Father equals God?

From the movie "FightClub":

Tyler Durden: Shut up! Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?
Narrator: No, no, I... don't...
Tyler Durden: Listen to me! You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen.
Narrator: It isn't?
Tyler Durden: We don't need him!

If you think about it.
This is very true in more than a few senses.

Not sure if this is another "I hate God" threads that have become so populous on ATS these days, or not...

Perhaps you should make your point clearer, so we can tell the depths of your 'argument.'

a reply to: Chronogoblin

Not sure if this is another "I hate God" threads that have become so populous on ATS these days, or not...

Not actually.
Rather pointless to hate a concept.
Yes, I know, people do it all the time.

Perhaps you should make your point clearer, so we can tell the depths of your 'argument.'

No argument.

Just to elborate.
I am not seeking to argue anything really.
Just a meeting of the like minded.
Those I want to talk to at this moment will understand what I am getting at.
This thread will most likely die in obscurity as I am, admittedly, an odd bird.

I apologize that this does not include you.
As far as I can tell from your comments thus far at least.
Please don't construe this as an insult because it is in no way meant as such.
Neither you, nor I, are not any "better" than the other as far as I am concerned.

Just different.

"If we are Gods unwanted children, so be it."
Tyler Durden

a reply to: HarbingerOfShadows

Bloch I want to confess as honestly as I can, but my heart is empty. And emptiness is a mirror turned to my own face. I see myself, and am seized by disgust and fear. Through my indifference for people I've been placed outside of their society. Now I live in a ghost world, enclosed in my dreams and imaginings.

Death: Despite that, you don't want to die.

Bloch Yes, I want to.

Death: What are you waiting for?

Bloch I want knowledge.

Death: You want a guarantee?

Bloch Call it what you like. Is it so terribly inconceivable to comprehend God with one's own senses? Why does he hide in a cloud of half-promises and unseen miracles? How can we believe in the faithful when we lack faith? What will happen to us, who want to believe, but cannot? What about those who neither want to, nor can believe? Why can't I kill God in me? Why does He live on in me in a humiliating way, despite my wanting to evict Him from my heart? Why is He, despite all, a mocking reality I can't be rid of? Do you hear?

Death: I hear you.

Bloch I want knowledge. Not faith, not assumptions, but knowledge. I want God to stretch out His hand, uncover His face, and speak to me.

Death But He remains silent.

Bloch I call out to Him in the darkness, but it's as if no one's there.

Death Perhaps there isn't anyone.

Bloch Then life is a preposterous horror. No man can live, faced with Death, knowing there is nothingness.

Death Most people think neither of Death, nor nothingness.

Bloch But one day you stand at the edge of life and face darkness.

Death That day.

Bloch I understand what you mean. We must make an idol of our fear, and that idol we shall call God.

Bloch: You. Do you hear me? They say you've had commerce with the Devil.

Witch: Why do you ask?

Bloch: For very personal reasons. I, too, want to meet him.

Witch: Why?

Bloch: I must ask him about God. Surely he knows.

Witch: You an see him anytime.

Bloch: How?

Witch: If you do as I say. Look into my eyes. Well, do you see him?

Bloch: I see terror. Nothing else.

Witch: Nothing? No one?

Bloch: No.

Two small scenes from an excellent film that deals strikingly with the concept of a Godless world, and the implications of it. While "Fight Club" has a very powerful narrative, Ignmar Bergman's film is in a league of its own when dealing with these concepts, and presenting the variant views in haunting ways.

As for the idea of an "I hate God" thread, I would see this more as a self-empowerment thread. You don't need God, and if there is no God, or if God has abandoned you, it makes you no less capable, as your own will is, ultimately, the thing which will keep you moving forward in life. I do not hate God, nor is He dead, He is irrelevant.


~ Wandering Scribe

a reply to: HarbingerOfShadows

I am not seeking to argue anything really.

Owww, thems fighten words from I come from

Just a meeting of the like minded.

We are all insane, and the insanity we share with our like minds is what will set us off when we realize we are the same to break the bonds and find illusion of individuality again.

Those I want to talk to at this moment will understand what I am getting at.

You should have given more than just a moment as that moment passed as soon you thought of it.

Father = God?

A question, I assume you have answered in a positive nature seeing as you posted this

If you think about it. This is very true in more than a few senses.

Depends on what one believes does it not?

a reply to: Wandering Scribe

Kind of deep video there about finding meaning, with some sort of high power.

IMHO, God is the Idol that we wanna put all our frustrations and hate on, because God can handle it. And when we realize it just a fictional Idol, we have to actually find the strength to forgive ourselves, or another. Or maybe even ask the fictional idol for some redemption in our errors of spirituality.

