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One of the reasons I really like living in unbelief is because it frees me from resentment. I don’t have to work out why god did this or did that. I don’t have to be mad at god because he allowed bad stuff to happen to me or didn’t come to my rescue when I needed him.
Other reasons.
I don’t have to worry about what god thinks of me.
I don’t have to feel any obligation to share god’s love with everyone.
I don’t have to worry if I’m saved.
I don’t have to wonder if I’m doing the “right” thing.
I don’t have to make sure I’m praying enough or reading the Bible enough.
I don’t have to figure it out.
I don’t have to share my testimony.
I don’t have to worry if I have committed the unpardonable sin.
I don’t have to worry if Satan is out to get me.
I’m sure there are many others. If anyone wants to share others, feel free to add to the list.
Richard as I read your list I am struck by how much like my own list it is. Though I live in belief, I agree with every statement on your list. And because I agree with them…my old church would most certainly declare me to be an unbeliever. I have come to a point of believing that all of those things on your list do not represent truths but rather false constructs of a religion that distorts genuine belief. (Whatever that belief may be)
I think it is funny, and really kind of cool, that I find much more in common with you than I do with “them”.
AnonymousMe too
Thanks Richard. I’ve been saying for some years that I have far more empathy with many agnostics and even some atheists than I do with those Christians who think they have all the answers. You have just reinforced that feeling.
One of the reasons I really like living without fear is because it frees me from resentment. I would then agree with everything you have said.
No one mentioned not having to wake up early on Sunday.
@RevOxley No one mentioned not having to wake up early on Sunday.
I could add not having to wake up early on Saturday as well. Sometimes I had church both days because I played in a Christian band and the Seventh Day Adventists did it on Saturday and everyone else did it on Sunday.
@Gary I have come to a point of believing that all of those things on your list do not represent truths but rather false constructs of a religion that distorts genuine belief. (Whatever that belief may be)
This may be true of all of them except for my first one.
As soon as you have a conscious being behind it all you have to engage with the problem of suffering. Apparently there is an intelligent being out there who thought disease, suffering, death, cancer, torture, disasters, earthquakes, storms, etc. etc. where all good ideas to include in the universe. And if He didn’t include them, then He isn’t all powerful and isn’t god.
Now since I’m not willing to even imply to someone else that there is a plan behind the death and suffering of the innocent, why would I tell myself that?
I have yet to hear a plan explained to me that isn’t simply horrible ethics on the part of god. Since I find no evidence that there even is a god, I’m free from trying to figure out this oxymoronic problem.
@Richard –
As soon as you have a conscious being behind it all you have to engage with the problem of suffering. Apparently there is an intelligent being out there who thought disease, suffering, death, cancer, torture, disasters, earthquakes, storms, etc. etc. where all good ideas to include in the universe. And if He didn’t include them, then He isn’t all powerful and isn’t god.
I certainly understand the thought process you present. Though it seems to me that such a construct is to promote the notion that the only logical form of reality a conscious God would create is one of robotic automation. It is true that if we had no choice in our actions we would never hurt each other. Of course we would never experience the joy of free conscious thought either. I used to struggle with the notion of how a loving God could allow suffering. But it seems to me that IF God exists…then surely He knows that a life without both the pleasure and pain of conscious freedom would be empty. If perfection is artificially built into the equation then there is no growth.
I to also share in everything in your list @Richard, and hold a firm belief in God and Jesus
As @Gary stated, most of your list are mere constructs of religion, and in terms of suffering, again Gary hit the nail on the head. For us to recognize good, there has to be evil, and if we have the ability of free thought, then we will inevitably turn against each other, otherwise we’d be nothing but puppets. Things like cancer etc happen because its one of the side effects of the physical universe we live in and of the biological bodies we have, asking where God in all of this is is like asking where God is in our need for oxygen to survive.@Gary I certainly understand the thought process you present. Though it seems to me that such a construct is to promote the notion that the only logical form of reality a conscious God would create is one of robotic automation. It is true that if we had no choice in our actions we would never hurt each other. Of course we would never experience the joy of free conscious thought either.
If we were only talking about the harm that people do to one another you would have a point. Except we have cancer, disasters, earthquakes, etc. etc. These are apparently god using his freedom of choice. They would also indicate a lack of intelligent design.
