People create their Gods in their own image and likeness. This is not an argument that God does or does not exist. It’s merely an observation that what people claim to know about God is always a projection.
This thought that God is a projection occurred to me when looking at numerous delightful manger scenes crafted by artists from around the world at a store called Plowsharing Crafts in University City Missouri. “Plowshares,” a non-profit store that promotes “fair trade” is run by the Mennonite Church.
Here is a sampling of the creche scenes I viewed. They clearly can’t all be physiologically accurate.
For a related post, see “What did Jesus Look Like?”
Karl, before germ theory, people believed that diseases were caused by demons, or by "humours", and performed all kinds of rituals and procedures based on this that did nothing to cure disease. Now we can see bacteria and viruses under microscopes, perform tests to isolate them, determine effective treatments specific to the disease. We have not cured everything, and probably never will, as these creatures mutate to survive. However, the evidence is reliable that they are a cause of most diseases, and that application of germ theory based methodology will continue to lead to treatment and cures.
What you are saying is akin to accusing someone who refuses to accept the idea that demons and humours could be the explanation for disease of bias. People who have looked at both sides, the supernatural explanation for disease, and the natural explanation, and decided in favor of the latter, are the same variety of closed-mindedness and relativism as atheists. Yes, their minds are made up because they weighed the evidence, and found it overwhelmingly one-sided. In order for them to give credence to the demons/humours idea, they would need to see -new- evidence supporting it, not a re-hashing of the evidence they have rejected. In addition, this new evidence would have to be stronger than the evidence that they found that supported germ theory.
In the case of religious beliefs, it's exactly the same. Having looked at the evidence for supernatural claims, and the evidence for their natural explanations, the latter is better supported. Should new evidence surface that can be as rigorously tested, produce measurable and predictable results, which proves a supernatural explanation more strongly than a natural one, you'd likely find the atheists and agnostics to be even more open-minded. Why? Because if it were evidence for something that wasn't necessarily the Christian god, they'd embrace it a lot more willingly than the Christians would.
Mark,
Don't blink, but my stating I have no problem with your idea of God being an emergent property of community is just what I said.
If your conception of God is based upon both a past majority emergent and a progressive current emergent propery of community I would fully agree. Something however tells me that your ideas weigh heavily towards a physical naturalistic emergent property that would totally render the concept of God as useless and impotent.
Humans collectively can not build a cohesive concept of God by limiting the perspective of the community one believes is capable of such an endeavor.
Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins concept of God might be called a construct of the human mind and will, yet the beliefs they claim to not call "a god" are revealed by what they put their faith in to construct their interpretation of scientific observations that they call knowledge.
Let me explain how a demon or some other spiritual entity manifests it presence. Spiritual influences come from eternal sources to the individual but they can take up residence in individuals.
Take for instance if you were abused regularly as a child. You would develope definite thought patterns with pretty predictable responses. If you were captured by people that were under orders to keep you in prison but you could tell they did want to treat you humanely, after a awhile you actually might start to like or have empathy for your guards.
Our thoughts and beliefs are much like the spirits (benevolent or malevolent) that exist in the world around us and can also be in us to any extent that they dictate what our responses are going to be.
Demonic spirits can cause all kinds of wrong illogical thinking and thus they can be responsible for sickness and diseases if not directly at least indirectly.
If an individual hopes that the world around them is not influencing their outlook and interpretation of data they are being impacted to a degree beyond their comprehension. If an individual keeps their bias at arms length and constantly evaluates its influeneces, they stand a much better chance of never being taken captive by the spirit which they learn to become empathetic for.
In the scriptures there were any number of malevolent demons that did not have the good individuals or collective groups in mind. Their spirits mean to keep the minds and lives of these people in captivity.
OK, Karl. Now were down to discussing "demons." Demons who purportedly make us think incorrectly.
Is it possible that it is the fault of "demons" that some people put a very high burden of proof (a high level of skepticism) on scientists who talk about evolution or the 4.5 billion year old earth, yet those same people put a low burden of proof (little or no skepticism) when scientists talk about "God," . . . or "demons"?
Truly, how is it that you can doubt highly calibrated scientific instruments that measure radioactive decay, but you have no problem believing in demons?
Where do these "demons" and other "spiritual entities" hang out when they're not screwing with our thoughts? Do they sip spiritual coffee at a spiritual coffee shop in that "external" world? Do they laugh, cry, play shuffleboard?
