If there were no G-d (or gods), what would be the saddest thing for you?

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Robertanthony said:
I think there are quite a few people who genuinely enjoy being alive, for whom life is an adventure. My life is wretched, but maybe meltzerboy is not particularly anxious by nature, has quite a few gifts and is quite content with his life, friends, family, occupation etc., so don’t go making monolith statements generalizing everyone’s experience of life. I agree with you about hell. Don’t even spend a minute worrying about Purgatory, but hell is a real cause for concern. Some people are overwhelmed with suffering, are desperate to find a place of rest, to think that a brutal condemnation to eternal hell (please spare me the rose-water “people choose hell” BS please) may be what awaits them is well beyond troubling. The eternal beatitude of 75% of all the people who have lived here doesn’t justify the 25% of collateral damage. The thought that my son, who is the apple of my eye, could be afflicted in hell, while I play harp in Heaven and am unbelievably happy and content in the company of the one person who is responsible for keeping my son miserable, is an abomination. If I see an old, sick dog that wants to bite me because the pain drives him mad, making damn sure it stays alive as long as I can sustain him so I can get the satisfaction of seeing him suffer would not cross my mind. But it does God’s. if you’re loving one second and infinitely cruel the next, then you’re not a loving person. God is not a loving person. Loving him back is not an option. We have free-will because God didn’t want us to be robots.:rolleyes: I’d like to do a “Job experience” in reverse: take away the threat of hell and see how many people love God for his own sake and not because of what he can do to their eternal souls. Eternal hell came from the mind of a loving God, I shudder to think what he would have come up with had he not been a loving God?:eek:x1000 The story of the prodigal son should have had an epilogue where the fate of the son would have been described had he not gone back to his loving daddy. Add “annihilationism”, and I gladly recant everything I said in this post. There is something deeply unsettling about God’s unrelenting will to sustain the damned so they can be eternally and hopelessly mortified. Think about this next time someone says God is love.

As a possibility, suicide is a wonderful thing for people acquainted with despair, it’s a defense mechanism that allows you to think: “If things get too bad, i have this last resort way out”. If life lasted 200 years and suicide was not possible, I’d go insane.
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I think Jews in general are less worried about hell than Christians because the topic rarely comes up in Judaism. Total oblivion, or perhaps annihilation of the soul, may be more of a concern for Jews, however. Personally, I cannot conceive of a loving, merciful G-d and an eternal punishment of conscious torture. Perhaps eternal separation from G-d, but even this seems too much punishment from a benevolent G-d even if it is we who purportedly choose this punishment since we would not be able to withstand being in the presence of G-d. My thinking on the issue is that if I, a mere mortal, could not bear such punishment even toward a terribly evil person, how could G-d? But then, I don’t have the infinite wisdom that G-d has.
 
vincent10395 said:
“If there were no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. If there is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.”
  • Dr. William Lane Craig
Thats my disappointment, “Life is absurd”.
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Albert Camus, who broke away from Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist thinking and became a moral humanist instead, distinguished between the absurdity of the uncaring, godless universe and the non-absurdity of life and mankind, who, he believed, nonetheless should and could construct a morality of human values rather than allow itself to be dragged down by the absurdity of the world. Evidently, Dr. Craig would disagree.
 
triumphguy said:
Losing the divine touch in creation
Not being made in the image and likeness of G_d.
No eternal life
No eternal life with loved ones.
No chance of the beatific vision/oneness with God.
Jesus would just be a man.
The OT would be pointless.
The NT would be lie.
The saints would all be fools.
The martyrs woulds be suicidal fools.
And the Guardian-reading sneering self satisfied and smug atheists would be right.
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A great list! Thank you. On a personal level, never seeing one’s loved ones again is a big one for me.
 
meltzerboy said:
Albert Camus, who broke away from Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist thinking and became a moral humanist instead, distinguished between the absurdity of the uncaring, godless universe and the non-absurdity of life and mankind, who, he believed, nonetheless should and could construct a morality of human values rather than allow itself to be dragged down by the absurdity of the world. Evidently, Dr. Craig would disagree.
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Good point re: Camus. And there are problems with the worldviews of people like Craig or Plantinga, because they are philosophically close to Calvinism and its attendant “I know it all” attitude about God, salvation and the problem of evil. God is ineffable and unknowable; His ways are not ours; to reduce him to logic or syllogisms is dangerous; and the challenge is to believe in his goodness in the face of the many tragedies we see around us every day.
 
