Is it reasonable to believe in God?

[historia]

Is it reasonable to believe in God?

Note, the question here is not whether you think it is true that God exists, but simply whether such a belief is reasonable or not.

[JehovahsWitness]

Arguably even the godless and the atheist sees the value of appropriate feelings of gratitude, even if they find such feelings morally redundant.

I'm a godless atheist and I do. Gratitude is important. And showing it is not always easy. Where I draw the line though, is acknowledging that because I was created (assuming that I was) I owe the creator moral deference.

I do not understand what you are saying;

DEFERENCE

polite submission and respect.

So I presume you are saying, that while gratitude is beneficial, you don't think intelligent moral creatures should respect and submit to the moral guidanceof their Creator even if they were designed by that one to benefit most if they do?

[Yozavad]

Hello Transponder. I didn't say its reasonable yet pointless to believe in God. I'm suggesting that the endeavor to ascertain the rational plausibility of God's existence, or lack thereof, is asinine futility! Elevating logical contemplation to a grandiose status, capable of indisputably affirming a position is completely irrational. As I said, " it will make your head spin around in perpetual frustration, as to how and why, everyone's individual logic leads to every direction but the fabled bull's-eye our hubris fancies it should". The fabled bull's-eye being the unanimous consensus of all our logic combined. The tragedy is not the pursuit of intellectual endeavor, but the multitude of varying destinations it leads to. The misery of the Greco-Roman philosophers was exactly that, and was constantly lamented amongst their varying schools of thought. Thus nihilism is the only companion on this road to nowhere. For those who insist on discovering God this way: "He has surrounded Himself in utter darkness", Psalm 18:11, completely undetectable and unknowable. In otherwords: its no bueno to attempt to find God this way.

[Clownboat]

Worship is essentially acknowledging the Creator as the source of our life and feeling appreciation towards Him for that fact.

There are holy books that make claims about gods creating our universe and life. Seems to me that some humans have made an idol out of such books and that the claims in the book is what is being acknowledged, not a creator in itself as one cannot be shown.

How would it be possible to acknowledge/appreciate the God of the Bible as a creator if we did not have the Bible to supply the claims for example?
What is actually being worshipped I must wonder, because it seems to be claims in a holy books being acknowledged (which is being claimed to be worship above), not any god.

Seems to me that worship is essentially acknowledging that holy books make claims about gods and creation, and to acknowledge and appreciate these words in the said books is akin to worship. Therefore what is being acknowledged and appreciated is the book, not a creator. If i'm wrong, I'm curious as to how.

[TRANSPONDER]

Hello Transponder. I didn't say its reasonable yet pointless to believe in God. I'm suggesting that the endeavor to ascertain the rational plausibility of God's existence, or lack thereof, is asinine futility! Elevating logical contemplation to a grandiose status, capable of indisputably affirming a position is completely irrational. As I said, " it will make your head spin around in perpetual frustration, as to how and why, everyone's individual logic leads to every direction but the fabled bull's-eye our hubris fancies it should". The fabled bull's-eye being the unanimous consensus of all our logic combined. The tragedy is not the pursuit of intellectual endeavor, but the multitude of varying destinations it leads to. The misery of the Greco-Roman philosophers was exactly that, and was constantly lamented amongst their varying schools of thought. Thus nihilism is the only companion on this road to nowhere. For those who insist on discovering God this way: "He has surrounded Himself in utter darkness", Psalm 18:11, completely undetectable and unknowable. In otherwords: its no bueno to attempt to find God this way.

I didn't say that,quite

"That'd be a No, then, or I reckon you would argue that it IS reasonable to believe in God, but pointless as - so I gather - Faith the only valid way to believe." That is, it looked like you were saying that it was reasonable to believe in God -on evidence - but that was pointless as it was FAITH that really mattered and believing for evidence was...pointless. In fact I recall that's what you did say.

Yes, in fact that is what you say above I get it. For me, well I can't get my head around why Faith (without reason) is considered so good. I cannot credit a deity that would actually want belief (never mind worship) without good reason, never mind making that the prime currency on a one - way ticket to salvation. In fact, popular belief has slipped into admitting that they know this deep down as they are somehow convinced that good deeds is the ticket to haven (with following orders the next) and Faith is not mentioned unless they run out of other apologetics.

No, It's just another reason why I think this is a self -serving (or Religion -serving) method of fooling people into giving authority and power to religion. I much prefer evidence and good reason and pretty much regard Faith (without question) with disfavor.

[Clownboat]

So I presume you are saying, that while gratitude is beneficial, you don't think intelligent moral creatures should respect and submit to the moral guidanceof their Creator even if they were designed by that one to benefit most if they do?

I hate to be a stickler, but this should read as:

So I presume you are saying, that while gratitude is beneficial, you don't think intelligent moral creatures should respect and submit to a book that makes claims about the morals of a creator.

