If it bothers you that morality is ‘arbitrary’, why is it more satisfying if it is the arbitrary preferences of god rather than the arbitrary preferences of humans?
I believe I can answer this question. The question is a misunderstanding of what “God” was supposed to be. (I think theists often have this misunderstanding as well.)
We live in a certain world, and it natural for some people (perhaps only certain personality types) to feel nihilistic about that world. There are many, many paths to this feeling—the problem of evil, the problem of free will, the problem of objective value, the problem of death, etc. There doesn’t seem to be any resolution within the material world so when we turn away from nihilism, as we must, we hope that there’s some kind of solution outside the material. This trust, an innate hope, calls on something transcendental to provide meaning.
However you articulate that hope, if you have it, I think that is theism. Humans try and describe what this solution would be explictly, but then our solution is always limited by our current worldview of what the solution could be (God is the spirit in all living things; God is love and redemption from sin; God is an angry father teaching and exacting justice ). In my opinion, religion hasn’t kept up with changes in our worldview and is ready for a complete remodeling.
Perhaps we are ready for a non-transcendent solution, as that would seem most appropriate given our worldview in non-religious areas, but I just don’t see any solutions yet.
I’ve been listening carefully, and people who are satisfied with materialism seem to still possess this innate hope and trust; but they are either unable to examine the source of it or they attribute it to something inadequate. For example, someone once told me that for them, meaning came from the freedom to choose their own values instead of having them handed down by God.
But materialism tells us we don’t get to choose. We need to learn to be satisfied with being a river, always choosing the path determined by our landscape. The ability to choose would indeed be transcendental. So I think some number of people realized that without something exceptional, we don’t have freedom. In religions, this is codified as God is necessary for the possibility of free will.
So if I say ‘there is no God’, I’m not denying the existence of a supreme being that could possibly take offense. I’m giving up on freedom, value and purpose. I would like to see, in my lifetime, that those things are already embedded in the material world. Then I would still believe in God—even more so—but my belief would be intellectually justified and consistent within my current (scientific) world view.
But if the truth is that they’re not there, anywhere, I do wonder what it would take to make me stop believing in them.
Without relaunching the whole discussion, there’s one thing I’d like to know: Do you acknowledge that the concepts you’re “giving up on” (‘transcendental’ freedom, value, and purpose, as you define them) are not merely things that don’t exist, but things that can’t exist, like square circles?
I only know that I believe they should exist. I gave up on figuring out if they could exist. Specifically, what I’ve “given up on” is a reconciliation of epistemic and instrumental rationality in this matter.
If God doesn’t exist, creating him as the purpose of my existence is something I could get behind.
And then I would want the God of the future to be omnipotent enough to modify the universe so that he existed retroactively, so that the little animals dying in the forest hadn’t been alone, after all. (On the day I intensely tried to stop valuing objective purpose, I realized that this image was one of my strongest and earliest attachments to a framework of objective value.)
God wouldn’t have to modify the universe in any causal way, he would just need to send information back in time (objective-value-information). Curiosity about the possibility of a retroactive God motivated this thread. If it is possible for a God created in the future to propagate backwards in time, then I would rate the probability of God existing currently as quite nearly 1.
I believe I can answer this question. The question is a misunderstanding of what “God” was supposed to be. (I think theists often have this misunderstanding as well.)
We live in a certain world, and it natural for some people (perhaps only certain personality types) to feel nihilistic about that world. There are many, many paths to this feeling—the problem of evil, the problem of free will, the problem of objective value, the problem of death, etc. There doesn’t seem to be any resolution within the material world so when we turn away from nihilism, as we must, we hope that there’s some kind of solution outside the material. This trust, an innate hope, calls on something transcendental to provide meaning.
However you articulate that hope, if you have it, I think that is theism. Humans try and describe what this solution would be explictly, but then our solution is always limited by our current worldview of what the solution could be (God is the spirit in all living things; God is love and redemption from sin; God is an angry father teaching and exacting justice ). In my opinion, religion hasn’t kept up with changes in our worldview and is ready for a complete remodeling.
Perhaps we are ready for a non-transcendent solution, as that would seem most appropriate given our worldview in non-religious areas, but I just don’t see any solutions yet.
I’ve been listening carefully, and people who are satisfied with materialism seem to still possess this innate hope and trust; but they are either unable to examine the source of it or they attribute it to something inadequate. For example, someone once told me that for them, meaning came from the freedom to choose their own values instead of having them handed down by God.
But materialism tells us we don’t get to choose. We need to learn to be satisfied with being a river, always choosing the path determined by our landscape. The ability to choose would indeed be transcendental. So I think some number of people realized that without something exceptional, we don’t have freedom. In religions, this is codified as God is necessary for the possibility of free will.
So if I say ‘there is no God’, I’m not denying the existence of a supreme being that could possibly take offense. I’m giving up on freedom, value and purpose. I would like to see, in my lifetime, that those things are already embedded in the material world. Then I would still believe in God—even more so—but my belief would be intellectually justified and consistent within my current (scientific) world view.
But if the truth is that they’re not there, anywhere, I do wonder what it would take to make me stop believing in them.
Without relaunching the whole discussion, there’s one thing I’d like to know: Do you acknowledge that the concepts you’re “giving up on” (‘transcendental’ freedom, value, and purpose, as you define them) are not merely things that don’t exist, but things that can’t exist, like square circles?
I only know that I believe they should exist. I gave up on figuring out if they could exist. Specifically, what I’ve “given up on” is a reconciliation of epistemic and instrumental rationality in this matter.
How’d I do here?
If God doesn’t exist, creating him as the purpose of my existence is something I could get behind.
And then I would want the God of the future to be omnipotent enough to modify the universe so that he existed retroactively, so that the little animals dying in the forest hadn’t been alone, after all. (On the day I intensely tried to stop valuing objective purpose, I realized that this image was one of my strongest and earliest attachments to a framework of objective value.)
God wouldn’t have to modify the universe in any causal way, he would just need to send information back in time (objective-value-information). Curiosity about the possibility of a retroactive God motivated this thread. If it is possible for a God created in the future to propagate backwards in time, then I would rate the probability of God existing currently as quite nearly 1.