Atheism is a belief fueled by jealousy

[Magical Realist]

I already stated what belief in God entails. I'm not going to go on with you saying "is not." I used to be a firm believer in God. I know what that is about. And its about believing in an invisible magical being existing somewhere unknown who protects you and watches over you. That's just the way it is.

Now are there people who never learn anything more than what they understood as a child? Sure, and you seem to be among them.

And here we go with your pathetic smears and ad homs again. You just can't stop with that shit can you?

[Syne]

I already stated what belief in God entails. I'm not going to go on with you saying "is not." I used to be a firm believer in God. I know what that is about. And its about believing in an invisible magical being existing somewhere unknown who protects you and watches over you. That's just the way it is.

Now are there people who never learn anything more than what they understood as a child? Sure, and you seem to be among them.

And here we go with your pathetic smears and ad homs again. You just can't stop with that shit can you?

You're just demonstrating (not ad hom) a child-like conception of god, and a likely reason your belief failed you. If your understanding does not mature as you do, it's little wonder you abandoned it. Just like how our notion of Santa becomes an understanding of adults spreading cheer, without becoming totally disillusioned with Christmas. There are many believers who share that child-like conception (and I guess you think I'm also smearing them). If you refuse to engage with any more nuanced or mature notions of god, that's your prerogative. You just can't be intellectually honest in thinking that you've refuted the latter by only addressing the former.

[Magical Realist]

If your understanding does not mature as you do, it's little wonder you abandoned it.

Ah yes..a MATURE version of an invisible magical being noone ever sees or hears from who watches over you and protects you. Sounds like a refusal to grow up and face the reality of life to me. The missing Daddy you never got enough of.

You just can't be intellectually honest in thinking that you've refuted the latter by only addressing the former.

Another smear and ad hom. It's like an addiction for you isn't it?

[Ostronomos]

If your understanding does not mature as you do, it's little wonder you abandoned it.

Ah yes..a MATURE version of an invisible magical being noone ever sees or hears from who watches over you and protects you. Sounds like a refusal to grow up and face the reality of life to me. The missing Daddy you never got enough of.

You just can't be intellectually honest in thinking that you've refuted the latter by only addressing the former.

Another smear and ad hom. It's like an addiction for you isn't it?

Your belief in God was not based on observation and evidence which is why it failed you. What you believed was that God is invisible, which is not the same thing as omnipresent, which means "nowhere absent", and thus cannot be distinguished from the background of spacetime. You possess an oversimplified concept of God and you dismiss specifically that. There is a scientific version of God out there that is both accurate and comprehensive. It does not conflict with science in other words. God may be seen as a self-generating self-processing language possessing the attributes of the 3 O's (omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience), but that is only relative to the world of God. Quantum Mechanics teaches us that reality may be divided into different worlds.  The universe may be seen as a self-perceptual dual inclusive system that ultimately doubles as a mind. And you are the prime character and nature of the universe.

[Magical Realist]

Your belief in God was not based on observation and evidence which is why it failed you. What you believed was that God is invisible, which is not the same thing as omnipresent, which means "nowhere absent", and thus cannot be distinguished from the background of spacetime.

No..noone believes God can be seen with their eyes or heard from. That's why they call it faith. You're supposed to believe God is there even though he's invisible. Then if you believe this farce hard enough, you get to go live with this unseen God in his magical unseen heaven, which nobody has any idea as to the location of. Since astronomy has pushed the boundaries of the seeable physical world 12 billion lightyears in all directions, God's domain with his saints and birdmen just hasn't shown up. Hence the merciful death of God with the emergence of the scientific worldview--a cosmos scoured and sterilized of the remnants of that holy spook.

[Syne]

If your understanding does not mature as you do, it's little wonder you abandoned it.

Ah yes..a MATURE version of an invisible magical being noone ever sees or hears from who watches over you and protects you. Sounds like a refusal to grow up and face the reality of life to me. The missing Daddy you never got enough of.

