I’ve started reading Rene Descartes and I’m intrigued by his idea of “god”.
Descartes is famous for his " I think there for I am." He doubted everything in life to such a degree that he believed the only thing he knew for sure was that when he was thinking then he existed. However, the second thing he deduced is that he knew this world he existed in, real or demonic deception, was imperfect by virtue of the fact that he can doubt it exists. So he knows he exists while thinking and has a conception of imperfections therefore perfection exists and the idea was given to him.
This perfection is god.
God is perfect in all ways. They are beyond deception because a perfect being wouldn’t need to lie, their reason alone for you needing to believe something is enough.
And to me that’s an interesting conception of god. Its a lot more sterile than the normal Christian stance that god is Love which has a emotionally textured connotation. It positions god as having feelings with which we can relate as opposed to Descartes perfection that is simply beyond our reasoning but also (conveniently) not malicious.
As an atheist, god as love makes more sense. God is the feeling of communal love that comes with a religion. People who care for each other for no reason other than because they’re in the same community has always been beautiful to me. God as mislabeled inclusion and comradely behavior males perfect sense.
What is your god or gods like?
I never did understand why other atheists don’t think religions are interesting.
Like obviously a god or gods is an absurd conclusion to jump to in any circumstance, but suspending that disbelief males the idea so much more fun to talk about.
Like the contradictions of the christian god. The implications are very interesting to think about.
God starts off as this incredibly vindictive jerk setting arbitrary and restrictive rules. The only reason is so he can occasionally have an excuse to be a dick head to whole swaths of people or incredibly specific people. But as 4000 years pass he mellows out into the god of love and cooperation that is embodied by Jesus and his teachings.
You can clearly see these weird acting out tendencies in Jesus like his walking on water or creation of flaming orbs above the disciples heads. That’s such pointless but dramatic behavior that old testament god would do. Just toned down and isn’t murder anymore.
So the idea that there is this all powerful, all knowing being that had a fucking edgy teenage phase is really fucking funny.
Even more interesting to me is that the god of our universe is just a selected god as there are more above him according to genesis. The idea that earth is just the Minecraft world of a cosmic toddler who was told to care for humans and he sucks at it is very funny an implication using their own religious texts.
Also we’re atheists. We need to be better than be dick heads to religious people. Our standards should be higher for community engagement
I dunno’ man, when they’re still coming to utterly ridiculous conclusions when taken seriously, I find it nothing but patronizing to attempt to suspend disbelief.
You wouldn’t say we should support schizophrenic delusions so we can make a better mental disorder community, would you? Giving religion a pass literally only harms them and humanity as a whole.
Actually there are a lot of reasons not to necessarily feed into delusions but there is a fine line between healthcare and torturing the confused.
Alzheimer’s Patience’s for example. They inevitability get to the point where they’re looking for someone long dead because they’re scared and want that comfort person. Is it better to play along with Margaret the 80 year old grandma looking for her dead mother because she’s scared? Or should we perpetually tell her of her mothers death for the first time every single day until she herself dies?
Religion is similar in that we won’t talk anyone out of a religion. Its a naive thought that we can rhetoric someone away from such a strong belief as a creator god. Especially from an outsider perspective. From an unknowing perspective.
Religions are deeper than a facts of the matter reading of their beliefs. I like their emotions of the matter even if the facts are rather absurd
Right, but religious people mostly aren’t equivalent to Alzheimer’s patients. Most are so engrained in their belief because it IS reinforced by others’ feeding literal delusion.
If that were to change, you wouldn’t have nearly as many literally deluded people.
That’s a fair read.
But consider, theres obviously something more to religions than simply being deluded and in a feed back loop. We will never successfully replace religion without understanding what that something more is.
Can we recreate a sense of community like the religious have but more inclusive and more resilient to say political agendas?
What other emotions are encapsulated by religion? Can they be secularized?
I’m personally just fascinated by religions because its not something I had and I don’t believe in them.
But I think people interested in de-programming need to think of religion more empathetically.
I would say community. Though with the death of the Third Place, it’s very much an up hill battle on that front. I think many interests have groups that still have good communities, but many aren’t in person any more. We just need to bring back the Third Place and get the non-specific communities rolling again … somehow.