If the Almighty doesn't exist

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_Jason Bourne
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If the Almighty doesn't exist

Post by _Jason Bourne »

I think there are some good points as well as some not so good.


If the Almighty doesn't exist
By Dennis Prager




We are constantly reminded about the destructive consequences of religion — intolerance, hatred, division, inquisitions, persecutions of "heretics," holy wars. Though far from the whole story, they are, nevertheless, true. There have been many awful consequences of religion.

What one almost never hears described are the deleterious consequences of secularism — the terrible developments that have accompanied the breakdown of traditional religion and belief in G-d. For every thousand students who learn about the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials, maybe two learn to associate Gulag, Auschwitz, The Cultural Revolution and the Cambodian genocide with secular regimes and ideologies.

For all the problems associated with belief in G-d, the death of G-d leads to far more of them.

So, while it is not possible to prove (or disprove) G-d's existence, what is provable is what happens when people stop believin g in G-d.

1. Without G-d there is no good and evil; there are only subjective opinions that we then label "good" and "evil." This does not mean that an atheist cannot be a good person. Nor does it mean that all those who believe in G-d are good; there are good atheists and there are bad believers in G-d. It simply means that unless there is a moral authority that transcends humans from which emanates an objective right and wrong, "right" and "wrong" no more objectively exist than do "beautiful" and "ugly."

2. Without G-d, there is no objective meaning to life. We are all merely random creations of natural selection whose existence has no more intrinsic purpose or meaning than that of a pebble equally randomly produced.

3. Life is ultimately a tragic fare if there is no G-d. We live, we suffer, we die — some horrifically, many prematurely — and there is only oblivion afterward.

4. Human beings need instruction manuals. This is as true for acting morally and wisely as it is for properly flying an airplane. One's heart is often no better a guide to what is right and wrong than it is to the right and wrong way to fly an airplane. The post-religious secular world claims to need no manual; the heart and reason are sufficient guides to leading a good life and to making a good world.

5. If there is no G-d, the kindest and most innocent victims of torture and murder have no better a fate after de ath than do the most cruel torturers and mass murderers. Only if there is a good G-d do Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler have different fates.

6. With the death of Judeo-Christian values in the West, many Westerners believe in little. That is why secular Western Europe has been unwilling and therefore unable to confront evil, whether it was Communism during the Cold War or Islamic totalitarians in its midst today.

7. Without G-d, people in the West often become less, not more, rational. It was largely the secular, not the religious, who believed in the utterly irrational doctrine of Marxism. It was largely the secular, not the religious, who believed that men's and women's natures are basically the same, that perceived differences between the sexes are all socially induced. Religious people in Judeo-Christian countries largely confine their irrational beliefs to religious beliefs (theology), while the secular, without religion to enable the non-rational to express itself, end up applying their irrational beliefs to society, where such irrationalities do immense harm.

8. If there is no G-d, the human being has no free will. He is a robot, whose every action is dictated by genes and environment. Only if one posits human creation by a Creator that transcends genes and environment who implanted the ability to transcend genes and environment can humans have free will.

9. If there is no G-d, humans and "other" animals are of equal value. Only if one posits that=2 0humans, not animals, are created in the image of G-d do humans have any greater intrinsic sanctity than baboons. This explains the movement among the secularized elite to equate humans and animals.

10. Without G-d, there is little to inspire people to create inspiring art. That is why contemporary art galleries and museums are filled with "art" that celebrates the scatological, the ugly and the shocking. Compare this art to Michelangelo's art in the Sistine chapel. The latter elevates the viewer — because Michelangelo believed in something higher than himself and higher than all men.

11. Without G-d nothing is holy. This is definitional. Holiness emanates from a belief in the holy. This explains, for example, the far more widespread acceptance of public cursing in secular society than in religious society. To the religious, there is holy speech and profane speech. In much of secular society the very notion of profane speech is mocked.

12. Without G-d, humanist hubris is almost inevitable. If there is nothing higher than man, no Supreme Being, man becomes the supreme being.

13. Without G-d, there are no inalienable human rights. Evolution confers no rights. Molecules confer no rights. Energy has no moral concerns. That is why America's Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that we are endowed "by our Creator" with certain inalienable rights. Rights depend upon a moral source, a rights giver.

14. "Without G-d," Dostoevsky famously20wrote, "all is permitted." There has been plenty of evil committed by believers in G-d, but the widespread cruelties and the sheer number of innocents murdered by secular regimes — specifically Nazi, Fascist and Communist regimes — dwarfs the evil done in the name of religion.

