seem to be arguing that this is a good thing.

If you want the most control of your world - to navigate it in a way that maximizes the desirable and minimizes the undesirable - you need to have the most accurate map of it possible. You need to understand how it really works to predict outcomes successfully. Believing a god will protect you is dangerous if it causes you to behave recklessly and there is no god.

Your 'beliefs' are no different than anyone else's. You hold them for exactly the same reasons as any theist holds theirs

Disagree. I have a different method of deciding what is true than a faith-based thinker, which is probably why my conclusions are radically different from theirs. My beliefs are derived from observation and experience. Theirs come from faith. Faith cannot be a path to truth given that anything or its mutually exclusive polar opposite can be believed by simply guessing and believing one's guesses are facts, knowing that at least one of them must be wrong. Faith is why there are so man gods and religions. Empiricism is why there is only one periodic table. I choose the latter method, and it is most definitely not "exactly the same" or "no different."

It's the same handicap either way. You have not escaped the unknown any more than they have. Or than anyone else has.

Disagree again. I am not escaping not knowing with atheism. I am escaping pretending that I know.

You have a god, you just choose to call it 'nature', and characterize it as "random", and worship it through science. 'Scientism' is no different from any other religion, really. Except that it closes off the mind to the fundamental mysteries of life as a human. The mysteries of meaning and purpose.

Disagree again. I'll leave the gods, religions, and worshiping to others, and address the mysteries of life without them as I have for decades.

I notice that you haven't ever addressed the question of how a secular humanist would be better off with a god belief, although I've explained how one is better off without one if one can do that, and you have not rebutted that..