Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[JackDaydream]

@eyesofastranger

Thanks for your reply and I think that language is so bound up with our understanding of reality. I believe that a lot of people do not pay enough attention to this in thinking about the basis of belief, including how this comes into play in ideas developed about 'God' and the whole area of religious experiences and its interpretation.

[Sculptor1]

I have been thinking about this in the last few days about the nature of how one approaches the whole topic of God's existence and ,other aspects of religious beliefs. I am not sure whether the question does come down to conceptual analysis, or about the way in which language is used as a way of framing.

I don't think so.
FIrst what do you mean by "God"?
Or should I say which particular "God" are you talking about?
What I find most puzzling is the lengths people go to to cling onto some sort of concept of god no matter how absurd and slippery the term becomes.
I suspect that this thread is just another attempt to cling on to a dead-beat term.

[tsihcrana]

This will somewhat side-step the question, but it seems to me the most probable origin of all belief in Gods/heavens/nirvanas/etc lies in empathy/compassion and a desire to reassure loved ones. I've been an athiest all my life, but there have been times when people I loved were in terrible pain over loss, or were dying themselves, and all I wanted was to reassure them that everything would be ok, that they would be passing over to another place where everything would be fine, that the loved ones they'd lost would be there waiting, that they'd be returning to a God that loved them.

Say you've got a little kid who has lost her mother. What do you tell her? That her mother is gone forever? Or that she is in a special place where she is happy and content. We all want to make the little girl feel better - that's just human - but the problem with the latter approach is that now that little girl grows up believing something that just isn't true, and because she never dealt with the loss of her mother without the aid of that fantasy it now operates as an important shield she will be reluctant to give up.

[JackDaydream]

@tsihcrana
Your comment relates to how people use beliefs as an attempt to gloss over the aspects of life which are so difficult to come to terms with. I can remember as a child of about 2 that my grandmother had gone to 'heaven' and it did make it easy to cope with. But, there is the question of how language can be used to mystify and what happens when beliefs break down. Then, one faces a void. I can remember the shock of copying with Darwin's theory of evolution being told to me after I had been taught the Biblical account of creation and the evolution account seemed rather disappointing. So, religious beliefs can be more 'romantic' and there may be some kind of wishful thinking in wishing to cling on to them. So, there can be a tension between what one wishes to believe and what one really believes and this can be a fierce battle.

[Belindi]

I have been thinking about this in the last few days about the nature of how one approaches the whole topic of God's existence and ,other aspects of religious beliefs. I am not sure whether the question does come down to conceptual analysis, or about the way in which language is used as a way of framing.

I don't think so.
FIrst what do you mean by "God"?
Or should I say which particular "God" are you talking about?
What I find most puzzling is the lengths people go to to cling onto some sort of concept of god no matter how absurd and slippery the term becomes.
I suspect that this thread is just another attempt to cling on to a dead-beat term.

I think I know and agree with what you mean. 'God' for some people is a devotional name. But I'd rather not paint all the posters as monochrome.

[JackDaydream]

@Sculptor1

My thread is not an attempt to 'cling on to a 'dead beat there', but was intended to involve closer inspection of religious language, and especially the term, 'God.' I think that the debate between theism and atheism is not a simple 'for' or 'against'. I was brought up in very religious background but questioned this a lot.. My current position is not a definite yes or no to God's existence, but more a wide open question mark. Some may say that means that I am agnostic, but I choose not to even use the term because it is too fixed. I am more in favour of embracing whatever source is underlying the universe and I am not sure whether it matters if people choose to call it 'God' or energy.

[tsihcrana]

@tsihcrana
Your comment relates to how people use beliefs as an attempt to gloss over the aspects of life which are so difficult to come to terms with. I can remember as a child of about 2 that my grandmother had gone to 'heaven' and it did make it easy to cope with. But, there is the question of how language can be used to mystify and what happens when beliefs break down. Then, one faces a void. I can remember the shock of copying with Darwin's theory of evolution being told to me after I had been taught the Biblical account of creation and the evolution account seemed rather disappointing. So, religious beliefs can be more 'romantic' and there may be some kind of wishful thinking in wishing to cling on to them. So, there can be a tension between what one wishes to believe and what one really believes and this can be a fierce battle.

Language is one layer of abstraction above the emotions underlying most people's reasons for believing in a deity.

More generally, language only significantly impacts our thinking when it's incoming. That's because words we generate ourselves are only expressive of some thought already formed at some other cognitive level. Since those thoughts are already formed when the words are chosen to express them, they aren't impacted by the language we choose (though their expression is severely corrupted and/or limited by our vocabulary, word choice, and skill in formulating sentences).

Words only 'generate' meaning when they're incoming. But there's nothing special about that at all. When sight is incoming it generates meaning as well, as do tastes and non-linguistic sounds and touch and so on. Because some thoughts tend to be automatically converted into language some people infer that thoughts and language are synonymous. They aren't - you can think without words, but you cannot use words without thought.

