I was reading recently about a man who came to a rabbi and asked him why did god create/allow athiesm? Why doesn’t he make himself unquestionably known to us? The rabbi replied athiesm is one of gods greatest gifts. The man was outraged at how such a holy man could say such a blasphemes thing. The rabbi responded is it not because of athiesm that you will go out and help humanity and not wait for god to do it? When enemies atack your family are you going to wait for god to help you or are you going to defend yourself?
In the first place no act per se is good or bad. It is the actor that determines the morality of the act. So whether atheism is good or bad depends on the atheist being good or bad. As a ccorollary to this view is that it is good acts are what good people do and bad ones that of bad people. If you disagree that there are such things as good or bad people, then thats too bad.
Secondly atheism is somewhat a contradiction in terms. For if there is no God there is no meaning in a-theism. For the latter is defined in terms of the former which is denied - a logical conundrum if ever there was one: ~A is defined in terms of A, or derived its meaning from A, and so if A does not exist so does ~A.
Waiting for God versus acting on your own. God is not a push button machine and neither is the relationship with a living entity a mechanistic, formulaic one. It is not something that you check the “rule book” each time you are in a situation. Rather each and every situation for each and every individual is unique and the acts most appropriate therein are only to be discerned in that specific context, derived from discourse and interaction with God at that moment and for that moment. In one situation it is wait, and in another, in apparently exact circumstances, it could be fight or flee. God is not to be treated merely as a Law, like the law of gravity, that operates mechanistically. God is a Living Person.
That only makes sense if one does not believe in religion which states it is god who determines what is good & bad not the actor.
For example in the Torah Moses who was refused entry into the promised land because he kicked a rock out of anger. Now is that good or bad in you view? It is not for me or you to decide but for god, if one hold religious beliefs.
I think your digging a little too deep into the terms here.
Atheism:
Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods
The doctrine that there is no God or gods.
I think the point of the anecdote was reffering to why god does not make himself known to mankind. Why he allows for man not to believe in him and doubt his existence. Why he doesn’t make himself known to us and allows us to have atheistic beliefs whether one is deeply relgious a rabbi per se or not. The wisdom being that one will act and try to help people in the world say for example starving people instead of waiting around for god to do it. Or fight evil/bad whatever you wish to call it like Hitler instead of being pacifists.
Though I’ll admit this is insufficient. It does not explain why such things exist in the first place. But I think thats another disscussion.
I also happen to think faith in gods existence does not garentee that we do not doubt his non-existence. Is such a paradoxical view illogical or impractical? Can one not be deeply relgious and yet have doubts to gods existence?
I cannot comprehend how this can be? Surely if you are ‘deeply’ religious, you’re life is somewhat devoted to God, in which case you would not doubt his existence? Would anyone care to explain?
Bad, because God deemed it so, and not I, or else why was Moses denied entry into the Promised Land?
No he did and still is making himself known to us, or else how else could I be speaking about God at all. Another name for Jesus is Immanuel meaning God is with us. [And “is” is a present not a past or future tense.]
To be “deeply religious” does not mean you know God. For religion to me is merely ritualistic, whereas knowing God is a relationship. All rituals count for nothing.
No disagreement here.
If that is your conviction, again I have no disagreement.
See point on “deeply religious” above.
The issue here is knowing God.
Do I doubt you exist on the other side of this posting somewhere out there in the world? Most likely not. Why? Because a bot could not possibly make all the typo errors and also I can identify your thoughts, fears, anxiety, confusion, illogicality, etc with my own, and so more likely than not you are a same human being as I am.
You doubt when you do not know. And when you know, you have faith. Faith is not blind. Faith is based on knowledge.
And regarding atheism, I still maintain that you cannot be so, it is inherently contradictory - for the moment you deny God, you have acknowledged His existence. At most you can be agnostic, meaning you hold the belief that God is unknowable. To be an atheist is simply to be in constant denial of God.
Eh? That doesn’t make sense. Either there is or there isn’t a God. If you say that there isn’t it doesn’t mean you are acknowledging that there is one, merely acknowledging the possibility of one. Your statement is logically incoherent.
That’s almost as bad as racisim, that Rabbi just accused all bad men of being atheists. There are plenty of religous men who are bad too. Osama Bin Laden perhaps? What about all those holy crusades? What about the Jews who helped crucify Jesus? Three religions, all with their evil doers, your enemies can even be from the same religion as you.
And I’m also going to suggest something crazzzzzzyyy here, atheists also go out and help people!!! It’s true, I swear, I have helped absolute strangers for no reward and I’m an atheist! Honestly!
I totally agree with you Matt, I’m agnostic and would consider myself to be as good a person as most people who believe in God.
To be honest, I cannot see the point of God existing - what actually does He do which is special, has not been yet explained by science and cannot be done by atleast one other person?
How?? he did the complete opposite. He said one will do good and not wait around for god to solve their problems because theres the possibility that there is no god.
As to clear up the point on religion. Religion is more about life then it is about god. It is about you and morality and deals with this life rather then the next.
If you want to know what god did then he gave us the law. Can you show me some other place that says Not to Murder, Kill, Steal, Lie ect… Prior to the torah?
Well to answer the question you have to further ask, what is a kinkapoo?
And then enough knowledge of a kinkapoo have to be knowable and known, for you to be sure that it is not an elephant in the Vauorinian tongue, or the abstract concept of Kenyesian economics in the unspeakable language of the Hooboo’s cursive script, or that it is merely the latest alien creature in the continuing Star Wars saga.
If instead no one knows what a kinkapoo is, then, logically and rationally, can you conclude that a kinkapoo does not exist?
