[Gary Wassner]

You see, the idea of God is so outrageous to me, particularly in the Judeo/christian form, that my thinking is this: If something as ridiculous as some being in the sky, omnipotent etc etc exists, then just about anything could exist, no matter how absurd. God is the epitome of absurd IMHO. It's a crazy idea in reality! But it's no crazier than dragons and mermaids and flying people and mind-reading and devil possession and on and on and on. In fact, it is crazier than those things. So that's the gist of my thought process.....

[ironchef texmex]

As you brought up a while ago: the feeling of goodness in Spirituality and NDE's compared to the feeling of dread in Sleep Paralysis or Psychotic Hallucinations are pretty much the same thing.

I'm not talking about altered states of consciousness here.

Umm... you've never met the insane-o "soccer moms" of the suburbs then?!??

Or guilt complexes....

This is actually a fairly well documented phenomenon in clinical psychology. A stat I learned back in 'Psych 2000: Stats for Psych' (crap, that was a decade ago...:eek:) claimed that perhaps as many as 2/3rds of people diagnosed with depression may actually be bipolar (manic-depressive) because there is a bias against viewing outgoing, extroverted, and generally social behaviours as negative.

Or oscillating outlooks.

No, I'm just talking about auditory hallucinations -- the sensation of a voice being piped in from the external environment. And I don't know a whole lot about it. I added a couple of books on abnormal psych to my '08 reading list to try and bone up. Right now this is just sort of a random musing.

[ironchef texmex]

(Tex, you can yell at me later, but you'd probably feel the same way about a child who is a devout atheist! You'd think he's misguided and unfortunate)


True. Raincheck accepted on the yelling... :D

very interesting exchange, by the way.


Gary, I was halfway through a story about a friend from my church who told me about a 'message' he received from God. Except, it was told to me in confidence, so felt I shouldn't post it.

Anyway, I do want to say that there is a difference between hearing the voice of God in a "religious" context, as opposed to a psychotic break. I've met a couple of people in my life who I would say may have genuinely received a special message from God. But I also recognize for every time it may actually originate with God, there are a great many other people who are just plain nuts.

For a psychologist to term someone insane, they need some combination of destructive impulses and ineffectual thinking to be present. In other words, if it's not causing a person to either harm themselves or others, or in some way make them ineffectual (ie: they can't move ahead at work, can't make friends, etc.) then no matter how unusual the 'thing' in question may be, it's not psychosis. An ideosyncracy maybe.

So although I might feel sorry for an atheist child of mine, I wouldn't take them to a psychiatrist.

[Gary Wassner]

Happy Easter to all of you who celebrate it. :)

I'll reply tomorrow, Tex. Probably not the best day for you to post here.....

[CMBillett]

So much I'd like to add to this thread here, and I will, once I have a better grasp on it. (I've just read the last page, and don't want to dive into such a debate without some thought...)

What I will do, though, is chuck my support behind Gary's thoughts on how rational certain feelings/beliefs are or are not. For a bit of context, I was raised in a very fundamentalist Christian regime (New Frontiers, which you can read about here: http://www.newfrontiers.xtn.org) and have a good few friends there still. They do not think rationally. They do not make decisions based on real experience, or logic, but rather justify their actions based on pseudo-logic or their beliefs. From the outside (and keep in mind that I have also been 'inside' for a good eighteen years of my life) it does not make any sense, and is worrying. Mostly, it hurts me, because of how much I care about some of these people.

I have more thoughts, but they'll have to wait I'm afraid.

[Gary Wassner]

Interesting. You should be able to add a new dimension to the discussion! I look forward to hearing more about your experiences.

I went to the site. One comment bounced off the 'about us' page:

We believe that God speaks to us, and many of the things God has spoken over the years have shaped our development as a movement.

[Fung Koo]

Happy Easter to y'all. Bunnies for everyone!

Incoming ramble...

You see, the idea of God is so outrageous to me, particularly in the Judeo/christian form, that my thinking is this: If something as ridiculous as some being in the sky, omnipotent etc etc exists, then just about anything could exist, no matter how absurd. God is the epitome of absurd IMHO. It's a crazy idea in reality! But it's no crazier than dragons and mermaids and flying people and mind-reading and devil possession and on and on and on. In fact, it is crazier than those things. So that's the gist of my thought process.....

