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What is Love/Hate?
The Love/Hate campaign is aimed at providing a forum for people in the William and Mary community to share their opinions about various topics. There are 10 different threads for people to comment on.
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2010
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March
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- What do YOU Love or Hate about LOVE/HATE?
- What do YOU Love or Hate about WILLIAM & MARY?
- What do YOU Love or Hate about CHRISTIANS?
- What do YOU Love or Hate about FAMILY?
- What do YOU Love or Hate about FRIENDS?
- What do YOU Love or Hate about DATING?
- What do YOU Love or Hate about JESUS?
- What do YOU Love or Hate about THE CHURCH?
- What do YOU Love or Hate about RELIGION?
- What do YOU Love or Hate about GOVERNMENT?
- What do YOU Love or Hate about GOD?
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March
(11)
I hate how confusing and mysterious the subject of God can be.
ReplyDeleteI hate how I know he has a plan but I don't know that plan.
ReplyDeleteI actually like how mysterious God is. I wouldn't want for a deity to be simple. I like his multi-faceted nature. God is infinite.
ReplyDeleteI hate how he makes people do bad things to other people.
ReplyDeleteI hate how people assume there is a God. Why do we have to have significance in this world? Why is not ok to believe that we are not meant for greatness and are just simply organic material that will dissolve into something? Why do people find this viewpoint depressing, when it is actually liberating?
ReplyDeleteI hate how you can't prove that God exists, and you can't prove that he doesn't.
ReplyDelete"I would rather live my life as if there were a God and die to find out that there wasn't, than to live my life as if there weren't a God and die to find out that there was."
ReplyDeleteI hate not understanding why He allows what He allows.
ReplyDeleteI hate that people think god has a plan for everyone, thus leaving things out of their hands and having an excuse for failure or poor circumstances brought about by chance (health ailments, accidental deaths, etc).
ReplyDeleteYou make your own fate. Sometimes chance interferes, not god.
I hate god.
ReplyDeleteI love how God loves us. I love how He reveals Himself to us through everything if we're just paying attention . . . the flowers, the breeze, the ocean, all living creatures. God is there. I love how no matter what I do God never turns his back on me. His love is infinite and unconditional.
ReplyDeleteI dislike how people continue believing in an idea (God) just because it is an entrenched part of their culture and/or makes them feel good despite not having a shred of evidence to support it.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of God
1) Isn't necessary to explain any phenomena that can be successfully explained
2) Has no substantial evidence to support it - the assumption for rational human discourse is that of the burden of proof.
If I said that Zeus existed, I would have to prove it to you. I really can't stand when Christians say "I may not be able to prove that God exists, but you can't prove that He doesn't exist!"
If not being able to prove that something isn't so is adequate cause for believing something, then we should all start believing in Zeus, or that there are invisible fairies down at the bottom of the Crim Dell, because we can't definitively prove either of those things incorrect.
A loving person in the sky and an afterlife could be nice things if they existed, but there is nothing to suggest that they do, so to do so is wishful thinking.
"I actually like how mysterious God is. I wouldn't want for a deity to be simple. I like his multi-faceted nature. God is infinite."
ReplyDeleteNo offense, because it sounds like from your use of vocabulary (and that fact that you go to W&M of course) that you are a very bright person, but this kind of language is fuzzy.
You're making a bunch of vague statements without evidence/adequately explaining your terms. I strongly dislike when apologists try to couch God in complex terms that they can't even really clearly define like "infinite" and "multi-faceted" (and therefore their arguments lack adequate proof) - because the simple explanation of God doesn't hold up.
"I would rather live my life as if there were a God and die to find out that there wasn't, than to live my life as if there weren't a God and die to find out that there was."
ReplyDeleteThis would be all well and good if your belief in God was trivial and had no effect on the way that you live your life and interact with others.
Living according to God's dictates hinders your ability to be an individual and pursue a life that is meaningful, beautiful, and worthwhile to you.
Living for heaven and a promised eternal life in the sky distracts you from the beauty of the only real life, the bliss that is being present in the here and now. Some scholars believe that the present moment is what the historical Jesus actually meant by the "Kingdom of God" (see the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus Seminar, Alan Watts, et al).
