Choosing a faith

nwr writes:You are inventing your own God.
​
Actually, this is very common. Most Christians claim they worship the Christian God. But they argue and disagree about the details of that God's character. That's because they have invented their own God, but agreed to say that it is the Christian God.
​
Why not just take life as it comes, and without inventing your own God? Yes, there are aspects of our experience that we cannot completely explain. But we can get along without needing everything to be explained. We can celebrate the gaps in our knowledge, because they provide an opportunity for future discovery and learning.

Percy writes:But those of the qualities of the God you've come to think exists and have chosen to follow. Discussions with you center around your reasons for making the choices you do. You consider them imperatives when they're not. "God as we call him" could be my God who hasn't yet noticed our existence. He has higher goals. We're not the focus of his attention or even awareness.

Percy writes:And maybe it would if you'd give it a decent definition. As of now is just a blank slate upon which anyone can write whatever they like.

GDR writes:Having faith in God or Jesus is not about giving intellectual assent to any particular doctrine...

Percy writes:Most of the Christian world would disagree with this.

Percy writes:Selfless love is a good goal but has little to do with religion, God or Jesus.

Stile writes: don't get your point here.
I state that my point is to show that having a moral/loving motivation can be mundane and not require God and your thought is to cite an example of letting someone into traffic ahead of yourself (which the next person may also very well do.) Which, to me, is just another mundane (no God required) example.
​
It seems you're proving my point?

Stile writes:Seems like equivocation to me.
If you want to call my conclusion, based on evidence "a belief" the same as your conclusion, based on your desire for it to be true also "a belief." Well... that seems like you're glossing over a very big point.
​
One agrees with all evidence we've learned from humanity learning things.
While the other adds in extra entities that have never been verified.
​
Those two things don't seem equal to me - but you may label them as you wish.

dwise writes:One thing I've learned on this forum was a new word, Ignosticism:

dwise1 writes:When theists in general do it, then the fault is more likely to lie in ethnocentrism and just plain not having thought it through.

ringo writes:I don't like the term "intelligence" as applied to gods. To me, intelligence implies an ability to learn.

ringo writes:Why would a god have to learn?

GDR writes:I can’t accept the belief that intelligence and morality can evolve from mindless origins.

nwr writes:What does "mindless" actually mean?

nwr writes:Have you considered that nature may have different ways of doing something analogous?

PaulK writes:The science-based understanding of morality points to an explanation that makes sense, based on observation. You reject that out of hand - but you don’t have an explanation for morality at all.

GDR writes:Look at it this way. If someone from 300 years ago were to be transported into today and came upon a factory with only robots producing widgets which was being remotely controlled, it would appear that the robots are responsible for widgets. He wouldn’t know that the robots were designed by humans or even that there was human input into their functioning. (you could also look at AI as an example.)

Tangle writes:Can you see that this is exactly what you are doing when you say that god did it? It's an argument from ignorance - a fallacy.
​
The ‘primitives' looking at the robot have jumped to a wrong conclusion haven't they? They've failed to properly understand what they're looking at and got the wrong answer. They look pretty foolish on their knees worshipping a man-made robot making 'god'. (Reminds me of the cargo cult tribes worshipping Prince Philip)
​
But they wouldn't stop at the robots would they? They'd then ask what made the robots and when they eventually worked out that it was just better educated people, they have to insert God again; just a bit higher up the ladder. It's an infinite regress until the believer inserts the entirely imaginary full stop of the uncaused cause.

Phat writes:I think the resulting belief/conclusion is based on where one wants to be.
​
Critical thinkers/willing atheists want to be freed from the whole God meme or belief concept. Theists, in contrast, want to have a higher power...albeit one friendly towards them.

AZPaul3 writes:No, the question is not unanswerable. You just don’t want to accept the answers the actual world provides.
​
The evidence we have provides reproductive advantage as the answer to your ‘why’ questions.
​
Do you understand how reproductive advantage drives evolution? Survival of the fittest, in its various and often erroneous interpretations, is but one aspect. Society, looking out for each other, no matter how small a touch of altruism, may, as the theories go, have had significant impact on the reproductive success across the greater population. Those “altruism” chemicals/pathways become more prominent and more powerful with each generation.
​
A couple hundred generations later and altruism becomes settled in the human species as a benefit just like muscle strength. In all of this, nowhere is some emotionally conjured cosmic intelligence evident or necessary. We understand how, and the why, these processes work, and everything we see in evolution, including emotions, can be directly attributed to generations of incrementally improving reproductive success for its development and appearance in the human species.

Tangle writes:Of course not it's garbage. It's you that needs the uncaused cause, not me. Who made your god?

Tangle writes:I don't believe in your god or anybody's god. That's an end to it. It's nothing more complicated than that. Exactly like you don't believe in Father Christmas. Exactly like that. I don't have a substitute belief to make it easier for you to understand.
​
As to whether we'll ever understand life the universe and everything, I can't see any reason at all why we should be able to. We're just evolved apes, why should we? It's just hubris. Doesn't stop us trying though.