In a way, God is a lot less crazy than mermaids and dragons and flying fish. I assume you've been exposed to some of the limited information available on pre-written-history cultures and their conceptions of God. Or, perhaps, our interpretations of their conception...

Assuming the anthropologist general assertion that virtually all modern religions can be traced back to earlier Sun-Worship protoreligions is more-or-less true, then as society advances and becomes more complex, would we not also expect the conception of God to evolve and become more complex?

One of the things that Christianity quite obviously wrestles with is over-specification. If you take the history of the Roman Catholic Church, it goes along doing its thing for many years, all the while building more and more elaborate arguments about the nature of God, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Mary, Magdalene, etc... If you go back to the source text, an awful lot of the things that we associate with Christian Tradition aren't there. They simply aren't. They're mostly found through nearly 1500 years of para-religious texts and cultural practices.

After a while, the specifications that have been put onto the concept of God start to grate on people. Society is evolving, new ideas are being explored, and suddenly the specificity of God becomes the greatest burden to believing in God. The result? Fracture.

Virtually every religion that I've ever had cause to examine (which, admittedly, isn't nearly as many as I'd like) seems to start with a somewhat generalist view of deity. Then years and years of culture and social institutions based on the generalist view create more and more specific versions of the original generalist idea.

So I will give you that the modern Judeo/Christian/Islamic deity concept is pretty ridiculous. It's been well over-specified. But the thing is, people are starting to realize this and there is a huge movement to strip away everything and start over which is producing mass appeal. Why? Because everyone can relate to a general concept.

But all this is just culture, even for the atheist. All it really comes down to is a combination of socialization and personal conviction in the generally vague notion of higher power, the source of life, and meaning. The specifics are what we relate to, and are essentially no different than "I like Rock and Roll" and "I like Country and Western" -- They're both Music, and we can agree that we both like Music, but we've turned them into groups where I might think that my version of music is better than your version of music.

From my perspective as an atheist, the kind of argument your school of atheism makes against God is a rejection of humanity more than it's a rejection of God. And that, to me, is counter to everything that atheism is really about. Atheism, to me, is taking ownership of all the varied beliefs of humanity. Taken as a whole, humanity believes a lot of strange things. Some of them are contradictory, some of them are not.

If the statistic is true that 95%+ of the world's population professes belief in some form of God, then all the specifics that separate each of the believers into their groups are purely based on socialization. It's culture, plain and simple. We all agree we like God/Music, but we each think ours is the better type. But I know that I like Rock and Roll because I was raised in a Rock and Roll family. Beyond that, I know that I like music because I was exposed to music, and children who aren't exposed to music tend not to learn the concept of structured sounds so they don't even learn about music. So if I never learned about God, would I even be likely believe in God? I'm saying probably not.

So in order to answer the question of whether or not there's a God, I think we have to take humanity as a whole, take ownership of its beliefs and try to understand them, and then examine whatever threads of commonality remain. And there's really only one -- personal conviction. If we question the source of the personal conviction, we get one of two answers: Social Process, or God. I'm on the one side, Tex is evidently on the other.

So then I come back to the question of fear -- what does the atheist have to fear? For one, I can't imagine declaring oneself atheist without describing God as cultural. And that, to me anyway, means rejecting all the other silly ideas that come along with each culture's version of God.

So if God exists, we have one of two situations. Either he isn't the same God for everyone, and each group's idea of God is accurate at least as far as it pertains to them. This could even mean that God will only "appear" to you as you believe him to be. For the atheist then, God doesn't appear to you. The other option is that God is the same for everyone, and the differences are purely cultural, and we made them all up. If so, then from a meta-religious view we have to ask what interaction, if any, is visible on our level from God. To me the answer is none.

For every person claiming God did something, there's someone claiming otherwise. Mathematically, they cancel out. Demon possession or psychological disorder? Messiah or Prophet? If that's indicative of God's nature, then God is self-contradictory. Self-nullifying, even. Take the law of averages, the homeostatic principle, and apply it to faith -- you're left with a Zero.

So to try to finish up -- already rambling for far too long -- are you afraid of God? Or are you afraid of people? Atheistic reasoning should indicate to the atheist that everything about God is made up. Your assertion that "if God exists then anything is possible" is patently untrue -- if God exists, he already exists. There would be no change to the external world -- it's only your internal world that will change should you decide that God does actually exist. So why the fear?