As noted at the beginning, none of this proves, or even necessarily argues for, G-d's existence. It makes the case for the necessity, not the existence, of G-d. "Which G-d?" the secularist will ask. The G-d of Israel, the G-d of America's founders, "the Holy G-d who is made holy by justice" (Isaiah), the G-d of the Ten Commandments, the G-d who demands love of neighbor, the G-d who endows all human beings with certain inalienable rights, the G-d who is cited on the Liberty Bell because he is the author of liberty. That is the G-d being referred to here, without whom we will be vanquished by those who believe in less noble gods, both secular and divine
_Chap
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Re: If the Almighty doesn't exist

Post by _Chap »

Ho Hum. I see where this person is coming from, and I know that it all makes sense to him, but ...

Once more we find the common assumption that the only valid religious tradition in the world is the so-called 'Abrahamic' one to which Judaism, Christianity and Islam belong: there is a transcendent entity who made and sustains the cosmos, and who is the source of all ethical values. If belief in this entity is lost, it is alleged, all sense of coherence, purpose and morality is lost.

What was lacking in the moral universe of Meng Zi (Mencius) and Zhu Xi in China, and of Gautama Siddharta in India? I don't see signs that the absence of the Abrahamic deity in their world-view did much to diminish their moral status or their sense of purpose in life.

I fear that the position set out in the OP amounts to little more than saying "I can't understand how people who don't share my world-view can manage to get by without either despair or wickedness".

To that, my response is "Well, since they evidently manage pretty well most of the time, maybe you should try harder to understand the way they see things."
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
_harmony
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Re: If the Almighty doesn't exist

Post by _harmony »

It's taken me a lifetime to come to this conclusion, but in my life, God is personal. He doesn't favor one group over another, doesn't give one group authority and deny it to another, doesn't hold grudges, doesn't keep score. I have no problem believing God will guide each individual, even while I don't believe he guides any group.

I think churches are manmade by men who mistakenly extrapolated spiritual experiences about God's will for themselves into God's will for everyone. I think scripture is the same thing: written by men who extrapolated their own spiritual experience into something that applied to everyone. Groups may grant individuals and/or scriptures authority to act in God' name while dwelling among men, but that doesn't mean God does. Any group who claims authority is barking up the wrong tree. Men are in it for the power, not because God had anything to do with it.

My experiences with God are my own, not able to be extraploted to anyone else, not even to be shared with anyone else except under circumstances I judge as safe.

Joseph chose to share his personal spiritual experience. I think that Joesph had a personal spiritual experience in the grove; I'm not saying he saw God (that seems to be in doubt), but I think he had a powerful personal spiritual experience. Out of that experience, the gift of the Book of Mormon, by whatever means it was written, was the limit of his contribution to mankind. Everything else that followed was Joseph following in the footsteps of Mohammed, Peter, Martin Luther, John Calvin, etc. He is simply one of many men who tried to extrapolate their personal spiritual experience into something that had meaning for everyone else. Claims of visitations by angels and the dead, claims of authority, claims of translations, claims of revelations have no more basis in my reality than claims of seeing the Virgin Mary in a slice of toast.

Joseph may be sincerely believed what he taught, or he may have known all along it wasn't based in reality. Neither makes his personal spiritual experiences binding on anyone else.

How do I survive in the LDS church? I grant my bishop limited authority to make decisions based on his understanding. If I don't agree with his decision, I don't accept it. I do what I can to help the other people who sit in the pews but I am not bound to Joseph's view of heaven, his revelations about various accepted doctrines, or his claim of authority.

I have no problem sustaining the GA's as prophets, seers, and revelators, because I think their stewardship of the church makes any spiritual experience they are granted personal to them, just like I am granted spiritual experiences for my own job. I think when they try to extrapolate their personal life experiences, thoughts, prejudices, spiritual experiences meant only for them (like all those stories from Pres Monson), they are simply following in the footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr, Jimmy Swaggert, etc., with the same pitfalls when their experience doesn't help those to whom they speak.

It's hubris to think one's personal experiences with God extrapolate to anyone else, but historically it's easy to see how it occurs over and over again. Churches are a source of power; not from God, but from the people who sit in the pews. Authority doesn't come from God; authority comes from the members.
(Nevo, Jan 23) And the Melchizedek Priesthood may not have been restored until the summer of 1830, several months after the organization of the Church.
_Thama
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Re: If the Almighty doesn't exist

Post by _Thama »

Let's break these down:

1. Without G-d there is no good and evil; there are only subjective opinions that we then label "good" and "evil." This does not mean that an atheist cannot be a good person. Nor does it mean that all those who believe in G-d are good; there are good atheists and there are bad believers in G-d. It simply means that unless there is a moral authority that transcends humans from which emanates an objective right and wrong, "right" and "wrong" no more objectively exist than do "beautiful" and "ugly."