No. The only logical thing you can conclude is that you do not know what a kinkapoo is, and that it is perhaps unknowable as at this point in time.
Yes of course you can hold the position or believe that a kinkapoo does not exist. That I am not disputing - for you believe what you believe. All that I am saying is that the position or the belief is an illogical and irrational one.
Chanbengchin. Your arguments here have been good and eloquent but i must take issue with this:
If i understand you correctly you are saying that if a ‘good person’ (whatever that is) saves 1000 people from drowning and a ‘bad person’ (whatever that is) saves 1000 people from drowning that the good person is still good, the bad person still bad, and their acts (which are one of the few things humans can do to interact with the other people down here that we can actually see, feel, hear, taste, and smell) are of no consequence. If that is your view then in my opinion it is a highly incorrect view. Actions should be judged by their consequences.
Furthermore you state (as above):
“In the first place no act per se is good or bad.”
“It is the actor that determines the morality of the act.”
“So whether atheism is good or bad depends on the atheist being good or bad.”
2 contradicts 1. You say no act is good or bad in 1 and then go on in 2 to say the actor determines the morality of the act. (emphasis mine)
Furthermore 3 definitely does not follow from 1 and 2 because Atheism is a position, not an act.
Of course if there is a deity controlling this whole affair, then maybe the rules of logic don’t apply…
You continue:
Fascinating argument! I accept Atheism as the default position. In other words i will posit no Gods before their time. When i am able to confirm the existence of said God or Gods by the use of the five senses and deduction i will do so. I don’t assume money in my account, before i write a check. I verify that there is. The notion of God gives everyone a blank check.
You go on:
Amazing! If you take out the part of God i almost agree with you. Every situation and moral agent is different and must be judged from within that context. I agree with that. It seems, however, that you regard the acts of God as within the confines of morality, and the acts of people as outside of morality (as in 1).
Atheism is not so much a belief as the absence of belief. This will reinforce my response to 2. Given this definition, little children who do not believe in God are atheists. I look forward to your response Chanbengchin. Good day.
Acts certainly have consequences, but it is not the consequences that make the act good or bad.
And is the use of an act’s consequences the only way to judge an act? Why not the motive or the heart behind an act? That you certainly cannot see anyone’s heart is not an argument against such a measure, and at the least, philosophically speaking, you must admit to the possibility of such a judgement.
The issue here is what measure of judgement is the righteous one (and not merely pragmatic or popular), ie which lead to true righteousness: judging the consequences of the act or its intent.
I have already discussed elsewhere about the rich man and the poor widow giving to charity (of course it is an allusion to Jesus’ teaching on the same thing. [Mk 12:41-44]). Both the act and the consequence are the same, or so it seems.
For even if you want to judge by the consequences can you really know all the consequences of an act?
Can you see what will happen after the rich man made the generous donations to charity? Perhaps he now obtained his desired reputation of being a kind man and so got into a committee where he manipulated and schemed that led eventually to the lost of money, and lives, of countless people some 10 years down the road, and he recovering his “generous donations” more than 100 times over.
The “act” is used in the sense of an disembodied or notional entity, an abstracted idea, say “giving to charity”. It is not an instantiated or actualised event and without consequences or effects in the real world.
It is like chair as a notion - that it is something to sit on - and chair as an actual object, which can however collapse when you sit on it.
(In object oriented programming the “notion” is call a “class” which becomes an “object” when you instantiate the class.)
But when an act is “instantiated” there must certainly be an actor - the can be no real actualised act without an actor - and we no are longer talking hypothetically or discussing in the abstract. Such actuallised acts certainly have consequences and can be judged, by God, to be either good or bad.
Hint: You believe what you want to believe. You say what you want to say. But until I see in your acts what you say you believe, only then can I believe you. So if you say you can fly but still walk or take the train to work everyday, then I am reasonable to be skeptical about what you say you believe. Faith is acting out your beliefs. And the 9/11 hijackers demonstrated what true faith is: they willing died for what they believed. And that’s the greater tragedy.
But dont you see you keep begging the question all the time. What is this thing call “god” and why does it matters and what difference does it makes to my life if “it” does not exist? And vice versa why it does if “it” exists?
Maybe you mean’t to say that no act is inherently good or bad as i have done. I still disagree that the actor determines the morality of the act. I don’t even think the moral agent can take the majority of the credit.
Chanbengchin said:
and
Is this actually the way one should live? One would go to work, not to feed one’s family and get the items one needs, but to be a ‘righteous person’. I think too that the consequences of this type of thinking would be monstrous. If the same act, in the same context, is considered good by one person and bad by another then why would it not be ethical for a ‘good’ person to go on a killing spree in McDonald’s playland for no apparent reason? Would he not then become a bad person by this very act? People are not inherently good or bad just as acts are not inherently good or bad. An action should be judged by it’s consequences, but it still must be considered from within that specific context which is where those other things you mentioned come in.
e.g.
As you alluded to earlier, sometimes the context can make a big difference. Things like motivation, circumstances, etc do count in the equation. How much is probably where we disagree, i am no deontologist. Also we tend to oscillate between good and evil, it’s not just black and white. Show me a person (a living one, not Jesus) that is perfectly good. You can’t just arbitrarily divide people into two groups. I’m sure many fundamentalist extremists (such as those in 911) have done just that.
I don’t know what God or Gods are. I myself, however, have not posited these wily creatures, it is up to those who have to describe them.
Would anyone care to explain?
and also I can identify your thoughts, fears, anxiety, confusion, illogicality, etc with my own, and so more likely than not you are a same human being as I am.