No, still just your insistence on a child-like notion of god.
Is a missing daddy the reason you were once drawn to religion? Did you feel like you needed to reject it so you could grow up?

You just can't be intellectually honest in thinking that you've refuted the latter by only addressing the former.

Another smear and ad hom. It's like an addiction for you isn't it?

No, just clearly demonstrable.

[Ostronomos]

 Since astronomy has pushed the boundaries of the physical world 12 billion lightyears in all directions, God's domain with his saints and birdmen just hasn't shown up. Hence the merciful death of God with the emergence of the scientific worldview--a domain scoured and sterilized of the remnants of that holy spook.

Spare me your ignorance. Under close examination of the trends of science you will find that you are wrong.

In actuality science is continuing to be influenced by Philosophy. Science claims knowledge of the physical world, the observable. It has no bearing on the unobservable (a newly discovered area of Philosophy). Believe it or not there is a newly emerging branch of Philosophy that God is better understood through. It is believed to be *gasp* Metaphysics. As Metaphysics becomes more developed science will follow suit. The world of God is only now beginning to emerge in the human mind. Your seeming hopes that science bury any memory of God is an exemplification of unreason. 

Purpose defines existence. Logic and causality are interlinked. Science alone is ill-equipped to uncover the world of God. But future science may be more successful.

[Yazata]

Atheism is a belief fueled by jealousy

That sounds like an insult to me. Jealousy of what, exactly?

and I say this because atheists have no clue whether or not God exists yet they rage against the idea. Pathetic.

What is "God"?? That's a word people throw around a lot, without ever being clear about what it means. I think that it can mean a whole variety of things.

Personally, I consider myself an atheist regarding personalized deities of religious myth, including Christianity and Judaism's Yahweh, Islam's Allah, and all the various personifications of Indian monotheism: Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna etc. (I'm also an atheist regarding the countless deities of polytheism.) I consider all of these to be characters from mythology and don't believe that they correspond to anything out there in objective reality.

And I consider myself an agnostic regarding the metaphysical functions that philosophical theology has long associated with "God": creator, source etc. I don't really have a clue why reality exists in the first place (and neither does Langan), what might explain everything else while needing no explanation of its own, why the universe displays the order it does, what initially started the chain of cause and effect, and so on.

It is far better to adopt a view of agnosticism than to limit oneself to a one sided view point.

Certainly agnosticism is the most intellectually defensible position to take on the metaphysical issues.

But I have no trouble thinking that the ultimate principle of being itself isn't a big blustering Jewish or Arab guy in the sky, laying down a set of exceedingly crude divine laws that look suspiciously like ancient Semitic customs, always flying into a wrath and ordering genocide against somebody. (Or that the ultimate principle of reality itself is a lithe sexy blue-skinned Indian guy for that matter, though I do like the Indian versions better). Whatever the ultimate principle might be, I'd expect it to be a lot more... cosmic... than those ancient mythological images.

I'm more attracted to theologies of divine transcendence. Which lead us to agnostic theism, not all that remote from my own atheistic agnosticism perhaps.

---

God is never seen or heard from, and all we have is books talking about him and what he wants from us by religious men and women.

It reminds me of that extraordinary existentialist 1960's TV series The Prisoner.

Patrick McGoohan finds himself trapped in a very pleasant village from which he can't escape. He has no idea why he's there, who runs things or what is going on. Everyone has a number, he's #6. The individual in charge is the mysterious #1, who is never seen. #1 is represented in the village by a succession of pompous self-important #2's, who claim to speak for #1, passing on his orders that they say they receive from #1 on a special phone.

McGoohan makes it his task to find out "Who is Number 1???" and hence what everything is all about.

#2 (the Pope, the Preacher, the Professor, Scripture, Langan, Ostro ...) getting the Truth straight from #1:

[Image: colin-gordon-08.jpg]

[C C]

[...] no clue whether or not God exists [...]