Also, if you really take your faith seriously, it shapes your moral values. Do we want our moral values to be based on outdated social mores (treatment of women, homosexuals, demonization of the sexual act) and cosmological beliefs unsupported by evidence or logical, evidence-based discourse for the most effective way of running society?
It is my personal belief that the most important aspects of our morality come from natural selection (read "Personality" by Daniel Nettle at swem for a start). Temperamentally good people know for the most part what is right and wrong by using their own instincts and intelligence; they certainly don't need a bible.
Believing in God also effects that way you interact with others in that, at least in believing in a theistic concept of God, you pledge allegiance to him. This can be very dangerous and often turns into conflict between the saved (who pledge allegiance to him) and the infidels (who don't). See modern conflict in the middle east, northern ireland, crusades etc.
It is sad to see people resent, hate and sometimes kill each other over unreasonable religious differences.
Thanks for the comments, Alan!
ReplyDeleteI love that no matter how much any of us think we have God (or lack thereof) figured out, if God is God, he must still be beyond the smallness of thoughts about Him.
I hate that there is hatred and killing over differences of opinion about God.
ReplyDeleteI think that all of the comments about proving/ disproving God's existence miss the point. Believing in God is about having faith, not reason. Reason can substantiate both believe in and rejection of God.
ReplyDelete"I think that all of the comments about proving/ disproving God's existence miss the point. Believing in God is about having faith, not reason."
ReplyDeleteWhy? In our day to day lives, we choose to believe or not believe things based off of whether our not they make sense/are supported by evidence from our senses, even though we're never 100% sure about anything. Why should a belief in God be any different?
If the 'virtue' of "faith" means clinging to a belief about the world without any evidence to suggest that it is true, then 'faith' is a foolish and possibly dangerous virtue.
I propose a different kind of "faith:" Not stubbornly holding on to ideas but instead trusting your renewed awareness to tell you what past ideas are valid and which ones need to be tossed aside in favor of new, better, more explanatory ones.
To have that faith suggests a great deal of strength and trust in yourself, and would likely result in a world of reasonable, open-minded individuals.
I also want to say thanks to the editor! This a great blog and a fun opportunity to have good discussions with other intelligent W&M students!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad God finally started sharing his love with people besides Jews.
ReplyDeleteHow can you love or hate anything about God? It's like loving or hating anything about everything, about the Universe? Too heretical? Tough, I'm a pantheist. I love God, as I love existence, as I love the air I breathe or the water I drink and of which I am mostly composed. That is to say, I don't love it: I take it for granted. But when one is suffocating or dying of thirst, doesn't one just love air and water? To drink to breathe? Similarly, if one is far from God, isn't one quick to exclaim one's undying love and devotion to God? And if one is drowning or being blown about in a tornado, isn't one just as quick to curse air or water, as one curses God when all the forces of the Universe seem to have lined to destroy you? Clearly, love and hate are insufficient concepts to describe something as fundamental as God.
ReplyDeleteMed Dog:
ReplyDeleteI'm curious as you what you mean when you call yourself a "pantheist."
When most people make the distinction between pantheist and theist, they mean something along these lines:
Pantheist = believes in a reverence for the majesty of the interconnectedness of the totality of nature/universe; the word 'God' is redefined to mean 'the universe,' and is NOT describing a person. If this is what you meant by pantheist, I too am a pantheist.
Theist = believes in a personal, anthropomorphic creator God to love, be devoted to, and/or declare allegiance to
To answer your (probably rhetorical) question, it does indeed seem silly to ask whether someone hates 'God' when 'God' is defined from the classically pantheist perspective, as it is a waste of time to hate 'the universe.'
However, if we are talking about the meaning of the word 'God' as most people (theists) use it, isn't easy to see how someone could hate an idea that, aside from being false, has caused so much heartache, hatred, and intolerance?
I love that God gives me more chances than I ever deserve.
ReplyDeleteI love the gifts He gives every day. From the flowers, to the sunshine, to the silly and sometimes profound things that come out of the mouths of babes.
