What does the Christian God want from us?

You have to look at it from the other side. If you jump at someone and call them an Idiot, I can guarentee that they will immediately tune out everything else you say. While you are making your important logical arguments all they are thinking about is: "this guy is an obnoxious and rude person". If you then proceed to continue yelling and making fun of everything they belive in, they will start to get worried. They will wonder: "If my childern start to belive the things this guy says they might turn into obnoxious and rude people, we need to pass laws to stop people from beliving these things"

But you are right, people need to be exposed to other points of view and learn to see things from other people's perspective.

Yes, they should be exposed. What's sad is some people automatically assume because one studied the Bible, they don't study anything else.

As far as I'm concerned, studying the Bible is part of a well rounded understanding of the history of the Jewish and Christian faith. Just as the Koran is part of the material one would study to understand Islam.

I don't know of anyone who only reads and quotes the Bible.

I do not believe God exists, and I do believe that the Bible is a step in the continually evolving belief system that developed starting in Mesopotania. I can not prove the validity of my belief that no Christian God exists. His very nature is supposed to be an existance beyond the world I can observe. Proof that he doesn't exist is like the shapes, in Edwin Abott's Flatland, trying to assume the non-existance of the 3rd dimension. For my own reasons, I believe he does not exist, but I am interested in the explanations of those who believe in their holy scriptures. If someone else considers the book to be without faults, then I can not start a discussion by assuming that they are automatically wrong.

Me too!!!

-Ghoti

Let's distill this all down, shall we?

The meaning of life is thus: To love and be loved. Everything else is fluff.

With regard to commands, re: killing all men, women and children - I have no answer for you. My understanding of the Christian faith is cursory at best.


But atheism has always fascinated me.

I find that atheists are generally the first to grant the possibility of intelligences other than our own. Or even a deconstructionist view of our own nature - the 'illusion' of cognition.

Thus life, cognition, or even the sense of 'self' might be created by someone's hand someday. Should it happen, I'd wager that hand will be the steady hand of an atheist.

And in fulfillment of such an act... the atheist would validate that which he most denies.


By becoming, himself, a flawed, capricious God of the petri dish. Perhaps a literal white-bearded Father high above, with powers of life and death, feast, famine... perhaps even with exquisite interest in the reproductive habits of the newly created?

And one that understands the intricacy of his accomplishment, yet not the analogy.

The irony makes me dizzy. If atheists are in fact correct, we had best start preparing ourselves for godhead. I, for one, would join Neualtenburg on the spot to improve on my civic sense of responsibility, should I ever discover atheistic surety.

* * * * *

It seems that certainty in personal belief is quite common - yet of any given billion people on earth, there are five billion that dogmatically disagree.

What does that tell us about ourselves?

Oh ho! So now we're down to the meaning of life, are we?

OK, I'll play:

There is no meaning to life. We are accidentally-ordered flotsam at the edges of a vast, ancient, cosmic accident, a breaking of mathematical and physical symmetry and the creation of the Flaw of Existence.

Suspended above this abyss, we can either run around and scream ourselves silly, or we can gird ourselves and together learn what we can about ourselves and the universe around us, thus giving ourselves an essential quality that is our own, unique creation: dignity.

There you have it. I do not, by the way, accept donations.

If "There is no meaning to life" what's the point of "dignity"?

Yes Seth, I agree with you completely, but I am also preparing myself for godhood by colleting followers.

Dammit! I so wanted to mail you that spare change burning a hole in my pocket.

um, no. this is nothing close to what, as you suggest, all athiests believe. I certainly don't believe it. I am a zen buddhist and an atheiest. I simply do not acknoweledge the notion of a transcendent deity or intelligence.

attaining satori does not make you a white bearded god of the petri dish. the act of becoming ones true self is not the act of deification.

I should think it obvious: We become Creators, and what we create - all we can create - that is aside from the obvious Chaos, is dignity.

btw, just so we're all on the same Page of Creation, there's a little tongue-in-cheek going on here....

All socail animals exhibit altrusitc behavior, its a genetic adaptation. When a society functions smoothly individuals within the society are more likely to propagate their genetic material, when they do not work together they are less likely. Over time, genes that give a predisposition to altrusim end up dominating the genetic pool. This is balanced to some extent by the fact that selfish behavior can also improve the abiltiy to reproduce, but only if the society tolerates it.

The dictionary defines Dignity as "The quality or state of being worthy of esteem or respect."

If there is no meaning to life, what is the point of being worthy of respect?

And... why would anyone seek the esteem or respect of meaningless animals?

I don't intend to be contrary, I truly am intersested in your thoughts in this matter.

None of the animals that I have respected ever sought to be so.

Many of them, have lead more "dignified" and "meaningful" lives than most humans I know.

1) Clearly I cannot know every flavour of atheism.

Yet I still find that *most* atheists believe in physical explanations for cognition, sense of self, life and so forth. Either that, or declare it all to be illusory.