To define them in a way that avoids often non-cullable metaphysical speculation, hypotheses, and issues:

Gods are propagating concepts that were depicted as personhoods in some ancient cultures, in that the general population could relate better to their abstract, psychological and culture-regulating influence that way. [Examples: Demeter: Goddess of grain, agriculture, harvest, growth, and nourishment. Apollo: God of music, arts, knowledge, healing, plague, prophecy, poetry, manly beauty, and archery. Etc.]

One like the Abrahamic deity thus "exists" in that thought-virus or primitive information entity context; and thereby has historically affected the world via events, movements, policies, etc enacted by those humans which serve as embodied hosts for it (i.e., followers / believers). The Bible can be construed as an inactive, non-biological storage method and distribution platform for its pattern or "ideational structure". Different interpretations / versions of God or the accompanying Bible totem are similar to varying distros of the Linux OS software packages.

~

[Ostronomos]

Atheism is a belief fueled by jealousy

That sounds like an insult to me. Jealousy of what, exactly?

They appear jealous that theists claim to be more privy to the world of God than they. This appears to infuriate them.

and I say this because atheists have no clue whether or not God exists yet they rage against the idea. Pathetic.

What is "God"?? That's a word people throw around a lot, without ever being clear about what it means. I think that it can mean a whole variety of things.

No, its definition is clear. It is the self-processing self-defining non-objective non-material Being that spoke the first word into existence. It is a purely computational entity that reality is bound by. Yet it has no objective existence. None whatsoever. Neither is it a subjective existence. It is supreme and beyond the physical world. It is the absolute essence of all creation. The prime objective of our existence and defines us. It appears not. Yet we constantly search for it despite what atheists claim.

Personally, I consider myself an atheist regarding personalized deities of religious myth, including Christianity and Judaism's Yahweh, Islam's Allah, and all the various personifications of Indian monotheism: Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna etc. (I'm an atheist regarding the countless deities of polythism too.) I consider all of these to be characters from mythology and don't believe that they correspond to anything out there in objective reality.

You have fit the Bill regarding my personification of atheism as a belief. Except you don't seem to be the typical rendition of jealousy and hatred. 

And I consider myself an agnostic regarding the metaphysical functions that philosophical theology has long associated with "God": creator, source etc. I don't really have a clue why reality exists in the first place (and neither does Langan), what might explain everything else while needing no explanation of its own, why the universe displays the order it does, what initially started the chain of cause and effect, and so on.

Purpose defines existence. Logic and causality are interlinked. What makes Christopher Langan different from most Philosophers is that he is aware God exists and he knows how to argue for His existence. He has experienced the world of God and has found a scientific explanation for it. So to have I, though not to Langan's extent in regards to the latter. Science will never know for certain what lies beyond death nor will anyone, unless they bear witness to the world of God enough times to know what existence entails. 

The reason the universe has order is because it is logically required.

It is far better to adopt a view of agnosticism than to limit oneself to a one sided view point.

Certainly agnosticism is the most intellectually defensible position to take on the metaphysical issues.

But I have no trouble thinking that the ultimate principle of being itself isn't a big blustering Jewish or Arab guy in the sky, laying down a set of exceedingly crude divine laws that look suspiciously like ancient Semitic customs, always flying into a wrath and ordering genocide against somebody. (Or that the ultimate principle is a lithe sexy blue-skinned Indian guy for that matter, though I do like the Indian versions better). Whatever the ultimate principle might be, I'd expect it to be a lot more... cosmic... than those ancient mythological images. I'm more attracted to theologies of divine transcendence.

Such an oversimplified view of God would be incongruent with the correct scientific version that Langan and I have expounded. Though Langan claims to have taken it to a greater extreme. I am motivated by my efforts to get the truth out there. I have sensed this God and I have proceeded to argue for Its existence. For the attributes of this God refer to my above response to you. If you are attracted to theologies of divine transcendence then you should have no problem accepting the God as being a language that communicates with itself whenever reality assumes divine properties as it does in the world of God.