Way to 'kill' any God?

Originally posted by Seekerof
It matters and you did not answer the question.
You are basing BELIEF entirely around learned knowledge.
Knowledge when?

If belief is learned as you so assert, then who taught the first believer; who taught the orginator of that belief; who gave the first believer, the originator of the belief first knowledge?

If you cannot answer it, then your argument, postulation, and hypothesis crumbles based on BELIEF=LEARNED KNOWLEDGE.

It matters not to you because quite frankly, you cannot answer what is asked.

seekerof

[edit on 16-8-2005 by Seekerof]

I can answer that quite well actually.

Self-inclination and reasoning are the answers to your question.

If I look down and see that my socks are white, therefore they are white. If I hear a bird churp in the morning, therefore there is a bird churping in the morning. If no one knew that E=MC2 (I don't know the formating for squared.), then how did Eienstein come up with it?

Information does not have to be passed on through another living being who can communicate it for a belief to be formed. If that were not true - we would know absolutely NOTHING about our world.

[edit on 8/16/2005 by BlueApocalypse]

[edit on 8/16/2005 by BlueApocalypse]

Originally posted by BlueApocalypse

Originally posted by Zeta_101
Not to mention christianity has survived for thousands of years ... so much for trying to "erase" it ... >_>

How long did the Greek Mythology last? The Egyptian Heliopolis? Thousands of years if I'm not mistaken - Everything must die at somepoint, Christanity will too.

[edit on 8/16/2005 by BlueApocalypse]

Yet...it's still alive ... after those other religions have ceased to exist. : )

as posted by BlueApocalypse
Self-inclination and reasoning are the answers to your question.

If this is the case for the first believer, then would it not take faith in his or her own self-inclined and self-reasoned belief to teach or pass on that belief to the second learner/believer to be? Would it not take faith on the part of the second believer to believe in the person [the first believer, the orignator of the original belief] and belief that was being taught to him or her [the second believer]?






seekerof

[edit on 16-8-2005 by Seekerof]

Originally posted by Seekerof

as posted by BlueApocalypse
Self-inclination and reasoning are the answers to your question.

If this is the case for the first believer, then would it not take faith in his or her own self-inclined and self-reasoned belief to teach or pass on that belief to the second learner/believer to be? Would it not take faith on the part of the second believer to believe in the person [the first believer, the orignator of the original belief] and belief that was being taught to him or her [the second believer]?

seekerof

[edit on 16-8-2005 by Seekerof]

Yes it would take Faith. What's your point? I said that Faith is only the hope that what you believe to be true/false is actually correct. Since you didn't not argue that, I can only assume you either didn't see it, read it, or you agree with it.

Knowledge creates the belief, whether it's true or false. Once that has been decerned for the said person, it's FAITH that keeps that belief the same.

If you hear of God and decern for yourself that he is real, then that is your belief. It would be your FAITH that keeps you believing that belief.

Whether you have the motivation or not to tell others about your beliefs as well as the source of your motivation, has absolutely nothing to do with it.

My point still remains - If you could take away the knowledge or stop it from ever forming or being passed around, then no belief would ever form.




[edit on 8/16/2005 by BlueApocalypse]

Yet...it's still alive ... after those other religions have ceased to exist. : )

Just because we live in the Age of Man, does not mean he will be around forever and that no other species could 'rule' this world. The same principal applies to religions.

Long before religion was religion, there was only belief.
As such, the belief in the afterlife predates religion, as does the belief in gods or higher beings.






seekerof

Originally posted by BlueApocalypse
Yes it would take Faith. What's your point?
......
Knowledge creates the belief, whether it's true or false. Once that has been decerned for the said person, it's FAITH that keeps that belief the same.

My point was and is that faith creates belief and that knowledge is a byproduct of faith and belief.





seekerof

Originally posted by Seekerof

Originally posted by BlueApocalypse
Yes it would take Faith. What's your point?
......
Knowledge creates the belief, whether it's true or false. Once that has been decerned for the said person, it's FAITH that keeps that belief the same.

My point was and is that faith creates belief and that knowledge is a byproduct of faith and belief.





seekerof

Really? So I can have faith and beliefs in a religion that I know nothing of?

BlueApocalypse I understand the depth of what you are trying to elucidate, and there are two points contained within that which you present:

1) That knowledge of a particular thing, in this case, God, had to have been either implanted
2) or manufactured, where without either having been done, no belief in God would be possible.

