Stop Using This Argument For God

By The Non-Alchemist

Comments:

The teleological proof of God goes back to St. Thomas Aquinas in the 12th Century. Proofs for and against occur in language in either case.

Not only did we invent our vision of God (who exists or not regardless of our opinion), we also invented evil and cruelty and sin.

Arguments for and against the existence of God between apologists and atheists are inside baseball. It is more productive to argue about the Memes of God in theodicy - in other words, the history of how a god is understood through time.

For most who believe, it is because of personal experience of spirituality, not due to proof. For others, it is about group dynamics (as is atheism). Instead, assume God and then, like earlier philosophers, work out what a god should or must be. Focus on whether that god needs worship to exist or is satisfied in itself (theirself). If it is (and it must be), then they must be perfectly humble, which is also perfectly loving. This rules out being perfectly just - because justification implies making reasons and excuses. Any true god does not need to make excuses to love.

This argument is useful, because it can hold theists to account for what and how they believe in their idea of God, rather than believing at all. The end result is a humanistic ethics, whether it be secular or theists - the product would be the same.

Belief in God is chosen, not reasoned, speaking in existential terms. Many believers have existential "bad faith" meaning their faith is what they are told. Neuroscience has found a "faith center" which has as much to do with our sensitivity to others as a God. This cuts both ways - either it proves that belief evolved as a response to social cues or it could be an actual way to link to the divine. Either way, it is evolutionary. Neuroscience shows that those who are atheists don't have that particular nerve bundle.

Neuroscience showed that any soul consciousness occurs after the brain has acted - so DesCartes was wrong about the ghost in the machine. Indeed, the soul we can find is entirely materialistic - an amalgam of electrical and chemical processes that start with gastrulation and end in death. The organization that fends off entropy.

What happens after death cannot be known. Near death experiencers may be having neurological breakdown or may be seeing an afterlife. None have seen the note on top of a file cabinet in the operating room with a message to show they have been out of the body. The counter point is that, when someone has an NDE, their focus is directed elsewhere. At least one NDE (and for this purpose, it only takes one) has returned knowing someone else has died in a way that they could not have without having such an experience.

Either way it is a choice to believe or not, it is driven by social cues (and seculars can be as tribal as theists) and it matters not one bit as to the actual existence of the supernatural. What does matter is how we can lead theists to humanism by focusing on the necessary fact of divine humility. A god who depends on creatures in any way cannot be God. Worship is not needed for God's sake. Legend is that Lucifer thought their worship was essential and all that was needed for salvation (his worship was his song). He could not accept a human savior, thus becoming Satan. The legend of St. Michael was that he made the taunt - and who is like to God? (You, really?). If there are angels, their songs, like are worship, are art on God's theoretical refrigerator when compared to God's experience of theirself.

YHWH, or He Who Is, can be equated with Being itself - or if you prefer - the Universe. The Son is called the Word - but it can also be considered the Mathematics used to model the world, aka physics. Spirit, again, is love - which is entirely complex and complicated and exists for every person as they are. All very complex and all describable without that God being conscious. These concepts can exist in natural reality or ultimate reality and still be the same.