It seems to me that your idea of God has no volition and is not equipped to care about anything we do. Why is the idea important, then? Why is it a worthwhile idea to collect the regularities of the Universe in a bag labelled “God”?
First: I wholly agree that my idea of God has no volition and is not equipped to care about anything we do. This is the view of God I’m defending, not a personal God.
Why is the idea important, then?
Good question—I’ve been anticipating it for some time now. There are three reasons why the idea is important.
(1) Many people (especially scientists) believe in this God. Many/most world religions actually assert a God that is much more more like the God I describe than you might think. So I would like atheists to understand that when they assert that belief in God is irrational or absurd, they are really (usually) just making arguments that there is no personal God, which is annoying to theists that believe in the impersonal God. Perhaps mostly because as a result of the identification God=Personal God, they can’t express their beliefs in a meaningful way. For example, even after having sketched my view of God, it was still implied that I “suppose that the entire universe is the creation of some infinite mind-like thing with an unconditional respect for reason!”
(2) Many logical arguments against God don’t focus on properties of God specific to a personal God (the problem of evil is a noteworthy exception). Since they argue that God of any kind can’t exist, but then my watered-down do-nothing version of God can exist, what went wrong with the reasoning? My favorite example of this is the argument that a supreme power would be too complex to exist. (Are the fundamental physics laws too complex to exist??) So I would really like to learn, after all, how anyone can tell the difference between an logical argument and just a line of reasoning that conforms with your point of view.
(3) As humanists, we need to identify what we have in common and not exaggerate differences. I think a lot of people, theists and atheists alike, have an innate belief that the world must make sense. As some people have pointed out in comments to me, it is possible for them to hold this as a theory rather than a belief. However, I then suspect that our personalities or the way our mind is structured is really quite different. And this difference is not a good reason to think of most of humanity as idiotic. I strongly assert that what theists really can’t let go of (even the ones who believe in a personal God) is the idea of a meaningful/consistent universe. So practically, you’d have a lot more progress pulling them “sideways” towards a belief in an impersonal God than in no God. I’ve made a similar argument here.
Finally, there is an aspect to your question that I cannot fully address. It is: what difference does believing in God make if there’s no reason to worship him and it would have no effect on my behavior? I have no response to this because I don’t think it does make a difference. I have no objection to people being atheists. But I think some people innately do have a belief in God, and for whatever reason, it is connected with their motivation to explore the universe. If I don’t believe in God—if I consider it unimportant whether or not the world actually makes sense—then I lose my interest in it. I might just take psychedelic drugs all the time. From observation of the true atheists here (who seem more or less reasonable) I suspect this is a difference in innate constitution.
I’m interested in learning how true atheists avoid this feeling of nihilism. I was actually once quite comfortable once with nihilism, but ultimately rejected it in favor of belief in an objective external universe. Which is why I am so interested in how other empiricists organize their worldview. When I say that my belief in God is innate, I should qualify that it may only be innate when I am simultaneously being an empiricist.
Good point. I’ve been struggling for a few days with what I can possibly mean by “God exists” and still feel like this is not an empirical fact that can ever be resolved. Because the existence of God is not a scientific question. We agree, I think, that it must be based on faith or else it’s just a mundane empirical fact.
On the one hand, it seems to be a matter of interpretation. Even if we had proof that there was a set of universal laws explaining everything, I wouldn’t require that someone else find this meaningful. In this case, I personally would prefer if they said “God is meaningless” rather than “God doesn’t exist” but I can’t control what definition of God they use.
On the other hand, it may be a problem with the meaning of “existence”. I find that theists can mean God exists in a literal sense, in which case I find their views on God to be naive (and wrong), or they mean God exists in the way I mean, in which case they also seem unable to communicate what this means. I’ve been seriously toying with the idea that this concept of “existence” is an artifact of the way people-like-me think. When I think about something abstract, it seems to exist in a way, and this is the way I mean.
