Dave's View on Religion: part 2
Grant, I like I like. If anyone here is insightful my freind, its you. I like what you wrote about faith and morals, I hope you'll continue with that later when you get a chance. NOW THEN, part 2: I received an interesting post from Kay which is equally insightful, to give it the respect it deserves, i'll post the main point right here:
considering how insignificant we are, how can we expect that only a physical world exists?we can't. who knows what people's reasons are for believing in a supernatural. it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. it's something that we won't ever be able to prove or disprove, methinks.
I'll be honest, theres really no way I can argue with that because its all true. But I'd like to point out that this is an argument that the Catholic Church loves to use. What better way is there for them to shoot down any counter arguments than by saying that god's existence can never really be disproven, because there's quite simply no evidence to prove otherwise. If so many people believe in something, then surely it must be real. We as humans wont ever be able to understand what's beyond our senses, and we fear what we cant understand. Thomas Aquinas used the cosmological argument, which stated that there must have been something which started the universe going, sure humans may have evolved from single celled organisims, but who created those cells: none other than God. This kind of thing is very difficult to counter so I'm not going to try to counter it, but I am going to try and work with what's been presented in the physical world, all supernatural ideals aside. One of those good ol' counter arguments to God has always been the problem of evil. If God is benevolent God, then surely he cannot want evil to exist, if God is omnipotent, then we cant say that the Lord wasnt powerful enough to stop evil, and if he is omniscient, then surely he must know about evil. These things present an amusing contradiction: God is somehow allowing evil to exist, or God is not the good loving being we thought he was. This goes back to what Grant said, when he said that just because something is powerful, doesnt mean it is good. It looks like I've gone from trying to prove the existence of god to trying to show god as being bad, but bear with me for a moment. How many heinous crimes have been committed in the name of god? How many times has the church been accused of corruption and perversion? What kind of god lets children die horrible deaths in a Serbian campaign of ethnic cleansing? Of course, these are all human acts, and god supposedly gave humans free will, but even the elements seem to cause death and destruction. Surely this god is a vicious god, and arent we created in his image? If god can take life, why cant we? Alright, lets use another example. One of the ten commandments is supposedly 'thou shalt not kill' well, who does that apply to? Say that i kill an insect, am I gonna go to hell? of course not! only if you kill a human being. But this makes no sense to me, I think that the mere fact that we have supposedly evolved better than most other creatures on this planet by no means makes us special. Once again, i say that religion is a tool to keep people in line and to force them to curb their less noble impulses. Without religion, I think people would start to realize that besides the law, there is no punishment for what you do. Religion stops this from happening, and it's because of religion that people have certain morals. In the end, there is no definite or absolute. If you believe in god, you believe in god, if you dont, you dont, its that simple, and I believe that just because I have my beliefs and I put them out there, that doesnt give me the right to try and tell someone else to renounce their ideals.
considering how insignificant we are, how can we expect that only a physical world exists?we can't. who knows what people's reasons are for believing in a supernatural. it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. it's something that we won't ever be able to prove or disprove, methinks.
I'll be honest, theres really no way I can argue with that because its all true. But I'd like to point out that this is an argument that the Catholic Church loves to use. What better way is there for them to shoot down any counter arguments than by saying that god's existence can never really be disproven, because there's quite simply no evidence to prove otherwise. If so many people believe in something, then surely it must be real. We as humans wont ever be able to understand what's beyond our senses, and we fear what we cant understand. Thomas Aquinas used the cosmological argument, which stated that there must have been something which started the universe going, sure humans may have evolved from single celled organisims, but who created those cells: none other than God. This kind of thing is very difficult to counter so I'm not going to try to counter it, but I am going to try and work with what's been presented in the physical world, all supernatural ideals aside. One of those good ol' counter arguments to God has always been the problem of evil. If God is benevolent God, then surely he cannot want evil to exist, if God is omnipotent, then we cant say that the Lord wasnt powerful enough to stop evil, and if he is omniscient, then surely he must know about evil. These things present an amusing contradiction: God is somehow allowing evil to exist, or God is not the good loving being we thought he was. This goes back to what Grant said, when he said that just because something is powerful, doesnt mean it is good. It looks like I've gone from trying to prove the existence of god to trying to show god as being bad, but bear with me for a moment. How many heinous crimes have been committed in the name of god? How many times has the church been accused of corruption and perversion? What kind of god lets children die horrible deaths in a Serbian campaign of ethnic cleansing? Of course, these are all human acts, and god supposedly gave humans free will, but even the elements seem to cause death and destruction. Surely this god is a vicious god, and arent we created in his image? If god can take life, why cant we? Alright, lets use another example. One of the ten commandments is supposedly 'thou shalt not kill' well, who does that apply to? Say that i kill an insect, am I gonna go to hell? of course not! only if you kill a human being. But this makes no sense to me, I think that the mere fact that we have supposedly evolved better than most other creatures on this planet by no means makes us special. Once again, i say that religion is a tool to keep people in line and to force them to curb their less noble impulses. Without religion, I think people would start to realize that besides the law, there is no punishment for what you do. Religion stops this from happening, and it's because of religion that people have certain morals. In the end, there is no definite or absolute. If you believe in god, you believe in god, if you dont, you dont, its that simple, and I believe that just because I have my beliefs and I put them out there, that doesnt give me the right to try and tell someone else to renounce their ideals.
posted by david at 5:28 PM
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