How strong is your faith?

[The Laughing Man]

[Avatar]

Welcome to The Close as well. The topics here are just as interesting as the ones in the 'Tank. Glad you explored so well, some people never find their wayhere at all...for some reason...

Interesting post. Gonna have to think about it a bit.

--A

[Cybrweez]

YOU are Abraham.
Your God, as you know him/her, has asked you to prove your faith by sacrificing your child.
Could you do it?

I would either be sorely disappointed that my God had requested such an act of me to prove my faith, and re-assess my faith on the spot (unless of course I had spawned The Evil One Itself), or assume it was an imposter and strike him down! I think that ur-bane's question bears directly upon the ability God has given us to disobey or even disregard Him, and the natural laws as He exists within them,( ie: instincts or ideals or simple pure perception of the universe in its totality). We have the capability to interpret the emanations of existence itself in whatever way we choose, or are able, and confront or deny our God at our own choosing, or mistake, but always with His permission.

Actually, I think Abraham believed in God's promises, namely, He would build a nation through his son Issac. So, Abe had to believe God would just raise him from the dead, or do something in order to bring about His promise. It is also the precursor of God sending His Son as a sacrifice for others.

[Kinslaughterer]

Isn't sacrifice a strange notion? Why is it necessary for someone to die?

Particularly from an anthropological standpoint many cultures reject the notion of sacrifice. Its far more common in those regions and cultures where survival is the most difficult. Its was prehistorically unknown in the Americas except for the Aztec and Mayan empires where sacrifice was a last ditch attempt at a quasi-population control and desperation to prevent expected climatic catastrophes.
Now several cultures reject the position of sacrifice but create mythological heroes to show sacrifice as how they failed as well.
Generally, in those cultures who accept it, they tend to not include a world saving sacrifice but small sacrifices for objects or individual love. Really an interesting question.

[SoulQuest1970]

Ironically, in Catholic high school I was taught that much of the Old Testament was made up of myths, legends, and stories that had been handed down through oral tradition and so much of it was not to be taken literally. It was people who wrote the Bible through divine inspiration, but being people they were still fallable. I beleive the story was meant to make a point and it may have related well to people at that time, but somehow I don't think parents and kids have changed all that much. No loving God would EVER ask such a thing from a parent. If anyone was telling him to kill his son, it would have been Satan. If anyone told him to stop, it would have been God shouting, "What are you thinking?! Put that knife down right now, mister! 1... 2...."

[The Laughing Man]

[Avatar]

I suppose that my main issue here is that all of those things that you mentioned about being able to obey, confront, or deny god at our own choosing because of his "gift" of free will remain subject to the existence of a god in the first place.

As a non-believer myself, none of those abilities pre-suppose a god at all, and remain perfectly valid and applicable if we simply subsitute "self" for god.

If we posit such existence, based on what we are meant to believe about god, I too would be rapidly re-evaluating my position if "ordered" to do something that went against my "conscience" as it were.

(Oh, IIRC, there is no mention of god telling Isaac (the son) not to worry about it. As far as I know, he was bound in the full expectation of being killed by his father, for his fathers god. Scarcely nice.)

--A

[The Laughing Man]

[Plissken]

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No Hell below us
Above us only sky

Imagine all the people...

[Cail]

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No Hell below us
Above us only sky

Imagine all the people...

Somewhere around here, someone completely deconstructed this song. I'll have to find it, because looking at it cynically, this verse is rather disturbing.

[Plissken]

Yeah, that was Cho, I think. I thought alot of her conclusions were pretty big leaps of logic (sorry, Cho or whoever), and had heard alot of them when we were forced to watch Backward Masking videos in Math class at my religious highschool.

(My math teacher actually cried when we started stomping and pounding the desks to the beat of "Shout at the Devil." I wonder what happened to that guy...)

[Avatar]

As a non-believer myself,

...Avatar, I don't know where to begin! I have never spoken to, much less admired, one of "you people", and never would have assumed that of you in the small amount of posts I have enjoyed of yours! (I "confess" to jumping to the end of this topic, initially responding to the original question without following from the beginning, is this a forum "sin"?)

The Watch has a goodly number of "us people" (the source of many interesting debates) and you'll find much to surprise you here once you've played along for a while. I'm curious though...very curious. What would you have "expected" for one of "us people"?

(And really never talked about these things with anybody who didn't share your belief system? Wow!)

I cannot concieve how anyone could not believe that, at the least, something is responsible for all this, if not that it all has a purpose. To "non-believe" to me would leave such a void in my being that I can scarcely imagine it, but I also would assume that your system of beliefs makes you whole, as well, very curious indeed for me...

Sure something is responsible: Physics. Or random chance. Or pure damn luck. (Good or bad, I can't decide.) I find the thought of some supernatural, omiscient, omnipotent being unlikely at best.

