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I grew up Christian (of sorts) and drifted away from the belief. Like you write, it felt like a convenient lie. I was convinced it was a myth invented by humans

by keane 10y ago

I grew up Christian (of sorts) and drifted away from the belief. Like you write, it felt like a convenient lie. I was convinced it was a myth invented by humans to bring themselves comfort. Observing human suffering seemed to me to be proof of no God. I heard of the Buddha who declared both that there was no creator God and that life was suffering, and based on what I had seen of poverty, disease, and war this seemed to be the case. For me, I saw my rejection of Christian claims as a very element of my personal need for 'capital-T truth'. I embraced that motto of Rousseau and Juvenal and began studying every -ism and theory apart from Christianity. Eventually, I would run into a philosophy B.A. who was also a Christian. I constantly pressed them for justification of their belief and their main response was this quote by Kierkegaard: "If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?" -- If there were no God, life would be despair (and Siddhartha would be right) so we believe. This line of thought upset me. What I wanted was to know what was actually the case, how the world actually was and not how we might like it to be. Truth at any cost no matter how inconvenient, bewildering, or painful. I studied Buddhism and Eastern philosophies (which are basically methods of coming to terms with and accepting nihilism). But I retained an idea that human suffering was bad and humans somehow had value. Reading Hume is what changed me. Unless an outside rubric existed that would declare human suffering bad, human suffering never actually had been bad at all. But I believed internally stronger than any other belief that somehow it truly was bad and this instinct seemed to be a self-evident truth. What Hume shows is that this instinct that we feel is either placed in us in relation to a Supreme Being and its existence functions as a unit of evidence called natural revelation or it is a strange delusion we invent and we delude ourselves that human suffering matters. A liberating realisation was that, in light of this, if the second scenario were the case, it was also not morally 'wrong' anytime humans proclaimed suffering was wrong, one would have merely paid the universe a compliment it would not have deserved. If the unempirical does not exist, then proclaiming it does is not wrong. In the words of philosopher Thomas Nagel: "If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either". As far as quitting the search and holding logically untenable positions, I suggest this remark by Walker Percy: "This life is too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then to be asked what you make of it and have to answer “Scientific humanism.” That won’t do. A poor show. Life is a mystery, love is a delight. Therefore I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and the infinite delight, i.e., God. In fact I demand it. I refuse to settle for anything less. I don’t see why anyone should settle for less than Jacob, who actually grabbed aholt of God and would not let go until God identified himself and blessed him." He portrays a worldview known as the supernatural existential, desiderium naturale, or Man as Wayfarer in his book The Moviegoer explained here: http://liamk.org/moviegoer/ http://liamk.org/moviegoer/

0134340 10y ago
Hume had a tendency to seek truth but does that mean Hume should've seeked it? Hume is also susceptible to his own problem as you are. >>What Hume shows is that this instinct that we feel is either placed in us in relation to a Supreme Being You seem lost in that you think what atheists I doesn't come from something more despite us not having a name for it. You may call it a god, Yahweh, etc, I call it a feeling of existential validity. I believe also that my instinctual feelings come from something beyond, something greater, a higher order, whatever you want to call it but it's far beyond what we have knowledge of and so far from Christian mythology that I refuse to call it "god" or "gods". I prefer not to be linked to that. And your mentioning of suffering, beauty, love, etc over and over makes it seem to me that you're coming from an emotional point, not a logical one. Not all love is good. Sometimes doing without love makes us stronger. Sometimes suffering is good, it builds strength and character. Sometimes feeling "bad" is "good", sometimes the opposite. You'll never find real logical truth when you base it on such ambiguities. Life is way too complex to just say 'I like love, therefore god". If life is good and meant to be, then that which nurtures and perpetuates it is good. Sometimes it's suffering to strengthen oneself, sometimes it's suffering to strengthen humanity and weed out the weak so that in the end, we have left ones who don't suffer so much. Love for oneself and humanity is an emotion that in itself, can be a weakness. Too much and you have vanity and pride, which can be a weakness of successful living and leadership. If love is mercy and tolerance, sometimes what's needed for living isn't mercy and tolerance. You seem to praise certain emotions and instincts as if they're infallible. Believing in gods is also a weakness when you count on those gods to look out for you when you should be looking out for yourself. Some don't care what we do to the Earth because they count on their gods to save them or about space travel because they rely too much on their gods not throwing balls of fire at us, or they pray to their gods to save them from medical illness. All this is predicated on the presupposed notion of life being good so we should perpetuate it. And it takes your love of love, beauty, suffering, etc out for a proverbial spin because life sometimes needs needs what it doesn't wish for, for it to flourish.
- 0134340 10y ago
  Hume had a tendency to seek truth but does that mean Hume should've seeked it? Hume is also susceptible to his own problem as you are. >>What Hume shows is that this instinct that we feel is either placed in us in relation to a Supreme Being You seem lost in that you think what atheists reason about the universe doesn't come from something more despite us not having a name for it. You may call it a god, Yahweh, etc, I call it a feeling of existential validity. I believe also that my instinctual feelings come from something beyond, something greater, a higher order, whatever you want to call it but it's far beyond what we have knowledge of and so far from Christian mythology that I refuse to call it "god" or "gods". I prefer not to be linked to that. And your mentioning of suffering, beauty, love, etc over and over makes it seem to me that you're coming from an emotional point, not a logical one. Not all love is good. Sometimes doing without love makes us stronger. Sometimes suffering is good, it builds strength and character. Sometimes feeling "bad" is "good", sometimes the opposite. You'll never find real logical truth when you base it on such ambiguities. Life is way too complex to just say 'I like love, therefore god". If life is good and meant to be, then that which nurtures and perpetuates it is good. Sometimes it's suffering to strengthen oneself, sometimes it's suffering to strengthen humanity and weed out the weak so that in the end, we have left ones who don't suffer so much. Love for oneself and humanity is an emotion that in itself, can be a weakness. Too much and you have vanity and pride, which can be a weakness of successful living and leadership. If love is mercy and tolerance, sometimes what's needed for living isn't mercy and tolerance as they can disintegrate the core foundations of the merciful and tolerant. You seem to praise certain emotions and instincts as if they're infallible. Believing in gods is also a weakness when you count on those gods to look out for you when you should be looking out for yourself. Some don't care what we do to the Earth because they count on their gods to save them or about space travel because they rely too much on their gods not throwing balls of fire at us, or they pray to their gods to save them from medical illness. All this is predicated on the presupposed notion of life being good so we should perpetuate it. And it takes your love of love, beauty, suffering, etc out for a proverbial spin because life sometimes needs what it doesn't wish for, for it to flourish. I'm a lurker, not used to commenting so I don't know why but I can't edit comments.

