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Author Topic: If an atheist met God...
suminonA
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quote:
Originally posted by Corwin:
That's the problem right there. There have been people convincing others that they are God's prophets. A complex enough intelligence could provide you with a very plausible explanation that it is God. However, that doesn't make it God. It would make it God (or God-like) for me "until otherwise proven". You can't "remain in the dark" when light is shone in your eyes. But you can remain skeptical about the light being God.

What if I turn this question around? Let's say a believer met someone who gave him good reasons to think he's God. Then after a while some events would prove that it was just an alien with a good knowledge of both the Universe and the human mind, who made it all up. What would the believer think? This is God but the evidence is somehow faked? There still is a God but this is not it? What if the believer finds himself in this situation several times? God A is disproved, God B the same, etc. How many evidences of fraud are necessary to come to the conclusion that perhaps the initial belief in God was also based on lies?

Corwin, there is a thread called “How much do you NEED religion?”, from a while back. (It is easily found with the search function). It addressed many of these questions in a series of “what if scenarios”. The answers there might surprise you (or not [Wink] ).

quote:
Originally posted by 777:
Yet the greatest risks have both the greatest consequences and the greatest rewards. I think that what God asks us to do is to take the risk that he's real, and that he's right. It may be hard, but it's what we Christians do.

Do you know about Pascal’s Wager? You seem to use a reasoning very close to his.

A.

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Corwin
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Thanks, I read the thread, or at least most of it. But I haven't been very active lately on Hatrack lately so I'll go back and take a look at the whole thread when I'm back home for good. (which is next week, yay!)
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BlackBlade
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Mucus: I read what you're saying and I agree for the most part. I think the Greek Parthenon is a good comparison but not necessarily saints, as to some Christians, the adoration of Saints is akin to worshiping them as Gods. But it's worthy of note that in this sort of marriage between Taoism and Buddhism, and even alittle bit of Christianity courtesy of Persian missionaries, many of the Chinese people still retain a belief in a greatest God, or central judge/authority.

You find Him described as Shang Di and for a very long time worship and mention of this being has been documented.

The concept of Shang Di sorta fits right in the middle of Chinese religion, but today little survives about just how much the Chinese believed about Him. But if you mention a "Shang Di" or a "Shen" Chinese people usually emphatically state that they believe He exists. Today, interestingly enough, many Chinese folk see Shang Di as having a sort of limited jurisdiction, and He only seems to care about Chinese people.

So perhaps you are right that lower case g gods and goddesses is an apt description.

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Mucus
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BB:
Interesting, I didn't know some of the stuff in the article, although I suspected. I'm going to have ask around about that in specific, but I suspect you're right that little may survive about exactly what he was and the myth may have mutated over the years. For example, I also see that even by Han Dynasty that that Shangdi becomes synonymous with Tian (Heaven) which is rather depersonalised. I think that the Jade Emperor by contrast is more of a personalised one, although I am very unclear about the relationship between the two.

That last bit on Chinese Christianity explains a bit too.
quote:

Shangdi is also one of the main names used by Chinese Christians for the Christian God. It is first used in the southern China edition of the Chinese Union Version, a Mandarin Chinese translation of the Christian Bible. 19th century British Protestant missionaries in China, such as James Legge, used the name Shangdi to refer to the Christian God, while American Protestant missionaries in northern China in the early 20th century preferred the alternative Shen (神, pinyin: Shén), and another edition was printed reflecting this usage. By contrast, historically, Chinese Catholics have predominantly used the term "Tian Zhu" (天主, pinyin: tian1 zhu3; literally, "Lord of Heaven") to address God. ...

So it seems that there was either a conscious or unconscious decision to pick Shangdi by British Protestants to conflate the two entities (Shangdi and God) in order to make faster inroads into China. Personally, I think either "shen" or "tianzhu" would be more appropriate for the Christian God as the American Protestants or Catholics did. (Even though it is kind of annoying in respect to the capitalization issue because there is no capitalization in Chinese so there is no parallel to the "God"vs"god" issue when using shen to refer to both)

Anyways, interesting.
But seriously, quit it with the "He" and "Him" too unless we're really referring to the Christian God. Its just confusing. I realise it may be a force of habit [Wink]

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Foust
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I grew up Christian, then became an atheist around 21. I'm 27 now, and am occasionally asked by friends or family if I'm "still an atheist."