This discussion has been beaten to death on this forum: by invoking God you don't make good and evil less arbitrary, you simply move the decision-making up a level.

2. Without G-d, there is no objective meaning to life. We are all merely random creations of natural selection whose existence has no more intrinsic purpose or meaning than that of a pebble equally randomly produced.

I would argue that the concept of God and an afterlife actually removes value and meaning from our mortal existence. In human systems of thought, value is always attached to something which is limited in quanitity: gold, space, food, energy. If time is unlimited, then what value can it actually have? Religions have found ways around this problem (Alma 34 comes to mind), but still does little to give meaning to the problem beyond a) delayed gratification-- sacrifice now for eternal pleasure! or b) delayed pain avoidance-- sacrifice now to avoid eternal agony/restriction!

3. Life is ultimately a tragic fare if there is no G-d. We live, we suffer, we die — some horrifically, many prematurely — and there is only oblivion afterward.

Sure. It particularly seems that way to someone who has spent most of their life expecting something better to come after death (like me). But once again, there is more to living than suffering if we make it that way. To (attempt to) quote antishock8: temporary/meaningless, doesn't have to be morose/depressing.

4. Human beings need instruction manuals. This is as true for acting morally and wisely as it is for properly flying an airplane. One's heart is often no better a guide to what is right and wrong than it is to the right and wrong way to fly an airplane. The post-religious secular world claims to need no manual; the heart and reason are sufficient guides to leading a good life and to making a good world.

I'd love an instruction manual. If only Leviticus had proved a bit more helpful in its advice. I don't think the secular world claims to need no manual, they just acknowledge that they lack a really good one for the time being.

5. If there is no G-d, the kindest and most innocent victims of torture and murder have no better a fate after de ath than do the most cruel torturers and mass murderers. Only if there is a good G-d do Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler have different fates.

Granted. Though, whose life would you rather have lived?

6. With the death of Judeo-Christian values in the West, many Westerners believe in little. That is why secular Western Europe has been unwilling and therefore unable to confront evil, whether it was Communism during the Cold War or Islamic totalitarians in its midst today.

I partially agree. The problem of a lack of something good to replace religion is, in my view, a serious problem. While religion has its many flaws, it has served a valuable role in society. Time will tell if Western society manages to replace its valuable functions while ridding itself of its negatives. However, a theological system isn't the only thing worth believing in: humanity, democracy and freedom seem to be worthwhile candidates.

7. Without G-d, people in the West often become less, not more, rational. It was largely the secular, not the religious, who believed in the utterly irrational doctrine of Marxism. It was largely the secular, not the religious, who believed that men's and women's natures are basically the same, that perceived differences between the sexes are all socially induced. Religious people in Judeo-Christian countries largely confine their irrational beliefs to religious beliefs (theology), while the secular, without religion to enable the non-rational to express itself, end up applying their irrational beliefs to society, where such irrationalities do immense harm.

This is probably his most poorly-founded point so far. While I'm sure the author fancies himself quite the psychoanalyst, he presents no evidence beyond his own suspicions here. Non-rationality is now a basic human need that must be expressed? Emotion, sure, but non-rationality?

8. If there is no G-d, the human being has no free will. He is a robot, whose every action is dictated by genes and environment. Only if one posits human creation by a Creator that transcends genes and environment who implanted the ability to transcend genes and environment can humans have free will.

If I understand some of what I've read from articles and those on this board (esp. Tarski), modern physics isn't very friendly to free will. Psychology seems to be friendlier, and philosophy has been debating the issue for a long, long time. Of course, if there is a God, many theologians would insist that predestination is a logical consequence, and so the presence or absence of God only appears to alter the nature of the arguments, not the problem itself.

9. If there is no G-d, humans and "other" animals are of equal value. Only if one posits that=2 0humans, not animals, are created in the image of G-d do humans have any greater intrinsic sanctity than baboons. This explains the movement among the secularized elite to equate humans and animals.

Peter Singer, at least, agrees. That's the basis of the animal rights movement. Although, there are reasons (intellectual ability, capacity to feel joy and pain at a greater level of complexity, etc) to consider a human at a higher level than other animals, in the same way that we would consider an insect's well-being perhaps more important than that of a bacteria.

