The God Helmet

[nonlnear]

Actually that's incorrect. A possible atheist is one who has never considered the issue. Do you believe in flying spaghetti monsters? Probably not, and you've probably never considered the issue. In practice, atheists will generally, as you say, "acknowledge theism then deny it." But that doesn't mean very much. It's only "acknowledged then denied" because it's such a commonly held belief. Other than that, there is nothing special about "atheism" that requires a particular label or to describe it as some sort of belief system unto itself. Some atheists may express it that way, and for those atheists it's a belief system. But the idea of "atheism" isn't a belief system. It isn't a "thing" at all, actually.

- wolf

This is very true.

But if we're listing different paths to atheism, allow me to throw another one in. Atheism can also be a result of acknowledging theism and ignoring it without denying it. Belief is not binary after all (despite the protests of some on either side of the debate). If it were we would not hear the faithful asking for more faith. That's one of the problems with using logic as a model for understanding human ideas. The logician has the luxury of categorizing postulates as true and untrue (and more recently, undecidable). The human mind employs many shades of gray. It is rather ironic how in many situations the expectation of binary logic is held up as a benchmark of sanity when in fact it is probably a much more accurate model of insanity!

 

[Nemesis 1]

It takes no faith whatsoever. Science has already demonstrated that happens all the time, all around you. It's called the zero-point field. Google it.

Proof that it exist . You can't so you have faith in what your being told . Its like saying you can look back at the big bang . But now science says you can't because things way out are moving at better than light speed something science said couldn't be. But now they know it is . Zero -point can't be proven so you take it as faith that there be a zero point . Much like this topic . there is zero point to it.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

An Atheist is someone with a lack of belief in a God or Gods. In order to be an Atheist you have to acknowledge Theism then deny it. It's all personal beliefs, hence beliefs. Wtf are you talking about Atheists don't believe there isn't a God or Gods?

What world do you live in where the lack of a belief is a belief? If a person lacks a car, is that a car? If you lack skills, is that skill? If you don't have a car, then you lack a car. If you don't believe in God, then you lack belief in God. Are you really this stupid, or do I need to start drawing pictures?

You cannot prove either way so it's a belief.

A more ridiculous non-sequitur I don't think I've ever seen written.

Also I stated my personal beliefs, I don't believe or disbelieve in a God, but I will live my life like there isn't because I simply don't care. That doesn't make me an Atheist because I can argue for or against the case. Nor am I an Agnostic because that would require me to believe in something, but like I said that isn't the case.

It's pretty obvious that you don't know the proper usage of the terms you employ.

 

[Moonbeam]

Ah so there it is. Even after my most careful (if simplistic) attempts to delineate what is meant by transcendence, you are still incapable of dealing fairly with a postulated entity that is not an integral part of the physical universe - even when such an entity is explicitly stated as such. You seem to have had mental sex with your abstracted physical models and lost the emotional detachment needed to see the limitations of the underlying assumptions. Love is blind and all...
Nor do I. It is a mystical sentiment, nothing more. It speaks to transcendence. Of course given your argument (the one that boils down to "any God must be an integral part of the physical universe - even if that is not the case") it is not surprising that you would completely miss the point that this implication is not scientific per se, but rather pointing out that such a deity is totally undiscoverable through scientific means, like claims about the beauty of a poem or the sublimity of pi.

It is nothing of the sort; I was simply pointing out the false dichotomy. There is nothing quantum going on there.

Just in case you begin to question your gift with the English language, your meaning as you first stated it was completely and totally clear to this reader and a testament, again, to what I see as a piercing, honest and very bright mind.

My mystical version of God goes something like this:

God is when I am not.

God is who I am when who I think I am has died.

I have a real self and a false self, an illusionary self that controls me.

The illusionary self is my ego, the story of who I am, my memories, thoughts and experiences, all dead and in the past. I am a fragment of my totality that thinks it is the whole, but the thinker is separate from what it thinks. But thought is of the past, thinking about what just happened.

The thinker is an abstraction as thought depends on words.

It is the power of language that creates the ego. No non verbal animal can ever have a divided self.

Language creates abstractions that have no actual existence. Words about a tree are not the tree. The word tree isn't a tree.

Language creates duality, the separation of the self and the false self through the creation of good and evil. There is no such thing as good and evil.

But we have all been made to feel that we are evil. We were put down with words, told that we were bad to be this way or that, and that we would get love and support only if we were good.

So we separated into two different beings to survive or we would have died.

We became good little egos who hate the true self, the self that had infinite potential, that was undivided from the world and was the universe.

