are you an atheist?

So what is it that makes the monotheistic god(s) of abrahamic religions apparently more plausible than others?

Better beards

Do Cthulhu's face tentacles count as a beard?

Cthulhu's gay?!?

Well I think the odds of any of the hypotheses man has made up out of thin air over the years actually being the correct one are very very very very very very very high so...

Sad to see so many ILXors will be swimming in the Lake of Fire, tsk tsk.

See you again on the 4th of July.

So what is it that makes the monotheistic god(s) of abrahamic religions apparently more plausible than others?

I don't think that they are more plausible, but those aren't the gods that many of us are agnostic about. Agnosticism about Thor or Jehovah is different from agnosticism about something as abstract as a "prime mover" or "guiding intelligence." The latter are philosophical possibilities, for which one can offer arguments. The former are elements of folklore that there's no good reason to think exist.

otm. Though the thing about folklore is that even if it isn't literally true, it still offers an insight into the people that embrace it.

Careful, we all know where the folklore road ultimately leads

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120805123155/horrormovies/images/1/11/Candyman2.jpg

otm. Though the thing about folklore is that even if it isn't literally true, it still offers an insight into the people that embrace it.

Like what religion they are and stuff

someone more versed in religious history could explain this better, but monotheism strikes me as a major development because it shifts the metaphysical frame from one of a pluralism of, let's say, "forces" within the world to one of the "prime mover" or what have you. that's interesting because it puts the world off the one side and God off to the other--God exists "outside" the world, makes it happen, makes it new, whatever.

that's a big epistemic shift (tho i am perhaps overemphasizing the pluralism of polytheism) because it locates ultimate "causes" and things like that in a very different zone from the shifting, contingent nature of the world around us. and it's especially interesting because it creates a zone for thinking the unthought, the unthinkable, futurity, etc. the world as a whole becomes contingent and thus evolving, changing, mutable.

now of course that leads to all the familiar sins of metaphysical thinking but also points to what's good about that kind of thinking.

Despite our being 'made in God's image', a single, omnipotent, omniscient creator is miles different from non-omniscient, non-omnipotest, non-creators with distinct jobs and personalities and biographies who are like humans but on a greater scale only Christainity, afik, has something close to a demi-urge in Christ.

xpost

Monotheism being an attempt to inscribe a rational agency on the world, as inscrutable as its motives might be?

I don't know, a God existing other than the world he makes happens still seems like in that old tradition of human-like deities, entities with forms, not really the "prime mover" but a "really important mover". The only way monotheism really works is if God transcends the world -- he is not outside of it, not separate from it, in fact he's not separate from ANYTHING. If he was separate from something, he would not be perfect and infinite, there would always be this line where 'god' ends and 'something else' begins and that's not an infinite concept. There can be no other gods because all deities are contained in him, all are reflections or glimpses of him. It's a more mystical, abstract, all-encompassing version of god.

it's not hard to cast contemporary philosophy in terms of this inability to think the "whole" as god + world but also necessary + contingent or even beings + Being (to use Heidegger's formulation). we fall into one-sided loops of self-reference, we "forget" Being, radical contingency, etc.

x-post: I actually agree. God is paradoxically "not separate from anything separate" as I think Niklas Luhmann puts it somewhere. the position of radical "indistinctness."

Any God I can conceive of is far too puny to be credible.

Agnosticism about a "prime mover" as a philosophical position I can understand, but it's so thin and abstract a concept that it bears hardly any relation to the idea of god that most people consider when they're talking about agnosticism. ("Prime mover" even suggests some kind of agency, stripped down to its bare essentials "first cause" would be a better term.)

What happened before the prime mover moved?

To put it another way, an argument for a first cause isn't really a religious argument, you'd need to drag in a whole load of other implausible baggage to make it religious. (Xposts to jim, really)

xp zodiac_mindwarp.gif

Any belief in a "prime mover," no matter how abstract, assigns the workings of the universe to resemble human qualities. I think when you get to the core of the reason the human mind gravitates to this context is because it is easier for us to categorize what is a seemingly crafted existence as a decision of some kind.

Any belief in anything no matter how abstract, assigns the workings of the universe to resemble human qualities

As for what happened before the prime mover moved, that question is irrelevant. The prime mover must transcend space and time. One could say he is moving, has yet to move, has already moved, and all those statements would be true for a proper prime mover. Also, is not moving, will not move, and hasn't moved would be appropriate.