So to answer your question - language can only 'influence' (and I stress the word 'influence') one's belief in God if it satisfies these criteria:

1. The language is incoming rather than internally generated;
2. The thoughts generated by incoming language about God do not affront your current belief system such that you reject them;
3. You either: receive the information uncritically, or the information 'resonates' with some part of you.

Point 3 basically sets out my opinion on the subject. For language to impact your belief in God you either have to outright believe what someone tells you, or it has to accord in some way with positions some part of you already holds*. In the former case language definitely plays a role in your belief. In the latter you believe independent of language and are the 'choir being preached to'. Of course there are nuances as well - you might be religious and someone says something religious in a way you hadn't previously entertained, and you gain some greater religious depth, and so on, but that extra thought still had to 'resonate' with something some part of you experiences as 'true'.

*I say 'some part of you' because if you've gotten to the age of, say, 15 and don't have contradictions in you you're either an animal or an alien.

If you approach incoming language critically it cannot change your beliefs unless it accords with something some part of you already holds to be true, and in that way it doesn't so much 'alter' your beliefs as 'reveal' them from subconscious obscurity into the light of consciousness. For instance, if I were told my whole life that 'things fall upwards', and uncritically believed it, one part of me would be inclined to say "things fall up", yet my subconscious, ever the historian of cause and effect, 'knows' otherwise. If someone tells me "no, things fall down" I might initially be affronted and claim 'that's nonsense', but at another level it would resonate because my subconscious has evidence it's true. Part of me already knew it to be true, but I was not conscious of it. A lot of 'understanding' consists of bringing the subconscious into conscious awareness.

In summary, I'd argue that language can significantly influence religious belief only if you receive it uncritically or it resonates with something some subconscious part of you already believes, and in the latter case it is more a matter that the words unveiled something already 'known' rather than altered anything.

[Belindi]

Belief inis hardly appropriate to an idea that is entirely a matter of existence not empirical fact. Belief in the existence of something that has no You can believe inthe power of paracetamol to remove a pain, and you can believe in information that some man tells you because you can put these to the test if you want to do so. There is no way to test God.

Belief on i.e. trust is what you have when you trust an idea or a person to be what they purport to be and have been in the past. You do not need to test them. So you can relate to God as in trust (or believe on )God, but you cannot believe in God.

[Sculptor1]

My thread is not an attempt to 'cling on to a 'dead beat there', but was intended to involve closer inspection of religious language, and especially the term, 'God.' I think that the debate between theism and atheism is not a simple 'for' or 'against'. I was brought up in very religious background but questioned this a lot.. My current position is not a definite yes or no to God's existence, but more a wide open question mark. Some may say that means that I am agnostic, but I choose not to even use the term because it is too fixed. I am more in favour of embracing whatever source is underlying the universe and I am not sure whether it matters if people choose to call it 'God' or energy.

Np. the pointmt about atheism is that it is very clear. It's crystal clear. It recognises no god. THe difficultly comes with the idea of god in the first place: vauge diffuse, incohernt, contradictory, unlcear, not evident., a theory that does no work.
There is a good reason you are confused.
You have been brought up with an assumption that has not, nor ever has been supported by any fact. It's all just faith based imagination.
Why woul dyou think there is a force "underlying the universe"?

[Ecurb]

This will somewhat side-step the question, but it seems to me the most probable origin of all belief in Gods/heavens/nirvanas/etc lies in empathy/compassion and a desire to reassure loved ones. I've been an athiest all my life, but there have been times when people I loved were in terrible pain over loss, or were dying themselves, and all I wanted was to reassure them that everything would be ok, that they would be passing over to another place where everything would be fine, that the loved ones they'd lost would be there waiting, that they'd be returning to a God that loved them.

Say you've got a little kid who has lost her mother. What do you tell her? That her mother is gone forever? Or that she is in a special place where she is happy and content. We all want to make the little girl feel better - that's just human - but the problem with the latter approach is that now that little girl grows up believing something that just isn't true, and because she never dealt with the loss of her mother without the aid of that fantasy it now operates as an important shield she will be reluctant to give up.

The problem with this theory is that not all afterlifes are represented as "happy and ocntent". Didn't Achilles tell Oddyseus that he would rather be a slave among the living than king of the dead (this is when Oddyseus visited Hades). Among Middle Eastern religions, Judaism doesn't place much emphasis on an Edenic afterlife. Eastern religions involve reincarnation, and (eventually) an escape from the circles of the world.

So although your theory would make sense for Christianity and Islam, it is clearly not comprehensive.

In general, I think people often confuse cause and effect. It is probably correct that belief in an afterlife provides some people with comfort; we cannot infer from this that " the most probable origin of all belief in Gods/heavens/nirvanas/etc lies in empathy/compassion and a desire to reassure loved ones." The fact that Judaism (the ancestor of Christianity and Islam) does not emphasize an afterlife seems to suggest different "origins". The logical error ("assuming the antecedent", or something like that, is what it is called) is often made in discussing biological evolution -- especially evolutionary psychology.