You say that the idea of God is absurd. Presumably it follows then that those who believe in God, by believing in the absurd, are themselves absurd. You say it's a crazy idea, so the believers are by extension crazy. So is the real difficulty the actual idea of God, globally, or is it the fear that everyone else on the planet is crazy? (95%+ at least) Is it simply loneliness? Do you fear that you're the only sane one? Or that to accept God is to accept insanity?

So why your fear? I really just don't get it. But perhaps it has something to do with how you personally noticed you were an atheist. Care to share?

[Gary Wassner]

So why your fear? I really just don't get it. But perhaps it has something to do with how you personally noticed you were an atheist.

For me it was a confirmation more than a revelation. Organized religion never appealed to me. Though I took comfort in my own version of 'Santa in the Sky' when I was scared at night, I always felt like I was lying to myself, kidding myself, being foolish. He wasn't up there. Not for me. I was alone. My confirmation came when I started to study philosophy, particularly ethics. All these different systems, all looking to God to ground them. Why? Well, because otherwise, as we've been talking about on other threads, good and evil are just words whose meanings are strictly contextual. Even a utilitarian one. So it was one confirmation for both. No God, no ultimate basis for right and wrong. It all becomes a matter of taste.

That's not frightening to you? Imagine. Imagine the consequences. Didn't we see a time in history, not that long ago, where these priciples were put into practice?

[CMBillett]

I just don't know where to start with how being forced into organised religion like that screwed me up, so maybe I'll just take things as and when they come. Feel free to prod me with any questions though, anyone, and I'll try and answer them as honestly as I can. I'm still working some things out, of course, and it is with the help and advice of a great many smart friends (Gary being one of them, in fact) that I am getting there.

Just writing that last sentence has brought a thought to mind actually... when I was surrounded by evangelical and, basically, fundamentalist Christians, it was very easy to believe. These people didn't question their beliefs or seek a further truth, because they had the ultimate get out clause in their belief that he is 'Almighty' - he can do whatever he wants! He's always right! Logic need not apply! When I met people who did have different opinions to me (working in film) things soon changed... rather than being bullied in the way that I was all throughout school for being different, which just made me think all I had to turn to was the brainwashing that I'd received, I was being shown that there are other ways and bigger questions. I learned, in fact, that it is harder and yet more fulfilling to find the real answers. Traveling around the world a couple of years after all that, I learned even more about how people are different, and how that is great. In my job since I returned to England (where I work with, in my opinion, some of the greatest minds and characters I've ever come across) I have only been further encouraged to think for myself, rather than have people think for me, and it's been great. I love having people around me who come to their own conclusions about things rather than inheriting them from some anachronistic book, or teacher.

Anyhow, that wasn't put so well, maybe. I don't mean it to sound offensive, I promise. n' sorry, but I can't figure out how to do proper quotes on this board, but here goes regardless...

"In a way, God is a lot less crazy than mermaids and dragons and flying fish."

Which way?

"If you go back to the source text, an awful lot of the things that we associate with Christian Tradition aren't there. They simply aren't. They're mostly found through nearly 1500 years of para-religious texts and cultural practices."

Amen to that!

"You say that the idea of God is absurd. Presumably it follows then that those who believe in God, by believing in the absurd, are themselves absurd. You say it's a crazy idea, so the believers are by extension crazy."

Um... careful what you accuse people of presuming! I don't mean to speak for anyone else, but you can believe the idea of God is absurd without thinking believers are. I have horrible, nasty opinions about Christianity, and its reasons for existence, and many people's ultimate goals as part of it... but I still love many Christians as much or more than many other people on this planet. I think they're wrong, but I don't have the same opinions about them as I do about their religion!

n' as for your ninety-five percent statistic... ha! Maybe in the mid-west...

[Gary Wassner]

are you afraid of God? Or are you afraid of people? I'm afraid of people who believe in God! And I'm afraid of those who don't. How's that for straddling the line?

I don't want to ever think that some evil demon might be lurking under my bed. I spent years of my childhood fearing things like that, fearing things paranormal and supernatural. I'm liberated finally. When I realized that it was all not real, I felt so much more at peace with the world, peace with my fate, peace with my life. It's what I make of it. It's what I do in it.

You can't believe in God and not open the door to all the rest. The angels and demons come flying through those open doors.