How Does an Atheist Come to Believe in God?:

[Veritas Aequitas]

You seem to be advocating Plato's balanced man and I agree. I also agree that the brain is aided through the efforts of meditation, contemplation, conscious attention, detachment, and of course impartial efforts to "know thyself" or have the experience of oneself. How many pursue them?

Seemingly and similarly, but not exactly. I think continual striving towards an ideal that is not attainable is inherent in the human pscyhe. I agree the majority are not aligned into its proper gears toward the ideal. In principle, what I am advocating is humanity need to expedite the majority to do so, i.e. strive toward the ideal.

We may differ in how we understand the limitations of fallen human being. We can just do so much through our own initiative. I believe without help from above in the form of grace we are destined to psychologically turn in circles.

As I had stated, the majority are not into the gears of the more refined. Rather the majority need psychological crutches to function normally.
People like Weil, Needleman and other mystics are more refined than the majority, but they are still relying on some form of crutches, albeit subliminally, i.e. grace.
There are a minority of 'fallen human beings' who had been able to pick themselves up without crutches nor grace. e.g. those who picked on the trail of the Buddha. So it is possible for the majority to pick on this trail and they do not have to be Buddhists at all, but merely being human.

"Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace." Simone Weil

I believe she is right. If she is, all these modern efforts of secular humanism that deny grace become meaningless in the face of the blindness of the human condition. Everything repeats because since we are as we are, everything is as it is.

I think it is false for Weil (or you) to think, what she is recommending is the only best way and there are no better value effective alternatives.
Weil's grace may be of the refined nature, but grace-god-theism when taken as the whole package is a liability to humanity.
When we eventually get rid of all traces of grace and god, there will be no opportunity for all theist-based evils at all.

After all, grace and god are fundamentally based on necessary illusions and white lies. It is not a big loss if we get rid of beliefs based on lies in exchange for truth-based principles.

[Mike Strand]

Back to the original question, "How Does an Atheist Come to Believe in God?" I thought of some simple (maybe simplistic) examples of how to answer this question which depend on a concept or definition of "God":

1. Take Jung's definition, mentioned in one of the posts: "God is a psychic fact of immediate experience ..." This to me says it's a personal thing, and based on human emotion or longing. Thus there could be billions of ideas about God out there, with maybe awe and hope as fairly common associated feelings. Even an atheist may experience this -- for example, "love". So if you say "God is Love", then such a person may come to believe in "God".

2. The path of forensic evidence. The atheist demands a rather precise definition of God, and then asks for "proof" or a "demonstration" of existence. This would be analogous to defining a tube worm, and then going in a submersible craft down into the ocean to places where they can be seen and sampled and studied with instruments and human senses and reasoning. The definitions "God is Nature", or "God is everything that is" are trivially proved by forensics.

The God envisioned and hoped for by many people, corresponding to a superior Being who created everything, loves humanity, and has tremendous power and knowledge, is the foil for many if not most atheists. The existence of a God that satisfies these attributes arguably hasn't yet been demonstrated. And folks who don't believe such a Being exists are what I usually think of as atheists. Are such atheists necessarily deplorable? Of course not. Many of them still believe in love, the Golden Rule, peace among human beings, and so on.

[Nick_A]

Back to the original question, "How Does an Atheist Come to Believe in God?" I thought of some simple (maybe simplistic) examples of how to answer this question which depend on a concept or definition of "God":

1. Take Jung's definition, mentioned in one of the posts: "God is a psychic fact of immediate experience ..." This to me says it's a personal thing, and based on human emotion or longing. Thus there could be billions of ideas about God out there, with maybe awe and hope as fairly common associated feelings. Even an atheist may experience this -- for example, "love". So if you say "God is Love", then such a person may come to believe in "God".

2. The path of forensic evidence. The atheist demands a rather precise definition of God, and then asks for "proof" or a "demonstration" of existence. This would be analogous to defining a tube worm, and then going in a submersible craft down into the ocean to places where they can be seen and sampled and studied with instruments and human senses and reasoning. The definitions "God is Nature", or "God is everything that is" are trivially proved by forensics.

