Quote:
Originally Posted by BlueWing
If we get a sample of the general population in the Western culture by addressing 20000 people. Ask each one of them to write a very short essay(no more than 500 words) on what their definition of God is and why. I guarantee you, very few people will agree upon what God is. We will have thousands of radically different ideas of what God should be defined as. We will even notice major discrepancies between the ideas of people who profess to be of the same faith, as for example, a 100 Pentacoste Christians will produce no less than 25 different notions of what God is.
Why is this the case?
Because people were led to believe that God is something sublime and powerful. Yet it has never been explained clearly and consistently what exactly it means to be sublime and powerful and how these qualities of character ramify. Hence, people are led to believe that God is exactly that, yet it is left up to their imagination to fill in the gaps. For this reason, people end up with radically different ideas of God.
However, in institutions of organized religion, the idea of God is investigated in greater detail. However, people are exhorted to do what they are told and memorize basic characteristics God supposedly has. However, in order to effectively store information, one must be able to think clearly. As for example, in order to clearly remember what you were told (especially if the idea is complex), you need to have a disciplined mind. If your mind is not disciplined, the notion you were informed of will be distorted.
However, almost all of those people clearly understood one thing, that God is something they all must claim to believe in. Yet with regard to the metaphysical structure of this idea, they never bothered to shed light! As that requires much thinking about complicated matters, and to undertake this task, they have never acquired the inspiration.
This is what Daniel Dennet in Breaking the Spell calls the 'Belief in Belief'.
YouTube - Daniel Dennett part 1/2 |
I agree with alot of what you say, but I feel as though even though these people may believe in God, without realizing it's because they feel they should (if that's even the case), does it really matter? They take away deep meanings and philosophies on living life regardless. Does this make them any better or worse than the man who takes God as metaphorical? The end result seems to be the same: a greater satisfaction and feeling of an understanding of "who we are," "where we came from," and "why we're here.
Furthermore, I feel like the reason we can't disprove God anymore than we can prove God is because, we're told that God is sublime. We are not, however, and as the only way we can know of something is from our own flawed perspective, how can we ever know what it means to be sublime and, more importantly, what it means
not to be sublime.