I don't think we are the ones who need God, but we are the ones who God needs, to understand. Anyone in this modern age today, who wants to put all their frustrations or fears on God, is no more then a dumb child, and probably needs mercy for using the Idols name in Vain.

Ever seen the Original clash of the Titans ending?

"We the Gods if abandoned, or forgotten, the Stars will never fade. They will burn till the end of time".

a reply to: InhaleExhale

Feel better now?

a reply to: Wandering Scribe

As for the idea of an "I hate God" thread, I would see this more as a self-empowerment thread. You don't need God, and if there is no God, or if God has abandoned you, it makes you no less capable, as your own will is, ultimately, the thing which will keep you moving forward in life. I do not hate God, nor is He dead,

Exactly.

But, like some children with an absent parent, they continue to reach.
The pararrels in the concept of god that some believe in is very similar to that of children's concepts of parental figures.
This suggests a number of possibilities to me.

He is irrelevant.

Also, exactly.
I don't pretend to know if god(s) exist or not.
But, it's interesting to look at the concept as best I can understand from those that in some sense believe in it.


Of some small interest, at least as far as Christianity and Judaism is concerned:

The Pious as Sons of God.
The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha contain a few passages in which the title "son of God" is given to the Messiah (see Enoch, cv. 2; IV Esdras vii. 28-29; xiii. 32, 37, 52; xiv. 9); but the title belongs also to any one whose piety has placed him in a filial relation to God (see Wisdom ii. 13, 16, 18; v. 5, where "the sons of God" are identical with "the saints"; comp. Ecclus. [Sirach] iv. 10). It is through such personal relations that the individual becomes conscious of God's fatherhood, and gradually in Hellenistic and rabbinical literature "sonship to God" was ascribed first to every Israelite and then to every member of the human race (Abot iii. 15, v. 20; Ber. v. 1; see Abba). The God-childship of man has been especially accentuated in modern Jewish theology, in sharp contradistinction to the Christian God-sonship of Jesus. The application of the term "son of God" to the Messiah rests chiefly on Ps. ii. 7, and the other Messianic passages quoted above.

SOURCE

a reply to: HarbingerOfShadows
When I was much younger, before "Fight Club", i had that epiphany.
It was along the lines of, "My parents are my adoptive parents, God gave me them to act in his stead- cuz for some reason, he can't be here."
Then I took a good look at them.
"God must not like me very much."

After that I was fine. I grew up in an Irish Catholic family, went to a Catholic school, had nothing but learning that God is only waiting to put his boot on my neck; the revelation was quite freeing.
At that point on, I figures I might just go ahead and run away and join the circus, it's not like god would care.
One less person to eat his personal Cheez-itz.
Parents don't realize that their behaviors affect a kid's definition of god, mine paid a ton of money to the pope for an 'education', and then dropped the ball with their winning personalities.

I'm fine now.

a reply to: TheCounselor

Brings a question to mind.....
Not one I would think would be well recieved.

How many nonbelievers have had some sort of parental issues?

I would like to think I came to my position through reason and the simple lack of tangible evidence.
But, given my childhood, which I won't be sharing, I have to wonder.

a reply to: HarbingerOfShadows

I don't know if I'm a non believer.
If he exists, fine, if not, fine.
He keeps to his yard, I keep to mine.

It would be interesting to see if one's relationship to parents affect one's belief system. I think it's a good question.
Do we sieve our interpretation of a divine father through the lenses in which we see our parents?

Of course, an all knowing god would know if we did this, so those with parental issues would still look at their parents and go "Huh."

originally posted by: HarbingerOfShadows
a reply to: InhaleExhale

Feel better now?

Compared to when?

a reply to: InhaleExhale

Oh so you're always this vitriolic?

a reply to: TheCounselor

I keep trying to see if anyone's done a study but am mostly getting Christian parenting advice pages.
Or news articles that aren't sourcing their iinformation..
Meh.....

originally posted by: HarbingerOfShadows
a reply to: InhaleExhale

Oh so you're always this vitriolic?

No just asking a question to your vague reply.

I can be if its necessary just as anyone can be.

Just like you are by suggesting such of me.

What was so critical of my initial reply for you to respond as such?

a reply to: InhaleExhale

If you cannot see it there's little point in trying to show you.
But I will point out vagueness in no way merits hostility.
Which, regardless of whether you meant to be or not, you were.


But anyrate this is off topic.
Good day sir.

In many ways your OP is sound but forgotten cannot be the MOTHERS or GODdesses...

NAMASTE*******

a reply to: Ophiuchus 13

Very true and I had actually thought of that.
Too late to change it.

But that's the reason I switch my langauge to parents instead of just the patriarchal side of the equation.