The God envisioned and hoped for by many people, corresponding to a superior Being who created everything, loves humanity, and has tremendous power and knowledge, is the foil for many if not most atheists. The existence of a God that satisfies these attributes arguably hasn't yet been demonstrated. And folks who don't believe such a Being exists are what I usually think of as atheists. Are such atheists necessarily deplorable? Of course not. Many of them still believe in love, the Golden Rule, peace among human beings, and so on.

Hi Mike

You've brought me back to Simone's remark previously posted

Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.
- Simone Weil, Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 417

The love, peace, and golden rule you mention are all natural reactions for humanity in the "World" or Plato's Cave of which the atheist is a normal part. As we know these goals are transient and often become their opposite.

The Supernatural part attracted to objective human meaning and purpose is not of the World but rather can consciously experience the results of the fallen human condition for the contradiction it is and become attracted to a quality of consciousnes that indicates the path that allows a person to become themselves rather than a creature of reaction normal for Plato's Cave.

[Mike Strand]

Thanks, Nick_A!

Thinking of "Plato's Cave", are you describing the principles or ideas of love, peace, and the golden rule as the shadows of reality ("God"), or are you describing "God" as the human-imagined symbol or shadow of these principles? I may have misunderstood you, but it appears to me that former is the case -- that you have described the principles as the shadows of a higher or supernatural reality (God).

I think an atheist (and many modern theologians) would say "God" is a symbol for love, peace, etc.

[Atthet]

Jacob Needleman describes his spiritual atheism. Is it a contradiction?

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archi ... needleman/

When I was younger I was totally allergic to what I saw as religion: Judaism and even worse, Christianity—it was my enemy. But I loved nature, and for me nature was sacred. I didn't use that word, but it made me quiet; it made me feel a sense of something greater than myself; it made me wish to serve something. So I was an atheist, but I recall it as spiritual—a spiritual atheism.


Do you believe there is truth in what they offer or do you think they are just dreamers?

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9426

Anti-religious atheists and liberals claim to believe in genetics, and support evolutionary theories.

But...do they? Do they actually believe in genetics and evolution, or, concerning online "philosophy forums", don't they deny it readily and fervently, to maintain the bottomline, the premises of their ideologies? Don't they deny genetics, when it comes to race and gender? Don't they deny genetics and evolution, to destroy and deny the past?

Who believes in the past, that the past exists? Who believes in science, truly? Do anti-religious atheists and liberals, actually accept and understand objectivity, and the premise of a past, and future, that does not bow to the ideological whims of skeptical idealists?

We call this philosophical ideology as Cynicism. You will find, here, that most of the participants on this "Philosophy Now" forum, are nothing more than liberal cynics. In this, just about every idea they have coursing through their brains, inside their neural pathways, can be predicted to the letter.

What is more predictable than a slave who never questions or denies his slavery, and always follows the command from his master to the letter?

Blank Slate Theory, "Tabula Rasa", is the core element of all liberal ideologies. It is also an important element in Judaeo-Christian worship, but, not completely. This is why Judaeo-Christians are Dualists. They must support Tabula Rasa, but they also must support the existence and essence of an "immutable soul", which never changes. Judaeo-Christianity is forced into an intellectual gambit, an obvious contradiction.

How can the nature of man Change, when, the soul of man is immortal, eternal, and cannot Change?

This is why Dualism exists in Judaeo-Christianity. But, for the atheistic liberals, there is no need for the presupposition of an eternal soul. All that is possible, then, is change. The past doesn't need to exist, and it doesn't actually exist. To the atheistic liberal, the enlightened "Secular Humanist" of the postmodern world, who also go by the designation of "Nietzscheans", the past can readily be denied, but never punished.

But, what protects them from punishment, except an "invisible" status quo?

What is the "dumbing down" of postmodern society, how does it work, and why?