Here's where we differ. If someone asked me whether there are demons, I would say that I seriously doubt it but I can't absolutely disprove that proposition (and I don't actually understand what a "demon" is, another reason I can't say yes). You say there's demons. Yet you say that I am the one with a "bias." Yes, I am biased toward things that can be tested by use of the scientific method.
If you used the same burden of proof you impose on scientists to your own beliefs, your spiritual world would implode in a nanosecond.
Erich,
Here is where we don't differ.
I can discuss the merits of the interpretations of scientific theories and hypotheses because they are suppose to require physical evidence to support them.
Here is where we do differ.
To me, my ideas, theories, beliefs, desires, attitudes, choices and perspectives on life in general are all influenced by both the physical and spiritual dimensions of life. You do not see this because you have chosen to believe only in physical evidence which you have carefully screened and categorized so it supports what you believe about the physical world.
You don't believe in the supernatural, so why ask me about demons or any spirit for that matter? Why try to get me to tell you where they hang out? Why even bring up the word as if you've thought through the ramifications of what its use may imply about your world view?
I'm not one to go around calling on demons to come out of people. Our Nation is past that point. The demons have taken up residence so carefully that they can no longer be spotted because they are the most welcomed of guests in the thoughts and beliefs of the post modern progressive thinkers.
Demons hold knowledge to be true about the physical world that would separate the creation from the creator. Demons hold knowledge to be true that would prevent the testing of scientific knowledge from being falsified. Demons have rendered the spiritual authority of the church impotent in this day and age because they elude detection and being identified for what they are.
What else would you like to know about them?
I believe I put up some pretty simple criteria, and I hope other readers found them reasonable. The evidence has to be new, and it has to be evidence. Karl, a different interpretation of demons is not new evidence. conjecture is not evidence. Show me the demons. If proving that they exist requires a pre-existing belief in their existence, that's confirmation bias, not proof.
What I'd like to know is how you prove that something is caused by a demon rather than something explainable already by science. It would have to be shown how a random study group who exhibited the same behavior that had a distinct onset, and who responded to a consistent methodology of demon removal by the cessation of that behavior. It would have to be repeatable, measurable, and produce a predictable result. Otherwise, all you have are gut feelings and anecdotes. And as one of my favorite science bloggers says, "the plural of anecdote is not data."
Karl writes:—"Demonic spirits can cause all kinds of wrong illogical thinking and thus they can be responsible for sickness and diseases if not directly at least indirectly."
Also:—"Demons hold knowledge to be true about the physical world that would separate the creation from the creator. Demons hold knowledge to be true that would prevent the testing of scientific knowledge from being falsified. Demons have rendered the spiritual authority of the church impotent in this day and age because they elude detection and being identified for what they are."
So demons are that which manifest in pure assertion, regardless of any concrescent void (see Whitehead) allowing for their nonexistence.
I shall be as considerate as possible. Here is where it appears you and I are from different planets.
This is all very simple for me. God is the concoction of people who could not understand the universe in any other way, simply because they had no means of examining the universe. It served to explain the inexplicable. It then became a handy tool for social control—law-giving when it was benign, tyranny when it was malign. It worked (more or less) fairly well for a long time.
We now have the means to look a the universe and ask what we might term concrete questions about origins. God has now become a theory—pick one—and its extranatural existence no longer explains much of anything.
Demons are part of the former model. Demons explain everything from epilepsy, Crone's disease, and bipolar disorder to full-blown schizophrenia and psychopathology. But we now have other means of explaining these things, means which in many instances also allow for treatments. Ergo, the extranatural existence of demons is also extremely…questionable and practically inessential.
It is convenient to have a repository for Good and Evil that fits expectations of dramatic struggle—the acceptance or resistence of such entities as embody these ideas become part of our own personal sense of self-worth. But in truth, this is all just Jungian poppycock.
There is often an overlap in the different spheres of our cognitive apprehensions of the world (and its discontents), but on this point there is none. Demons are as real as the appearance of the Virgin in Medjugorje or at Lourdes, as substantive as the supposed transubstantion of the bread and wine, and as useful as prayer in the treatment of disease. Which is to say that it is all highly individualized and utterly personal—that the reality of these things is entirely a matter of assertion. But once we step outside the Twilight Zone of such beliefs, there is a world and a universe that operate, not by virtue of the kind of cultural relativism you seem to have espoused in earlier posts, but by causal connections which we are able to observe and (sometimes, more often than not) explain.
