No Evidence For God, Why Still Believe?

So Psychology is about not being arrogant, condescending, or really really ignorant? I think you’re on about yourself there, mate… especially when all you can offer up in reply are ad Homs and baiting. Go you!

Did you not come into this thread to debate, or just to attack the person’s character?

Keep this up sunshine, and you’ll be getting attacked with warnings.

Sartre?

Measurement is not the point. Not that it’s even possible to measure these things beyond some sort of ranking.

I used “good” - “bad” - “evil” to show that “evil” is on one end of a larger scale of evaluation. Efficiency has nothing to do with my point.

We don’t call petty crimes, illegal parking and spitting in the street “evil” because they don’t warrant the “evil” label.

If somebody tried to change the definition of the word “hungry” to span the range “not hungry” to “very hungry” , it would not make any sense because “hungry” never means “not hungry”. “Desperate” never means “not desperate”. If someone shows no signs of being desperate then he/she is not desperate.

You’re not making it simple. You’re making it confusing. I’m responding to your posts with a certain understanding of the word “desperate”. If you tell me that a theist can be desperate without any signs of desperation, then as far as I’m concerned it’s nonsense. And as I said, just believing in a god is not a sign of desperation.

Petty crimes are not evil in any sense. The word “evil” carries a stigma and people do not want to be called evil. If you are going to use the word for practically every mildly negative act, then you will get resistance along with confusion.

Snark’s point is that evidence is not necessary :

The Dispenza quote says that information and technology distracts some people from looking in the right direction. The insistence on evidence for the existence of God, prevents those people from finding God.

The Maslow quote is similar in that the “downlevelling” is an obsession with the materialistic at the expense of the “higher”.

Both quotes are critical of a low level materialistic focus. Both support Snark’s posted idea.

Yes. It was a deathbed confession: “I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here: and this idea of a creating hand refers to God.” His Atheist mistress, Simone de Beauvior, wrote a scathing article calling him as a “senile traitor” after his death in 1980 – kinda like what Prismatic does with Flew and every other person who becomes more religious as they age.

I have researched on Abraham Maslow and read some of his books with emphasis on
Toward a Psychology of Being. New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Note a comment on the above book:

Note again, Maslow’s fundamental view!
“They do not come from a supernatural God but from human nature.”

I have stated many times I always maintain my intellectual integrity and would never shoot from the hip but always ensure I have some form of justifications.

Note my essence is ‘progressive’ and to progress the most efficient way is to rely on some basis of measurements [the best we can obtain].

Note this as a possibility;

I am not saying the above scale is the final and authoritative scale, but its existence indicate the possibility and potential for refinement and improvement.
In future it is possible we can have a very objective scale of evil that has a strong correlation to neural activities in the brain.

It is not your point because you are not focus on progress and concern for humanity in the future, whereas I am.

Normally we don’t but for progress sake we need to do that. I could reverse the scale from 100% good to 50% good and 1% good because all humans has the potential to be good. From this perspective we loose the significance and impact to deal with the full range of evil.

On the critical issue of obesity and where the rate of death related to obesity, then a continuum of hunger from 100% to 1% would be appropriate. ALL humans has the hunger drive which is supported by its relevant neural circuit within the body and the brain. In order to manage obesity it is necessary to understand the full range of hunger right at the starting point from 1% so that we can better manage the hunger drive and obesity plus other associated health problems.

Problem is you can only see a glass as half-empty and not the other exact truth, i.e. the glass as half-full.

My point is ALL humans has the potential for psychological desperation driven by the existential crisis. This potential is active in the majority in various degrees which compelled many to theism and other secular beliefs.
To manage this psychological desperation, we need to understand and take into account its full range and degrees within a continuum.

I understand the word ‘evil’ carries a stigma especially within theology.
However lately this term ‘evil’ is getting more relevant within secular use.
Note,
plato.stanford.edu/entries/concept-evil/

Thus to increase efficiency in resolving the problem of all evils we need a continuum of evil.

From the above, you will note you have a shortfall in the width of your knowledge which need to be filled. I hope you respect knowledge i.e. the more relevant knowledge the better.

The point is I supported my views with at least some sort of research material. Soon there will more revealing discovery to the psychological basis of theism and why God [illusory] is an impossibility.
Why Sartre turned to theism is because his brain power to hold back theism with rationality and wisdom has failed.

The above is one strong indication theism is driven by psychological factors.

If God is claimed to be omnipotent, God could easily appear or influence those late-theists when they were younger, why only when they are older. This has to be due to the fact that brain neurons are dying from almost day one a child is born on a daily basis. By the time the person is older many of the relevant inhibitors that held back theism would have died, thus MANY are driven to be more inclined to theism or its forms.

It is a fact, as one grows older lots of neurons would have died in related to many neural faculties, e.g. memory, motor action, conscious awareness of surroundings, etc.

I am optimistic soon humanity will be able to map all the neural connections that are related to theism.
Note the Human Connectome Project.
humanconnectomeproject.org/
Then humanity will be able to manage theism objectively and replace theism with fool proof approaches to deal with that inherent unavoidable existential crisis.

:angry-banghead:

:laughing: I know what mean.

The point is that by ignoring Maslow you revealed yourself to be a bigot.

Did you read this post above?
viewtopic.php?p=2690566#p2690566

Based on the above ‘it has nothing to do with God’ your reference on Maslow will not lead you to a God ultimately as a conclusion. What have you got to say on this?

I have provided justifications to every point you raised. Since I raised this OP, I know my points are in alignment with the topic.

The onus is on you to dig deeper and provide counter justifications.

All you did was to repeat the same arrogant claims that you have been making.

You either don’t understand what I’m writing or you don’t care about what I’m writing.

I have better things to do than to participate in that kind of discussion.

I read it. You see things through bigoted eyes so you read into it what you want to believe.

Maslow interpreted everyday psychology as laced with the trace of the supernatural, because for him “supernatural” just meant a deeper level of consciousness about ordinary things.

What I don’t understand is why I am apparently required by Prismatic to reject Maslow’s ideas just because he was a self-professed atheist. IMV, Maslow just doesn’t go far enough with his holistic ideas.

Your belief does not make it so.

I did not request you to reject Maslow’s ideas.

My point is, where you are relying on Maslow’s ideas to justify God exists as real, that is false and not possible because Maslow’s ideas are non-theistic.

So? Why can’t I appropriate his ideas into my own wherever they fit? Why must you pigeon hole everything?

It would be a lack of personal integrity to automatically believe. I am not Pascal.
Perhaps for an agnostic, a real deep proof of God is much more important than it is for a believer.

Also, we might need to ask ourselves:
Just What is this so-called God that cannot be proven to exist or not?

We sometimes argue over a god without having made a distinction of What God, a description (although a description is not the thing necessarily) but God has become like a million different species in the ocean of life for us.
Who can possibly know God based on THIS?

Note I presented re Maslow;

“They do not come from a supernatural God but from human nature.”

Re this, no matter how you ‘pigeon-hole’ Maslow’s ideas, they will not lead to your ‘God’.
As the statement indicate, the fundamental is human nature, i.e. psychological.

Here’s a suggestion: try reading what I actually write. Heck, you quoted me. What did the last sentence say?