Good question, hope you don’t mind me jumping in. For me as a teenager or even younger, reading about various faiths and mythologies, I was thinking about which faith was the right one. Obviously I could simply choose the one of my parents and the adults around me followed, but I went to a school with Muslims, Hindu and Buddhist children too. Was I really supposed to try and convert them? None of the Christian teachers did.
It all made no sense. Everybody was just doing and saying what their parents told them to, and actually thinking or talking about it and taking it actually seriously just seemed absurd. Nobody was actually following through on what the scriptures said they aught to be doing, if it really was all true, and if they had that would be even worse.
So it wasn’t so much deciding god doesn’t exist, it was that if god does exist, which version is it and how would I know? From there concluding that religion is an entirely artificial social construct was a pretty small step.
Having said that, I also concluded that spirituality is clearly a ubiquitous human experience. Religion seems to be a response to a universal, or near universal impulse that it’s worth taking seriously.
I agree, but there may be a tipping point of equilibrium to that social construct. Cause at the end of the there should be some logic and reasoning has to there to feed the family. At least in this modern day.
Due to modern education system and scientific thinking clears out most of the dogma imposed on to people by religion. And I can see the current religion leaders embracing them, as it was their own. And we will see how the religion will evolve or devolve in this modern era of logic and reasoning.
We all come by it by different ways but I'll share my story.
I was mormon up until around 30ish. However, researching the history of the mormon religion ultimately led me to completely disbelieve the faith claims of the church.
From there, atheism was just sort of natural. Why, for example, would I suddenly believe that any other religious sect got it's supernatural claims correct when the one I was raised with, got a bunch of the "good feelings" from and was 1000% convinced was true ended up having really major issues?
I certainly could be convinced there is a god, but it cannot be through emotions. My emotions held me in mormonism for far to long. I know emotions can trick, deceive, and are easily played to. The right type of music or a charismatic orator can easily trigger them.
So what does that leave me with? Facts, logic, and evidence. Any religion that can give me solid evidence that the supernatural is real and exists would win me. None have succeeded (and I have had fun looking into a few).
If there is an all knowing, loving god that cares about me, then that god would know exactly how to present me the evidence I need to believe in it. If that god doesn't care about me, then why should I care about it?
And, if there's a supernatural belief without a god that I should believe in for afterlife rewards... well, there's just no way for me to correctly stumble into it. I need evidence that I'll be reincarnated as a spider if I don't believe in reincarnation, and that seems pretty tough to prove.
> So what does that leave me with? Facts, logic, and evidence. Any religion that can give me solid evidence that the supernatural is real and exists would win me. None have succeeded (and I have had fun looking into a few).
What tools would you use to prove supernatural claims?
Ultimately it depends on the claim, but the basis of it would that you'd have to be able to both test and repeatably reproduce whatever effect is claimed.
For example, let's say the claim is "God will heal you if you pray to him". Ok, let's pray that someone is healed in the hospital. How about another? And another? Do those prayers fail? Why?
The issue that one runs into is that the prayers will often fail and the answer is generally "mysterious ways". Yet, no religion seems to statistically fair better than other religions when it comes to diseases. So either, the prayer isn't working, or god is working extra hard to make sure to hide itself (Why would a divine being do that?)
Some claims I'll just reject outright. If the proof is "feelings" that's manipulation, not proof. Because, as I said, feelings are easily triggered. Pretty much every religion has figured that one out.
> Ultimately it depends on the claim, but the basis of it would that you'd have to be able to both test and repeatably reproduce whatever effect is claimed.
Can you explain further why this would be a good standard, or how it would help? I mean, suppose you were god (with the usual alleged attributes that generate this kind of issue). How would you make yourself repeatable or testable?
Prayer seems like one of the tests that you would propose. This seems to me to be a maybe not great test? Even we respond differently based on the situation. My kids pray to me for ice cream fairly regularly, for example, and sometimes they get it and sometimes they don't. (Sometimes they eat their dinner and haven't had more sweets than are good for them by my judgment; sometimes they're disobedient and annoying; sometimes I'm a first-rate bastard to my kids; and so on.) If god exists, I don't know that I would expect him/her/it to respond repeatably or to be testable, at least in that sense.
> Can you explain further why this would be a good standard, or how it would help?
Without this as a standard what are you left with to verify the divine is the divine and not a con? I think we can both agree that there are a lot of crazy cults and charismatic leaders that claim things they aren't and can use tricks and the slight of hand to prove things that aren't true. Assuming a loving god exists, shouldn't that being give us a way to tell the difference between false beliefs and true beliefs? Or if that doesn't matter to this divine being, then why would it be important to be a believer in the first place? The best way I know how to verify truth is repeatable tests with measurable results. Do you have a better way?
> I mean, suppose you were god (with the usual alleged attributes that generate this kind of issue). How would you make yourself repeatable or testable?