The first is the obvious, and too deep for your detractor to fathom. Presuming for the sake of argument that there is a God, if s/he did not wish us to feel his/her presence, s/he would not have implanted the thought of his/her existence, and hence, we could at best only imagine such an existence.

The second deals with the manufacturing of a God or Gods by a human or humans who either wished to spawn a name to something that they and or others felt (relative to the implanting of this evidence) within themselves or just manufacture a name and a story for psychological impact.

In both I agree with you, where the first is obvious, and the second applies a human term to some construct that man wanted to define whether out of a desire to express what one felt or out of deceit. Had the original word been translated as pig by the original coiner of the entity, man would be referring to the generic term for Ra, Jehovah and Allah, as pig. Your second point then which others miss, is that with the latter, if man alone is responsible for this thing known as God but had not created and perpetrated the entity, there would be no belief in such entity. Much like if man had never created the airplane, we would not believe it possible for anything but birds to fly.

Originally posted by BlueApocalypse
Really? So I can have faith and beliefs in a religion that I know nothing of?

I guess you'll have to ask those Stone Aged people or those early natives that had no sense of what we call religion but worshipped unnamed, unspecified, and unknown gods of nature, the elements, the sky and the stars, the moon and the sun, etc., huh?
They knew nothing of many things, yet they were awed by lightning, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, hurricanes, etc., all of which, they attributed to higher beings they called gods. It was later on the names were given.

The problem here is that you are thinking with a conventional and today type mentality and not taking into account or looking deeper into how MAN developed the belief in gods and higher beings, or in the afterlife, etc., when applied to faith--->belief----->knowledge.

All of my mentions have not been to necessarily demean what you have been saying, but to get you to look deeper in trying to understand how early man, caveman, etc. developed such beliefs; how those beliefs were passed on as knowledge; how faith played an integral part in the process: that process being God induced or man created.






seekerof

[edit on 16-8-2005 by Seekerof]

You need to define "god" are you talking about the one universal god that we all have by name God, Allah, etc., or some sort of specific sub-deity?

You can't kill god since it is not a being. It is a concept.

If you were to erase say all bibles or all qu'arans from existence, you would also have to go back in time and eliminate all followers of this religion, which is patently ridiculous and you should really go into science fiction novels not conspiracy theories ...

Originally posted by Seekerof

Originally posted by BlueApocalypse
Really? So I can have faith and beliefs in a religion that I know nothing of?

I guess you'll have to ask those Stone Aged people or those early natives that had no sense of what we call religion but worshipped unnamed, unspecified, and unknown gods of nature, the elements, the sky and the stars, the moon and the sun, etc., huh?
They knew nothing of many things, yet they were awed by lightning, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, hurricanes, etc., all of which, they attributed to higher beings they called gods. It was later on the names were given.

The problem here is that you are thinking with a conventional and today type mentality and not taking into account or looking deeper into how MAN developed the belief in gods and higher beings, or in the afterlife, etc.

All of my mentions have no been to necessarily demean what you have been saying, but to get you to look deeper in trying to understand how early man, caveman, etc. developed such beliefs; how those beliefs were passed on as knowledge; how faith played an integral part in the process.

seekerof

I think Blue's got you there as well. Man had knowledge of lightning (he saw it), that was enough to inspire a self proclaimed belief (of how it happened, or what it was). It was then Faith that carried down through the ages, without going furhter in the quest for knowledge. You can apply that formulae to anything. His argument is increasingly valid.

But just becasue the argument makes sense and holds it's ground, doesn't make it true.
You just have to ask yourself, is faith keeping me from knowledge? I think the answer is quite evident.

I guess I have to go back to the originator and first believer again?
Did the first man have knowledge of lightning the first time he saw it?