It's weird for me to hear this argument against theism (belief in god a consequence of normative human thinking) when numerous theological models posits God as an ultimate unknowable force - something beyond humanity's ability to understand or explain. for example, apophatic theology is explicitly antagonistic to this idea that man believes in a god that 'resembles human qualities.'

numerous theological models posits God as an ultimate unknowable force

^^^^^ cannot be emphasized enough. atheists love to conveniently ignore this but this kind of language is, in many cases literally, the core of tons of religious writings.

Abstract concepts of god in general just seem to me like something intelligent people create to reach a middle ground between what they have collectively learned and infer about the universe and a hope to hold on to a greater meaning for their lives, and basically start with god and work backwards until it's pretty watered down usually to a useless level.

The core of tons of religious writings in traditions that have a ton of other writings emphasising exactly how this unknowable god demands that we live our lives? xp

start with god and work backwards until it's pretty watered down usually to a useless level

practically a word-for-word recapitulation of how kabbalists envision the tree of life/ten sefirot model

The core of tons of religious writings in traditions that have a ton of other writings emphasising exactly how this unknowable god demands that we live our lives?

religions contain multitudinous viewpoints

"God as an unknowable force" I mean if nobody human can conceptualize god in any way than what relevance can the meaning of god possibly have on anything? Again I feel like it's working backwards to fit the word god somewhere into a view of existence.

" atheists love to conveniently ignore this"

hahahahahahaha

OH NO WE'VE BEEN CAUGHT OUT

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

to draw a clumsy analogy - scientists, for example, cannot explain why time exists. They assume there was some process or force that put it in place, but they don't know what it is, and conceptualizing that force means resorting to analogies and abstractions. yet they can conceive of it by observing time in action, they can observe it's effects.

this is exactly how people like, say, Maimonides describe god. if you want me to print you out a reading list of similar arguments from different theologians from different religions we might be here awhile, as this is a common thread in hinduism, islam, christianity, etc.
xp

when you start describing god at a certain level of abstraction, you'd have to call these guys atheists. probably not to their face, but you could give them the atheist fist bump.

As a realist I find my imagination is looked down on that I don't give credence to the existential possibilities that may exist beyond my perception or conceptualization. But to subscribe to a belief structure that places a creating force with reasoning that on some level resembles my own- I think that is actually more of a limited imagination for how much more digestible it is for a human mind to understand.

Can I repost myself from above. Any God I can conceive of isn't godlike enough to warrant faith.

It seems reasonable to assume that any god that was capable of creating space-time would exist independently of space-time. Humans have notorious difficulties imagining what existance outside of space-time would entail. A more promising avenue of enquiry into this "unknowable force" would be looking for evidence of the activities of such a god, as they manifest themselves within space-time. After all, force is a physical concept, so it should manifest physically somewhere.

What many religions tell us is that the god they conceive and worship is capable of breaking physical laws. So far, what science tells us about the universe is that it appears to be entirely rule-bound. Also, one of the basic axioms of science is the Law of Uniformity, stating that any physical law that applies in one part of the universe can be assumed to work uniformly in all parts of the universe.

These two sets of assumptions would seem to be at odds.

As of now, I much prefer to think that science's description of the universe is more accurate, until such time as the Law of Uniformity is falsified by evidence. However, the Law of Uniformity is not incompatible with all religions, only those which claim the operation of special providence, miracles and other types of law-breaking.

probably not to their face, but you could give them the atheist fist bump.

I don't think Maimonides or Augustine would be down with being called atheists fwiw

So Rob Halford actually was singing a religious song.

xpost

lol

There do seem to be different rules on different planes though. Hasn't most of 20th century science been baffling evidence that rules that apply on the quantum scale don't necessarily apply to the every day world?

well in terms of physics yeah mostly

rules that apply on the quantum scale don't necessarily apply to the every day world?

This does not falsify the Law of Uniformity. The rules, such as they are understood, are evidently never broken. This would imply that our understanding is imperfect, not that the rules are imperfectly followed.

religions contain multitudinous viewpoints

Any big tent is gonna be full of clowns I guess.

pretty much

at the same time I find it hilarious that atheists would claim theologians whose works are taught to every rabbi, priest or monk are actually atheists. well done guys. "if I agree with it, it must not be religious!" really.

Aimless I don't understand how you can separate rules from the understanding.