I love God's story.
I love God's grace.
I love that I have a personal relationship with God through his son Jesus Christ. I love that no matter how many people think that I am crazy, foolish, closed minded, or ignorant- that none of it can change the beauty, the intensity, the truth of that relationship. I love that my relationship with God defines who I am as a person and gives me value. I love that God's love was shown to me through my parents- they showed me what unconditional love is.
ReplyDeletePs. I love that God doesn't care if I use poor grammar or run on sentences :)
It's noteworthy to see how nations/governments that are atheistic as derived from their Marxist ideology have perpetrated the most horrible crimes against the individual. A nation based in religion recognizes the divine within each citizen.
ReplyDeleteAlan, is there truly no evidence of God? What about the resurrection of Jesus? One could make an argument there is an incredible amount of evidence for this event. And, if so, is not this event a "game changer" for all time?
ReplyDeleteI love Spero!
ReplyDelete"It's noteworthy to see how nations/governments that are atheistic as derived from their Marxist ideology have perpetrated the most horrible crimes against the individual. A nation based in religion recognizes the divine within each citizen."
ReplyDeleteThis argument is as flawed as it is sensational.
There have been evil men who committed crimes against humanity that were atheists (Stalin, Mao).
There have been evil men who committed crimes against humanity that were theists (Hitler, Osama Bin Laden).
Kings and dictators have lead armies to kill in the name of a God.
No ruler has ever mass murdered in the name of atheism.
A great article on this topic:
http://atheism.about.com/od/isatheismdangerous/a/AtheismKilled.htm
The reason authoritarian states are so antidemocratic is that they are too much LIKE religion:
1) they are dogmatic in their insistence that their ideology (be it fascism, communism, et al) is sacred and beyond question/rational discourse
2) they often rise around cults of personality or 'hero worship' of dictators as God-like figures
As for your second point, anyone with a limited knowledge of history or politics can name off the top of their head several very religious nations past and present that have seemingly failed to recognize "the divine" within each individual:
- Iran is a theocratic state where religious values are extremely important, yet women are treated like second-class citizens
- In the middle ages in highly Christian europe, jews and muslims were persecuted and killed and Christian serfs lived in abject poverty
- In the deeply religious United States, slavery was allowed to endure for almost a hundred years
- The God of the Old Testament advocated the mass killing of the Caananites
"Alan, is there truly no evidence of God? What about the resurrection of Jesus?"
ReplyDeleteDo you seriously believe that someone died and then spontaneously came back to life?
If someone told you that that happened to a friend of theirs just the other day, you would say that that person is insane, because coming back from the dead is physically impossible. Why the double standard when it comes to gospel writers?
People persist in believing in the Resurrection, the virgin birth, God talking to people, etc despite intuitive knowledge that these phenomena are implausible either because
1) (In the opinion of some snobby Atheists) people are generally gullible or
2 (In my opinion) the beliefs of Christianity, though as ridiculous to outsiders as the beliefs of other religions (Greek mythology, Hinduism, Egyptian gods, et al) are to us, are so thoroughly entrenched in our culture and made sacred/beyond question that it is hard for even very bright individuals that have grown up in these cultures to let go of them.
Because I don't believe every book I read, no matter who it is supposedly written by or how good it apparently is, for me there is zero convincing evidence that Jesus Christ died and rose again.
"One could make an argument there is an incredible amount of evidence for this event."
Really? You haven't attempted, let alone made, a remotely convincing argument to prove that the Resurrection happened. And, as I said above, the burden of proof should be on you.
Lastly, I want to reiterate that, even though I strongly disagree with you, and consider your beliefs to be ill-founded and detrimental to society, I have nothing but the utmost respect for you and for all of the other clearly intelligent, passionate, and moral individuals on this blog.
And so I will continue to enjoy intelligent discussion with you.
Anonymous, I love you too.
ReplyDeleteAlan Watts, you have deliberately mischaracterized my point. Kids, that’s called a straw man argument.