My belief system? I don't "believe" anything. At least, not in the sense that you mean, i.e. "having faith". I like to believe a lot of things. But I don't assume that this automatically makes them true.

We are, and can be, better. It is up to us, and we need to do it for ourselves. Not because some being will putatively be offended if we don't. Or because we need fear some punishment, or long for some reward.

And the atrocities committed in the name of a loving god boggle the mind.

I suppose, Avatar, that my main issue here is that all of those things that you mentioned about there being no God to obey, confront, or deny at our own choosing because of his "gift" of free will remains abject to the existence of a god in the first place.

As a believer myself, all of those abilities pre-suppose a god, et al, and remain perfectly valid and applicable if we simply subsitute "god" for self

I'm not sure how you see the concept of, say, free will, to presuppose a god. Surely you don't think that if we hadn't been "created" we would not have free will? Rather, I find the argument, as it relates at least to explaning why bad things happen despite a "benevolent" god, to be an all too easy, not to say pat, explanation.

Aah, I look forward to some interesting conversation.

--Avatar

[The Laughing Man]

[Avatar]

Sure something is responsible: Physics. Or random chance. Or pure damn luck. (Good or bad, I can't decide.) I find the thought of some supernatural, omiscient, omnipotent being unlikely at best.

And you feel all this can account for awareness, especially self-awareness? I agree that if the universe were merely the totality of its physical characteristics, that your hypothesis could account for it, but what about our ego? What about "thought", or ambition, something "science" can't account for?

I see no reason to believe that it hasn't, and certainly no evidence to the contrary. Ambition at least can be accounted for by the simple evolutionary drive to strive for more. It is our thoughts that have elevated it, and ourselves, to be certain. And those thoughts can be accounted for as well, I think, by the necessity for adaptation that faced man. Indeed, we could describe man as the "adaptable animal" if we were so inclined.

But certainly nothing suggests to me that it can only have come about through the design of some greater power.

You see, it's the whole "design" concept with which I have a problem. Design must, by implication, suggest a "plan." A reason. And I see no evidence at all to show such a reason.

We are, and can be, better. It is up to us, and we need to do it for ourselves. Not because some being will putatively be offended if we don't. Or because we need fear some punishment, or long for some reward.

And the atrocities committed in the name of a loving god boggle the mind.

Doesn't this pre-suppose that the existence of a creator is dependent upon "its" presence in, and an active punitive role within, the lives of "its" "createes"? Does a god have to punish or reward in order to exist? or even be aware of "its" creation? Are you aware of every cell in your body that dies, or even lives? And since when is "it" responsible for what others have done in "the name" that really wasn't "its" name, but the name of a god that had been created by them in their own minds ?

Well, in general, religions are founded and based on that very concept. That "god" not only is present, but is actively invested in the lives and actions of humanity. Not only that, but that such a god actvely demands recognition and obediance.

Certainly I'd find an uninvolved god an easier concept to accept, if we're positing one who not only doesn't know, but doesn't care, what people are doing. That however, would not fall under the accepted teachings of christianity at all, as well as the majority of religions.

...to explaning why bad things happen despite a "benevolent" god, to be an all too easy, not to say pat, explanation.

"bad things" that happen are always, and exclusively, caused by either A) Nature, and the horrendous forces that it contains, which the human body cannot withstand, but can avoid or protect themselves from,(most of the time) or B) People, who act in ways unique to them, and ignorant to "it". Belief in a force responsible for what is all around us shouldn' be reliant upon the presence of "its" benevolence, or the absence of "its" righteous ire, eh? maybe? That the "Indescribable Force" is too complex for us to comprehend "it", and that we are too miniscule a portion of "its" overall creation for "it" to pay direct attention to us?

Think I cover this in the paragraph above too, and likewise, much easier to accept than a god who demands worship. Something like Nietzsche's "dead" god perhaps?

Of course, I made the post that you replied to with the possibly (probably?) erroneous assumption that you were a christian in the usually accepted sense.

I can accept the possibility of of an indescribable force, rather than a "god," to be sure. I still find it pretty unlikely though.

--A

[Prebe]

The whole problem with divinity for me is, that whenever I lean on it, my scientific and currious mind starts asking: "So ok, but where did HE/IT come from?". Very banal, I know.

This is the essence of why one should never attempt to back the pressence of divinity by science. In doing so, you would also have to scientifically explain the presence of divinity.

[Avatar]

Well said Prebe. Banal or not, it's a fundamental question, otherwise it's "elephants all the way down."

If everything required a "creator force," then that force is part of "everything" and must have required some other force, which would have required...etc.

--A

[Prebe]

The egg and the Jay question again Avatar

Heh!

[Avatar]

Even worse than that, I suspect.

--Avatar

[The Laughing Man]

[[Syl]]

Pretty easy to tell you where divinity comes from