Thanks for the input! One of my favorite quotes goes something like: "The only thing I know for sure is that I know nothing at all."
If I were to tell you that I KNOW Schrödinger's cat was alive, but couldn't explain to you my definition of life, I would expect my certainty to be questioned.
I've never met someone to profess such certainty without being able to explain what they are certain about.
If he said something like "I don't know, but I feel/think/believe/etc..." then I would be far less concerned about the particulars of that belief.
Or, if he would've said "I know there is something, but I can't explain it" the implied ambiguity of the word something would also leave the anal retentive part of me at ease.
When you say you know there is a mountain in California, it makes sense to me because I also know there are mountains in California. If you say you know there is a mountain in North Dakota, I then must question your definition of mountain, because obviously we aren't seeing it the same.
I'm not implying he is right or wrong in his belief, I just want to better understand what he means so I can at least understand it, if not necessarily agree with it.
The word God carries significant historical baggage in regards to its definition and how it is perceived when used in a sentence. To use the word God, yet remove all commonly agreed upon context from it makes me feel as though it is a poor choice of word to use in this instance (which is why my assumptions on the origin of his beliefs point towards his childhood religious experiences).
Then I thought, how does one define a God, without using a religion?
Well again, how does one define a God,
with a religion? Religions may tell you what to do to make God happy, to relieve you of your sins, they might even tell you you'll go somewhere where you die (although the specifics become murkier as we do things like send up planes and rockets) -- heck, they might even tell you
attributes of God , and they might repeat Greek formulae for how God must be omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent (just before withrdrawing into a long treatise on how evil can then exist...) but don't they all really say they can't truly know God? I mean, except some lumpen televangelists?
I think most of them reserve that to the category of mystery, in one way or another -- which is just what we've been discussing.
Only it's not mystery in the sense of the old mystery religions, in which someone can tell you the secrets and you're "in." It's a mystery in the sense that it really can't be known... and you really can't stop trying to know it. Believers think of that need as religion. Nonbelievers think of it as needing to know what you can't, and some may become greats in the sciences. Not that religious people can't... it just takes either the right religion, or the right attitude toward one that tells you you already have the answers.
We are what we are... in evolutionary terms we'd be pretty useless without this hard-wired need. If you want, you can just think of God as the unknown and unknowable. Encroach a little and it's not God anymore, by that definition... but again, that's the top-down God I guess you'd say. I think all that we think we "know" is God too... not very personal, dramatic, or comforting. But it fits the things I've learned.
I grew up with some religion -- not a lot, and not very "imposing," in either sense of the word. But I still mutter to my personal internal God from time to time, by which I mean I pray.
As I said, I can't make heads or tails of trying to convince others about religion. I look back and remember doing it when I was young, because it was fun and because I was always playing defense (as a Jew in the South.) Then the more I figured my way around my own contradictions the less fun it was.
I have a great deal of trouble these days with anybody of any faith or lack thereof trying to impose said faith or lack thereof on someone else, at least as adults. Sometimes I worry about those close to me teaching doctrines I disagree with to their children, on similar grounds to the ones an atheist would us, vis, I don't believe in said doctrines so they should not be taught. Some of them strike me as borderline abusive. The mechanics of the celestial skinner box we call heaven and hell, for example. But there are some for whom those mechanics are the outcome of the search.
For those subjected to said ideas, if they're seekers, they'll keep seeking. If they're believers, they'll keep believing. If they get tired, they may think they've gotten away from all that, but it will always come back, whether as religion, science, politics, or under some other guise. Same's true if you had no religion in your upbringing.
If there wasn't a God, you'd have to invent him, one way or another.
People want to matter. Or maybe more precisely, they want it all to matter. A man can die proudly laying down his life for another, I think (haven't done so, but it seems eminently probably when it happens.) But laying down his life for nothing? Say, if someone was target-practicing with a crash-test dummy, and you thought you were going to be a hero, but you were just a dumbazz?
Oh man. What's the difference - just meaning.
I'm just wool-gathering here.
Lots and lots of good stuff all around. I like this thread.
