I Know That God Does Not Exist

For a hoot, take a look at new member Connie Muller's website: http://ourpurposeanddestiny.com/--Percy

I don't know that God exists, but I believe that he does.--Percy

I don't know who William Berkshire is, but I found that article at innumerable places on the web, all with horrible formatting that makes it difficult reading, but it says that when Einstein was lecturing at universities across the US he said he believed in the God of Spinoza, and then whoever wrote the article goes on to quote Spinoza at length.To me the lengthy Spinoza quote seems to capture a little of the spirit of what I recall of Spinoza's religious philosophy, but it seems doubtful that he wrote it, and I could find no evidence that he did. For examples, I don't believe Spinoza was ever translated as having written, "But I can give you a tip," or that he made copious and inappropriate use of ellipses.Here's that article with formatting so that it's easier to read:

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Did you know that when Einstein gave lectures at the numerous US universities he was invited to, the recurring question that students asked him was, "Do you believe in God?" And he always answered, "I believe in the God of Spinoza."

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The ones who hadn't read Spinoza didn't understand. I hope this gem of history serves you as much as it does me.

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Baruch de Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher considered one of the three great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy, along with René Descartes in France, and Gottfried Leibniz in Germany. Here's some of his wisdom:

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God would have said, "Stop praying and punching yourself in the chest! What I want you to do is go out into the world and enjoy your life. I want you to enjoy, sing, have fun and enjoy everything I've made for you.

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"Stop going to those dark, cold temples that you built yourself and say they are my house! My house is in the mountains, in the woods, rivers, lakes, beaches. That's where I live and there I express my love for you.

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"Stop blaming me for your miserable life; I never told you there was anything wrong with you or that you were a sinner, or that your sexuality was a bad thing! Sex is a gift I have given you and with which you can express your love, your ecstasy, your joy. So don't blame me for everything they made you believe.

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"Stop reading alleged sacred scriptures that have nothing to do with me. If you can't read me in a sunrise, in a landscape, in the look of your friends, in your son's eyes... you will find me in no book! Trust me and stop asking me. Would you tell me how to do my job?

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"Stop being so scared of me. I do not judge you or criticize you, nor get angry, or seek to punish you. I am pure love.

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"Stop asking for forgiveness, there's nothing to forgive. If I made you... I filled you with passions, limitations, pleasures, feelings, needs, inconsistencies... free will. How can I blame you if you respond to something I put in you? How can I punish you for being the way you are, if I'm the one who made you? Do you think I could create a place to burn all my children who behave badly for the rest of eternity? What kind of God would do that?

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"Forget any kind of commandments, any kind of laws; those are wiles to manipulate you, to control you, that only create guilt in you.

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"Respect your peers and don't do what you don't want for yourself. All I ask is that you pay attention in your life, that your consciousness is your guide.

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"My beloved, this life is not a test, not a step, not a rehearsal, nor a prelude to paradise. This life is the only thing that exists here and now, and it is all you need.

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"I have set you absolutely free, no prizes or punishments, no sins or virtues... no one carries a marker, no one keeps a record.

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"You are absolutely free to create in your life heaven or hell.

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"I could tell you if there's anything after this life, but I won't... but I can give you a tip. Live as if there is nothing after... as if this is your only chance to enjoy, to love, to exist.

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"So, if there's nothing, then you will have enjoyed the opportunity I gave you. And if there is, rest assured that I won't ask if you behaved right or wrong, I'll ask. Did you like it? Did you have fun? What did you enjoy the most? What did you learn?...

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"Stop believing in me; believing is assuming, guessing, imagining. I don't want you to believe in me... I want you to feel me in you when you kiss your beloved, when you tuck in your little girl, when you caress your dog, when you bathe in the sea.

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"Stop praising me, what kind of egomaniac God do you think I am?

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"I'm bored being praised, I'm tired of being thanked. Feeling grateful? Prove it by taking care of yourself, your health, your relationships, the world. Express your joy!... that's the way to praise me.

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"Stop complicating things and repeating as a parakeet what you've been taught about me.

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"The only thing for sure is that you are here, that you are alive, and that this world is full of wonders.

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"What do you need more miracles for? Why so many explanations?

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"Look for me outside... you won't find me. Find me inside... there I am beating within you."

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Spinoza.

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Here's some genuine Spinoza from Spinoza's Short Treatise on God, Man and Human Welfare:

quote:

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All things which exist in nature, are either objects or actions. Now good and evil are neither objects nor actions. Therefore good and evil do not exist in nature. For if good and evil are objects or actions they must have definitions. But good and evil (for instance, the goodness of Peter and the wickedness of Judas) have no definition apart from the existence of Peter and Judas; for existence is only in nature and they can not be defined apart from their existence. Therefore as above, it follows that good and evil are neither objects nor actions which exist in nature.