Demons. Yeesh.
Mark,
Again your assertion makes all the sense in the world as being reasonable and the path of noble scientific endeavor. You chose to accentuate the physical aspects of existence and the physical and social aspects of how you understand that people come to believe the ideas and values that they think are the most logical and rational for them.
Unfortuantely we do come from different planets in this matter because I come from a planet created by a creator for a purpose. This is a spiritual relationship of the creator to the creation. You come from a planet that in your estimation has no purpose for existence besides physical existence itself. This is why you look for science to explain things it has no ability to address or to even reliably test as true or false.
Science will never be able to answer many of the types of questions you think it can. Physical reality is not what science says it possibly might be, it is what it is observed to be. Those who try to state that past recorded and reliable observations are folk tales or fairy tales have either a stated or an unstated reason for their bias.
As I said before, "Demons hold knowledge to be true about the physical world that would separate the creation from the creator. Demons hold knowledge to be true that would prevent the testing of scientific knowledge from being falsified."
I guess I'm just not capable of such streamlined physical analysis and logical deduction based upon over whelming real physical evidence (what I would label demonic oppression) from my biased point of view.
Most people agree that when science falsifies something real and physical the observational evidence is credible. When people try to state the absence of physical evidence, or persist in a hope of finding physical evidence proves or disproves something they really don't know how the ideas, theories and beliefs of science need to be tempered by how their mental structure created by inductive reasoning are acted upon the operations of deductive reasoning.
Inductive reasoning will always leave man short of the full picture and understanding that he so desperately tries to construct from the worls around him. Man will always look for meaning in life beyond the physical existence – this is where natters of the spirit both benevolent and malevolent come to impinge upon every individuals worldview and perspective on life.
It sounds like demons "exist" to give people like Karl a reason to dispute inconvenient science (that the earth is billions of years old or that natural selection does heavy lifting regarding the creation of species).
Karl's assertion that God-doubters are possessed by demons sounds like the flip side of what some hard-shell atheists assert, that all religious believers are mentally ill. It's really hard to have a discussion under those circumstances.
Many religious believers are capable of epistemic humility; non-believers can be guilty of epistemic hubris. Karl doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference.
Karl writes:—"Unfortuantely we do come from different planets in this matter because I come from a planet created by a creator for a purpose."
Teleology is seductive nonsense in this instance. No, you don't. You believe you do, and that's fine. Forgive me, but there comes a point when open-mindedness reaches a degree where there is a danger that one's brains might fall out.
"You come from a planet that in your estimation has no purpose for existence besides physical existence itself."
So? And why is this such a bad thing? The presumed "purposes" you assert explain our existence have a checkered history at best of being in the best interest of anyone.
"Those who try to state that past recorded and reliable observations are folk tales or fairy tales have either a stated or an unstated reason for their bias."
As do you in denying it.
"Man will always look for meaning in life beyond the physical existence"
Of course. It's called The Imagination. I have no problem accepting that meaning and purpose ultimately are self-made, either by the community or the individual. However, the desire alone for that purpose and meaning doesn't mean there is any outside our own cognitive apprehension.
"I guess I’m just not capable of such streamlined physical analysis and logical deduction based upon over whelming real physical evidence (what I would label demonic oppression) from my biased point of view."
Of course you are. But you've decided for many reasons to find your answers in that which reaffirms who you think you are and who you think everyone else is. It's kind of a cool place to be, to assume that you hold answers so many people don't see—there's a certain rebel appeal in that. Been there myself.
I'll admit to having a bias. And I am vitally aware of it. Which means I can set it aside, sometimes for days at a stretch, when I must consider new evidence. It may reassert at some point, but, like the Id, it does not rule my life.
Let me assure you, lastly, that I have found you to be a most courteous and often interesting adversary in these posts. I have not always been so courteous, for which I apologize. As here. I frankly find the whole notion of demons absolute garbage—fantasies concocted to frighten people and allow the few to hold sway over a gullible many. It is this that started me questioning the whole religious description of god etc, because it seemed a question of internal consistency that you can't have the one without the other. I categorically do not accept the existence of something called Satan, nor any of his sub-minions. And once I rejected that, the rest just dissipated in, as Douglas Adams so famously put it, a "puff of logic."