I’ve argued this POV in detail (but without much success) in this thread about the difference between being frequentist or Bayesian. I’ve pretty much given up on this explanation, but my interest in this topic was motivated by considering an analogy between belief in the “existence” of probability and belief in the “existence” of God. For me, while God and probability are quite different, they “exist” in a similar fashion.
Consider the set of laws of the universe, given that they exist. In what sense do they exist? You can measure their effects of course, but you infer their existence.
Perhaps I misunderstood him, but I nevertheless learned from Vladimir_Nesov that believing in the “existence” of physical laws is kind of like believing in some kind of phlogiston. I don’t consider it a demotion of God for him to only exist in the way that physical laws exist. I think this is a linguistic/communication problem only.
But I think some people innately do have a belief in God, and for whatever reason, it is connected with their motivation to explore the universe.
I don’t think people have innate beliefs in God. I think people are creative, and afraid of the unknown, and when you put the two together, you get a lot of imagination. You might get a God who grants you immortality in paradise, a cycle of rebirth that goes on forever until you achieve enlightenment, or just a sense of being connected to everything in a mysterious way. All of these things are interchangeable. A boy is born in India and grows up to be a Hindu. The same boy, transplanted to Saudi Arabia, grows up to be a Muslim. Again, moved to England, he may turn out to be an Anglican, or a Shintoist in Japan, or a New Ager in California, etc. In each case, he may say that the “hole” is filled by his beliefs, that he has an explanation for everything, a universal theory.
The reality is that this kind of belief is no different from any other. It’s no different than preferring cats to dogs, or being afraid of spiders. We aren’t born with a reflexive cats > dogs preference in our brain, nor are we born with a God-shaped hole in our heads. The reason the hole looks God-shaped is because we made God to fit. When Laplace was queried by Napoleon about the lack of the “Creator” in his work on the solar system, he replied, “I have had no need of that hypothesis.” Is this because Laplace did not have the same motivation to explore the universe as his religious colleagues? No, it is because Laplace had an even stronger desire to explore the universe, and realized that involving God in his exploration was like finding the X on the map and laying bricks over it.
If I don’t believe in God—if I consider it unimportant whether or not the world actually makes sense—then I lose my interest in it.
It’s extremely important to me that the world makes sense, and not believing in God is part of why I think it does. Even a God that lacks volition or interest, a totally impersonal God, injects enough uncertainty into the universe to make it absurd.
I’m interested in learning how true atheists avoid this feeling of nihilism.
We don’t. It’s called “existential depression”, which usually first presents when you realize that Death = Not Being, although it’s probably worse if, like me, you grew up believing you’d go to heaven when you died. I don’t see how believing in an impersonal, uninterested God of physics could possibly help mitigate the feeling, though. I prefer to just be pragmatic about it; even if I could “live forever”, I probably wouldn’t escape the heat death of the universe. My instinct is to stay alive and try to enjoy myself, though, so that’s what I do. And I take psychedelic drugs.
Many/most world religions actually assert a God that is much more more like the God I describe than you might think.
But not like yours in the key aspects I noted—those aspects imply a lack of any need for religious practices.
Arguments against God usually don’t focus on properties of God specific to a personal God (the problem of evil is a noteworthy exception).
My impression is that arguments that advocates of atheism are making to the public (as opposed to academia) are largely against the idea of a personal God. These atheists would just shug their shoulders at your stance.
I strongly assert that what theists really can’t let go of (even the ones who believe in a personal God) is the idea of a meaningful/consistent universe.
I assert that what theists really can’t let go of is a social setting and their place within it.
Many/most world religions actually assert a God that is much more more like the God I describe than you might think.
But not like yours in the key aspects I noted—those aspects imply a lack of any need for religious practices.
I’m been writing too quickly. I meant that many/most world religions assert this God theologically—it is not espoused in popular culture. The reasons for this is that religions like to be accessible, whereas this God is rather abstract for most people. (I know a Catholic priest who winces every time someone says Christ died for their sins.) Also organized religion does want to wield control. So the churches themselves may be huge dogmatic monsters in direct opposition to the theological basis of their faith. (For example, Jesus is described as having been against organized religion and the building of any churches, yet organized Christian religions completely ignore this.)