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--Percy

I only provided that short excerpt of Spinoza's writing to show that the supposed Spinoza quote in the Einstein story doesn't much resemble Spinoza's actual writing. I didn't mean to change the subject.It's a shame that the original author of those words appears to be lost. At one point he appears to be addressing a loved one ("My beloved"), so my guess is that it is from a letter. I think the original was not in English because I found what looks like an alternative translation at The Awakening of Humanity | Sinchi Runa.To address your question, I don't know Spinoza's position on angels and demons, but one thing I read suggested he likely rejected the possibility because he didn't think there was any such thing as disembodied minds.--Percy

I haven't read ahead in the thread and so may be replying to some of the same arguments as others, but they were too ostentatiously wrong to ignore. Whether or not the scientific method is the *only* path to understanding the real world, it is certainly a very effective and successful one. If you know of any other methods with similarly successful records please let us know what they are. To use an example to make the point, novel coronavirus vaccines were developed and tested using the scientific method. To provide us an example of a better or at least equivalent methodology for gaining knowledge, please describe how it would work for vaccine development. By what method are belief systems like religions tied to reality? You above questioned how we could know the scientific method was superior, but here you provide your own answer: it's superiority over superstition was just so bloody obvious. I'm curious about this "unfounded superstition" you speak of. One suspects that "unfounded superstition" is other people's religion, while "well founded belief" is your religion.But what really matters is your method. What would you use in place of the scientific method to learn about the real world? If you wanted to develop a new vaccine or a new particle collider or new battery technology or new rocket technology or improve upon the standard model, and you were going to use something better than or at least as good as the scientific method, what would that method be? I can't see anyone here objecting to testing the scientific method - why would they, since testing the method is in the spirit of that very method?I think what people are actually pushing back against is your attempt to position the scientific method as not having the remarkable history of success over all other methods that it quite obviously does, as if the jury is somehow still out. It's not. Religion lost the battle of "figuring things out about the real world" centuries ago. Anyone denying science's incredible success is not living in the real world. If not a fellow believer you're at least a fellow traveler with the climate change deniers, the pandemic deniers, the mask effectiveness deniers, the vaccine deniers, the moon landing deniers, the 911 deniers, the fair election deniers, etc. For those with no effective method of establishing what is true about the real world, anything goes. If by "truth discernment" you mean figuring out how the real world works then your arguments are just mumbo-jumbo nonsense. If you truly believe all knowledge is faith then you'll have no problem marching up to your roof and jumping off, since the supposed knowledge that keeping one's feet firmly planted on the ground is safer than launching oneself into the air and falling 20 or 30 feet to the ground is mere faith having no more reality than any other particular thing you care to believe. Again, what do you mean by truths? If you mean things we figure out about how the real world works then while many questions exceed our grasp, at least at present, that doesn't mean they're forever untestable. It's actually difficult to find questions that can't be studied by science. Even the incredibly ambiguous question, "Does Julie really love me?" can be studied by defining terms and criteria. This echos what I just said, and it raises the familiar question, "Why shouldn't the Flying Spaghetti Monster be given equal time in Bible study classes?" What method did you use to establish the above knowledge? How does this method's record of success measure up against the scientific method. I'm not sure how to interpret the laugh emoji, but the effectiveness of the scientific method is not "an unprovable faith claim." Untestable beliefs is a pretty good definition of faith. If science isn't objectively telling us things that are likely true about reality then it's a long, lengthy and stunning run of good luck. Aren't you also anti-theist, with one exception?--Percy