I don’t need to face the alternative of a robotic automation because I don’t have the god problem. I look at reality and see what we do have. To me, and I’m emphasizing the “to me,” the concept of god is extra baggage and it is particularly extraneous because we have no evidence of said god.
There may be concepts of god that don’t present this rather horrible notion of suffering is necessary for free will. This sounds good on paper until you have to face suffering in the face.
@Richard –
If we were only talking about the harm that people do to one another you would have a point. Except we have cancer, disasters, earthquakes, etc. etc. These are apparently god using his freedom of choice. They would also indicate a lack of intelligent design.
Why? Again…blaming God for a perception of injustice is a construct formulated to explain what we cannot…just as religion often does. Yes it is logical to hypothesize that an omnipotent God could end suffering…but at what cost?
I don’t need to face the alternative of a robotic automation because I don’t have the god problem. I look at reality and see what we do have. To me, and I’m emphasizing the “to me,” the concept of god is extra baggage and it is particularly extraneous because we have no evidence of said god.
True enough. But I do not believe God and suffering are mutually exclusive concepts as you do so I bear no “baggage”. For the record my belief in God is not exactly a matter of faith. Rather it is a very rational thought process whereby I have arrived at the conclusion that a creator is a theory which is the most plausible explanation for the universe as we know it. This is partly based on science and the nearly infinitesimal probability of of the big bang (which I accept) resulting in a sustainable and ultimately life bearing universe without a creator fine tuning the process. It is partly based on the unique development of mankind in the animal kingdom resulting in a nearly universal belief in a supreme being demonstrated in virtually every society in recorded history. I see no purely evolutionary process which would explain this phenomenon. But it is also because I see love and charity as the most beautiful and worthy product of humanity that I don’t struggle with a concept of a God that would allow suffering, for without suffering we would not even have an understanding of love.
@Gary Why? Again…blaming God for a perception of injustice is a construct formulated to explain what we cannot…just as religion often does. Yes it is logical to hypothesize that an omnipotent God could end suffering…but at what cost?
I have no god to blame because I don’t believe there is a god there. The standard of justice is the standard the Christian god asks of us in the Bible. We are held to sins of omission. If god is not held accountable for his sins of omission then this god is a hypocrite. There are so many circular arguments that this talk of an imaginary god whom we have no evidence for or indication of what this god wants or what this god does, that it makes more sense to me to not talk of any gods.
@Gary This is partly based on science and the nearly infinitesimal probability of of the big bang (which I accept) resulting in a sustainable and ultimately life bearing universe without a creator fine tuning the process. It is partly based on the unique development of mankind in the animal kingdom resulting in a nearly universal belief in a supreme being demonstrated in virtually every society in recorded history. I see no purely evolutionary process which would explain this phenomenon.
Well science doesn’t look at the development of life as a probability as much as it looks like it is an inevitability. There are a number of demonstrations of entropy creating order at the micro level. With our advanced understanding of fractal geometry and the fractal nature of reality it looks like order is part of the nature of the universe itself. What we perceive as chaos is often order too complex to comprehend because molecules in the presence of energy tend to order themselves and many of the in-between stages don’t fit our esthetic of order. And it makes sense that life would take billions of years to form. It seems more and more likely that there are millions of planets out there with life on them. We are on a planet surrounding a small star among 4 billion stars in our galaxy and our galaxy is one galaxy among 4 billion that we know about.
The fact that we have universal belief in a supreme being means nothing in terms of proof. We have grown past many universal beliefs and we don’t hold on to them because of the numbers of people who believed them. We do have examples of naturally atheistic cultures that are still functioning today. And interestingly enough they are considered the happiest culture on the planet because among all the cultures studied by a group at MIT they spent the most part of the day laughing and smiling than any other culture.
And we have a number of highly developed theories on why belief in deities developed as part of the evolutionary process. We have lost belief in a lot of those deities. It is only a matter of time and we will lose our current beliefs and we’ll either make up new deities or dispense with them all together.
@Richard – The standard of justice is the standard the Christian god asks of us in the Bible. We are held to sins of omission. If god is not held accountable for his sins of omission then this god is a hypocrite.
I agree. It is one of the biggest reasons why I now reject the Christian portrayal of God.