These atheists would just shrug their shoulders at your stance.
Please do. It’s not the response I’ve been receiving.
I assert that what theists really can’t let go of is a social setting and their place within it.
We should look into why theists are so resistant to conversion. We disagree, but I think we may make some headway when we compare the evidence we have for our priors.
It seems to me that your idea of God has no volition and is not equipped to care about anything we do. Why is the idea important, then? Why is it a worthwhile idea to collect the regularities of the Universe in a bag labelled “God”?
First: I wholly agree that my idea of God has no volition and is not equipped to care about anything we do. This is the view of God I’m defending, not a personal God.
Good question—I’ve been anticipating it for some time now. There are three reasons why the idea is important.
(1) Many people (especially scientists) believe in this God. Many/most world religions actually assert a God that is much more more like the God I describe than you might think. So I would like atheists to understand that when they assert that belief in God is irrational or absurd, they are really (usually) just making arguments that there is no personal God, which is annoying to theists that believe in the impersonal God. Perhaps mostly because as a result of the identification God=Personal God, they can’t express their beliefs in a meaningful way. For example, even after having sketched my view of God, it was still implied that I “suppose that the entire universe is the creation of some infinite mind-like thing with an unconditional respect for reason!”
(2) Many logical arguments against God don’t focus on properties of God specific to a personal God (the problem of evil is a noteworthy exception). Since they argue that God of any kind can’t exist, but then my watered-down do-nothing version of God can exist, what went wrong with the reasoning? My favorite example of this is the argument that a supreme power would be too complex to exist. (Are the fundamental physics laws too complex to exist??) So I would really like to learn, after all, how anyone can tell the difference between an logical argument and just a line of reasoning that conforms with your point of view.
(3) As humanists, we need to identify what we have in common and not exaggerate differences. I think a lot of people, theists and atheists alike, have an innate belief that the world must make sense. As some people have pointed out in comments to me, it is possible for them to hold this as a theory rather than a belief. However, I then suspect that our personalities or the way our mind is structured is really quite different. And this difference is not a good reason to think of most of humanity as idiotic. I strongly assert that what theists really can’t let go of (even the ones who believe in a personal God) is the idea of a meaningful/consistent universe. So practically, you’d have a lot more progress pulling them “sideways” towards a belief in an impersonal God than in no God. I’ve made a similar argument here.
Finally, there is an aspect to your question that I cannot fully address. It is: what difference does believing in God make if there’s no reason to worship him and it would have no effect on my behavior? I have no response to this because I don’t think it does make a difference. I have no objection to people being atheists. But I think some people innately do have a belief in God, and for whatever reason, it is connected with their motivation to explore the universe. If I don’t believe in God—if I consider it unimportant whether or not the world actually makes sense—then I lose my interest in it. I might just take psychedelic drugs all the time. From observation of the true atheists here (who seem more or less reasonable) I suspect this is a difference in innate constitution.
I’m interested in learning how true atheists avoid this feeling of nihilism. I was actually once quite comfortable once with nihilism, but ultimately rejected it in favor of belief in an objective external universe. Which is why I am so interested in how other empiricists organize their worldview. When I say that my belief in God is innate, I should qualify that it may only be innate when I am simultaneously being an empiricist.
This seems to suggest that you either are not truly convinced that (your) God exists, or that it does not bother you when people are wrong.
Good point. I’ve been struggling for a few days with what I can possibly mean by “God exists” and still feel like this is not an empirical fact that can ever be resolved. Because the existence of God is not a scientific question. We agree, I think, that it must be based on faith or else it’s just a mundane empirical fact.
On the one hand, it seems to be a matter of interpretation. Even if we had proof that there was a set of universal laws explaining everything, I wouldn’t require that someone else find this meaningful. In this case, I personally would prefer if they said “God is meaningless” rather than “God doesn’t exist” but I can’t control what definition of God they use.
