A question for Athiests/Evolutionists. (re: How can one not belive in something greater than himself? et all)

How can I not believe in something greater than my self?I will assume by this you actually mean how can I not believe in god?Simple I find the concepts of god/s/whatever as many religions see them as totally preposterous. It would be like asking and sane rational person to believe in the actual existence of Godzilla or the Staypuff Marshmallow Man as portrayed in GhostbustersNow to take the question at face value I do believe in something grater than my self and that thing is the universe. It is vast and totally wondrous and there is so much about it that I don’t and probably won’t understand. However this awe does not have me invoking GOD as an explanation of it despite the un-fathomable mysteries yet to be discovered.If you wanted me to define what I believe god could be please consider this apocryphal tale:
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Does evil exist?

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The university professor challenged his students with this question. Did God create everything that exists? A student bravely replied, "Yes, he did!"

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"God created everything? The professor asked.

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"Yes sir", the student replied.

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The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are then God is evil". The student became quiet before such an answer. The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

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Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question professor?"

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"Of course", replied the professor.

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The student stood up and asked, "Professor, does cold exist?"

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"What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?" The students snickered at the young man's question.

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The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat."

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The student continued, "Professor, does darkness exist?"

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The professor responded, "Of course it does."

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The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."

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Finally the young man asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?"

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Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil."

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To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

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The professor sat down.

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The young man's name Albert Einstein.
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There is no reason to believe this story is true in anthing it says but it makes for a good read, save I think it has a few thing ass about face.In the above story God is equates to heat and Evil to cold. It is this I believe is the wrong way round.Heat relates to the level of energy a body has. At 0k (absolute zero) a body has zero energy and no molecular movements it is still calm, at rest, peaceful if you like. Where as something that is hot has lots of energy lots of molecular motion and is far more chaotic than some thing that is ‘cold’. Also cold is depicted as blue frequently were as heat is depicted as reds.Now if you consider the traditional homes of good and evil (heaven and hell) then you will see that heaven is depicted as calm peaceful and generally bluish white, where as hell and thus evil is depicted as very hot and fiery red.You can see that clearly if you were to assign good and evil to hot and cold that Evil is clearly hot and Good clearly cold. So where does that leave god?Well clearly if Good and thus God is cold then God does not exist, and the concept of God can be defined simply as the absence of EvilBut as I don’t believe in god all this is Moot but a good example of the spurious justifications for god that by their very nature forces you to question the validity of the whole shooting match.Why can’t I believe in something bigger than me [ie God] because it’s a load of ridiculous, piffle and bunkum. That’s why

Please note that I said the story is apocryphal, and is posted as such on several sites. These sites point out that the story has been seen many times with different people doing the tormenting. So it’s more likely to be something made up with Einstein inserted to give it credibility.I like the story because it is fun and made me smile, but highlights a problem with ‘proofs’ like this, that the placing of good and evil with its framework it totally arbitrary and thus meaningless. The writer places god as heat and evil as cold because he wants to state evil does not exist and that any perceived evil is the absence of god. There is no reasoning behind this placement other than the writer is already convinced in the existence of god and so would not write the story in such a way that would state a lack of existence for god, even when a more logical, though no less arbitrary, position is to place good as cold and evil as hot as I described.A real world example of this kind of highly questionable ‘proof’ In the JW booklet the bible: god’s words or man’s? They make the claim (among many equally flawed claims) that the fact that so many people have martyred themselves in the name of their faith to be ‘proof’ that the bible is god’s word not man’s. ?!!?!! This was actually in print! She had gone home to get this book specifically for me. I read it, I could not believe it! They were honestly trying to use the murder or self-sacrifice of many thousands to prove authorship of a book? You simply can not say that. There is not a single point that you can use to justify that. All martyrdom proves is that there are people out there who believe strongly enough in the bible to lay down their life. What it does not prove is that the bible is categorically the word of god and not a man made fabrication. Where as the ‘Einstein’ anecdote is amusing and clever but totally arbitrary, the JW’s books are flat out wrong, but un-fortunately a lot of argument for religion tends to be just as flawed.And no, I don’t find belief ridiculous (except when it leads people into stupidity like the above example). Belief if a wondrous thing that can lead people to great heights and propel them to dark places too. Belief if a facet of human nature that is simply astounding. But it doesn’t have to be a belief in god/gods/whatever to qualify as belief. It’s the structures and preposterous claims and concepts around which belief is frequently built I have problems with. People ask why can’t you believe in something greater than you? (Typically meaning God) Just look around you, at the universe and the majesty of it all! How can you not believe in god in the face of all this?Firstly I have to agree that the Universe is a truly astounding place but why invoke the hand of god in it? Sure we don’t know everything about it yet but we are on the road to discover all we can. There was a time when thunder and lightening was believed to be the anger of the gods, but now we understand it to be a natural phenomenon resulting from a whole host of factors from barometric pressure to sea temperatures and so on. The fact that most religious thought places man at the very centre of creation, fugitively and literally, is another big clue as to the manufactured nature of the whole thing [religion that is] What gives us the right to assume that this species is the be all and end all of creation? But religion has gone further than that and even gone as far to suggest that a single tribe/family were the darlings of god and the rest didn’t matter. This concept centring of god’s focus on one family of one species of one planet of the countless billions of planets out there and claiming we are the panicle of it all shows a supreme arrogance that is very, very human but not much divinity.I used the concept of believing in Godzilla or the ‘Staypuff Marshmallow Man’ to try and indicate that I believe that the whole notion of god or gods to be just as man made and thus equally as hard to believe in. I know Godzilla to be a story created by man, just as I believe god to also be a construction of man to explain the unknown and to have some kind of overseer to plead to in times of strife. God does exists as a mental concept but, that doesn’t imply that god exists outside of that concept as anything more then a fanciful idea created by man to explain stuff he couldn’t fathom or to seek meaning in natural disasters or death. I can emotionally sympathise with characters in a work of fiction and even sometimes gain new perspectives about the world around me, from their stories I but I wouldn’t believe in the existence of those characters outside their narrative.

