Man created God? [edited]

[Charlemagne_II]

wxboss

I would like to quickly end by saying that even though we may be at odds here, I do respect the fact that you are a person of conviction. I’ve always despised the Agnostic as they are unable to decide what it is that they really believe (I always considered them to be cowards without a cause - no matter how much they try to convince everyone otherwise). The person who has put no thought into what they believe in has no right to expect others to believe in what they believe in

I also believe Touchstone has put plenty of thought into being an atheist rather than an agnostic. What he has not put plenty of thought into is why he is certain enough (unlike the agnostic) to believe there is no God. There is literally no evidence to prove that God does not exist. One is left then with whether there is proof that God does exist. The signs pointing to a Deity of some sort Who designed and started up this universe are a good deal more suggestive than any non-existent signs that the universe always existed and existed without purpose or direction or final end. The Big Bang and the appearance of intelligent design suggest that whatever God produced us, we certainly did not imagine Him out of whole cloth. That mankind everywhere is reaching out to Him and bowing down to him is also a sign that we did not create Him, but rather that we acknowledge our dependence on Him and thank Him for our very being.

I also respect the agnostic, to a degree. The agnostic is smarter than the atheist because he knows that he does not know whether there is a God, and he knows he cannot prove there is no God. When Bertrand Russell chose to call himself an agnostic rather than an atheist, I think he did so because as a logician he knew he could not prove with certainty that God does not exist. Despite his contempt for Christianity, and his eagerness to argue that the Christian God was invented, he would not go the extra mile and ally himself with the atheists. Touchstone will probably blast this point as arguing from authority rather than on the merits. But I think Russell just couldn’t find any logical merits in atheism, and as a master logician, one would think that if anyone could find a solid logical argument for atheism, it would be Russell.

Also, Touchstone talks about the merits of the case for atheism. What merits? Simplicity? Consistency? These are words only with no arguments behind them. When he produces the arguments, arguments that apparently evaded the genius of Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and Bertrand Russell, we shall see whether it is theism or atheism that is a “simpler” explanation or a more “consistent” one or a more “performative” one (post # 56), and whether it makes more sense that God created us, or that we created God.

However, I don’t expect this conversation to take place as Touchstone seems allergic to the thoughts of greater minds than his or mine.

 

[Leela]

I also respect the agnostic, to a degree. The agnostic is smarter than the atheist because he knows that he does not know whether there is a God, and he knows he cannot prove there is no God. When Bertrand Russell chose to call himself an agnostic rather than an atheist, I think he did so because as a logician he knew he could not prove with certainty that God does not exist. Despite his contempt for Christianity, and his eagerness to argue that the Christian God was invented, he would not go the extra mile and ally himself with the atheists. Touchstone will probably blast this point as arguing from authority rather than on the merits. But I think Russell just couldn’t find any logical merits in atheism, and as a master logician, one would think that if anyone could find a solid logical argument for atheism, it would be Russell.

Here you go again trying to build your team of intellectuals. This has got to be the strangest teammate of yours yet. Russell an agnostic? This is the guy who made the tea pot argument to show the emptiness of agnosticism, remember?

In case anyone wants to know what Russell thought on the subject, his essay “Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic?” ought to make it clear.

"Here there comes a practical question which has often troubled me. Whenever I go into a foreign country or a prison or any similar place they always ask me what is my religion.

I never know whether I should say “Agnostic” or whether I should say “Atheist”. It is a very difficult question and I daresay that some of you have been troubled by it. As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God.

On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.

None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of homer really exist, and yet if you were to set to work to give a logical demonstration that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and the rest of them did not exist you would find it an awful job. You could not get such proof.

Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line."

Whether or not you think conclusive knowledge is possible, whether or not you are an agnostic, there remains the question of whether or not you think there is a God. It’s pretty clear that Russell, like pretty much all atheists, doesn’t claim to have any special knowledge of the nonexistence of God anymore than he does about the nonexistence of Zeus, also does not believe that such gods exist. That’s why he can be an agnostic in the strict sense, while his not believing in God also makes him an atheist.

 

[thevickinator16]

May I interject a question here?

If you do not believe in God at all, why are you on this CAF web site? Seems to me that your beliefs are not as set in stone as you say they are.

Just curious.

God Bless to all!

 

[Leela]

May I interject a question here?

If you do not believe in God at all, why are you on this CAF web site? Seems to me that your beliefs are not as set in stone as you say they are.

Just curious.

God Bless to all!

