If God Ever Stopped Intervening In Nature....

I know it's message-board dogma that God-is-God-ain't is a crucial evidentiary matter that forms the foundation of all analysis of religion, but could it be that this question is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things? What if the important question is What does belief or nonbelief in God mean?Edited by MrHambre, : No reason given.

I'm not saying the question isn't relevant at all. But as a nonbeliever, I don't find the question of The Big G's existence as important as people's reasons for believing or disbelieving. The notion of collective construction of meaning is more relevant than the let's-call-it-literal truth of the belief.

I'm not sure anymore that the God-is-God-ain't matter is one that can be decided on evidence. Forcing people to reframe their religious beliefs as an evidentiary construct, and then criticizing the construct for its indequacy, might make the world of debatery go round but it's mistaking the finger for what it's pointing to.If the matter is about collective construction of value and meaning, however, then we need to ask different questions. Is the notion of religious belief really analogous to Santa-belief, or more like the belief in the value of currency? Message-board atheists sound like they're trying to convince us that hundred-dollar bills are just scraps of paper. And maybe they are scraps of paper, but they symbolize a whole slew of things that transcend their empirical paperness. In the same way, religious belief is tied into political, philosophical, and psychological matters in ways that are much more important than the existence or nonexistence of The Big G.

Um, right. And if it's not an evidentiary matter, then you're disregarding conclusions on the very basis that you already know isn't going to justify the conclusions. That's fine if we're determined to miss the point, but it doesn't give us any better understanding of why people believe. If someone says he's a Christian because his family is Christian, we can't say that's an inadequate basis for religious belief. After all, it's good enough for him. But it's not just that we collectively agree. Currency is a cultural construct that transcends our beliefs and involves legal sanctions for the transfer and treatment of money. Just because something's culturally constructed doesn't mean it's fictitious.