Well science doesn’t look at the development of life as a probability as much as it looks like it is an inevitability. There are a number of demonstrations of entropy creating order at the micro level. With our advanced understanding of fractal geometry and the fractal nature of reality it looks like order is part of the nature of the universe itself. What we perceive as chaos is often order too complex to comprehend because molecules in the presence of energy tend to order themselves and many of the in-between stages don’t fit our esthetic of order.
I find it fascinating that what you identify as logical deniability of God, I see as a beautifully logical reason to believe. Why is order part of the universe itself? It seems illogical to me that this order would result from abstract randomness.
The fact that we have universal belief in a supreme being means nothing in terms of proof.
Oh I totally agree. I think we both accept the limitation that we can neither prove the existence or the absence of God. I submitted this merely as a phenomenon I observed in my effort to determine which “theory” best fits the facts. I am not threatened by the possibility that there is no God nor by the fear that I may one day conclude that there is no God. If I don’t embrace that possibility then my thought process flawed. I have no desire to engage in magical or fantasy based consciousness. However, what I do reject is the notion often promoted that logical thought is the domain of the atheist.
@Gary I find it fascinating that what you identify as logical deniability of God, I see as a beautifully logical reason to believe. Why is order part of the universe itself? It seems illogical to me that this order would result from abstract randomness.
It’s not a deniability of god. It’s just not proof of a creator. Fractal geometry is not abstract randomness. In fact it demonstrates that there is no randomness. In computer programming we have a function called a random number generator. In truth it’s not random at all. It just is set up so that it is very difficult to guess which number is going to come out. There’s nothing random in a binary computer.
It’s just as possible that the universe has always been here as it is that there is a creator god behind it. All you do is move the question back a recursion. Who created god?
@Gary I think we both accept the limitation that we can neither prove the existence or the absence of God.
This is kind of non problem because we don’t really have a concrete definition of what god is. So to disprove or prove an unknown isn’t in the logical domain. This is described in the illustration of Russell’s Teapot. I can’t prove or disprove that there is a teapot between here and the moon someplace. It’s possible, but unlikely. With the issue of god it’s even more difficult because, while we know what a teapot is, we don’t know what god is.
@Gary I submitted this merely as a phenomenon I observed in my effort to determine which “theory” best fits the facts. I am not threatened by the possibility that there is no God nor by the fear that I may one day conclude that there is no God. If I don’t embrace that possibility then my thought process flawed. I have no desire to engage in magical or fantasy based consciousness. However, what I do reject is the notion often promoted that logical thought is the domain of the atheist.
All trains of logical thought come from presuppositions. If we presuppose that there is a god, you can make a number of logical trains of thought. The issue is the presupposition. I don’t presume there is no god. I just don’t have any evidence of a god. I also have no description of god that I can test out nor do I have a test even if I had a description.
When we are talking about theory and science you have to have physical evidence before you can even begin to make a theory. We have no facts about god. There is absolutely no evidence that there is any god out there. Any argument of complexity is not a valid argument for god. You have to have evidence that a god intervened at someplace. Just because we have something versus nothing is not an argument for the existence of god.
We have plenty of evidence for energy and mass and that the universe at this time follows a predictable set of physical laws. These laws set up a predictable pattern of self organization that at this time we don’t fully understand, but as we get more information from studies in particle physics we will begin to form theories and test them out.
There is no theory we can test out for the existence of god or a creator. Maybe you will be the first to come up with one.
@Richard…You seem to keep proceeding in our discussion as if I am attempting to prove the existence of God. I am not, though I must admit your discussion of fractal geometry and the lack of randomness in the universe does more to bolster my belief in a creator than any argument I have heard in a long time. I am intrigued though by your computer analogy of randomness and the apparent assumption that a program CREATED to run in a simple binary system translates to the reality of the universe.
And as for pre-suppositions…I tend to believe everyone has them. The facts of the universe we do know are open to theorizing the how. It is logical to me that order is more likely by design than by chance. This is an attempt to try to determine the most plausible explanation for the facts as we know them and one which I am at present satisfied with. There may come a day when I see it differently…I am very open to that. Perhaps the presupposition you suggest for me is the result of a spiritual realm connecting with my consciousness on some level. I still maintain this might explain the vast majority of societies developing a belief in some form of higher power.
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