Fine tuning specifics: Reasons for God (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, April 27, 2017, 12:15 (2767 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

QUOTE: "Why don’t we wake up every morning and realize our existence is miraculous?”
dhw: Does he believe that atheists are incapable of appreciating the miraculousness of life?
TONY: Um, yes...because they are. They can not, by definition, appreciate it as a miracle.

Only if you define “miracle” as an act of God. It can also be defined as “any amazing or wonderful event” (Encarta).

dhw: The third reason to believe in God is that he believes in God and it helped him to become a better person. I appreciate that such faith can indeed be a power for good. So can a placebo. It doesn’t prove God exists, let alone that his mercies never come to an end.

TONY: Well, if you accept that there is a God as a given, and then look at all of creation through the lens of that faith, you do begin to get a sense of his love and mercy. Moreover, when you begin to get that sense, you also begin to feel a sense of awe, reverence, appreciation, along with seeing the need for responsibility and accountability for your actions because you see your life, and all other life, as a precious gift that should be cared for.
That is not to say that Atheist can not be accountable, but honestly, what reason do they have to be? They are just 'unimportant, momentary, minuscule specks in a vast indifferent Universe'. If they are right, their actions, ours, or anyone's make no difference whatsoever. Burn the world and damn it all, it doesn't matter one whit. What evolution did before it can do again, and WILL! Anything and everything is meaningless, and therefore valueless because it is all just blind random chance, so do what you want, when you want, how you want, and who cares how destructive you are in the process. After all, its all temporary anyway.

You must have had some truly terrible encounters with atheists to have formed such a jaundiced vision. It is as unbalanced as the view that belief in God leads only to bigotry, fear, and the extremes of violence that we now see every day being perpetrated in the name of the Almighty. Some of the kindest, most conscientious people I know are atheists or agnostics, and their lack of faith does not in any sense diminish their sense of awe at the sheer wonderfulness of life, mixed with their sense of horror at the destructiveness of their fellow humans. As for responsibility and accountability, do you really think that belief in God is the only possible motive for love of one’s fellow creatures? You know as well as I do that there are forms of Buddhism that dispense entirely with gods and hold all life to be sacred, but you don’t even have to be a Buddhist to practise love, empathy, sympathy, charity, honesty, fellowship etc. You talk as if anyone who doesn’t believe in your God is bound to have no social conscience and by nature to be a thief, rapist or murderer. And philosophically can you not see that the sheer temporality of our lives renders every moment precious? “Meaningless” and “valueless”? On the contrary, it endows the present with unique meaning and value, and if we are to make the most of it, what better way can there be than seeking happiness for ourselves and others? What makes you think atheists only enjoy destruction? Speaking for myself, I love life, respect my fellow creatures, do my very best to help others, and would never ever deliberately cause pain to anyone or anything. Maybe your God exists, maybe he doesn’t, but such a being plays no part in my approach to life and to my fellow animals. And I can assure you that I am not alone.

DAVID: Sometimes it is good to present what pure believing passion sounds like. No sense of a smidgen of doubt. Are atheists that convinced of their position?

In my view it’s not good if it’s a destructive distortion, whether the passion is theistic or atheistic. It fosters prejudice and conflict. Next you’ll be applauding jihadists and embracing Dawkins.