Where is the true denial, and of what principle or principles?

"Human Rights" is a code word for absolute Slavery, slavery of all people, all histories, and all cultures.

You are human, and in becoming "human", you have destroyed your gender, in addition to your race. You have no past, and therefore, cannot have a known or predictable future.

Are people born human or made human?

This should be rephrased to:

Are people born slaves or made slaves?


The metamorphosis of humanism is complete. What we see in "all are born human", is instead, "all are born slaves". The term "God" is no longer necessary, and this was the goal of Judaeo-Christianity all along. Atheism is result, the final conclusion, of Western Civilization. The slave, all slaves of men and women across the earth, no longer deny their slavery, because slavery-itself does not exist.

All are "free".

Free to be slaves to Human Rights. We can see then, that nobody, not one person on this "philosophy forum", would ever dare to question the basic premises and proponents of their deepest ideological values. Their values, are set, and permanent. They will defend their slavery, their slavishness, to the death. And slaves will die, to maintain their slavery.

This is known as the "liberal Status Quo of Western Civilization". The Status Quo is that slaves ought to have a meager portion of gruel, water, and "free sexual expression" amongst their own kind. The Status Quo is that we "must never judge" the sexual indiscretion of the slave class of the world. The slaves can have sex with animals, corpses, and each other, in a great orgy, freely, and this is the "highest freedom" known to history.

Meanwhile, the Master Slave Dialect is complete. The slave is no longer aware, on any level, of their predetermined course, through their entire lives.

Reality T.V. is reality. This is the end of "human evolution".

[Nick_A]

Thanks, Nick_A!

Thinking of "Plato's Cave", are you describing the principles or ideas of love, peace, and the golden rule as the shadows of reality ("God"), or are you describing "God" as the human-imagined symbol or shadow of these principles? I may have misunderstood you, but it appears to me that former is the case -- that you have described the principles as the shadows of a higher or supernatural reality (God).

I think an atheist (and many modern theologians) would say "God" is a symbol for love, peace, etc.

As I understand it, the values you mention are mechanical reactions to shadows on the wall leading to the hypocrisy that is evident in world history. Plato referred to such values as "soul knowledge" which is an understanding of a higher nature than conditioning.

Conscience as we normally experience is conditioned in us. I believe that objective conscience is soul knowledge and a potential we are born with rather then a conditioned response.

I agree that it is natural for the atheist to explain God as a secular creation representing secular values.

[Mike Strand]

Interesting, Nick_A.

I've heard of the belief that each human individual is born with the "Divine Spark" -- which sounds like your "soul knowledge". This spark of divinity is independent of anything a person may learn or fail to learn from parents or society or religion, etc. Another way of looking at it is the idea that knowledge of what is good is "written on the heart".

Viewing human beings simply as animals, like the great apes, some people may claim this is just an evolved tendency to be nice to and cooperate with members of one's own group -- that is, a trait that tended to be possessed by humans who in the past survived to reproductive age and had offspring.

This "niceness" tendency is the basis of the development of the modern dog (man's best friend). The wolves (or their ancestors) who hung around humans and their trash and did not run off at the approach of humans and were not aggressive and maybe even "friendly" towards humans, or willing to show dependence upon and be useful to humans, were the ones humans selected for breeding. A similar experiment has been successfully conducted for several recent decades in order to domesticate foxes.

[Kayla]

my brothers started going to church again and no longer hold the view that religion is retarded after the congregation canned the lunatic pastor and decided we dont really need one

the church is now actually pretty sane for a southern baptist church and we did have a few people who came back after reverend looney tunes departure

[Mike Strand]

Thanks, Kayla -- I think I know what you mean by "looney tunes" pastors.

Any belief system that encourages its members to treat themselves and others with kindness and respect may, in my book, be viewed as sane. Along with southern baptists, maybe even northern presbyterians and African episcopalians and Italian catholics and Israeli Jews and Middle-Eastern Muslims, etc., may aspire to belong to such a belief system.