Marxist/communistic regimes seek to displace the concept of a divine and eternal God, replacing Him with a figurehead with divine properties. Propagandists declared that Stalin, Mao, Kim il-Sung, and Pol Pot had supernatural abilities—with that, they had absolute power to persecute and liquidate anyone they deemed inconsequential or unnecessary. While Castro in Cuba hasn’t extinguished Roman Catholicism, he’s made it very difficult to practice it freely and has imprisoned ministers and dissidents. Despite exiling God, these are/were not nations open to free inquiry and scientific advancements—oddly enough, the vast majority of scientific advance has been undertaken by the Christian West.
It’s almost as if they’ve read Chesterton – “when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing--they believe in anything.”
In the Western tradition, the foundation for fundamental individual rights is found in the New Testament. Christian philosophers subsequently advanced the idea that man is not perfect, but he is perfectible.
You say no ruler ever mass murdered in the name of atheism…they didn’t have to. They didn’t recognize the individual as having any inherent worth. Only the state (as embodied by the tyrant) mattered.
Spero:
ReplyDeleteCorrect me if I'm wrong, but your argument was that
1) nontheistic nations, because of nontheism's apparent lack of concern for the worth of the individual, inevitably commit crimes against humanity and/or fail to respect individual rights and that
2) theistic nations (particularly Christian ones) because of theism's supposed concern for the worth of the individual inevitably guarantee their citizens individual rights and treat them equitably.
#1 is, plainly, bigotry. Nontheists as a people are on average just as concerned with social justice, the welfare/worth of others, and individual rights as theists. In fact, you could argue that nontheism, by diminishing the importance of the heavenly and earthly perogatives of religious communities, allows more focus on improving the actual physical and psychological welfare of individuals here on earth.
It might be worthwhile to reprint something I posted on the religion page - a list of nontheists who were passionately concerned with social justice and/or respect for individuals/their rights:
Carl Rogers, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Clement Atlee, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, James Madison, Buddha
Additionally, both of our above comments seem to agree that it is the extent to which nontheistic dictatorships are LIKE religions (dictators are revered as godlike figures, dogma cannot be challenged, etc) that makes them so illiberal - not the extent to which they don't believe in a God.
As for #2, I'll merely reprint the counterexamples that I posted above in my response to your first post:
- Iran is a theocratic state where religious values are extremely important, yet women are treated like second-class citizens
- In the middle ages in highly Christian europe, where religion was vastly more influential a force than it is today, jews and muslims were persecuted and killed and Christian serfs lived in abject poverty with no political rights/recognition
- In the deeply religious United States, slavery was allowed to endure for almost a hundred years
- The God of the Old Testament advocated the mass killing of the Caananites
"Despite exiling God, these are/were not nations open to free inquiry and scientific advancements—oddly enough, the vast majority of scientific advance has been undertaken by the Christian West."
ReplyDeleteSounds like the persecution of Galileo and the other astronomers by the forces of religion. Scientific advance happened in the West only after the power of religious dogma was sufficiently weakened and religious beliefs were able to be openly questioned.
I don't understand how you can say that Christianity is responsible for the advance of free inquiry or scientific advancements. Christianity is a foe to free inquiry because it is dogmatic (it requires you to accept teachings as 100% true without reference to evidence).
Also, in many ways, Christian thought (especially among religious leaders who don't interpret the Bible/ancient church teachings liberally/loosely) is opposed to scientific advancements in technology and knowledge (a lack of birth control use among Catholics has led to population issues in many countries; most people believe that the earth is 6000 years old, et al).
“'when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing--they believe in anything'”
You provide zero justification for this rhetorical flourish, and this idea does not follow. How does being skeptical of a belief make you believe everything else?
I've already talked above about how, in my opinion, religious belief has WAY more do to with the culture in which you were raised than with how smart/gullible you are, and I really can't stand it when fellow atheists talk about my Christian friends and family members like they're stupid or uneducated, but it would seem to me that someone who believes in anything sounds more like someone who thinks that a man could raise from the dead, that a virgin could give birth, that bushes can spontaneously ignite and talk to people, and that wafers can become someone's flesh after a priest says a prayer than someone who is skeptical of these ideas.