This opens a very wide door. It a basic premise for creation by man, creation on a level that at least partially assigns traditionally godlike attributes to man himself. Thus the irony.





2) I never stated that enlightenment would make you a creator of anything. The act of making something makes you a creator - no more, no less. I'm a bit confused as I did not make any remark to this effect.

I'm not a respecter of dictionaries.

The emotional essence is caught in Dylan Thomas' poem, Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night, excerpt:

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Intellectually, I think what I'm referring to is "a collective dignity of the self" - which to the individual means "self-dignity", and in the collective means "respect for everyone who has dignity" - and infers the desirability for collective progress toward dignity among humanity.


Put another way, you set your own challenging standards to become more than what you are, Kevn, and those standards include not inflicting pain, suffering, or madness on others. And beyond that, they include helping others achieve their own "dignity", and accepting their help in achieving yours. Because by accomplishing a measure of dignity in spite of the meaningless of life - your own attempt to understand and bring order and civility to the cosmos and thus turn it into your own, small, act of creation - you do not go gentle into that good night. Dignity itself becomes the meaning of life - the only meaning we can give it, in light of our limitations.


Which is not to say that I wholly believe what I just said - because as I've stated in another thread, science has not demonstrated that there is no "God", nor an ulterior purpose. It is to say, however, that if life is truly meaningless, and the cosmos is merely a stupendous Flaw - then this is what I would believe, and how I would behave.

I would just assumes things are.

I personally have no respect for anything or anyone for no reason at all. I do not respect a human just because he is a human. I think both sides of the coin have come up with a myth to make themselves special. Some think of evolution as an evolving of apes to the more superior man. Some think humans are special compared to all the other animals. In reality humans are nothing but an insignificant speck in the universe.

Some religious think of a deity viewing both their culture and their species as special. They think that man was created in God's image. They think that all other animals were created for the sake of man. They think even other supernatural beings other than God are completely obsessed with Man. What makes a person so full of pride that they think something like a fallen angel would care one way or another about Man. How does it benefit such a being to spend all its energy trying to cause bad things to happen to man. The only time something is going to be interested in humans is if they get some kind of benefit from humans. If they get knowledge, love, food, entertainment from humans they might concern themselves with a human. A dog doesn't come to love you because you are a special wondrous thing in the image of God. It comes to love you because you took care of it and loved it back.

There is nothing special about mankind. I may respect life. I may respect a person's ideas. I may refrain from harming others. I certainly give no reverence to any person, God, or Patron, however.

Westerner have hard time with idea that cow and human come from same tree of life. This because he have no respect for cow, instead he eat cow! If cow and him the same, and he treat cow so shitty, that make him shit too. Uncomfortable to think about.

Please excuse the preceding engrish. I came here straight from MasaMania.

Thanks Seth for the reply, let me see if I understand... We are to set our own challenges, to not inflict pain/suffering/madness on others, and to help others achieve their own dignity... accept their help achieving mine... try to understand and bring order to the cosmos...

But I still don't understand the point in all this. It seems like a lot of effort for no result. If life is meaningless, what reason would one have to add meaning with our inflated self-esteem.

Why care about the cosmos and trying to achieve order if we are doomed to death personally, and extinction globally?

It seems pointless in a World that is temporary to seek enlightenment. Since it's all a big waste of time anyhow.

I guess that is why so many young people are turning to drug dealing, they are taught there is no meaning, no reason to strive to be a valued part of the community. They look for the most comfortable, easy road to cross the desert they see as life.

Do you see what I mean? Or am I wrong to think people probably won't strive to be good with the thought life is completely meaningless?

With respect, Kevn, read the post one more time. Life may be meaningless, but to "strive to be good", as you put it, is to create meaning and purpose, where before there was none. To accomplish such meaning and purpose in the midst of nothingness and accident is an act of creation, and lends the creator (us) dignity.

In effect, without God, we become "small gods" ourselves - in the only ways we can. And that is one way I can conceive of living in a vast, empty, howling cosmos.

*sneaks into the thread late and sits in the back of the room*



Depends on whether you believe that everything has to be results driven. Or perhaps its just a different type of results than you need/want. It's kinda' like going fishing and releasing your catch at the end of the day. From one perspective it can look like I spent a lot of effort for no results. But from another pespective, I like to fish.





Which is why you've chosen the path you have. Maybe you just have a greater desire or a need for a more concrete results and purpose and goals for your existance than others may. It may seem pointless to you to seek enlightenment in a temporary World...but I like to fish.





Wrong? For you? No. For everyone. Yes. For one thing you presume that meaning must be imposed from without, and that individuals are not able to find their own meaning (and yes, before you ask, sometimes that meaning is destructive and bad).

Are you saying Deep Thought was wrong?

That's exactly what I'm saying. That movie was messed up. No matter how you look at it, Deep Throat was just wrong