Vicky writes:—"flip side of what some hard-shell atheists assert, that all religious believers are mentally ill."
While I do not for a minute believe they are mentally ill, religious belief does fit the requirements for a form of psychosis in the standard texts.
Mark,
First of all I am not your adversary, I just enjoy expressing my point of view and my perspective. I also believe I don't need to raise doubts about your intentions towards me or the ideas I present on DI.
If religion is a form of psychosis then you should add that belief in non-belief is just as much a psychosis, which would mean then that no one can fit the normal distribution for what is "normal" regarding beliefs and values for human existence.
Karl,
Firstly, I didn't mean "adversary" in a bad way—more like sparring partner, but we don't know each other that well 🙂
Secondly, belief in non-belief is an oxymoron. Part of a defintion of psychosis is a profound belief in what is demonstrably not real—real in trhe common sense of what is not there for anyone to see. Now, you might argue that Seeing, in terms of this discussion, is an optional position and can be affected by bias, but what is meant is real in the sense that the fire plug you just ran your car into is real, but the purple and pink spotted giant jackrabbit wearing spectacles you swerved to avoid (causing you to hit the fire plug) is not real.
No, I do not believe that people who believe in god are psychotic—humans are fully capable of sustaining implausibilities and function quite well as "normal" people, and we all do it in one way or another (imagination, remember?) I'm just pointing out that the degree of insistence on certain aspects of a religious world view would certainly fit a description of functional psychosis.
Karl provided a comprehensive response to both of my last two comments. Concerning the first, despite a lot of text, he nevertheless failed to address my point: the manger scenes to which Erich's post refers all deal with the flesh and blood version of the Christian god. Thus, Erich's observation remains valid: humans create their god in their own image and likeness.
As a side comment, I nearly laughed myself off my chair at Karl's rationalization for why his god's actions "…at times would SEEM to be seen as venegeful, cruel, vindictive, violent, murderous, aloof, arrogant, and jealous by those receiving discipline or correction." (Emphasis added.) Karl merely defines his god in such a way that all barbarous acts are good. Hahahaha.
As regards the number of commandments, the fact remains that there are more than ten commandments stated in the Bible. This is why Jews, Catholics and Protestants each have their own version of the "Ten Commandments." I will leave the wikipedia look-up as an exercise for the reader.
Karl wrote, "The atheist has decided before hand how he will deal with any type of evidence."
Sorry, Karl, but that's not only dead, flat, wrong, it also borders on being insulting. It implies all atheists have blindly prejudged all religions, which isn't correct. While I'm sure some atheists do dismiss all religious doctrines outright, more than a few (myself included) actually do take time to examine religious claims and try to do so with an open mind. For these disbelievers, the inability of religious claims to withstand close scrutiny is apparently what leads them to atheism.
Karl's statement borders on being insulting because everyone — Karl included — is an atheist; it's just a question of which god you ask them about.
Karl writes— “The atheist has decided before hand how he will deal with any type of evidence.”
You do realize that most, if not all, atheists start out as theist? And that one of the factors that drove most of us toward atheism is exactly that trait inherent in the religious?
What drives most athiest unbeknownst the them is a consistent refusal to allow the spiritual dimensions of life to mean anything to them.
At some point in their understanding of what or who God was they chose to place a box of limitations around God and when God was suppose to do something which they believed just couldn't be their box was shattered.
They then successfully (at least to themselves) have created a box around the rest of life that they believe they understand and call it science.
This puts man in control of his own destiny which is in one regards is a purpose for living. i.e. to replace the concept of a creator with their own concepts that eliminates the possibility for a creator.
Karl brain-vomited, after a session of remote-viewing:
"What drives most atheists, unbeknownst to them, is a consistent refusal to allow the spiritual dimensions of life to mean anything to them."
Oh, good. For a moment there I wasn't actually aware of what I think or why I think it! Thank you, Karl, ever so much for reading my mind and the minds of everyone else here and clarifying our thoughts for us. Not only do you know what we think and why we think it, you also know that we don't know our own thoughts – and that we don't know we don't know them! We are forever in your debt.