[tsihcrana]

This will somewhat side-step the question, but it seems to me the most probable origin of all belief in Gods/heavens/nirvanas/etc lies in empathy/compassion and a desire to reassure loved ones. I've been an athiest all my life, but there have been times when people I loved were in terrible pain over loss, or were dying themselves, and all I wanted was to reassure them that everything would be ok, that they would be passing over to another place where everything would be fine, that the loved ones they'd lost would be there waiting, that they'd be returning to a God that loved them.

Say you've got a little kid who has lost her mother. What do you tell her? That her mother is gone forever? Or that she is in a special place where she is happy and content. We all want to make the little girl feel better - that's just human - but the problem with the latter approach is that now that little girl grows up believing something that just isn't true, and because she never dealt with the loss of her mother without the aid of that fantasy it now operates as an important shield she will be reluctant to give up.

The problem with this theory is that not all afterlifes are represented as "happy and ocntent". Didn't Achilles tell Oddyseus that he would rather be a slave among the living than king of the dead (this is when Oddyseus visited Hades). Among Middle Eastern religions, Judaism doesn't place much emphasis on an Edenic afterlife. Eastern religions involve reincarnation, and (eventually) an escape from the circles of the world.

So although your theory would make sense for Christianity and Islam, it is clearly not comprehensive.

In general, I think people often confuse cause and effect. It is probably correct that belief in an afterlife provides some people with comfort; we cannot infer from this that " the most probable origin of all belief in Gods/heavens/nirvanas/etc lies in empathy/compassion and a desire to reassure loved ones." The fact that Judaism (the ancestor of Christianity and Islam) does not emphasize an afterlife seems to suggest different "origins". The logical error ("assuming the antecedent", or something like that, is what it is called) is often made in discussing biological evolution -- especially evolutionary psychology.

I'm not contending complex religions arose fully-formed from a desire to be compassionate, but that the "most probable origins of all belief..." (with emphasis on the word 'origins') is probably a desire to reassure loved ones in pain when there's nothing else you can do for them except give them some happier fantasy. Complex religious beliefs such as those you refer to obviously arose over time, and are the distant end-point of what I'm referring to. I mean the original reason someone previously non-religious decided to conceive of and disseminate an idea they knew was fantastical (because they themselves made it up). Maybe I wasn't clear on that though, so that's on me.

Sure some kinds of religious beliefs might have originally sprung from minds under the influence of psychedelic plants, or ancient sufferers of schizophrenia and so on, but I can't personally think of a better reason to conceive of afterlives/reincarnation/God/and-so-on than to help a loved one I'm otherwise powerless to help.

[JackDaydream]

@Sculptor1

I think that upbringing influences so much of how a person thinks and even though I have questioned Catholic teachings so much, it is likely that the language and concepts one learns as a child is embedded deeply in my subconscious. I am sure that people who are broughtv up without belief in any God at all are less likely to think of a force or source behind life. However, what is interesting is those people who have a dramatic shift to the complete opposite spectrum of belief and it is almost as if the script of thinking is rewritten entirely.

[Steve3007]

...However, what is interesting is those people who have a dramatic shift to the complete opposite spectrum of belief and it is almost as if the script of thinking is rewritten entirely.

I agree that those are the most interesting cases. I suspect that if, as children, we're taught that something is axiomatic then we have quite a high probability of either cleaving to it for life, rebelling against it, or rebelling and then returning. Relatively little chance of being indifferent towards it. I suspect that's true whether that something is a religious or anti-religious belief system, or our elders' tastes in clothes and music, or anything else.

[Sculptor1]

So taking a cold hard look at the thread title.
Take two views of god:

1. God is a person that cares who you sleep with, what you believe. Knows every sparrow that falls; has a plan for you and the universe; is difficult to understand; does things in mysterious ways. "He" put a son on the planet and allowed humans to nail him to a bit of tree, to "save" you all? and will sent you to heaven or hell depending on how "good" you have been (whatever that is); to either listen to choirs of angels for the rest of eternity or be burned with sharp forks wielded by snickering demons.

2. God is a diffuse and vague notion of a higher power laying the basis for the laws of nature but not having desires or consciousness.


So, really, is question of "God" or "god" just related to use of language?
Or is this thread just another attempt to salvage the notion of god by pretending its really all just the same thing but people just express the idea a little differently?

[JackDaydream]

@Sculptor1
I can reassure that I don't have an agenda of trying to create a thread salvaging the idea of God. I have struggled a lot with the question, and I do try to reconcile ideas, but that is on a personal level. My main aim in creating the thread was that I thought that my approach would bring a new angle to the area of debate and I am inclined to look at issues from all kinds of perspectives, as a philosophical quest.