I don’t know if you mean me or not, but my beliefs are definitely not set in stone. In fact, I’m here to object to the whole notion of setting beliefs in stone.

 

[thevickinator16]

I don’t know if you mean me or not, but my beliefs are definitely not set in stone. In fact, I’m here to object to the whole notion of setting beliefs in stone.

I guess I should have been more specific. I do not see why those who have no belief in God would want to come on a religious web site. I am not sure what you mean about your own beliefs, I am talking of those with no belief whatsoever.

I can’t imagine being without God. I spent 35+ years as a slave to this world’s ways and felt completely empty and had nothing to show for it. After returning to my faith, I have been the most at peace as I ever have been.

It just seems strange for someone to come on this site and be a member if they do not believe in God!

 

[nancy_dalrymple]

Hello Leeha, I hope i didn’t mispell your name, You gave a book to read and i want to thank you and would like to give you a book called"Mere Christainity" by CS Lewis

Also a book called “Confessions of a Feminist” If you would these would be nice for you to read or may be they have it on line? You are Loved Nancy

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Leela

Here you go again trying to build your team of intellectuals. This has got to be the strangest teammate of yours yet.

Russell was not a Christian, as I pointed out, so he isn’t a teammate. That’s your word, not mine. But he’s not the atheist teammate either. In the radio debate with Frederick Copleston back in the 40s he knew he was up against a real philosopher, and so he took the position of being an agnostic. The explanation you cite is a difference of terminology for different audiences. Notice that for philosophers he continues to call himself an agnostic. That’s an important distinction which shows that Russell is mindful of his obligation to speak of his position as a philosopher, regardless of how the average person may perceive his position.

• It’s pretty clear that Russell, like pretty much all atheists, doesn’t claim to have any special knowledge of the nonexistence of God anymore than he does about the nonexistence of Zeus, also does not believe that such gods exist. That’s why he can be an agnostic in the strict sense, while his not believing in God also makes him an atheist.*

So now you want him on your team. As far as the Greek gods are concerned, yes Russell was certain that they did not exist. To that extent he was an atheist. But to that extent I also am an atheist because I also do not believe that they exist. Russell, denying the Christian God, does not at the same time deny Deity altogether. If you can find me a passage that shows Russell to be an atheist in the sense of denying that any God exists, including the God of Einstein, Newton, and Darwin, I’d like very much to see that passage in black and white. You won’t find it, because it doesn’t exist. Russell was consistent in never allowing that he denied absolutely the existence of some kind of God because he just didn’t know. He was and remained, as far as we know to his death, an agnostic. If he had an absolute to which he subjected all his scrutinies, it was the goddess Reason. That he subjected Christ to Reason was his flaw. He should have subjected Reason to Christ.

Christ was the most reasonable of men.

---

 

[Charlemagne_II]

thevickinator
*
I can’t imagine being without God. I spent 35+ years as a slave to this world’s ways and felt completely empty and had nothing to show for it. After returning to my faith, I have been the most at peace as I ever have been.*

Many fallen away Catholics, like you and me, come to the same conclusion sooner or later. The emptiness of this world needing to be filled up with the Spirit is a chronic symptom of life without God.

 

[Leela]

Leela

Here you go again trying to build your team of intellectuals. This has got to be the strangest teammate of yours yet.

Russell was not a Christian, as I pointed out, so he isn’t a teammate. That’s your word, not mine. But he’s not the atheist teammate either. In the radio debate with Frederick Copleston back in the 40s he knew he was up against a philosopher, and so he took the position of being an agnostic. The explanation you cite is a difference of terminology for different audiences. Notice that for philosophers he continues to call himself an agnostic. That’s an important distinction which shows that Russell is mindful of his obligation to speak of his position as a philosopher, regardless of how the average person may perceive his position.

• It’s pretty clear* that Russell, like pretty much all atheists, doesn’t claim to have any special knowledge of the nonexistence of God anymore than he does about the nonexistence of Zeus, also does not believe that such gods exist. That’s why he can be an agnostic in the strict sense, while his not believing in God also makes him an atheist.

So now you want him on your team. As far as the Greek gods are concerned, yes Russell was certain that they did not exist. To that extent he was an atheist. But to that extent I also am an atheist because I also do not believe that they exist. Russell, denying the Christian God, does not at the same time deny Deity altogether. If you can find me a passage that shows Russell to be an atheist in the sense of denying that any God exists, including the God of Einstein, Newton, and Darwin, I’d like very much to see that passage in black and white. You won’t find it, because it doesn’t exist. Russell was consistent in never allowing that he denied absolutely the existence of some kind of God because he just didn’t know. He was and remained, as far as we know to his death, an agnostic.