You allude above to a creator being the guidance, but I think we should be accurate and acknowledge that it is a book written by humans that is the guidance. To say a God is the guidance is just an attempt to equate a book to being a god.

Claims made in holy books do not equate to gods guiding us. Surely you agree?

[Yozavad]

Faith without reason? Every theist has a reason for their faith. A Muslim friend gave me an extensive list of her reasons. You want logical reasons to believe in God. Fortunately, the kind of logic you want doesn't exist. As I previously said, everyone's logic arrives at a different place. This might frustrate philosophers, but how else could free will exist? If some indisputable rationale were to force us all to the same conclusion I'd call it tyranny. Tyranny worthy of nothing more than mental acquiescence! Transponder, our thoughts aren't far apart. I dare say our way of thinking are neighbours. And to quote Jesus: "You're not far from the kingdom of God". Once a person admits the futility and nihilism of attempting to force their mind into Heaven, there at the gates!

[Purple Knight]

So I presume you are saying, that while gratitude is beneficial, you don't think intelligent moral creatures should respect and submit to the moral guidance of their Creator even if they were designed by that one to benefit most if they do?

Yes. I was going to object to the benefit part and say that if we can discover that to be true then we should do it. However, part of being moral (I think, because this is how people behave) is accepting that you may be acting against your best benefit. I may just go ahead and admit to this part being supernatural or at least mirroring the supernatural, because we're supposed to follow it even if it's against logic. My idea is, if we get that twinge and start to think something is wrong, or even might be wrong, we should not do it.

And if we ever get that feeling and it goes against a religion, we should follow it and not the religion because if the religion was righteous, neither its dictates nor its creator would ever point in the opposite direction.

There are a lot of people out there, and I mean a lot, who will say, "but, my conscience" and it won't be genuine. They can even deceive themselves. This probably accounts for most of the discord about morality - people just lying to gain some advantage. But there are people who have done enough soul-searching to be genuine with themselves and others about morality and they disagree. That means somebody's moral compass was intentionally made wrong. That's what I can't see happening if there is a fair, honest and good creator who fine-tuned everything.

I do not go for the suffering argument for reasons I detail here*. I think the suffering argument against god is defunct. But I do think that if there was a kind, honest and fair creator, everybody's moral compass would point the same way. And I think this is pretty airtight because you can't claim to be fair and punish somebody for doing what they thought was right... because you created them to think that. Even in the case that it was all The Plan, and you just needed that pawn or rook to move in that specific way, nevermind traumatising the poor pawn or rook, that's deception which can be argued to be an immoral act on its own.

*It's like asking, "O God, if you really love us, why have you made bald people?!" And that's a decent question. That may disprove God. But asking why are there bald people if everybody was bald... we wouldn't even know what we were asking. It might still be a good question but we have no way of knowing that.

[brunumb]

If some indisputable rationale were to force us all to the same conclusion I'd call it tyranny.

If it was an indisputable rationale, then surely it should lead to the same conclusion. I don't see how tyranny comes into it.

[JehovahsWitness]

How would it be possible to acknowledge/appreciate the God of the Bible as a creator if we did not have the Bible to supply the claims for example?

Well obviously if there was no bible we would have no way to acknowledge the God of the bible. We can acknowlege the existence of a Creator but without revelation of some kind (verbal or written) it would be impossible to know who that Creator is and acknowledge this.

To illustrate: imagine someone that had know way of knowing who his biological father is. Without the information (either in the form of aa document or verbally transmitted) he or she could not acknowlege any specific individual as his father. He can of course deduce he HAS as Father but without a birth certificate or some other document being made available to him for example he cannot know who his father is.

In the same way, if there is a creator, revelation of some kind would be needed to identify Him and susequently acknowledge him as such ( Acts 17:23)




JEHOVAH'S WITNESS

FURTHER READING Who is God?
https://www.jw.org/en/library/books/goo ... ho-is-god/



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[Yozavad]

If some indisputable rationale were to force us all to the same conclusion I'd call it tyranny.

If it was an indisputable rationale, then surely it should lead to the same conclusion. I don't see how tyranny comes into it.

Hello Brunumb. You're correct. An indisputable rationale would force us all to the same conclusion; otherwise indisputable could be disputed, and now words mean nothing at all. I must put my final exchange with Transponder in context before I answer your question. Greco-Roman philosophers lamented the futility of logic, because of diversity of inference ( diversity of inference is the differing conclusions each individual's logic arrived at). Each school of thought anguished over the conundrum, of diversity of inference, in its own way. In the end, each philosophical sect embraced nihilism, and differed only in how to define the width, length, and height of this misery, and what lifestyle would best cope with it ( hedonism, asceticism, fatalism,etc.) Though diversity of inference baffled the Koine Stammerers, it doesn't baffle me at all. What else could define the essence of free will if not diversity of inference? If some indisputable rationale forced us all to reach the same conclusion, thus eliminating diversity of inference, I'd call it tyranny; and free will a farce!