Knowledge:

Knowledge is defined as the remembering of previously learned material. This may involve the recall of a wide range of material, from specific facts to complete theories, but all that is required is the bringing to mind of the appropriate information. Knowledge represents the lowest level of learning outcomes in the cognitive domain.

www.ohlone.edu/org/capac/docs/blooms-tax2.html

Knowledge is the awareness and understanding of facts, truths or information gained in the form of experience or learning. Knowledge is an appreciation of the possession of interconnected details which, in isolation, are of lesser value.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge

Knowledge refers to what one knows and understands. Knowledge is sometimes categorized as either unstructured, structured, explicit or tacit. What we know we know is explicit knowledge. Knowledge that is unstructured and understood, but not clearly expressed is implicit knowledge. If the knowledge is organized and easy to share then it is called structured knowledge. To convert implicit knowledge into explicit knowledge, it must be extracted and formatted.

dssresources.com/glossary/

arrange, define, duplicate, label, list, memorize, name, order, recognize, relate, recall, repeat, reproduce state.

www.tecweb.org/eddevel/edtech/blooms.html

The problem here is that some are trying to downplay the significance of the part that faith played/plays from the beginning of man's spiritual self, the notion and concept and belief and thus the faith in gods or higher beings. Modern and contemporary thinking has lead to the thinking that everything revovles around knowledge or a knowledge base, and that is not true when applied to spiritual beliefs, such as gods or the notion of higher beings. The belief in gods or higher beings is NOT math or science, thus requiring a different set of methods, beliefs, reasonings, etc., not necessarily requiring faith. We are talking spirituality, the metaphysical, thus requiring a different type knowledge, beliefs, and requiring faith.



seekerof

[edit on 16-8-2005 by Seekerof]

Seeker is absolutely right, in that belief does not require concrete evidence to remain viable. In fact, belief is a powerful tool that can be used by the faithful to literally mold reality like clay, regardless of the present conditions of the static reality, or, shared reality, as you please.

The Matrix touched on some of this, and while it's already cliche to invoke that movie in philosophical debates, I think this invocation is valid and interesting.

The idea that one can do anything, if one believes it can be done, is an idea that we are taught as children. Most of us don't heed our parents' advice, just as most parents don't heed their own advice.

In any case, man can kill God, in so far as God is relevant to man - the idea. If there is an actual entity who big-banged our universe into existence, and he/she/it is still alive somewhere, then that's a different story. However, I think it was mostly accepted by ancient religions that the creator God(s) were either deceased or slumbering, and I for one, believe God is dead.

An interesting note, regarding the name angle; a popular invocation used to be used in supplications: worshippers would praise the names of the known Gods, and then they would praise all the forgotten, nameless Gods. Offerings were frequently made to nameless Gods, because people didn't want them to get angry at having been forgotten, and issue a reprisal in the form of a curse or a famine.

The idea that man has power over God is not brand new or anything, but the idea that God has power over man is the root of the God idea. As has been mentioned, the God of the Old Testament can be consulted, even cajoled by the invocation of his true name, but he can also destroy and be very emotional over seemingly minor transgressions. The demons of old were said to be bound to their names, and to posess the name meant posession of the demon's soul. The two are not so different, in fact, the farther back you go, the less distinction there is between 'Good' and 'Bad' Gods.

The farther back in history you go, the more fickle the idea of God becomes. Could this have something to do with an evolving idea driven by experience? I think it just might...

So man can not only kill the idea of God, but he can germinate it, grow it, plant it, grow it, hybridize it, ignore it, abuse it etc., etc..

I really believe that there is no difference between angels, demons, and the Gods of old, excepting their decisions, and I really believe that we are all (angels, men, oak trees, all )splinters of a larger, deceased entity. It could also be that each and every creature is the entirety of God, trying to understand itself subjectively using the 'flesh paradigm' of corporeal entities. But that's not a logically derived idea, it's pure fantasy.

The way the bible talks about angels corresponds very nicely to the evolutionary development man has undergone. Angels are the source, the prototype so to speak, for man. They lacked souls was all...

Each characteristic of the human psyche, each node of the brain, every process and piece of cerebral software was birthed by one, or a very few animals of one generation. The progenitors are many, staggered all throughout pre-history, and we are their progeny, in thought and form.

(The progenitors being the embodiment of a certain quality, that for whatever reason was selected for survival.) The vices and virtues of man are shared by the angels (sins of the father?), it appears to me that man is descended from angels. We both owe the creator entity our initial birth, but we achieved our current state through immense tribulation. We earned our current place in the universe, or at least our ancestors earned our place for us. What other way to stand is there, but tall, when you are walking in the footsteps of titans?

Look at other mythologies and you'll see that the various deities represent different qualities of mankind, so the idea is, the Gods are personifications of man in some idealized state, or a worship of the origins of those qualities in modern man.