Yes, in that sense he was an agnostic, and so am I and so is Touchstone and probably every other atheist you know. But it also correct to say that someone is an atheist if they do not believe in God. Russell did not believe in God.

On the other hand, if you want to use the definition of atheist as one who claims to know for certain that God does not exist, then there pretty much are no atheists so the distinction is completely unhelpful in categorizing people by their beliefs.

If he had an absolute to which he subjected all his scrutinies, it was the goddess Reason. That he subjected Christ to Reason was his flaw. He should have subjected Reason to Christ.

I don’t know what it could mean to subject Reason to Christ, but I agree that Russell and many atheists treat reason as an essence and therefor like a sort of god. The Enlightenment did not completely rid such thinkers of essentialist thinking. In that sense, Russell is closer to theism than I am but still pretty darn far from it.

 

[Touchstone]

Touchtone - we meet again
The illustration you provided lead you to the correct conclusion - just as you are outside of the program you created so is God outside of His creation (this observation is extremely important as it is the very thing that differentiates us from all other creatures, that is, our ability to create! A trait that we inherited from our Creator). But as we get back to the question of ‘authorship’ and proving if there is an actual author, I would propose the following example. Consider the authors of freeware, and suppose you were like minded in a certain area. Say you enjoyed fishing, it was something you were passionate about. So you develop a program that provides other like-minded enthusiasts with a way of determining what is the best time to fish in their area. Your goal is to aid and encourage those who appreciate the same thing that you feel so strongly about. You upload your file where people have free access to it without any kind of signature or personal identification except for an email address for those who wish to contact you. You conceal your identity while also allowing those who are interested to contact you if they wish. You could have given out your full name. address, phone number, personal schedule etc., yet you didn’t want just anyone to have all yourt personal information - only those who had an similar interest and were of a like mind and you felt could be trusted. In short, the author has control over that which he creates just as you have control over how the programs you create. Some may disagree with your reasoning, but they can’t deny that you alone control what you created.

Yes, I’m a software developer, and part of what I do is in cryptography and cryptanalysis, so a term you might like to apply here is steganography, the embedding o messages in such a way that they are (partially) hidden or otherwise obscure such that only the intended or qualified observers will know what to look for and receive the message. “Security by obscurity”, the expression goes in this business.

Anyway, I certainly understand that a clever Author can fashion the program so that the actors inside the program do not see “©YHWH, In the beginning, all rights reserved” spelled out in the stars at night, or burned into the bark of every tree on the planet. God can be as obvious or as cryptic as he’d like in making himself manifest in his “software”.

That’s exactly it, Touchstone! You are closer to the truth than you think! Why is it natural to question such things? These are questions that aren’t intrinsic in the mechanical sense. They seek to answer those things which do not appear to be natural. For instance, do you ponder much of the day as to why your pulse pulses or why your heart beats? If your pulse didn’t pulse or your heart didn’t beat than those questions would be meaningless. Yet if you actually did ponder on such things it might bring you closer to the explanation for their existence.

It’s a truism in psychology and the cognitive sciences that the hardest, most complex processes to understand are the ones we don’t notice, and take for granted. It’s proven to be fantastically difficult to program robots to “see” their surroundings in such a way that they can perform the “chunking” and “associative” functions that you and I and every other human does constantly, second by second, every waking hour of our lives, effortlessly, *without even knowing we’re doing it. *It’s one of the most difficult things our brains do in terms of “consuming CPU cycles”, and we don’t even notice.

But I think that pondering just that very thing, and learning more about how that works leads me down a path of wonder and amazement, but not one that ends up pointing at God. Indeed, the real “punch” in the wonder for me is the realization that comes with learning about the process as an emergent phenomenon, not the creative of “swoosh” of a cosmic brush stroke (which is a powerful thing to imagine on its own, I’ll grant), but an extraordinarily complex and delicate system that has evolved over eons.

-TS

(continued shortly)

 

[Touchstone]

wxboss:

The ordinary mechanics of life are, well, ordinary and require no explanation. But life teaches us that it is anything but ordinary (that things don’t always go as planned even though there is every reason to believe they should) it’s as if some other force holds sway in the ordinary way of things.