We were ejected from the Garden with the knowledge of the word, that there exist this no thing called good and evil.

So we live our lives in a dual and repressed state. We must never again allow ourselves to feel. We do not want to relive the truth of how we were made to feel.

But occasionally somebody comes along with great courage or gets exposed to the right information and begins a journey inside, like Dante or the Hero of a Thousand Faces. He enters the hell of self hate and with mirror and sword sees the real enemy and cuts off its head.

Like the princess who can feel a pea under 39 mattresses, our hero can't rest till he destroys the last bit of his self hate. Our hero conquers duality and time and enters into immortality, the timeless state of being, where the division between self and the universe has disappeared.

At this point our Hero become the source of all being. Instead of seeking love he turns inside out and becomes its source. A tiny human being becomes a nova sun, the cornucopia of infinite love.

Such a person is no longer human in the ordinary sense of the word and what he is capable of God only knows. Perhaps the collapse of time is also the collapse of space. The God helmet seems to indicate just such a phenomenon.

But aside from the unknowns of human potential, there is nothing about what I said that is in any way supernatural. God is a state that men and women can enter the state that is when all that a person can lose is taken away.

Truth, then, is not something additional you add to the ego, but what you are left with when the ego is subtracted.

 

[bfdd]

What world do you live in where the lack of a belief is a belief? If a person lacks a car, is that a car? If you lack skills, is that skill? If you don't have a car, then you lack a car. If you don't believe in God, then you lack belief in God. Are you really this stupid, or do I need to start drawing pictures?


A more ridiculous non-sequitur I don't think I've ever seen written.


It's pretty obvious that you don't know the proper usage of the terms you employ.

What I'm saying is there is no way to say there's a lack of belief in Atheism. You have to acknowledge Theism and it's idea of a God(s) in order to deny it. Your statement "If you don't believe in God, then you lack belief in God." That's a personal belief so yeah you were saying who is stupid?

 

[Moonbeam]

nonlnear: It is rather ironic how in many situations the expectation of binary logic is held up as a benchmark of sanity when in fact it is probably a much more accurate model of insanity!

If only folk could carry that one sentence away with them.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Ah so there it is. Even after my most careful (if simplistic) attempts to delineate what is meant by transcendence, you are still incapable of dealing fairly with a postulated entity that is not an integral part of the physical universe - even when such an entity is explicitly stated as such. You seem to have had mental sex with your abstracted physical models and lost the emotional detachment needed to see the limitations of the underlying assumptions. Love is blind and all...

Nor do I. It is a mystical sentiment, nothing more. It speaks to transcendence. Of course given your argument (the one that boils down to "any God must be an integral part of the physical universe - even if that is not the case") it is not surprising that you would completely miss the point that this implication is not scientific per se, but rather pointing out that such a deity is totally undiscoverable through scientific means, like claims about the beauty of a poem or the sublimity of pi.

Transcendence is a philosophical construct of the mind. It's a essentially a "what if?" It's based purely on assumptions, assumptions that have no basis other than mental exercises and don't carry much rational weight, if any at all. iow, you're basing your claims on nothing more than pure speculation, i.e. 'What if god exists outside this universe?' It's akin to 'Could purple and pink spotted jackalopes fly, if they had wings?'

Transcendence is all well and good for those who want to contemplate realms that one does not or cannot sense. Clearly it's a concept you're quite attached to. Ultimately it's meaningless though because that's a realm outside of science and there is no proof for the existence of such realms other than in imaginations.

I don't care about the imaginary mystical that only exists in the mind of men. I'm addressing the concrete, scientific possibilities of this issue, not philosophical gymnastics that are purely speculatory.

We can only use the tools we have available. The claim was that we cannot possible ever know god. If a god does exist outside of this universe and never interacts with it, that is true. That god is hiding and likely we can never find it. However, I'm addressing how we can indeed detect a god, the type of god which is most prevalent in the myths of man, because those gods do interact with this universe, quite frequently.

It is nothing of the sort; I was simply pointing out the false dichotomy. There is nothing quantum going on there.

Sorry, it was kind of a physics joke. I guess I should have used one of those emoticon thingies?

 

[woolfe9999]

This is very true.

But if we're listing different paths to atheism, allow me to throw another one in. Atheism can also be a result of acknowledging theism and ignoring it without denying it. Belief is not binary after all (despite the protests of some on either side of the debate). If it were we would not hear the faithful asking for more faith. That's one of the problems with using logic as a model for understanding human ideas. The logician has the luxury of categorizing postulates as true and untrue (and more recently, undecidable). The human mind employs many shades of gray. It is rather ironic how in many situations the expectation of binary logic is held up as a benchmark of sanity when in fact it is probably a much more accurate model of insanity!