So, enlighten me further: at what point, o great one, did you become omniscient? At what point did you gain extrasensory perception strong enough to be able to guage the precise thoughts (and the reasonings behind them) of every atheist alive today? Got some crazy global mind-readin' doohickey like Professor Xavier in the X-Men?
But now, seriously: at what point did it become okay for you, in your mind, to behave so f'ing arrogantly and presume to speak for the many, many millions who don't share your philosophy? What an insult.
Once again you've trotted out a tiresome & predictable strawman argument, popular among the arrogant and presumptuous theist, that the atheist is some kind of rebel against spirituality: it's not that the atheist sees absolutely no reason to accept theists' extraordinary claims that a supernatural world exists; it's that he knows it exists but refuses to acknowledge it!
You've got us all worked out, have you? Such bloody arrogance. Such mental narcissism! I'm surprised you can tear yourself away from the mirror long enough to put fingers to keyboard.
Karl wrote, "What drives most athiest unbeknownst the them is a consistent refusal to allow the spiritual dimensions of life to mean anything to them."
Karl imagines himself remarkably insightful concerning the thinking process of atheists — a remarkably arrogant and narrow-minded belief, especially considering that he presumes to know what is "unbeknownst" to the atheists themselves, and also considering that he previously wrote: "The atheist has decided before hand how he will deal with any type of evidence." Seems to me Karl is the one who has decided beforehand how he will deal with any type of evidence.
In fact, atheism is not a "refusal to allow the spiritual dimensions of life to mean anything," it is merely a refusal to believe in invisible, supernatural deities. Spirituality need not include a belief in invisible, supernatural deities, and it certainly doesn't require a belief in the god that Karl believes in. Indeed, the "spiritual dimension" that Karl promotes is so thoroughly pre-packaged that I find very little about it that is spiritual.
Karl,
No. Maybe some, but not all, and not me. So, sorry. But that's wrong.
Karl, do you really think that telling us that we've never read the bible, that we rejected spirituality out of hand, that we are wandering purposeless through life, that we're close-minded and would otherwise see your point of view, will make it so? Have you established a predetermined number of times you will have to repeat your unsubstantiated claims about us for this to happen, or are you just winging it? If you don't pay attention to what we have told you about ourselves, how do you expect us to pay attention to you when you tell us about ourselves?
I respect all of your rights to to fling spirituality back in my face. But I just don't know why it seems on the verge of insulting. I have to smack myself across the face so I don't find myself worshipping a God of flesh and blood or in the form of a physical man or a physical man's ideas that would distort the Spiritual Nature of the True God.
However, until you come to grips with what you call spirituality from some scientific definition those who value natural science over matters of the spirit are just compartmentalizing their knowledge about the world and themselves into natural and supposedly clear knowledge versus unscientific and fuzzy matters that must be discounted by a human animal.
I just don't know why it upsets so many of you when I in essence repeat the same statements you make about yourselves, but from my point of view.
Grumpy says – (about me)- that I am an atheist, (even I think I'm not). He believes because I don't worship some form of someone else's God I too am an atheist. In this regard Grumpy is correct for once. Any form of anyone's God that I believe is God causes me to commit sacriledge and to violate the second commandment. As I have been saying, God is spirit, and those who worship Jesus in the flesh have committed sin as they have worshipped a graven image (exchanging the True God for a part of the creation).
Pray tell how he arrives at such a conclusion logically unless to him there really is no such thing as spirituality in his mind which means to him that no one can be a theist (even if they think they are) because they believe in something called God that has a physical representation which could never be the essence of the true God which is the spirit (i.e. something non-physical or non corporal).
How can I get it across to you that those who worship Jesus as the fullness of God (including the physical manifestation of humanness) are idolaters.
Jesus' spirit was equal to God's spirit. Jesus created the very body of the incarnaton (i.e. took on flesh) and in so doing limited the extent of the nature of God by being found in human form. Those who try to understand God (full spirit and full nature of God) and who try to have a spiritual realtionship with God will always be tempted to discount the spiritual nature of God because of the natural world and the way people think in naturalistic/scientific terms.
It occurs to me that Erich's post is more prescient than in just the way he mentions. Consider the example of Karl — a person with an arrogant and narrow-minded view of spirituality, who worships an arrogant and narrow-minded invisible deity. Coincidence? I think not. Karl has created a god in his own image and likeness.
Grumpy,
Please describe the God you think I have ceated?