[MD] The MoQ can't be atheistic

[John Carl]

But davey, I thought the sophists turned out to be the good guys in the
story


> Three or four times now I have hit the reply button with an urge to respond
> but then I just hit cancel because I promised myself I'd cut you some slack.
> But, dude, this is the kind of thing that gives sophistry and specious
> reasoning a bad name. All you've done here is define theism in such a way
> that it is not possible to be anything but a theist. All you've done is
> render the term meaningless.
>

Ok, then.  My work here is done.



> But it does shine a little light into the issue. For a lot of people, when
> they say they believe in God, what they're really trying to tell you is,
> "I'm a moral person" or "I like the people at church" or "I'm not a boat
> rocker" or "I'm not weird", none of which has anything to do with weather or
> not you really think a supernatural, all powerful creator actually exists.



Or perhaps they are saying something closer to "I need to feel like there's
a big daddy in the sky for my own psychological security."    You know, that
existential angst thing.



> Where is it written that you can't be moral or have any values unless you
> believe that? And if you're morality springs from such a belief then it's
> not really morality. It's just obedience.


Exactly.  I agree completely.  The statically defined religious belief in
God is no belief in God at all, but a belief in a system handed down by your
priest, rabbi or guru.



> It breeds irrational attitude of submission to authority and all kinds of
> thing that actually retard moral intelligence.
>

Yep.


> And the idea that people become atheists so they can be naughty is just the
> stupidest kind of pop psychology I ever heard.
>

Sorry, I got it from an Aldous Huxley quote and it made sense to me.



> This doesn't make me splutter my soup. It just makes me sad.
>


Well, again I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to make you sad, but I did think it
might.   I like the point you make about the need for dialogue.  I think
these points need to be made and that's why I bring them out.

Between the angry bull horn of the religiously certain, and the angry bull
horn of the anti-religiously certain, we have the middle way of the MoQ -
which says Good is real but cannot be defined.  That's been my understanding
of the MoQ ever since I closed the covers on Lila and I'm kinda confused how
come the anti-religious bullhorn has gotten the podium on this forum for so
long when the empirical truth confronting us all is that whatever we think
we know, such things remain a mystery to us.


The idea of a fat guy wearing a tee-shirt that says, "Too big to fail" makes
> me laugh but you need about 80 more of those just to break even.
>

Or what?  God is gonna punish me?  I ain't gonna get an "A"?

'scuse me while I guffaw in my soup.



> Let me ask you a straight question. Why do you believe in God? Seriously,
> give me one good reason.
>


He makes me laugh.



> And why are you trying to sell it here, of all places? There are literally
> a million places on the internet and many thousands of real-world places
> that would be more receptive and more appropriate. Why do you feel compelled
> to jam it into the MOQ when you know perfectly well that it's not about
> that?
>


Well I guess davey, I've always been something of a contrarian and when I
see one side of an argument pushed off as "truth", I wanna present the
other.  And I don't think the MoQ should be pushing religion, I also don't
think it should be pushing anti-religion.   For one very important and
pragmatic reason, if none other, atheism is about the smallest minority,
population wise, in the world and if you want a philosophy to succeed, you
don't want to start by pissing off 95% of the entire fucking world.

duh.


And it's not just you. Time and time again, religious people with an agenda
> show up here and do what you're doing, only worse.
>
> God, it's sooooo boring!
>


Well Dave, you know what to do with boring posts, just toss 'em.  I think
you made that point to Bo recently.  I mean, what else can you do?

John