meltzerboy said:
Albert Camus, who broke away from Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist thinking and became a moral humanist instead, distinguished between the absurdity of the uncaring, godless universe and the non-absurdity of life and mankind, who, he believed, nonetheless should and could construct a morality of human values rather than allow itself to be dragged down by the absurdity of the world. Evidently, Dr. Craig would disagree.
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I’m not sure what you are talking about there. Camus didn’t make such a distinction between the universe as a whole and humanity on the other side. He held that life as a whole, for us specifically, is absurd. Absurd in principle and experience, not in abstract. His solution to the absurd is to live lives that are personally satisfying and create meaning amount ourselves to confound the absurd by our free will.
 
RPRPsych said:
Good point re: Camus. And there are problems with the worldviews of people like Craig or Plantinga, because they are philosophically close to Calvinism and its attendant “I know it all” attitude about God, salvation and the problem of evil. God is ineffable and unknowable; His ways are not ours; to reduce him to logic or syllogisms is dangerous; and the challenge is to believe in his goodness in the face of the many tragedies we see around us every day.
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I would definitely see such a thing in Platinga seeing as he uses a reformed epistemology. But I would challenge you in what way Craig is close to Calvinism philosophically. He doesn’t come anywhere close, nor does he pretend to know it all. If you have a problem defending God from human reason, then the biggest problem you would have is the Catholic Church and it’s scholastic theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas.
 
TRH1292 said:
I would definitely see such a thing in Platinga seeing as he uses a reformed epistemology. But I would challenge you in what way Craig is close to Calvinism philosophically. He doesn’t come anywhere close, nor does he pretend to know it all.

He has been used by far too many Calvinists of my acquaintance (of the Internet tough guy persuasion) to bash Pope Francis, the Church, and Catholicism in general, hence my antipathy. Nothing personal. And even if he’s not a Calvinist per se, he still belongs to the Protestant tradition, with all its attendant flaws.
If you have a problem defending God from human reason, then the biggest problem you would have is the Catholic Church and it’s scholastic theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas.
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Nope, no problems there. St. Thomas and his followers have all worked under the umbrella of the Church, and have submitted their work for its approval. Remember that shortly before even his death, St. Thomas pointed out that all his writings and learning were nothing compared to what God truly is. (I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the general idea.)
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RPRPsych said:
He has been used by far too many Calvinists of my acquaintance (of the Internet tough guy persuasion) to bash Pope Francis, the Church, and Catholicism in general, hence my antipathy. Nothing personal. And even if he’s not a Calvinist per se, he still belongs to the Protestant tradition, with all its attendant flaws.

Nope, no problems there. St. Thomas and his followers have all worked under the umbrella of the Church, and have submitted their work for its approval. Remember that shortly before even his death, St. Thomas pointed out that all his writings and learning were nothing compared to what God truly is. (I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the general idea.)
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That is interesting, because when Dr. Craig was asked on stage at an event what part of Christianity he really disagreed with, he said Calvinism. Granted, he is not a Catholic. But describing him as a Calvinist just isn’t anywhere close to reality.

Being a convert to Catholicism from Calvinism myself, I never met a single Calvinist who considered Dr. Craig one, or even appreciated his work. Calvinists almost universally view him with disdain because of his perceived “Semi-Romanist” views of theology, stemming from his acceptance of Free Will and espousal of molinism.
 
vincent10395 said:
“If there were no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. If there is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.”
  • Dr. William Lane Craig
Thats my disappointment, “Life is absurd”.
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As much as I have profound respect for Dr. Craig, he (and many others) seem to forget that there are non-theistic religions that promise immortality, including Buddhism, some branches of Hinduism, and Jainism.

To answer the OP, I’d probably adopt an eastern religion that implies no God. If your question ultimately amounts to “what if there is no afterlife”, then what would make me sad is mortality, the absurdity of life, eternal separation from our loved ones after death, and ultimately, the void that was once our beautiful universe. Goodbye art, science, philosophy, harmony, poetry, music, knowledge, love, archaeology, life, and everything else that we thought mattered, everything humanity collectively put its sweat and tears in, and everything that makes life itself beautiful.

