Is God’s existence beside the point?

[cbayer]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/10/08/is-gods-existence-beside-the-point/

BY SIGFRIED GOLD
October 8 at 7:55 am


Mark Poprocki / iStock

God is a red herring. The question of God’s existence, God’s nature, the issues that bring religions into war with each other or that bring believers and unbelievers into conflict–these all obscure the deeper currents in our philosophical or religious lives. Like the fans of opposing baseball teams, we can get so wrapped up in our rivalries that we lose sight of what we share.

The personality of a sports fan is infinitely more significant and interesting than the team he roots for: is he a hooligan who sees team rivalries as an opportunity for declaring allegiances and brawling? A stats geek who studies the sports pages like a Talmudic scholar? A casual fan who enjoys rooting for the home team but knows it’s all in good fun? An epicure who experiences a display of transcendent athleticism as a vision of the divine manifesting in human form?

You can immediately tell by the hat someone wears or by the moments she cheers at a baseball game what team she roots for; discerning her personality as a sports fan is not so easy. It is increasingly clear that pluralists or moderates of all religions or secular persuasions find more in common with each other than they do with the zealots in their own ostensible camp. But I am not making an argument for moderation and tolerance here. Because as much as the reasonable among us would like to place ourselves at the admirable end of the continuum between open-mindedness and ideational rigidity, there is something strange about the domain of religion, and the zealots may turn out to be more open-minded, in a way, than the moderates.

I know that atheists get offended when people claim that atheism is another religion. I’d like to make a claim like that, but not for the offensive reason that atheists have faith that God doesn’t exist in the same way believers have faith that he does. That’s a misuse of the word faith and a misrepresentation of the ways most atheists reject the idea of God. My claim, rather, is based on my wanting to see religion (which by my understanding might also be called philosophical engagement) as having much less to do with the contents of any specific belief than with the way people interact with those beliefs. What religion is really about, by this view, is the phenomenon of having one’s conceptions of self, others and “the good” reshaped by an encounter with a community, person, book or body of teachings espousing some particular set of these conceptions. Becoming an atheist, especially from a position very different from atheism, can be a cataclysmic shift in a person’s self-conception and conceptions of morality and the world; similar in many ways to a religious conversion.

more at link

[skepticscott]

1. In other words

The author knows that the whole notion of a "god" that actually exists is unsupportable, if critical, rational thought is applied, but he's desperately trying to preserve the idea that "religion" is sensible and necessary, even when all of its supporting props and reasons for being in the first place have been knocked out.

Like so many liberal internet hacks these days, he wants very badly to be seen as rational, while still sucking up to the idea that SOME sort of religiony-thingy is vital to our civilization. So he has to morph his notion of "religion" into whatever form he thinks will render it immune from criticism or ridicule from the more critical and less emotional needy.

[Fearless]

2. The discussion is important

It teaches critical thinking and functions as a counterweight to the whims of wealthy religious organizations.

[cbayer]

3. Agree. It would be a great topic for a course.

I liked the author's take on this.

[rrneck]

4. Yes. nt

[TreasonousBastard]

5. A primary problem, maybe THE problem is that...

by the very nature of God, we can't observe or understand the nature of God.

God is not just not human, but not of this planet, dimension, or whatever else that can be observed. That's kinda the whole point of being God.

And, since it appears that no apparition of God has been around for over 2,000 years (assuming you believe the Jesus story-- much longer if you don't), we're probably not going to see another one any time soon. This leads us, as a scrappy species anyway, to come up with our own definitions of God and fight to the death for each and every of these definitions. Since nothing can be proven without that elusive appearance of God, the fight goes on... Not much different than arguments over the mating habits of unicorns, but far more problematic.

Even if God should make an appearance next week, who would believe it? And since not everyone would, if enough people do it would just be another round of religious warfare.

[skepticscott]

10. No, the problem is

that unthinking agnostics say in one breath that the nature of "god" is unknowable, and then in the next, proceed to say what he is or isn't, expressing the same knowledge that they say is impossible to obtain.

[Fumesucker]

6. Perhaps that's why the process of becoming an atheist from theist is known as "deconversion"?

Quien sabe?

[cbayer]

7. That's one of the points of the article, imo.

It's the path to getting there that is what is important.

It's the consideration of other ideas, having an open mind, being willing to see that what you once believed may not be true. It's the ability to ask yourself the really hard questions.

And it's even the ability to become fanatical about the new philosophy you are embracing, at least for a time.

It can happen no matter what direction you are heading, be it towards belief or non-belief.

[cleanhippie]

8. If god doesn't exist, what IS the point.

Everything belief in a god has to offer can be found without a belief in a god (and then some).

If god doesn't exist, then religion is irrelevant. So what's the point?

[Fearless]

11. +1

[longship]

9. Yup!

Yet another lame argument for atheism is a religion. I am not sure if believers would be willing to embrace this guy's definition of religion as not requiring a god concept except to serve the purpose of utilizing the First Amendment exclusion clause to oppose certain policies and sciences. Of course, there they still invoke a god concept merely stated as, for instance, "Darwin is the atheist god." (A common claim.)

The name of his Web site says it all, "God for Atheists". I don't have to click through to see that this guy has an agenda.

There are so many of these atheism is a religion claims that I think I'm going to begin responding to them with simply,

Umm! No it isn't.

And be done with it.

[dimbear]

12. Even noticed how similar waking up is to falling asleep? They both happen in the same place and

around 9 o'clock.

[Humanist_Activist]

13. The existence of gods is besides the point, the universe, as observed, is godless...

there is no evidence of intelligent design, no overarching purpose to the universe. Whether a god or gods exist is beside the point when they don't interact with this universe. I'll freely concede that a deistic god could exist, but since we would never see any evidence of this god or their actions, I certainly don't think that it is possible to know whether they exist or not, so I don't believe it does.

[cbayer]

15. Which is a perfectly reasonable position to hold.

[Humanist_Activist]

14. Why do people slap other, unrelated things, onto atheism to try to make it a...

philosophy or something?

I decided to read the article, and I can't make heads or tails about what this guy is talking about except he seems to have some odd ideas about religion, which seems to encompass everything from political views to actual religions. He basically just redefined religion into worldview, which renders the word meaningless in the context he's talking about. "Philosophical engagement" sounds like a typical butchering of English by faux intellectuals who pretend to know what they are talking about because they run a blog.

I'm also offended that he thinks atheists are offended by having atheism called a religion, we aren't offended, we are exasperated that people don't know the meanings, basic fucking meanings of words. Atheism is a word that summarizes ONE BELIEF, a belief about the existence of a god or gods, that's it, would theists please stop trying to turn it into something its not?

Not to mention he terms it as a "rejection of god" which means he acknowledges such a being, its disbelief due to lack of evidence, I no more reject gods than I do unicorns.

[CJCRANE]

16. This echoes something I've said on DU a few times...

that is that someone's personality or political inclination is more relevant than their religion (or lack of religion).

For example: a liberal atheist, liberal christian, liberal muslim and liberal jew would have more in common with each other than with a fundamentalist of similar persuasion.

[cbayer]

17. I could not agree more.

That's why I object to the infighting between believers and non-believers. It's a divisive and hurts us in the long run.

[trotsky]

18. I'm calling bullshit.

You've encouraged and applauded infighting, cbayer. You even contribute to it to this day.

What you oppose is people disagreeing with your chosen narrative.