thats exactly where I got the text to cut and paste.... though I was origionally sent the text in a mail some time ago but unfortunatly lost that mail..

Quote: Phatboy
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Man is not the source of his own awe inspired wisdom
-------------------------------Yes he is. We think there fore we wonder. unlike all other creatures in this world, who just learn to avoid things of potential danger, humans have the capacity not only to learn to avoid the dangerous things but also to think about ‘Why’ they are a danger. More than that, Humans can think about ‘thinking about’ why those things are a danger. This unique inquisitiveness is what drives humans awe inspired wisdom.The fact that there is something to be awed by, and something as awesome as the universe, in all its glory is another matter altogether. And as you say my version gives reverence to an impersonal universe without the need for a creator, but does this make an impersonal universe sans creator any less awesome or impressive? No it doesn’t. In fact, if no creator had a hand in its being and all this is the result of some natural process, then surely it has to be seen as even more inspirational, and really, really awesome?As to how that universe came about in the first place. Most people will agree that there was indeed a beginning to the universe. Whether that was 6k years ago or 14billion, by a creator or some as yet un-discovered process, is still wide open for debate. Personally I can’t see any sense in invoking a creator that existed before the existence of the universe in infinite time, when a more honest answer is we don’t know! Yet.Another key point to understanding that religion and god is a man made system, and thus why I cant honestly subscribe to any version, is to realise that what religion you follow, for the vast majority of people, is not a mater of 'fundamental truth's or personal choice resulting from self-evident realities, but simply inheriting the belief from their family. Not there aren’t a few who step away from their inherited faith and either move to a different belief system or even turn from religious belief systems altogether but on the whole people inherit their god from their parents or immediate family.If Christian why are you a Christian? If Muslim, Jewsish, whatever, why are you so? Was it a conscious choice on your part based on the evidence around you, or was it because this was the faith of your parents, and thus they raised you their faith? Would your current god and religion still have been your god and religion if you had been born to parents of a different religion rather than the ones to which you actually were?My parents were CoE and thus I was taught and raised in CoE environment and system, and till I came to realise the stupidity of it all my religion was most definitely CoE. Had my Mom and Dad been Jewish I’m sure I would have been raised a Jew. Had they been Buddhists or Muslims, then that would have been the faith I’d have been raised in. You can claim that yes but all the other religions are not the correct religion but where does that leave you in the realisation that what religion you are is by and large a simple accident of birth? And if you have actually switched religions (and I’m not talking about moving between different denominations with in a particular religion like Christianity.) then this doesn’t invalidate the fact that what god you subscribe to is for most people a simple accident of birth as changing religions is definitely in the minority.And if you have changed religions, that also begs the question if you can refute the ‘fundamental truths’ of the ‘one true’ religion you were raised in as being wrong, you do have to question any other religion that claims to have the one true versionJust another reason why "I cant believe in something greater than my self" [aka 'god'].----
edits for clarityThis message has been edited by ohnhai, 12-07-2004 11:23 AM