For example, Aphrodite, the Goddess of love. A long time back, one mother mammal was born with a brain that more accurately identified and selected a mate with high parental investment intentions, a protective Father for the children, in other words. This brain node or olfactory improvement, or whatever it was CREATED the idea of love. Why can swans fall in love? Because they adapted to do so over many, many centuries. Love helps you survive, whether you're an animal or a man, so it's an emminently selectable quality, or program. Love is good for evolution! So we have a God for that...

She's also a seductress, the epitomy of guile with strong sexual overtones. Consider the first woman born with large breasts (standard mammalian breasts are a flimsy, dangly affair). Her frontside looked like a backside to her primitive cavemates, and men were lining up around the block to woo her (or club her over the head, I'm not sure). Sex is good for evolution! So we have a God for that...

Praise the father? Damn right I praise my father, the one whose extra-marital indiscretion sowed the seeds of my consciousness. Before him, and before him, there were similar men, and before there were similar men there were similar apes, and before there were similar apes, there were similar reptiles. (My dad in particular bears a striking resemblance to an iguana)

Why not praise the animals and angels that literally opened the gate to let your life in to the world, what would you be without them? Hmmm..what's less than a twinkle in the eye? We all owe our lives to each and every ancestor, just as much as we owe our existence to the creator of the universe. Why praise one and not the other? Because of this silly belief that the creator spark is some sort of divine Santa Claus, bestowing presents on all the good, greedy little children that ask for them?

The Gods are, or rather were, men and beasts, (or varying degrees of both - think reptile brain stem ). So if that's the case, aren't the men of today the Gods of tommorow? Start acting like a God instead of waiting for the blessings and aid of one who may or may not exist. God helps those who help themselves. The syntax confuses people, but for me it's a giant red arrow pointing to the conclusion that men can be Gods if only they will help themselves.

The creator has always been appreciated, but what do you say to such an entity? Nothing, he doesn't want to talk to you. The angels on the other hand are flesh..or were. They deserve your praise, and are intended to be role models for intelligent behavior. What value is there in worshipping the spark that burned out billions of years ago?

Who knows, anyway, back to the topic.

Can you kill God by disbelieving? Certainly. If you believe you can.

This stuff is fun isn't it?

God is, at its heart, an encouragement for mortal failure. Burden too heavy? Here's a big set of shoulders to bear the weight for you. Bad luck? Here's an excuse. Afraid of death? Here's a life after.

The idea of God has been playing catch-up with man's insecurities since the idea was born. It's a miserable job, in my view, being the universal scapegoat. I prefer to place all the blame for my life's condition on myself, no luck involved, no God, no fate, just me and my decisions.

There's enormous power in our ability to make decisions, and even greater power to be had in understanding why we make the decisions we do. Responsiblity for your own life is a burden that makes you stronger for carrying it, if yaknow what I mean.

The thing is, so many people perceive God as a father figure, which is fine and all, when you're a child...

But, when you grow up, you can't be running to your father every time you get a runny nose or a kid picks on you at the bus stop. At some point you have to grow up, be a man, and start finding/creating solutions to your problems. You have to take responsibility for your own life, and live it as you choose.

The whole idea of God as a school principle, metting out judgements and punishing bad behavior..it's frankly offensive. As a man, you shouldn't need a father figure to keep you in line, you should be able to handle your own business and conduct yourself approriately, without the ever-present threat of a belt lashing, or the spiritual equivalent (Hell).

It's patently ridiculous the way some people use God as a crutch. I respect God, the creator, certainly, I admire his craftsmanship, but I don't feel the need to rely on him, fear him, or praise his name every day. If you were the omnipotent origin/creator of all things, assuming that fairy tale is true, and the original spark had/has sentience (which it didn't necessarily have), would you give a damn what this particular watery meat sack thought of you, or that particular watery meat sack wanted from you? Of course not. But people will believe anything if that belief serves an emotional need.

God is, in my mind, the spark that created our universe. It probably isn't/wasn't sentient. God probably died on the proverbial seventh day, when the universe was done. That's the cycle of every other observable process, so why should God be exempt from death after birth? It doesn't make sense.

So, finally, God is probably dead anyway. So, no, you can't kill the spark, because it's already dead. You can kill the idea of an omnipotent, omnipresent authority figure. I think everyone should kill that idea of God, by shedding the crippling fear that necessitates such a powerful security blanket. The fear is irrational anyway...

