The God concept. The following will be explored using some Christian definition as this is where my 20 year background comes from.
Let us start with what does it mean by definition to think there is a god, to have faith as a concept in ones life and try to measure up how reasonable it would be to have that frame of mind. I will briefly look at Faith, Creation, Universe, and then God.
“Faith designates blind acceptance of a certain ideational content, acceptance induced by feeling in the absence of evidence of proof.” (Professor Leonard Peikoff).
“The alleged shortcut to knowledge which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.” (Ibid; 157 pb 128)
“Faith as being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see, this is what the ancients were commended for. By Faith we understand the universe was created at Gods command. Without Faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” Hebrews 11:1
You will see here that the bibles concept of faith aligns with the other two definitions above. People must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who seek him, and is pleased by this, is something that cannot be proven, but simply must be believed blindly. This is mysticism.
Mysticism means the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or against the evidence of one’s senses and one’s reason. Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as “instinct”, “intuition”, “revelation”, or any form of “just knowing”.
Creation – the power to arrange the combination of natural elements is the only creative power that man possesses “creation” does not (and metaphysically cannot) mean the power to bring something into existence out of nothing. It means the power to bring into existence a rearrangement of natural elements that had not existed before.
Universe- the universe is the total of that which exists-not merely the earth and stars or galaxies but everything. Obviously then there can be no such thing as the “cause” of the universe…….
Is the universe then unlimited in size? No. Everything which exists is finite, including the universe. What then is outside the universe, if it is finite? This question is invalid. The phrase “outside the universe” has no referent. The universe is everything. Outside the universe stands for “that which is where everything isn’t”. There is no such place. There isn’t even nothing out there. “There is no out there”.
To grasp the axiom that existence exists, means to grasp the fact that nature ie, the universe as a whole cannot be created or annihilated, that it cannot come into or go out of existence. Whether its basic constituent elements are atoms, or subatomic particles, or some yet undiscovered form of energy, it is not ruled by a consciousness or by will or by chance, but by the law of identity. All the countless forms, motions, combinations, and dissolutions of elements within the universe from a floating speck of dust to the formation of a galaxy to the emergence of life - are caused and determined by the identities of the elements involved. Nature is the metaphysically given ie, the nature of nature is outside the power of any volition.
If your asking at this point where did all those come from?
God.
They claim that they perceive a mode of being superiour to your existence on this earth. The mystics of spirit call it “another dimension”, which consists of denying dimensions. The mystics of muscle call it “the future”, which consists of denying the present. To exist is to possess identity. What identity are they able to give to their superior realm? They keep telling you what it is not, but never tell you what it is. All their identifications consist of negating: God is that which no human mind can know, they say-and proceed to demand that you consider it knowledge-God is non-man, heaven is non-earth, Soul is non-body, virtue is non-profit. A is non-A, perception is non sensory, knowledge is non-reason. Their definitions are non acts of defining, but of wiping out.
Every argument for God and every attribute ascribed to him rests on a false metaphysical premise. None can survive for a moment on a correct metaphysics.
For instance God is infinite. Nothing can be infinite, according to the law of identity. Everything is what it is, and nothing else. It is limited in its qualities and in its quantity: it is this much and no more. Infinite as applied to quantity does not mean very large, it means, “larger than any specific quantity”. That means, no specific quantity ie, a quantity without identity. This is prohibited by the law of identity.
Is God the creator of the universe? There can be no creation of something out of nothing. There is no nothing. Is God omnipotent? Can he do anything? Entities can act only in accordance with their natures; nothing can make them violate their natures…. If they could, then the obvious show of a question which would be self contradictory would be “could God build a rock so big he wouldn’t be able to lift it”? The question clearly demonstrates the absurdity of the omnipotent god.
“God” as traditionally defined is a systematic contradiction of every valid metaphysical principle. The point is wider than just the Judaeo-Christian concept of God. No argument will get you from this world to a supernatural world. No reason will lead you to a world contradicting this one. No method of inference will enable you to leap from existence to a “super existence”.
Therefore, to fully accept the theological arguments as being superior to reason does not only require to put theology above logic and reason in the hierarchical chain of thinking but to actually deny it.
Metaphysical in objectivist terms means – that which pertains to reality, to the nature of things, to existence.
Atheism is this…. Existence exists. Existence is a primary; it is uncreated, indestructible, and eternal. So if you are to postulate something beyond existence-some supernatural realm-you must do it by openly denying reason, dispensing with definitions, proofs, arguments, and saying flatly,” to hell with argument, I have faith.” That, of course, is a wilful rejection of reason.
Objectivism advocates reason as man’s sole means of knowledge, and therefore, for the reasons I have already given, it is atheist. It denies any supernatural dimension presented as a contradiction of nature, of existence. This applies not only to God, but also to every variant of the supernatural ever advocated or to be advocated. In other words, we accept reality, and that’s all.
These are some of the view points presented by objectivism, we have looked at Thomas Aquinas’s arguments for the existence of God, and have found all five of them to be refuted as well. C.S Lewis is probably the worst reasoning serious theological philosopher however he was very good at reasoning with a person ready to accept some of his faulty premises. If there is a Christian out there who would like to try to argue the point of a created universe, or a God that exists, or why someone should hold a faith you are welcome to do so. Your thoughts are welcome. I hope you find this enlightening, even if it’s just to broaden your view on why atheists believe what they believe.
3 comments:
It's an interesting post (especially what you said about the universe being 'beginningless' etc.) , but I have two issues with this.
1. Perception of reality is not knowledge. You cannot ever prove that your surroundings even exist, so you cannot invoke perception, or even reason to be the source of your knowledge. For it to be knowledge it must be true, and we have all reasoned our way through to invalid conclusions.
Reason can only help us form apparent realities based on available evidence, or perception of available evidence. It does not show us reality.
2. It's a waste of time to attempt to 'disprove god'. Based on what we know of the universe, we may have had a creator. We do not and cannot know that we are not a teenager's science experiment, or a sophisticated computer program. Perhaps our creator's universe was the uncreated one.
Instead we need to approach it from another angle: disbelief in god must, for a scientist or intellectual (and I would hope the layman too), be the default position. From there, we can look at our surroundings and ask 'is a god required to explain any of this'. In the past, the answer was often 'yes'. Nowadays, there is not a single scientific problem that cannot be answered by something simpler than a god.
Since a god is not required to explain anything, belief in a god is not necessary. That's where it ends.
No use trying to disprove god - it's a meaningless idea to start with. Might as well try to disprove Fairies, or the Greek Muses.
This subject of God's existence has always been one of interest to me. God defined here through, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist concoctions can be summed and defined as a consciousness.
So to conclude. If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness and a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of, would be a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as conscious, it had to be conscious of something. If that which a mystic claims to perceive does not exist, what you posses is not consciousness.
Your consciousness can be conscious of itself.
Did you never study Descartes?
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