I totally agree about the limitations of binary logic in explaining human thinking. There are multiple paths to atheism and multiple paths to theism, and multiple versions of each. There are even varying degrees of confidence in a given belief or the lack thereof. The trouble here is language, in that it reflects binary logic, because it is often useful to provide binary descriptive labels to facillitate communication, even though it over-simplifies and ignores shades of grey. In my prior post, when I was talking about "atheism," I meant the abstract concept, not all of its real world variations. And that concept is nothing more than the absence of belief in God, for whatever reason.

I have always been fascinated with why there is such a word "atheism." There is no such word as aflyingspaghettimonsterism or atimetravelism or alittlegreenmenism. Indeed, if there was a word to describe the absence of belief in everything that can be imagined, our dictionary would occupy several buildings, or possibly the entire universe.

The first answer is as I said, that theism, in particular, is such a widespread belief that somehow it becomes necessary to create a label for its absence. And of course, the label itself reflects the fact that various religious people have their own labels, and the label "atheism" implicitly suggests that "atheism" is like its own sect, or strand of religious belief. In that way, language creates perception, in this particular case, perception of the non-believer, as something parrallel to the believer. To be sure, some atheists, implicitly adopting their perceived view of the theist, will behave as if "atheism" is a belief system. Those who treat it as a belief system may draw conclusions which are based on something rather akin to religious faith.

That is separate and apart from the tendency to "proseletyze" atheism, which may or may not in a given case be correlated with atheism as a belief system. Some atheists believe that religion is actually a destructive force in the real world and hence that proseletyzing atheism will bring about positive change. Others opine that non-believers are persecuted by believers, and that getting their message out will end or mitigate the persecution. A given atheist may pursue those goals and therefore proselyze, but that per se doesn't mean the non-believer is treating "atheism" as a religion. The reason I point this out is because I often hear people assert that atheism is like a religion just because some people proseletyze it, and I think that is a rather insufficient condition for labelling it a religion.

- wolf

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Proof that it exist . You can't so you have faith in what your being told . Its like saying you can look back at the big bang . But now science says you can't because things way out are moving at better than light speed something science said couldn't be. But now they know it is . Zero -point can't be proven so you take it as faith that there be a zero point . Much like this topic . there is zero point to it.

Proof that it exists is called the Casimir Effect. Google it.

 

[nonlnear]

nonlnear: It is rather ironic how in many situations the expectation of binary logic is held up as a benchmark of sanity when in fact it is probably a much more accurate model of insanity!

If only folk could carry that one sentence away with them.

Thanks for the compliment, but I suspect you and I go in rather different directions with the implications.
For all our differences I suspect we are quite alike in some ways - if not our posting style...

 

[bfdd]

woolfe9999, good post. I do agree that to some(most) Atheism isn't really a religion, but there are some(even groups) that are pushing it and making it seem like it is. The more of that that happens, the closer it becomes to being a religion. I treat it as such because these are the most vocal of Atheists.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

But you said that you had been working as an engineer for 25 years. I naturally read that with my engineering hat on and assumed you meant, as any good literalistic engineer would, that you had worked 25 years continuously and without any sort of break. I guess the illustration that certain assumptions are inherent to certain forms of thinking was wasted on you.

I guess the fact that you so blatantly point out the obvious when you actually believe you are being clever is lost on you? I guess it's also lost on you that there are a number of forms of assumptions, primarily intelligent ones and assinine ones. You frequently delve into the latter.

You always assume it's me that's the fool when I reflect you to yourself. Here's hoping that when you develop enough muscles to see the real me you'll be ready to look at yourself.

/yawn

More of Moonie's broken record routine. Get some new material. Your stale old stand-up is moldy.

 

[Moonbeam]

TastesLikeChicken: I guess the fact that you so blatantly point out the obvious when you actually believe you are being clever is lost on you? I guess it's also lost on you that there are a number of forms of assumptions, primarily intelligent ones and assinine ones. You frequently delve into the latter.

M: I have to to reflect you.



TLC: /yawn

More of Moonie's broken record routine. Get some new material. Your stale old stand-up is moldy.

M: I want muscle, not weak sauce.

And I guess you don't feel very clever since you want me to feel that way. Sorry, it's not something I even think about.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

What I'm saying is there is no way to say there's a lack of belief in Atheism.

Except where you said:

An Atheist is someone with a lack of belief in a God or Gods.

You have to acknowledge Theism and it's idea of a God(s) in order to deny it.

