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God would be an atheist...
A rational look at religion, morality, politics and daily life |
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HOME / This Week About GWBAA WEEKLY COLUMNS Previous Print column Why subscribe? Schedule Terms & Rates Subscribe Online column Subscribe BASICS Definitions Atheism Faith God Religion etc Analysis The meaning of life Morality etc NEXT STEPS Buy Discuss Join Read REVIEWS CONTACT Link to this site All Rights Reserved World Copyright © Martin Foreman PREVIOUSLY... If I am lucky, I will spend the next fifty years avoiding disease and disaster and spend my last days with a companion and a few friends in a small town far from violence and relatively untouched by environmental degradation. The world may be falling into chaos around me, but as the Brits once put it, “I’m all right, Jack”. Blood circulates in the body, the earth’s atmosphere protects us from harmful radiation, neutrons and electrons exist, DNA is passed from to parent to child, the earth is billions of years old and gravity exists. We know these things not because a few individuals proclaim them, but because thousands of men and women over several generations have theorized and researched and tested each idea until there is no doubt that they are true. The evolution of science Let us suppose for a moment that Christians are right. That somewhere Antony is either beaming broadly as he sings God’s praises or screaming in agony as devils torture him. At what point in the continuum of life and death did his spirit, his soul, his personality, call it what you will, pass from this world to the next? In the final ten days when you could see his mind shutting down, where was the Antony we had known and loved? Death comes as the end One of our greatest failings as human beings is our inability to understand other people’s emotions and thinking. We almost always give much greater weight to our own perspective on the world than to that of those around us. The rhetoric of death or the tools of life? Within the parameters of culture we create our own God, and like love, we each experience God differently. And we do so because God does not creates us in his own image; we create him in ours. Make me a god... |
Column 101 Clinging to faith Debating God's existence (i) By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 796 words Publication date: April 1, 2007 Print publications wishing to syndicate the column should click here. Individual subscribers wishing to receive columns by e-mail should click here. Last week’s column listed over forty reasons that different people use to explain why they believe in God. The arguments ranged from the apparently sophisticated - everything that exists has a cause; the cause of the universe can only be God – to the ridiculous – I saw the Virgin Mary in an omelet; therefore God exists. All kinds of reasons are given to explain God’s existence, from the apparent effectiveness of prayer to the laws of chance, from the physical nature of the universe to the fact that so many people believe. These reasons are often absurd to rational people, but they have a powerful effect on those who believe in them. Being a rich televangelist is a strong foundation for faith. Fear of anarchy and feelings of inferiority can be compensated by belief in an almighty. And of course there is the perennial failure to understand evolution. The fact that so many arguments for God exist, and that so many people believe in them, is an indication of how weak most people’s reasoning is and how much people wish to believe in God. Like frightened children, their eyes shut, clinging desperately to a sheer rock face, believers cling to their faith, afraid that if they let go they will fall into an abyss of sin and despair. We watch them, our eyes open, our feet on solid ground, trying to persuade them to look around and see that there is no abyss, that the real world is a brighter, more welcoming, more moral place than the inferno their imagination inhabits. Talk to them gently, these believers. Some are ecstatic in their delusion. For others, their stridency and anger reflects their inner suspicion that the world they create for themselves is no more than an illusion. Listen to the arguments they offer. Don’t ridicule them, but deconstruct their ideas one by one. They will not be instantly enlightened, but you may be able to set them on the right path. Start by analyzing some of the simpler arguments. The wording may vary but at heart they are usually the same. “If God doesn’t exist, my life is meaningless. Therefore God exists.” or “If there is no God, there is no meaning. But our lives have meaning. Therefore God exists.” These arguments are similar, although the first reflects a greater sense of insecurity. Both hinge on the meaning of “meaning”, which is where the problem lies. “Purpose” is better word; the argument is basically “Life has a purpose. That purpose was created by God.” Do not be distracted by the question “what is the purpose of life?”. You cannot do that without ascertaining that a purpose actually exists – and a purpose cannot exist without a consciousness to create it. The key questions in taking apart this spurious argument are: “Why must life have a meaning? “What would your life be like without meaning?” and “Surely people can give their own lives meaning?” The goal you want the believer to reach is that meaning is a human concept which we sometimes impose on situations where it is not appropriate. From there you can point them in the direction of understanding that (a) purpose is not essential to life, (b) purpose can exist without God, (c) people can exist happily without either God or God-given purpose. Here’s another argument: “The apostles and martyrs (of whichever religion is being discussed) wouldn’t have died for no reason. Therefore God exists.” Demolishing this one is easy. If the legends are true, the apostles and martyrs did indeed die for their faith. But their death doesn’t make their faith true. People have died for errors and delusions since the dawn of history. How about: “There are many religions. They can’t all be wrong. Therefore God exists.” Or “There are hundreds of arguments for God. They can’t all be wrong. Therefore God exists.” Yeah, right. There were many explanations for conception before science determined that eggs were fertilized by sperm. Every explanation was wrong. Many reasons have been given for invading Iraq, but they were all wrong. That argument, by the way, is similar to the argument that goes “Many cool people, including people who are much wiser than me, believe in God. Therefore God exists.” Sure. The wisest men in primitive tribes were convinced that the earth was flat and the sun was pulled across the sky by invisible gods. They all were wrong. The fact that some of those that we most respect believe in a God does not mean that the belief is true. There are stronger arguments for the deity and we’ll examine them next week. In the meantime check out the following. Godless geeks.com offers many more reasons that people give to believe. Rational responders gives plenty of ammunition to demolish them.
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If God existed, he would... If God existed, he would be an atheist. So that's all right. We can all breathe a sigh of relief. Alternately, we can ask ourselves about the assumptions underlying such a statement, particularly concerning the place of sexual orientation in human values, the ethics of specific medical interventions and the role of a mythical being in determining those values and ethics. Read more at the online edition of the Christian Index or Google "Mohler fetus orientation". State Senator Raymond Finney has introduced a Senate Resolution intended to force state Education Commissioner Lana Seivers to answer the question in a report to be presented by January 15, 2008. Finney, a believer, intends to force Seivers either to endorse creationism or to be ridiculed as deciding a question that belongs to the realm of science. Read more at the online edition of the Knoxville News Sentinel. |
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