Yes, and I do understand the inclination to “magic thinking” that way. I share it, as an urge. But the most profound wonder here I suggest obtains from a deeper understanding of the mind and consciousness as not the product of magic, of supernatural fiat, but as a kind of symphony of self-interaction of emergent systems that arise, literally from the dust, from the sea, all as result of law and chance interactive with matter and energy over deep time.

To be honest with you, I would not be on this site if I didn’t have questions. I was an atheist at one point who became a Lutheran and then a Baptist and now a desire to join the Catholic faith. The fact that I’ve changed several times could be used as an argument against what I really believe in, but that isn’t the case. The real failure was on my part since I didn’t really pursue what it was that I believed in. I simply accepted what others told me until I discovered (through personal investigation) that I really didn’t believe what I thought I believed. It was a long process of asking question after question after question where I required myself to come up with the answer. The more answers I came up with, the narrower the questions became until it all funneled down to a particular point which is the reason I’m posting here right now.

Good on ya. I hope I can be a kind of mnemonic device for you in your quest, a kind of touchstone for your investigation.

I regret that I’m unable to answer all your challenges as the time is late and I have to get up early, but I would like to end by say one thing: however much we may disagree, I can’t deny your conviction and my admiration for it.

That’s OK, they’ve got some crazy small post size limit here, so it’s just as well. I’d just make everyone’s eyes glaze over with my responses if you had time to post everything you’d like.

I would like to quickly end by saying that even though we may be at odds here, I do respect the fact that you are a person of conviction. I’ve always despised the Agnostic as they are unable to decide what it is that they really believe (I always considered them to be cowards without a cause - no matter how much they try to convince everyone otherwise). The person who has put no thought into what they believe in has no right to expect others to believe in what they believe in.

Cheers

Thanks I appreciate that. I’m a committed atheist, based on what I understand and reason about from the world around me, and I think that is the most accurate term. I’m convinced no God or gods or anything supernatural exists. But ever atheist is also an agnostic, in technically terms, as there is no way to be certain that no God or gods exist. The reasonable mind, no matter how convinced he may be of the absence of gods, must allow for that possibility, even if it is a remote one. The atheist who claims certainty that no God or gods exist is demostrably a fool.

And I don’t want to be too contrary, here, as we’re getting on well, but I cannot understate on this forum the value and utility of doubt. Doubt is the basis for all knowledge. As you can tell, I’m not one to end up in “washy-washy-I-can’t-decide” on a lot of questions, but the disciplined, fearless application of doubt is the means to seeing the world as clear as a human can, in my view. It’s not the end goal (!), but a tool that is uniquely able to separate the wheat from the chaff, knowledge-wise.

Thanks for the comments.

-Touchstone

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Leela

*But it also correct to say that someone is an atheist if they do not believe in God. Russell did not believe in God. *

Again, he said nothing against the God of Newton, Darwin, or Einstein. And he called himself an agnostic on more than one occasion.

 

[Leela]

I guess I should have been more specific. I do not see why those who have no belief in God would want to come on a religious web site. I am not sure what you mean about your own beliefs, I am talking of those with no belief whatsoever.

Everyone has beliefs. I come here to discuss which beliefs are worth keeping and which we would be better off without. Obviously I believe that people would generally be better off without belief in the supernatural.

I can’t imagine being without God. I spent 35+ years as a slave to this world’s ways and felt completely empty and had nothing to show for it. After returning to my faith, I have been the most at peace as I ever have been.

It sounds like your religion is working for you and I am sure that you will continue to believe it as long as it does.

 

[Leela]

Hello Leeha, I hope i didn’t mispell your name, You gave a book to read and i want to thank you and would like to give you a book called"Mere Christainity" by CS Lewis

Also a book called “Confessions of a Feminist” If you would these would be nice for you to read or may be they have it on line? You are Loved Nancy

I gave a book to read? I don’t recall. I wouldn’t hope for you to read anything but my posts. Thanks, just for doing that.

I actually just finished “Mere Christianity” as well as “The Reason for God” by Timothy Keller. My thoughts on the latter can be read here:

atheistichope.com/2009/04/reason-for-god.html

If I were you, I’d recommend that one to my skeptic friends over Lewis since it addresses more of the concerns of today’s doubters.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

This might be considered Russell’s miniature agnostic creed:

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine. Bertrand Russell

 

[nancy_dalrymple]

Yes I do know what you are talking about: Touchtone
Mind Control, Chris Angel, other wise known as mind freak! God did not create computers man did by mans choice to use his mind for either good or evil, like in the garden. Choice! God did create the universe and even you, but it is your choice and how you recieve this creation, unto God or unto yourself? Also there is subliminal messages to control the mind of the mindless shopper, as the music play’s sweet nothings you buy every thing and are left with nothing. The computer can do that also because it has a personality, dosen’t it? Don’t you think that? And he will bruise you in the head (mind) That to is scriptual! You are- known! Nancy

 

[Touchstone]

I also believe Touchstone has put plenty of thought into being an atheist rather than an agnostic. What he has not put plenty of thought into is why he is certain enough (unlike the agnostic) to believe there is no God. There is literally no evidence to prove that God does not exist. One is left then with whether there is proof that God does exist.