To deny the truth of X is not tantamount to asserting the truth of not-X. This is a basic logical principle, and if you think that it is false you are invited to supply a logical conncection between the two.

Your statement "If you don't believe in God, then you lack belief in God." That's a personal belief...

It isn't a personal belief, but rather it is a statement which is demonstrably true according to the definitions of the terms used in its construction. In fact I did demonstrate its truth, but you were too stupid to understand that demonstration.

...so yeah you were saying who is stupid?

That would be you, stupid.

 

[Moonbeam]

Cerpin Taxt: It isn't a personal belief, but rather it is a statement which is demonstrably true according to the definitions of the terms used in its construction. In fact I did demonstrate its truth, but you were too stupid to understand that demonstration.

M: Well all I can say is that what you said was demonstrably true and demonstrated turned out not to be demonstrably true at all apparently at least to somebody you then called stupid.

Maybe he just needs a bit of time to get where you're coming from, it being self evident and all, instead of becoming defensive, which I should think might slow that down. Just saying.

 

[Fern]

Pretty good thread, especially considering the 'humble beginnings'.

Fern

 

[LunarRay]

Well.... One thing for sure is that you can't know anything for sure... You can surmise or rely on what you think is the controlling factor(s) regarding an issue to opine but you can't state truth when what you or any of us know is based on what we think may be truth to this point in time...
Remember that IF God is God... he loves you... and created Hell if you don't believe him.... or.. IF God ain't God you can't prove it is so either.
A blind person needs a guide when they venture into areas they no nothing about... It is evident... axiomatic you might say... that those who are fond of using logic to prove what can't be proven are blind... so to speak... because logic is limited by what is truth and truth cannot be known until it is... and we don't know when that is...

 

[Zebo]

I've known good people in all religions...there are plenty of good guidelines in religion and i could argue sets many precepts even secular people believe in, the problem is people take the shit too far. You always get the spazes who thinks everyone's gotta be like them and start killing people to make it so.

 

[Moonbeam]

I've known good people in all religions...there are plenty of good guidelines in religion and i could argue sets many precepts even secular people believe in, the problem is people take the shit too far. You always get the spazes who thinks everyone's gotta be like them and start killing people to make it so.

I think there are reasons for this, that is to say, psychological factors that are not commonly accepted and therefore render this phenomenon a mechanical one that is inevitable and inevitably repeated in every religion.

The purpose of the world's main religions, I think, is to bring the practitioners into a spiritual state of love. The enemy, therefore, is hate.

Religions ask you to be good and not hateful.

But if we have not achieved the aim of our religion then we ARE hateful. We have not defeated the enemy.

Thus, instead of being good like our religion is supposed to make us, we now in the awkward position of espousing a religion of love at a point where we are still full of hate.

Well if you've ever tried to get rid of your hate you may notice it's not so easy. It's not going to happen going to church.

And we were all raised by parents who had the same problem.

We learn to hate that part of us that hates and emphasize and roll play the part that is good.

And thus we are lost. Our hate goes internal and underground, the reason it is so hard to get rid of.

And we become religious hypocrites, folk whose holiness is a pretense.

But the hate gets projected out there on the world, symbolized as the devil.

And we can become very self important to ourselves when we are fighting against the devil.

This need to think we are good because our religion asks us to be turns us into deniers of the evil we haven't purged within us.

It is this very thing Christians have been forgiven for but it does only some good. It is rare that folk forgive themselves for things they hate in others.

To forgive you have to forgive. It's as easy as giving up hate. Hehe

So we are stuck with hating the world out there, the evil other, because we can't allow ourselves to feel what we feel, that hate for ourselves because we are evil.

Sad too, because there is no evil. There is only this illness of self hate.

So the fact is that there is only one enemy we have in the world, and it is ourselves. We don't want to see that so we kill other people, in the name of some religion of love.

 

[totalnoob]

there is no way to say there's a lack of belief in Atheism. You have to acknowledge Theism and it's idea of a God(s) in order to deny it. Your statement "If you don't believe in God, then you lack belief in God." That's a personal belief so yeah you were saying who is stupid?

The thing is, people don't typically identify themselves by what they don't believe or what they don't do. When you meet someone, do you go out of your way to identify yourself as a non-stamp collector? Do speak proudly of the fact that you don't collect stamps? Do you make it a point to tell friends of yours that you don't worship Krishna or Zeus? Of course not.. The things people believe in are what defines their character. Positive beliefs and actions are what we use to identify people as individuals, not the things they have no interest in.