by keane 10y ago

0134340 10y ago

Hume had a tendency to seek truth but does that mean Hume should've seeked it? Hume is also susceptible to his own problem as you are. >>What Hume shows is that this instinct that we feel is either placed in us in relation to a Supreme Being You seem lost in that you think what atheists I doesn't come from something more despite us not having a name for it. You may call it a god, Yahweh, etc, I call it a feeling of existential validity. I believe also that my instinctual feelings come from something beyond, something greater, a higher order, whatever you want to call it but it's far beyond what we have knowledge of and so far from Christian mythology that I refuse to call it "god" or "gods". I prefer not to be linked to that. And your mentioning of suffering, beauty, love, etc over and over makes it seem to me that you're coming from an emotional point, not a logical one. Not all love is good. Sometimes doing without love makes us stronger. Sometimes suffering is good, it builds strength and character. Sometimes feeling "bad" is "good", sometimes the opposite. You'll never find real logical truth when you base it on such ambiguities. Life is way too complex to just say 'I like love, therefore god". If life is good and meant to be, then that which nurtures and perpetuates it is good. Sometimes it's suffering to strengthen oneself, sometimes it's suffering to strengthen humanity and weed out the weak so that in the end, we have left ones who don't suffer so much. Love for oneself and humanity is an emotion that in itself, can be a weakness. Too much and you have vanity and pride, which can be a weakness of successful living and leadership. If love is mercy and tolerance, sometimes what's needed for living isn't mercy and tolerance. You seem to praise certain emotions and instincts as if they're infallible. Believing in gods is also a weakness when you count on those gods to look out for you when you should be looking out for yourself. Some don't care what we do to the Earth because they count on their gods to save them or about space travel because they rely too much on their gods not throwing balls of fire at us, or they pray to their gods to save them from medical illness. All this is predicated on the presupposed notion of life being good so we should perpetuate it. And it takes your love of love, beauty, suffering, etc out for a proverbial spin because life sometimes needs needs what it doesn't wish for, for it to flourish.

0134340 10y ago
Hume had a tendency to seek truth but does that mean Hume should've seeked it? Hume is also susceptible to his own problem as you are. >>What Hume shows is that this instinct that we feel is either placed in us in relation to a Supreme Being You seem lost in that you think what atheists reason about the universe doesn't come from something more despite us not having a name for it. You may call it a god, Yahweh, etc, I call it a feeling of existential validity. I believe also that my instinctual feelings come from something beyond, something greater, a higher order, whatever you want to call it but it's far beyond what we have knowledge of and so far from Christian mythology that I refuse to call it "god" or "gods". I prefer not to be linked to that. And your mentioning of suffering, beauty, love, etc over and over makes it seem to me that you're coming from an emotional point, not a logical one. Not all love is good. Sometimes doing without love makes us stronger. Sometimes suffering is good, it builds strength and character. Sometimes feeling "bad" is "good", sometimes the opposite. You'll never find real logical truth when you base it on such ambiguities. Life is way too complex to just say 'I like love, therefore god". If life is good and meant to be, then that which nurtures and perpetuates it is good. Sometimes it's suffering to strengthen oneself, sometimes it's suffering to strengthen humanity and weed out the weak so that in the end, we have left ones who don't suffer so much. Love for oneself and humanity is an emotion that in itself, can be a weakness. Too much and you have vanity and pride, which can be a weakness of successful living and leadership. If love is mercy and tolerance, sometimes what's needed for living isn't mercy and tolerance as they can disintegrate the core foundations of the merciful and tolerant. You seem to praise certain emotions and instincts as if they're infallible. Believing in gods is also a weakness when you count on those gods to look out for you when you should be looking out for yourself. Some don't care what we do to the Earth because they count on their gods to save them or about space travel because they rely too much on their gods not throwing balls of fire at us, or they pray to their gods to save them from medical illness. All this is predicated on the presupposed notion of life being good so we should perpetuate it. And it takes your love of love, beauty, suffering, etc out for a proverbial spin because life sometimes needs what it doesn't wish for, for it to flourish. I'm a lurker, not used to commenting so I don't know why but I can't edit comments.