It’s a confused demand. Prove that God does not exist, anywhere in reality, any way. Think about that. What would proof look like to you, in principle? What would the world look like that proves to you that no God or gods exist?

If you have trouble coming up with a scenario for us that would prove to you (and us, perhaps) that God does not exist, then I suggest that is a sign that your understanding of knowledge and propositions needs an update. Proving a universal negative is a non-starter. The best one can do in approaching that is to conclude that all available/known positive arguments (i.e. “God does exist, because…”) fail.

The signs pointing to a Deity of some sort Who designed and started up this universe are a good deal more suggestive than any non-existent signs that the universe always existed and existed without purpose or direction or final end.

They do? The more we discover about the world, the less magical it looks and the more mergent and mechanistic it looks. Until the 19th century, for example, the question of biological diversity was a huge challenge to a materialist view of reality. The explanation that Darwin came up with made that challenge go away. The more we learn about evolution, and the cell, and genetics, the more compelling the case of law and chance working in concert, eons of unguided exploration of the fitness landscape of the environment.

The Big Bang and the appearance of intelligent design suggest that whatever God produced us, we certainly did not imagine Him out of whole cloth. That mankind everywhere is reaching out to Him and bowing down to him is also a sign that we did not create Him, but rather that we acknowledge our dependence on Him and thank Him for our very being.

I think both Intelligent Design and religion as mass phenomena tell us a lot more about human minds and psychology than they do about extramental reality. Science enables us to harness methods and technology that let us not abandon our intuitions, but rather get beyond them, so that we can achieve some new level of objective analysis about the world beyond just our intuitive grasp. And the picture that paints is one of man as “teleocentric”, honed by evolution around “intentionality”. We are “design-oriented” beings. That’s one of the reasons we’re still around on the planet to wonder about questions like this. But science provides a way to get beyond our intuitive “think like a designer” stance, toward “unthink like a universe” so to speak, and that view provides a rather sharp rebuke to the intuition, the sense of “design” that so many find “obvious” in nature.

I also respect the agnostic, to a degree. The agnostic is smarter than the atheist because he knows that he does not know whether there is a God, and he knows he cannot prove there is no God. When Bertrand Russell chose to call himself an agnostic rather than an atheist, I think he did so because as a logician he knew he could not prove with certainty that God does not exist. Despite his contempt for Christianity, and his eagerness to argue that the Christian God was invented, he would not go the extra mile and ally himself with the atheists. Touchstone will probably blast this point as arguing from authority rather than on the merits. But I think Russell just couldn’t find any logical merits in atheism, and as a master logician, one would think that if anyone could find a solid logical argument for atheism, it would be Russell.

I touched on this with wxboss… all atheists are necessarily agnostics, at some level. “Atheist” is just the term we use for “convinced”, rather than “up in their” about the idea that no God or gods exist. Any atheist who tells you he has epistemic certainty that no God or gods exist is a fool, a fool who’s folly can be shown in just a couple easy steps.

Bertrand Russell, though, was an atheist’s atheist. He was a Dawkins-class atheist. See Leela’s quote from Russell on this.

Also, Touchstone talks about the merits of the case for atheism. What merits? Simplicity? Consistency? These are words only with no arguments behind them. When he produces the arguments, arguments that apparently evaded the genius of Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and Bertrand Russell, we shall see whether it is theism or atheism that is a “simpler” explanation or a more “consistent” one or a more “performative” one (post # 56), and whether it makes more sense that God created us, or that we created God.

That would be more than is proper for this thread, but it’s not a problem to take that up in its own thread if you like.

However, I don’t expect this conversation to take place as Touchstone seems allergic to the thoughts of greater minds than his or mine.

It’s not the thoughts and ideas I object to, it’s the invocation of the names IN PLACE OF their ideas that just courts error and pushes a fallacy. If your argument isn’t just as forceful without famous names, that’s a serious problem.

