If 'god' is 'reality' or 'existence,' why confuse matters by calling it god?

[BurtWorm]

Why worship it? Why bend down to it as though it gives a shit what you do to please it? Why anthropomorphize it in any way shape or form by pretending it has 'personality' or 'will' or any of these other very human (and animal) characteristics?

I'll tell you why I think those who are religious do this: it's because god is not *just* reality or existence to them. Right? So why do they pretend to have great big grown-up beliefs about god, when in fact, they're still putting a smiley face on the object of their worship just as those infantile fundamentalists do. Or am I misreading something about 'mature' religion?

[Orrex]

1. Because "reality" spelled backwards isn't Dog

"Ytilear" isn't funny at all.

[Angry Dragon]

2. Makes it more personal

[county worker]

3. What I don't understand is why it bothers you so much.

Let them have their beliefs. Unless some religious person is hurting someone else I don't give a shit what they believe. I have my beliefs, you have yours and we don't expect someone to give us the third degree about them.

[BurtWorm]

5. It's the dishonesty that bugs me.

Usually when they're making these pronouncements about their advanced system of beliefs, they're trashing "new atheists" out of the other side of their mouth.

[ZombieHorde]

6. If you don't want to debate your beliefs, you may wish to avoid religious debate boards.

Do you go to bars and complain about people drinking?

[county worker]

10. The OP was not one side of a debate.

Do you know what debate is? Resolved, many posters on this board are not here to debate.

[ZombieHorde]

14. The R/T forum has many debates. All of the regular posters here engage in debate.

The OP offered a reason for holding an opinion, which is an argument.

Opinion: People who claim god is existence are not being completely honest.

Reason: The people who make this claim worship their god and try to please their god.

[Oregone]

8. Practicing gullibility makes one gullible

And an entire society doing that can do a whole lot of hurting

[mike_c]

4. rational thought simply isn't part of the process....

You're right, of course. In every respect, I think. But remember-- we start with persons who believe irrational things that are directly contradicted by their own observations, yet they continue to believe them regardless. That requires a certain tenacity of irrationality that's bound to spill over into other areas of thinking.

[dipsydoodle]

7. Whether or not

your chewing gum loses its flavour on the bedpost overnight don't change the fact its chewing gum.

[cliffordu]

9. Well.....

:rofl:

true dat.


Edit for damned autocompletion mistake.

[dipsydoodle]

12. Singalong time too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXp0i7Y1eVo&feature=fvw :rofl:

[zipplewrath]

11. Personification

It gives a sentience to the concept.

[BurtWorm]

13. Then it's dishonest.

Because it then worships the thing for having sentience.

[zipplewrath]

15. Chicken and egg

You're stuck arguing whether they GAVE it sentience, or they RECOGNIZED its sentience.

[BurtWorm]

16. You said they gave it, so I just went with it.

I think you're right.

[zipplewrath]

17. Sorry, my imprecision

Faith is, almost by definition, something that involves understanding that can't be demonstrated or proven.

When people use metaphors, or try to use language of others to describe this faith, you get this kind of imprecision. But there is almost no other way to discuss things with each other, since we are discussing things that we can't show, nor share but through the spoken word. People spend lifetimes trying to develop these languages to share these ideas. Then others get involved and they go to war over these words and ideas.

A person of faith, discussing it with someone who doesn't know faith, is like a sighted man trying to describe color to a blind man. Alternately, what most people of faith don't understand is that even though they arrange to use the same language, in the end, even though they've agreed that "that" color is "blue", they don't really know if they "see" the same thing.

[BurtWorm]

18. Let's get a little more concrete here, though.

Are you making a distinction between god and existence and reality? Are you saying that what you call god is distinct precisely because it has something like personality?

[zipplewrath]

20. Tough spot for me

I occasionally understand the allusions, but I'm not a particular adherent.

My general suggestion is that we "give" God a personality in an attempt to understand him/it/her. We personify all manner of things, boats, cars, luck, etc. It is a way for us to understand things. But much like we divide biology into genus and species relatively arbitrarily, our assignment of personality to God doesn't "make it so".

Folks want to explain to the unfaithful that the unfaithful's concept of "reality" is basically a DEpersonification of God.

I personally don't claim enough knowledge of God to make distinctions between the 3 concepts you describe.

The distinction I would draw would be that we can personify something on our own, but that doesn't mean it isn't sentient. My cat is sentient, even if the personality I assign is probably false. I presume a thunderstorm is not sentient, even though it displays a fair amount of "personality". It is equally possible that you deprive nature of its personality, as it is that others give it personality.

That answers your question. I come to this from a slightly different point of view.

Interesting book, called "The History of Ideas". He goes over the history of grand concepts over about a 10,000 period of recorded history. Interestingly, his conclusion is that most of the concept, over time, evolve. Knowledge is added and our understanding is refined. He even points out that in many scientific cases, it gets so well refined that the vast majority of us get to the point where we can no longer learn it (mostly for a lack of time). The one exception to this is "spirituality". It is an endless cycle of construction and destruction, but the concepts never really "advance". Predominately they just "burn out". Religions (Including eastern mystics) live for a few millenia and then ultimately become archaic with few if any adherents. New ones pop up, often going through similar cycles of rising popularity, trips through strict dogma, pursuit of wider acceptance, and then ultimately drifting into irrelevance.

One could quickly presume from that of course that it's all just so much nonsense. There's a slightly different conclusion to be drawn however. Regardless of where in the world people appear, and how much communication they have with others, they develop similar concepts of deities. They personify those aspects of nature that affect them, in an attempt to understand them. They could all be equally wrong of course, and it could merely be a function of the structure of our brain. Alternately, they could all be on to something, and just haven't quite gotten it "right" yet.

It's hard for me to ignore 10,000 years of people "perceiving" something. It's hard for me to claim that all 10 billion people in history have been wrong.

[jotsy]

19. For all we truly know

God is a student named Geoffrey Ogden Davis chasing a grade in ecological systems at a college in and of the cosmos, and everything we know is as simple as peripheral subjects of study in a petri dish.

Religion and patriotism have both been used throughout history as an excuse to rape, maim and pillage in the name of whatever god they design and speak for.

I consider myself a student faith, free of the confines of organized religion, and quite often on my own as a result.

[dyingnumbers]

21. Vote for GOD.

The urge to materialize ideas into recognizable forms is concretistic...

Deities very often represent governments: political emblems are associated with nationalistic pride or given a similar sense of personality, as you can see, to command respect from misinformed, unsuspecting voters.

While we're on the subject of confusing matters with god, Obama has never been an openly praying man until lately, when his desperate appeal to the public made him a bona fide televangelist overnight.

[Odin2005]

22. That's exactly why I consider myself a spiritual atheist.

the concept of "god" is useless.

[RagAss]

23. They need to objectivize that which is not an object....

Pure Subject without attributes is a difficult concept to grasp. The early Advaitans knew this 5,000 years ago. Plotinus came to the same conclusion around 250 AD. In this respect, we live in the dark ages of spiritual insight.

Sad days indeed.