And yet, I’m agnostic. I have the “joy” of suffering both fear of punishment, and fear of absurdity, as opposed to explicitly non-religious or religious folk, who more often than not fear only one of them.

(I wouldn’t miss my cynicism, though)
 
TRH1292 said:
That is interesting, because when Dr. Craig was asked on stage at an event what part of Christianity he really disagreed with, he said Calvinism. Granted, he is not a Catholic. But describing him as a Calvinist just isn’t anywhere close to reality.

Being a convert to Catholicism from Calvinism myself, I never met a single Calvinist who considered Dr. Craig one, or even appreciated his work. Calvinists almost universally view him with disdain because of his perceived “Semi-Romanist” views of theology, stemming from his acceptance of Free Will and espousal of molinism.
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Thanks for the info. I’m aware that Craig is a Molinist, which is why I was surprised in the aforementioned online debate. Oh well. 🙂

And it’s true that he’s certainly not as “know-it-all” as the average Calvinist theologian (Boettner, anyone? Or John Piper?) But I guess I have an issue with his “Kalam cosmological argument”; when the Church Fathers have said it better, why seek support from Arabian philosophers? That’s a minor quibble, though. Reason and faith are both important, and I’ll respectfully concede the non-equivalence of Craig and, say, Plantinga or Piper. 😉
 
Life would be pointless without God. Honestly, what other reason is their to live for.
 
RPRPsych said:
I like his free will defense. But I do not like Calvinism. How he could formulate one, and hold to the other, is beyond me. Calvinism is like the Christian version of Islam. 😉
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I too dislike Calvinism. I do however like his evolutionary argument against naturalism, and the joke he included in it (I am paraphrasing):

Evolution would only allow us to develop what is necessary for survival, also known as the four "F"s: feeding, fighting, fleeing and reproduction.

wait a minute, reproduction isn’t spelled with a… ooohhhhhh…
 
HardRockGTR said:
I too dislike Calvinism. I do however like his evolutionary argument against naturalism, and the joke he included in it (I am paraphrasing):

Evolution would only allow us to develop what is necessary for survival, also known as the four "F"s: feeding, fighting, fleeing and reproduction.

wait a minute, reproduction isn’t spelled with a… ooohhhhhh…
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Family life?

Falling in love?

Oh, wait… 😃
 
TRH1292 said:
I’m not sure what you are talking about there. Camus didn’t make such a distinction between the universe as a whole and humanity on the other side. He held that life as a whole, for us specifically, is absurd. Absurd in principle and experience, not in abstract. His solution to the absurd is to live lives that are personally satisfying and create meaning amount ourselves to confound the absurd by our free will.
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Perhaps I expressed this poorly. What I meant is that, for Camus, while life may also be absurd, the human moral values we can strive to attach to it, make it worth living and enable us to “lancer un defi contre l’absurde” (“hurl defiance against the absurdity”). This was a departure from the philosophy of Sartre, who believed in the individual subjectivity and re-creation of one’s life, divorced from any necessary morality. Sartre called existentialism his form of humanism. While Camus began as an existentialist in his book L’Etranger (The Stranger), he evolved in his thinking, as revealed in La Peste (The Plague), in which he shows himself to be a moral humanist who is concerned with the welfare of others rather than focusing solely on the self in confronting the absurd.
 
RPRPsych said:
Thanks for the info. I’m aware that Craig is a Molinist, which is why I was surprised in the aforementioned online debate. Oh well. 🙂

And it’s true that he’s certainly not as “know-it-all” as the average Calvinist theologian (Boettner, anyone? Or John Piper?) But I guess I have an issue with his “Kalam cosmological argument”; when the Church Fathers have said it better, why seek support from Arabian philosophers? That’s a minor quibble, though. Reason and faith are both important, and I’ll respectfully concede the non-equivalence of Craig and, say, Plantinga or Piper. 😉
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👍
 
HardRockGTR said:
As much as I have profound respect for Dr. Craig, he (and many others) seem to forget that there are non-theistic religions that promise immortality, including Buddhism, some branches of Hinduism, and Jainism.

Well, the arguments they bring forth, prove (or try to prove) the existence of a personal Creator who is one.

God Bless!👍
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