-TS

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Bertrand Russell, though, was an atheist’s atheist. He was a Dawkins-class atheist. See Leela’s quote from Russell on this.

I’ve already answered this. Russell clearly announced himself an agnostic in formal debate with Copleston and in the passage cited by Leela. He certainly was not an atheist’s atheist. I’d grant you that, like Dawkins, he used frivolous and insulting arguments against Christianity, but that is largely because of his psychological make-up rather than his intelligence. Russell lost both of his parents when a child. He also lost all of his nannies, many of them the only loving contacts he knew while growing up. He also lost four of his five wives through divorce. Not a stable personality, it’s not surprising that he would lash out at Christ and Christianity. Even his daughter Katherine admitted that she found him cold and aloof to her needs as his child. Looking for love, Katherine turned to Christ, as many people do who find cold intellect to be nothing without a warm heart. Her father took the opposite route by vilifying Christ. To that extent Russell agreed with the stance of Dawkins in vilifying Christians; but he never said silly things like the theory of evolution being a way to make atheism respectable.

Any atheist who tells you he has epistemic certainty that no God or gods exist is a fool, a fool who’s folly can be shown in just a couple easy steps.

Are you saying you are an agnostic **and **an atheist?

When we discussed this matter in another forum you made a more interesting statement: that one decides to be an atheist or a theist on the basis of the preponderance of evidence for or against God. Since atheism offers no evidence against God, I don’t understand why anyone would call himself an atheist.

But if you are now taking the position, as you did in post # 56, that certain criteria, if met, dispose one to call oneself an atheist, then you should develop that criteria; that is, argue the merits of the case. If you decide to quote Dawkins, I will not complain that you are citing authority. Rather, I will look at the argument Dawkins presents; and please don’t be surprised if I answer by citing someone else who is as, or more more knowledgeable, in these matters. After all, you and I are both indebted to many authorities for our education, that is to say, people who developed reasonable (even if arguable) evidence to make their case. Nor should you resent me for citing thinkers who in the opinion of mankind are a good deal more intelligent and open-minded than Richard Dawkins, you, or me.

The problem here, as I see it, and as you suggested in an earlier post, is that sooner or later we get into positions where we have to use the ideas of others without knowing for certain how reasonable those arguments are. After all, if the authorities cannot agree with each other, how can we (who are somewhat less than authorities) be able to know which sources we are using are the more reliable and the more truthful?

I agree that the three points you noted and that I repeated in a recent post might be the subject of another thread. Since those are the three points you raised, I think it a matter of courtesy that I ask you to frame the question to be discussed in a new thread.

 

[Leela]

Leela

*But it also correct to say that someone is an atheist if they do not believe in God. Russell did not believe in God. *

Again, he said nothing against the God of Newton, Darwin, or Einstein. And he called himself an agnostic on more than one occasion.

As far as I know, he never mentioned leprechauns, either, but if you follow his reasoning , it’s clear that he would have been agnostic on them, too. Same with unicorns, fairies, etc.

You aid previously, “Russell was consistent in never allowing that he denied absolutely the existence of some kind of God because he just didn’t know.”

Russell would not assert that gods do not exist since the burden of proof for that assertion would be on him, and he admitted that he could not prove that gods do not exist. However, when you say “he just didn’t know” you shouldn’t think that he put the existence of God and the non existence of God on equal footing. Obviously Russell doubted very much that any sort of god exists.

Russell thought that religion was a human invention in response to fear:

"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it. "

 

[nancy_dalrymple]

I beg your pardon but i do not believe because i fear, but i believe out of LOVE for the Whole family of God, and the Trinity.I respect the Word of God and the church,and all those who are the children of the body of Christ. But if you needed me for help i would be there for you i would not mark you because you were not a Catholic or any religion, and i do love you because i,know that i know, that God did make you and this whole universe. Science believe’s in facts and anything that is tangible We believe in thing’s that are not seen things that are hoped for, blessed are those who believe and have not seen. I never seen my Mom having me at birth, but i was there. I cannot prove it but was there! Do you believe Your mom had you? Why? You certaintly did not witness it. But you were there! You believe don’t you? And by the way all the martyers who died must have some fear but their Love for the Lord God was more than their fear ( the human part) and they went Like soldiers of the Cross every one fear or no fear that is not the point, they truly had the faith that carried them through to the last day on earth, why because they knew where they were going, to be with the Master. I fear life more then death for i have seen to much suffering and have been through enough to make anyone not believe, But i will one day know that all i have suffered in this life was NOT IN VAIN! You are Loved Nancy