How couldn't you?
Assuming I'm the god of the universe, then the test would be as easy as "Anyone that thinks 'all hail cogman10!' will see a gold star in the periphery of their vision." Heck, I could simply have all my creations be born with the innate knowledge that I exist and these are my rules.
If you are a all knowing, all powerful, ever present being then constructing any sort of "this will always return true" test would be trivial. There are already tests like this in the bible "if you have the faith of a mustard seed you can move a mountain". Wouldn't the act of asking for literally anything demonstrate the minimal amount of faith?
But, assuming there is some law of the universe that I'm bound by (making me not all powerful), then I'd surely know how to communicate specifically with cogman10 to let them know that I exist beyond doubt (and to do that for everyone). If I didn't know that, then I must not be all knowing.
Or, if I didn't care to communicate that and instead I'm fine with my creations being tortured for eternity over an instant of choices... then I'm not particularly good or loving.
I picked prayer because it's a concept I'm most familiar with from my mormon upbringing.
> Assuming a loving god exists, shouldn't that being give us a way to tell the difference between false beliefs and true beliefs?
Oh, sure, I think that makes sense. I mean, supposing god exists and wants us to know he/she/it exists, it makes sense to me that some sort of revelation has to be there. But this god, being per se infinite, has to accommodate finite creatures. That seems like a challenge.
> Assuming I'm the god of the universe, then the test would be as easy as "Anyone that thinks 'all hail cogman10!' will see a gold star in the periphery of their vision." Heck, I could simply have all my creations be born with the innate knowledge that I exist and these are my rules.
I guess I would say that the universe itself seems to be repeatable and testable, at least at the scales we can measure so far. Of course there's a lot we don't understand, but that's kind of expected if your deity of choice is infinite.
I'm not sure what Mormonism teaches, but the Bible at least says that everyone knows that God exists, and that they suppress that knowledge. Maybe that's begging the question, though I doubt such claims are merely axiomatic (i.e., without some kind of reasonable argument). At least the request for something repeatable and testable that expresses the divine in some way would be answered by the universe you inhabit. This doesn't really lead to a Personality, which I think you'd have to arrive at in a different way. But I don't think persons—divine, if they exist, or otherwise—are repeatable that way.
> Wouldn't the act of asking for literally anything demonstrate the minimal amount of faith?
I don't know. Maybe the point of the saying is that no one has faith the size of a mustard seed?
> But, assuming there is some law of the universe that I'm bound by (making me not all powerful), then I'd surely know how to communicate specifically with cogman10 to let them know that I exist beyond doubt (and to do that for everyone). If I didn't know that, then I must not be all knowing.
It seems to me that one of the essential problems that most religious systems have to deal with the challenge of creaturely freedom and divine omnipotence. One possible supposal is that freedom is somehow incompatible with the desire for incontrovertible, watertight evidence, and that the two exist on a continuum. Perhaps the maximal amount of evidence is provided for the maximal amount of creaturely freedom?
Again, I think I understand the objection, but I'm not sure whether it adequately addresses the challenges that come along with it. I appreciate you thinking about the problem and talking about it, though. I have a lot of questions like this, too, and it's helpful to push some electrons into the ether instead of just talking to myself about it.
Look into teachings of Gurdjieff. Having similar background as yours, I was interested due to the fact that there is no need to believe anything from anybody else, and you should test everything you believe by yourself.
Just read the main wiki blurb on him and my main question is "Why should I believe in the existence of the unified consciousness or higher levels of consciousness"?
Wikipedia is not a great starting point to approach spiritual things.
Bohr, the Nobel-winning physicist, had a horse shoe on top of the front door of his country cabin. When he was asked whether he believed it brings him good luck, his reply was "I was told it works regardless I believe in it or not."
There is no need to believe in such things, and belief -- in the sense you are using the word -- does not "help" you. It may even be a hindrance.
More interesting question could be: can I find useful things about myself that I can personally verify that would be difficult or impossible to learn otherwise?
A book called Inner Game of Tennis (not related to Gurdjieff) talks about the inner game that elite athletes need to learn. For example, if you are practicing how to make the perfect tennis forehand hit, you are struggling with a part of yourself that tries to control your movement. However, you need to learn to let go, and let the body to do the movement. The part that wants to control the movement is very poor in doing that. So there are these various parts in myself, and it is essential to learn how they operate.
If you are intrigued, reading "In Search of the Miraculous" by Ouspensky or one book from "Psychological Commentaries" by Nicoll could be a better starting point than Wikipedia.
You don’t have to. It’s a choice. My doubts about it not existing came after I realized it’s not clear where to draw a clear boundaries for an organism. For example, each neuron in our brain can be considered it’s own organism but it’s part of our body and from our perspective we are in control of it. If we apply this to ourselves then maybe we ourselves are just a neuron in a bigger living “brain”.