My answer usually runs like this. The short answer: I'm agnostic. The long answer: I'm an atheist.

Is there a big guy in the sky with all kinds of magical powers? I don't know. It's a matter of probability, a craps shoot. If you insist on me saying which way I lean, I'd say I'm 75% certain God doesn't exist.

But. But but but. Is there a highest value? No. Is there a "One" figure that underlies all of reality? No. Is there a "ground of being"? No. Is there a moral author of the world? No. Is there a being that we are all beholden to? No. Is there nn infinite being, transcendent, immanent, or some permutation of the three? No. Is there a place for God in my thinking, at all? No. To sum up, God is dead. Old news. It's time to move on.

I don't deny that a being that could have parted the red sea exists. I don't know if such a being exists or not. What I will say is: if he exists, he isn't nearly so relevant as some think he is.

So if I met God? I'd say, "Will you send me to hell if I ask you to grant me three wishes?"

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Epictetus
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quote:
Buddhism: When I did some fast research on the theist/Buddhism question on Wikipedia, I got the impression that they were more agnostic than atheist. That is, they do not have an overseeing deity but they do not actually have a belief that there is not one either. As rollainm put it, its just not too relevant for them
This is relatively true, but Buddhism is a tricky subject. Many Buddhists are members of the Monastic orders (all of which have slightly differing beliefs and practices) and many more are Lay Buddhists who view Buddhism as more of a Philosophy than a religion in the Western European sense of the word.

The trick is that one of the core attractions of Buddhism when the Buddha was alive, and still even today, is that there is no central dogma to believe. You can declare yourself a Buddhist and still believe in God, or Hinduism or what have you, so long as you remove yourself from attachment to those ideas. Other than acknowledging that the Buddha's Four Noble Truths are true and then doing your best to follow the Eightfold Path, there isn't much else to being a Lay Buddhist.

quote:
But I'm pretty sure that at the core of Buddhism is the idea that all is illusion, and that it is the clinging to illusion that leads to suffering. "God" would be a part of "all." It's another illusory distinction.
I'm not sure about all the different sects of Buddhism, but from what I've read of Gotama's teachings this statement isn't entirely true. Buddhism states that the cause of suffering is desire. The desires that can be filled are soon replaced by more desires. The desires that we are incapable of filling pull at your consciousness and can prevent you from being truly happy.

It could be argued of course that desire is an illusion, in that we often desire things that we don't really need.

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BlackBlade
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Mucus:
quote:
So it seems that there was either a conscious or unconscious decision to pick Shangdi by British Protestants to conflate the two entities (Shangdi and God) in order to make faster inroads into China.
I am almost certain this is what happened. The idea of a central God although there was REALLY impersonal for the Chinese. The Catholic and Protestant missionaries definitely saw in Shang Di a concept that would make proselyting much easier.

I'm certain many of them encountered the perceived problem of Chinese people saying, "Hey sure we can worship this Jesus fellow, plenty of room on the alters for another idol."

quote:
Anyways, interesting.
But seriously, quit it with the "He" and "Him" too unless we're really referring to the Christian God. Its just confusing. I realise it may be a force of habit

Huge force of habit. Usually I refer to deities with the upper case tense. It makes "he said she said that He loves Her" sentences much easier on my brain. [Frown]
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Mucus
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If you don't mind my asking (and admittedly this is stepping into the murky territory outside of fact and into speculation) but why do you use the phrase "perceived problem"? For Christians wouldn't that be an actual problem given the commandments against idols and to not have any other gods before God?
Or are you taking a more pragmatic "getting the foot in the door" approach?

Re-reading, I'm also curious about what you said about the translation of some Chinese deities to saints. The way I read it was your reason was that some *Christians* actually treat saints as if they were gods, that the problem with the translation is that some Christians are too serious about the saints rather than (what I would have assumed) the Chinese being too serious about theirs. Is my reading correct (and would that not be a rather controversial contention*)?

* I realise that Mormon theology is different in this regard (and I do not know the details) in how it treats the terminology of "saints." When you said some Christians, which groups did you mean?

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anti_maven
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The way I see it, if theres an all powerful God, I'm fulfilling his plan by living as an atheist.

If I were to arrive at the Pearly Gates and find Him thumbing his nose at me, well I'd have a jolly good laugh.

I really rather hope any afterlife would be like Riverworld. I could stand spending eternity on the banks of a river, watching the world go by. It would sure beat work. I could learn how to fly-fish.

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