On the other hand, it may be a problem with the meaning of “existence”. I find that theists can mean God exists in a literal sense, in which case I find their views on God to be naive (and wrong), or they mean God exists in the way I mean, in which case they also seem unable to communicate what this means. I’ve been seriously toying with the idea that this concept of “existence” is an artifact of the way people-like-me think. When I think about something abstract, it seems to exist in a way, and this is the way I mean.
I’ve argued this POV in detail (but without much success) in this thread about the difference between being frequentist or Bayesian. I’ve pretty much given up on this explanation, but my interest in this topic was motivated by considering an analogy between belief in the “existence” of probability and belief in the “existence” of God. For me, while God and probability are quite different, they “exist” in a similar fashion.
Consider the set of laws of the universe, given that they exist. In what sense do they exist? You can measure their effects of course, but you infer their existence.
Perhaps I misunderstood him, but I nevertheless learned from Vladimir_Nesov that believing in the “existence” of physical laws is kind of like believing in some kind of phlogiston. I don’t consider it a demotion of God for him to only exist in the way that physical laws exist. I think this is a linguistic/communication problem only.
It seems like your problem might be isomorphic to the question of whether numbers exist.
Agreed.
I don’t think people have innate beliefs in God. I think people are creative, and afraid of the unknown, and when you put the two together, you get a lot of imagination. You might get a God who grants you immortality in paradise, a cycle of rebirth that goes on forever until you achieve enlightenment, or just a sense of being connected to everything in a mysterious way. All of these things are interchangeable. A boy is born in India and grows up to be a Hindu. The same boy, transplanted to Saudi Arabia, grows up to be a Muslim. Again, moved to England, he may turn out to be an Anglican, or a Shintoist in Japan, or a New Ager in California, etc. In each case, he may say that the “hole” is filled by his beliefs, that he has an explanation for everything, a universal theory.
The reality is that this kind of belief is no different from any other. It’s no different than preferring cats to dogs, or being afraid of spiders. We aren’t born with a reflexive cats > dogs preference in our brain, nor are we born with a God-shaped hole in our heads. The reason the hole looks God-shaped is because we made God to fit. When Laplace was queried by Napoleon about the lack of the “Creator” in his work on the solar system, he replied, “I have had no need of that hypothesis.” Is this because Laplace did not have the same motivation to explore the universe as his religious colleagues? No, it is because Laplace had an even stronger desire to explore the universe, and realized that involving God in his exploration was like finding the X on the map and laying bricks over it.
It’s extremely important to me that the world makes sense, and not believing in God is part of why I think it does. Even a God that lacks volition or interest, a totally impersonal God, injects enough uncertainty into the universe to make it absurd.
We don’t. It’s called “existential depression”, which usually first presents when you realize that Death = Not Being, although it’s probably worse if, like me, you grew up believing you’d go to heaven when you died. I don’t see how believing in an impersonal, uninterested God of physics could possibly help mitigate the feeling, though. I prefer to just be pragmatic about it; even if I could “live forever”, I probably wouldn’t escape the heat death of the universe. My instinct is to stay alive and try to enjoy myself, though, so that’s what I do. And I take psychedelic drugs.
But not like yours in the key aspects I noted—those aspects imply a lack of any need for religious practices.
My impression is that arguments that advocates of atheism are making to the public (as opposed to academia) are largely against the idea of a personal God. These atheists would just shug their shoulders at your stance.
I assert that what theists really can’t let go of is a social setting and their place within it.
I’m been writing too quickly. I meant that many/most world religions assert this God theologically—it is not espoused in popular culture. The reasons for this is that religions like to be accessible, whereas this God is rather abstract for most people. (I know a Catholic priest who winces every time someone says Christ died for their sins.) Also organized religion does want to wield control. So the churches themselves may be huge dogmatic monsters in direct opposition to the theological basis of their faith. (For example, Jesus is described as having been against organized religion and the building of any churches, yet organized Christian religions completely ignore this.)
Please do. It’s not the response I’ve been receiving.
We should look into why theists are so resistant to conversion. We disagree, but I think we may make some headway when we compare the evidence we have for our priors.