10. Without G-d, there is little to inspire people to create inspiring art. That is why contemporary art galleries and museums are filled with "art" that celebrates the scatological, the ugly and the shocking. Compare this art to Michelangelo's art in the Sistine chapel. The latter elevates the viewer — because Michelangelo believed in something higher than himself and higher than all men.

I'm not much of a modern art fan, so I can't disagree all that strongly.

11. Without G-d nothing is holy. This is definitional. Holiness emanates from a belief in the holy. This explains, for example, the far more widespread acceptance of public cursing in secular society than in religious society. To the religious, there is holy speech and profane speech. In much of secular society the very notion of profane speech is mocked.

Well, nothing is holy whose holiness depended on God to being with. But what is holiness or sacredness to begin with? I would argue that it is that which is considered most valuable to a group of people: to a desert populace, the reservoir upon which they have depended for generations; to the USA, the Constitution which we have depended on for generations. If we value knowledge, the works of Newton and Darwin could be considered sacred.

12. Without G-d, humanist hubris is almost inevitable. If there is nothing higher than man, no Supreme Being, man becomes the supreme being.

Or maybe we a) don't have any "supreme being", as the idea of a group of mammals who can't quit beating the hell out of each other as a "supreme being" seems a bit absurd, or b) aren't so arrogant as to discount the idea of a being or species superior to us in the universe.

13. Without G-d, there are no inalienable human rights. Evolution confers no rights. Molecules confer no rights. Energy has no moral concerns. That is why America's Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that we are endowed "by our Creator" with certain inalienable rights. Rights depend upon a moral source, a rights giver.

The unalienable rights are, in fact, quite alienable, as any felon on death row well knows. Is that a proof of the non-existence of God, or is this guy just a bit daft?

14. "Without G-d," Dostoevsky famously20wrote, "all is permitted." There has been plenty of evil committed by believers in G-d, but the widespread cruelties and the sheer number of innocents murdered by secular regimes — specifically Nazi, Fascist and Communist regimes — dwarfs the evil done in the name of religion.

Stalin and Mao were quite secular. Hitler was (at least publicly) religious, using millennial imagery to describe the 3rd Reich. Other brutal dictators and purveyors of slaughter have been of all sorts of religious and secular beliefs. The great evils of the 20th century have one theme in common: ideology at the expense of morality-- not any particular religion nor lack thereof.
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains.
_Yong Xi
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Re: If the Almighty doesn't exist

Post by _Yong Xi »

God may not exist. At the same time, humans may be the most intelligent life in the universe. If this is the case, our responsibility could be seen as either nil or enormous. Perhaps we are the genesis of intelligent life. I can't imagine anything more sobering than that. I want to see life continue.
_Some Schmo
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Re: If the Almighty doesn't exist

Post by _Some Schmo »

That letter basically amounts to a wish list. To just about every single one of his "points", I thought, "Yeah, so what? It is what it is." The idea, however, that a lack of belief in god leads to anarchy, or at least, a lack of moral restraint (or whatever) is just so stupid, I'm amazed that it's repeated as often as it is.

I keep waiting for my moral degradation to kick in now that let go of the god fantasy. When will that happen? Even when I feel like going on a rampant killing spree, something inside me prevents it. I wonder what that could be.

*rolls eyes*
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
_The Nehor
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Re: If the Almighty doesn't exist

Post by _The Nehor »

Some Schmo wrote:Even when I feel like going on a rampant killing spree, something inside me prevents it. I wonder what that could be.


The Light of Christ :)
"Surely he knows that DCP, The Nehor, Lamanite, and other key apologists..." -Scratch clarifying my status in apologetics
"I admit it; I'm a petty, petty man." -Some Schmo
_marg

Re: If the Almighty doesn't exist

Post by _marg »

Jason Bourne wrote:I think there are some good points as well as some not so good.


What are the good points?
_Some Schmo
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Re: If the Almighty doesn't exist

Post by _Some Schmo »

The Nehor wrote:
Some Schmo wrote:Even when I feel like going on a rampant killing spree, something inside me prevents it. I wonder what that could be.


The Light of Christ :)


Seems strange that something I consider to be a mental construct of certain individuals would have any effect on me. And what about those people who do go on killing sprees who claim they believe in Christ?

Where's the consistency?
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
_Thama
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Re: If the Almighty doesn't exist

Post by _Thama »

The Nehor wrote:The Light of Christ :)


I never realized that the Light of Christ works through evolutionary programming.
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains.
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