 

[Moonbeam]

The thing is, people don't typically identify themselves by what they don't believe or what they don't do. When you meet someone, do you go out of your way to identify yourself as a non-stamp collector? Do speak proudly of the fact that you don't collect stamps? Do you make it a point to tell friends of yours that you don't worship Krishna or Zeus? Of course not.. The things people believe in are what defines their character. Positive beliefs and actions are what we use to identify people as individuals, not the things they have no interest in.

The whole issue, it seems to me, is all about the messy nature of language.

One person is a theist. He believes in a god.

Another is an atheist in whom there is an absence of such a belief.

So if the atheist has no belief in God it sounds like he doesn't believe in God, or that he believes there is no god, which sounds, for all the world, like a belief.

It seems quite unnatural to me that a person who lacks a belief in god wouldn't also believe there is no god.

Simply to apply the term atheist to oneself means you are aware there are folk who believe in something you do not believe, a god, which also sounds, as you seem to imply, an active belief.

Ah, but the atheist will say, I simply lack a belief, please believe me.

But dictionary.com defines an Atheist thus:

a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

And that definition shows atheism to be a flat out belief because you can't deny or disbelieve in something without believing you are right. It is a position one stakes and not an absence of one.

 

[totalnoob]

And that definition shows atheism to be a flat out belief because you can't deny or disbelieve in something without believing you are right. It is a position one stakes and not an absence of one.

Very well. I believe collecting stamps is stupid. And I believe those making god claims have failed to make their case. I suppose the rejection of other positions could be considered a "belief"..but this is not the sort of belief that defines a person. It doesn't tell you anything about that person other than their "no" response to a single question. We don't identify people by negatives because there are literally thousands of different questions they could give a "no" reply to.. Why identify them by positive beliefs..the causes and principles that motivate their actions. Non stamp collecting and non believe in god/gods doesn't quality.

 

[woolfe9999]

Very well. I believe collecting stamps is stupid. And I believe those making god claims have failed to make their case. I suppose the rejection of other positions could be considered a "belief"..but this is not the sort of belief that defines a person. It doesn't tell you anything about that person other than their "no" response to a single question. We don't identify people by negatives because there are literally thousands of different questions they could give a "no" reply to.. Why identify them by positive beliefs..the causes and principles that motivate their actions. Non stamp collecting and non believe in god/gods doesn't quality.

Indeed, and by his logic, every time a single person decides thats/he believes in a particular thing, no matter what it is, the moment that person decides to broadcast his or her belief to other people, each person who does not agree is now apparently adhering to a new "belief system," defined as the antithesis of the original belief. He is implicitly adopting the fallacy that "atheism" is a belief system in some way paraellel to religious belief.

- wolf

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Very well. I believe collecting stamps is stupid. And I believe those making god claims have failed to make their case. I suppose the rejection of other positions could be considered a "belief"..but this is not the sort of belief that defines a person. It doesn't tell you anything about that person other than their "no" response to a single question. We don't identify people by negatives because there are literally thousands of different questions they could give a "no" reply to.. Why identify them by positive beliefs..the causes and principles that motivate their actions. Non stamp collecting and non believe in god/gods doesn't quality.

Your responses over time tell us a great deal. You believe you are correct and you believe that people who do not believe as you do are somehow defective and inferior, not based on how they live their lives, how competent they are, not if they are scholars or floor washers. The litmus test you use is if they agree with your atheistic POV.

That's a shallow way to view people.

 

[Moonbeam]

Very well. I believe collecting stamps is stupid. And I believe those making god claims have failed to make their case. I suppose the rejection of other positions could be considered a "belief"..but this is not the sort of belief that defines a person. It doesn't tell you anything about that person other than their "no" response to a single question. We don't identify people by negatives because there are literally thousands of different questions they could give a "no" reply to.. Why identify them by positive beliefs..the causes and principles that motivate their actions. Non stamp collecting and non believe in god/gods doesn't quality.

That is all well and good. However, I would have to say, in looking into the matter a bit and considering the dictionary definition I gave, we are taking apples and oranges with stamps and gods.

A person who doesn't collect stamps is a non collector of stamps. He doesn't deny the existence of stamps or that stamp collectors are collecting something that's real. He simply does not collect stamps himself

But is an Atheist is somebody who denies the existence of God then he is expressing the opinion that God does not exist. To have an opinion is to hold a belief, particularly, that that opinion is correct. It seems that the word Atheist defines a person who believes there is no God and not that he, himself, has no such belief. I just can't argue the dictionary is wrong because it defines what words do actually mean. Those that have no belief in God and find some need to say so and nothing more may need a new word for that it looks like to me.