Don't feel the need to reply to everyone or every message - you'll just end up repeating yourself a lot. AZPaul3 and I raised a lot of the same points. What do you mean by epistemology? Knowledge about God and the disposition of souls? Or knowledge about the real world? If the latter then if you have a meaningful alternative to the scientific method please tell us what it is. But what about your alternative epistemology? Does it work for cooking? Reality. The natural world. The universe. What are these truths that you speak of? Are these objective truths, i.e., the same truth for everyone, or does this truth vary from one person to the next? Do you have any limitations in mind beyond being limited to the real world? What are these other pathways to knowledge? Whatever they are, do they lead to different answers than science, which would lead us to question our confidence in the scientific method?If these other methods are merely hypothesized and as yet unknown and undiscovered then your casting of doubt on science is without justification. You're drawing a false equivalence. There are not multiple gas laws, resistance/current/voltage laws and theories of relativity, but there are many, many religious beliefs. Our confidence in Boyle's Law, Ohm's law and Einsteinian relativity derives from the scientific method: experiment, observation, theorizing, then repeat, replicate and so forth. Your confidence in your religious beliefs stems from...what? On an objective methodologically established level. You're looking at having some level of confidence in our scientific knowledge and mistaking it for certainty. A key quality of scientific knowledge is tentativity. This means our studies can improve our confidence but never achieve certainty.There *is* one thing we're very certain of: the scientific method is the best method found so far for ferreting out what is likely true about the real world. Scripture is revealed knowledge, not a method of gaining knowledge. If all you're saying is that science shouldn't be applied to religious questions then I think most of us would agree with you. You should be telling the creationists not to apply science to the Bible, not us. Yes, we know, but they'd all be different truths, wouldn't they, because religious beliefs have no objective method for establishing their truth. Hence the many religions and sects. Do you think all religious beliefs are true? At least some of them contradict each other, so it's impossible that they're all true. What is your method for establishing which religious beliefs are true. Scientific Progress (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) discusses a number of different views of scientific philosophy and you're narrowly focused on just the one described in section 3.4. The article does address tentativity when it mentions Popper's falsification and testability and so forth. We're still wondering about the method you're using to establish these other true things. You're playing a semantic game with the word "belief." When we say we believe a theory we mean we accept it based upon experiment, observation, replication and peer review. A theory is not a belief in any sense resembling a religious belief. If you think it is then I again suggest the experiment of jumping off a roof and testing whether gravity truly has any objective reality, as compared to what you think is the objective reality of, say, the sanctity of the soul. The price of ignoring one is tangible, the other not so much. I'm not myself interested in discussions of the nature of existence and whether it's real or not. Question objective reality if you like, but I'll bet many of the devoutly religious think the objects of their religious beliefs have objective reality. You don't have an epistemological framework, at least not one you've described for us yet. There are severe consequences for ignoring objective reality. What are the consequences of ignoring this "deeper" whatever it is? No one has given you any basis for saying this. We've instead talked about tentativity and our inability to achieve complete knowledge. No one has said anything like this. Rebuttal requires a bit more than making up stories about what other people believe. Now scripture is evidence? Which scripture? Can I guess which one? What is the method by which the veracity of scripture on topics like God and angels and souls and heaven has been demonstrated? Isn't the true situation that scripture has a wide range of interpretations, not a single objective truth? Sure, who would argue with that. Faith is about the spiritual, science is about objective reality.--Percy

I think we're done. I'll rejoin if you ever describe an actual alternative epistemological process.--Percy

Who are you talking to? Is it the general "you," meaning everyone? Or just some of you? Who? Members of what community? Are you a member of a community that are not "believers of major Christian trends," and therefore doesn't engage in frequent prayer or attend Sunday services?--Percy

Depends. What kind of God we talking about here? Are we talking about a vain, jealous, vengeful God who subjects to eternal torture those who don't believe in him? In that case I'm pretty happy he doesn't exist.But if we're talking about a God who loves his creation so much that he would never subject it to disease, pandemics, drownings, lightning strikes, mass killings, wars, earthquakes, floods, volcanos, hurricanes, asteroid collisions, solar bursts, gamma ray bursts, and so forth, then in that case I am very sorry that he doesn't exist.--Percy

If I only had a dime for every time an evangelist said, "God appeared to me in a vision last night..."--Percy

Every once in a while a cult holds their beliefs so deeply that they commit mass suicide, for example Heaven's Gate and Jonestown. They gave their last full measure of devotion. This tells most people that such demonstrations don't mean anything since it's not possible that all mass suicide cults are right, their beliefs not being mutually consistent.--Percy

I understood Phat to be saying that he'd already demonstrated sufficiently strong belief to convince you he's right, and claiming that further demonstrations of the strength of his belief such as giving up all his worldly possessions are unnecessary to proving he's right.So I responded that if people don't find the strength of belief of suicide cults convincing, why should his small declarations here be seen as convincing?Actually the suicide cults were very convincing about one thing, and that is the power of belief to make people do crazy things, which I think is how a lot of us see Phat.About the other comments, there's nothing wrong with investing as a hobby, but Phat lives in a fantasy world, and I for one don't think he can manage it properly. He certainly can't manage his health properly, something a lot more critical and despite having full health care coverage, so I doubt he can manage his gold obsession. His posts even imitate the form and style of the worst creationists by failing to understand something but criticizing it repeatedly no matter how many times it's explained, like fiat currency and the gold standard.I see Phat as a hopeless cause. No matter what we do he will continue to burden himself with preventable diabetes related health conditions while distracting himself with foolish investments that drain his funds.--Percy

Uttering nonsense and mean-minded inanities seems a form of not telling the truth, so I'm including those as well, which is most of them: You're referring to Message 795 where you made denigrating comments about feminism, called cultural Marxism the dominant culture in the west, and referred to the Loony Left. You grouped together those who support racial equality or feminism, those who live in Austin, Texas, and atheists, then called them all cultural Marxists.If you check the Forum Guidelines you'll see no stipulation about language. The ugliest name calling isn't what's most profane, and in this contest I think you won.More untruths: Just a small selection.--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Fix bad grammar.

Or possibly they wanted one of their own in charge? --Percy

So you're an agist, too.--Percy