Hell now definitely, or Hell later maybe, I'll go with the latter option and throw classical Christian morality in the rubbish bin in order to survive and breed.

Some things are important, and contributing to evolution is one of them. Some things aren't, and can be safely ignored by sensible people, things like making an ephemeral, probably dead, totally aloof, pseudo-father figure Santa Claus proud. Like God needs to be proud of you? Uh-uh. Live a life, the world is hellish enough without constant self flagellation motivated by fear, guilt, and childish greed.

Maybe if I act a certain way God will make life easier? Maybe if I act a certain way God will forgive my past acts? Maybe if I act a certain way God will give me what I want? Blech. Rubbish. You have the power, as a man, to make decisions that make your own life better. You have the power to forgive yourself, and believe me when I say you can have anything you want in this world if you're willing to make the decisions necessary.

Asking God for these things is the equivalent of a grown man asking daddy to tie shoelaces.

Wow.. Sorry about that.

/Rant over

[edit on 17-8-2005 by WyrdeOne]

Originally posted by BlueApocalypse
Now for the hypothetical part: If you were able to completely erase ALL knowledge on any given religion and had to the power to remove all relics and sources of knowledge of that religion from the face of the world so that the populus could not relearn it, it would then be a 'dead' religion right? No one to know about it, so no one to believe in it. Bye bye 'God'...

Well, that is still not going to be enough. You'll have to first find a way to get rid of or turn off the God module in the brain...

SCIENTISTS believe they have discovered a "God module" in the brain which could be responsible for man's evolutionary instinct to believe in religion.

A study of epileptics who are known to have profoundly spiritual experiences has located a circuit of nerves in the front of the brain which appears to become electrically active when they think about God.

The scientists said that although the research and its conclusions are preliminary, initial results suggest that the phenomenon of religious belief is "hard-wired" into the brain...

cas.bellarmine.edu...

[edit on 17-8-2005 by mwen]

Originally posted by mwen
Well, that is still not going to be enough. You'll have to first find a way to get rid of or turn off the God module in the brain...

I'd be interested on seeing further studies about this, absolutely.

Alas, one study doth not a proof maketh.

In terms of the whole knowledge/faith discussion..all I can do is try and simplify for my own mind

Belief does imply the presence of some knowledge of the subject, at least at it's very basic premise. You can't have faith in something with which you're unfamliar, and at it's simplest, knowledge implies that you're at least familiar with the subject.

Early man observed and noted lightning, the sun, things growing. He knew these things happened - but he had no idea why.

Knowing that something has happened does not imply that you understand why....it seems that might be where the gap is, so to speak, in discussing the entire concept.

If you have no knowledge of a subject, it would seem impossible to me to be able to have faith relating to that.

Faith needs a subject - and if you have no subject, upon what is that faith based?

well there is a way to kill a god the spear that stabed jesus side when he was being cruficfied is said to have the power to give a mortal immortality and the strengh of the gods and is able to kill a god as well so * shurgs* and there is many other artifacts said to be able to kill gods or trun them mortal and then you can kill them ^^

Originally posted by BlueApocalypse
Don't get me wrong, this is completely hypothetical.

All religions are based faith or how much a person believes in the religion correct? So that means the followers of any said religion should have knowledge on the Deity/Deities.

Now for the hypothetical part: If you were able to completely erase ALL knowledge on any given religion and had to the power to remove all relics and sources of knowledge of that religion from the face of the world so that the populus could not relearn it, it would then be a 'dead' religion right? No one to know about it, so no one to believe in it. Bye bye 'God'.

NOTE: This is not an attack made to state that there is no higher power. I honestly don't know. The point of it is to state that in my honest opinion no one knows what's out there and therefore is ridiculous to state that any Human made Deity is the supreme ruler of the Universe.

.......anyone having such powers would be the "king of the hill" if by erasing any memory you could "kill" religions and gods then what are you if not "divine" , the snake bites it's own tail

My thought is to question before man became aware of bacteria and viral infections did they exist?

Or did they not exist because we had no knowledge of them?

Originally posted by Seekerof
My point was and is that faith creates belief and that knowledge is a byproduct of faith and belief.

My BSometer just went off. Faith does not produce knowledge.