Alan, i think there is much evidence for the resurrection of Christ. Most of it is argued rationally.
ReplyDelete1. There are secular historians of that time period who attest to Christ's followers proclaiming the resurrection. Although, this may not be considered much, these historians are regarded as credible, and show that very early, the claims of resurrection were circulating.
2. The very rapid spread of Christianity, well before Constantine's horrible unifying of Christianity with the state, is remarkable. Somehow, this ridiculous claim of resurrection apparently was not a "deal breaker" to an incredible amount of adherents. How can we sit here two millenia away and judge so many that were only decades from the events in the life of Christ?
3. Without a protracted discussion on textual criticism of the New Testament, which I am more than willing to have, there is such an overwhelming amount of historians and archaeologists that put the dating of the entire New Testament well before 90 C.E. There were so many hearers of these claims who had lived during the time of the event of the crucifixion (c. 33 C.E.) that would recognize these claims of resurrection to be a lie if they had been. I guess one could argue they had all been silenced.
4. Within the New Testament documents, there are many who testify to having seen Christ after his very public execution. In fact, the apostle Paul counted as many as 500 witnesses in his first letter to the church at Corinth. This letter is considered by many scholars to be among the first New Testament documents written, c. 55 C.E. This is less than 25 years after the claimed resurrection. Although this is considered to be an eternity by today's communication standards, in ancient historical contexts, especially in very verbal transmissions of history, this is considered to be incredibly close.
5. It can be clearly demonstrated that many are willing to die for a strong religious belief. Suicide bombers prove this often. It seems odd that any group of religious followers are willing to die for what they know to be a lie. There was no powerful, wealthy church structure for which to die, much to the dismay of Dan Brown. The early followers of Christ are known to have died for their faith by horrible means. All the disciples died before 100 C.E. We know the stories of the coliseum for the later followers. Some event transformed these early eyewitnesses to Christ. From fearful deniers on the day of his crucifixion, to bold proclaimers willing to die for Christ is an amazing transformation. If this was a conspiracy, and the disciples had disposed of the body, then they died horrible deaths for what they all knew to be a lie. Conspiracies rarely stay so woven together.
6. If the Jewish leaders or the Roman government knew the resurrection was a lie, there would have been more of an issue made about this. They would have certainly produced the body of Jesus to squash this seminal movement. Only 50 days after the crucifixion, the physician Luke, regarded to be one of the finest ancient historians by many secular and religious scholars and archaeologists, records in the book of Acts that Apostle Peter stood and called out the Jewish leaders in an early sermon. Standing less than a mile from where Jesus had been buried, he proclaimed his resurrection, calling upon them as witnesses to these events. This whole movement could have been squashed that day if the Jewish leaders had produced the body.
There are no video tapes. To believe in the resurrection requires us to believe in something that is not consistent with natural order. Make no mistake, it requires faith. However, Christianity is hardly an irrational faith. If there requires a miraculous sign from a Creator to offer a measure of proof to provide a foundation for a body of highly regarded ethical teachings, then I submit the resurrection is quite verifiable, in regards to miracles. It measures to be quite historical.
I would love to dialogue further, Alan.
I love God's grace. His ever caring touch.
ReplyDeleteI love they way he loves me so much.
I love to feel his warmth around me.
I love to see him each time he's found me.
I love his works, his grand design,
This Buxom body that he made mine.
I love to lay down at his feet.
I love to taste his throbbing meat.
I swear to always do his will.
If asked I think I'd even Kill.
My god is tender, caring, strong
my god will never do me wrong
My Doctor, dispite his learnin, he'll
still call my cancer "Terminal"
Though if untreated by his drugs
I'll still be saved by godly hugs.
I hate how "god" is this identity that people find so easily to hide behind. If one can take a step back and ask themselves what would they do, I think we all might be a little less fearful of each other.
ReplyDeleteI hate how "god" is used as a proverbial stamp to rectify something and make events plausible. ("It's the god in me, I thank god for putting me here on earth, I thank god for getting me this student loan, etc.); why don't we all just stand up for ourselves?