Sam Harris

Why is in your view a world without God preferable to a world with a supreme Creator ?

Lindoia - 17 March 2012 11:18 AM

Why is in your view a world without God preferable to a world with a supreme Creator ?

Your querie is weighted by a theistic slant.

Whether the world has a Supreme Creator or not has no bearing or effect on my life.. at least, not one that I could ever know.

I do prefer to live in a world without my own imaginings about “its” nature, and would prefer one without anyone else’s.

I prefer not to be a theist. If there is a God, I’m sure it can take care of itself without any help from me.

For me, it depends what God.  It would be cool if the death of my body wasn’t the end of the existence of my personality.  But it would suck if I had to spend the afterlife with satan, or an evil god, so in that sense it wouldn’t be preferable.

But if god was cool, and afterlife didn’t generally suck, such a world would be preferable to me, in fact it is my sincere hope (not necessarily belief) that death is not the end, and that afterlife isn’t horrible.

I don’t think a world without a creator is necessarily preferable to a world with a creator. It would depend on the creator.

However, whichever world is preferable does not have an impact on whichever idea most closely corresponds to our own reality.

You guys are no fun. I want to live in a world with Jesus. And no. I don’t mean the metaphysical Jesus who now just chills in heaven b***hes about homosexuals, or whatever the dogma states. I mean legit LIVE with this caricature.

Walking around with his big beard and toga, always flashing people. We’d always be drunk too, what with turning water into wine and all. I’m pretty good with being an atheist, but it’s a failure of the imagination if you can’t think of a world you’d prefer to live in, I mean out of the 6000 or however many, you are bound to like ONE of them

Also, I’d like to think there is some supreme god that ensures we all reincarnate as Turtles.

Lindoia - 17 March 2012 11:18 AM

Why is in your view a world without God preferable to a world with a supreme Creator ?

Lindoia,

I believe the word is orientation, if one’s orientation to reality is of a delusional nature. One cannot expect rational, as in good relational judgment, to come out of a delusion—- the crazies are left running the institutions were reason is vanquished.

Lindoia - 17 March 2012 11:18 AM

Why is in your view a world without God preferable to a world with a supreme Creator ?

With the world of with God,as the history has told us,war existed with our contradicting beliefs,without the belief of God,we can be beings that exist with enough realization of things happen according to our action but not base on God’s whim.If we consider not basing our thinking on the good and bad,then things that exist will be better because no one will do things good that will drive them to be bad,or no one will do bad things that will drive them to be good.Right?

Lindoia - 17 March 2012 11:18 AM

Why is in your view a world without God preferable to a world with a supreme Creator ?

Since I don’t know what your idea of a supreme creator is, I’ll just pick one. Most people believe that God pays attention to all of us. We are to ask him for stuff and he answers (or he doesn’t depending on… not sure what).

This idea is predicated on the idea that God guides your life (or *can* guide your life). So when one has a problem, what does one do? Ask God to solve it? If one has a tough decision to make, does he think hard to figure out which option is best (and to create new options not previously thought of before)? Or does he ask God to “help” him choose? When one is suffering due to having so many grave life problems, does he work at solving them or put his life in God’s hands and hope (i.e. have faith) that God will solve his problems?

So a religious person who believes in a personal God (as I’ve described above) will shift responsibility of his problems to God, while a non-religious person won’t shift responsibility of his problems to God.

So which worldview is better: (1) Take responsibility for your problems, or (2) Don’t take responsibility for your problems?

Note that I’m not claiming that all atheists (and barely-religious theists) take responsibility for their problems. People find all sorts of ways of shifting responsibility of their problems to other people and things. Sometimes they shift responsibility to their spouses, parents, children, government, etc. Sometimes they shift responsibility to their brains (e.g. ADD, Aspergers), to their hormones (e.g. PMS), to their emotions (e.g. being angry), etc.

The best worldview is one where a person takes responsibility for all this problems. Note that to do this well, one needs knowledge about how to determine which problems are his.

Is it better to have parents than not to have parents? Well depends on the parents.
Being self-created is pretty cool though but sounds lonely.

ninjin - 09 October 2012 06:01 PM

Is it better to have parents than not to have parents? Well depends on the parents.
Being self-created is pretty cool though but sounds lonely.

What do you mean by “sounds lonely”? Being created by God is just as lonely. Now you might “feel” less lonely because you’re imagining talking to him, or imagining that he’s thinking of you, but that doesn’t make it any less (actually) lonely.

Lindoia - 17 March 2012 11:18 AM

Why is in your view a world without God preferable to a world with a supreme Creator ?

One word.  Accountability.

Or do you mean to ask, no god, as opposed to a real one?  I can imagine a world that could still be wonderful with a god, but that god hasn’t been presented in print yet.

I prefer this world to a world where the god of Abraham rules because this world is real, and the god of Abraham, as far as you and I can tell, doesn’t exist.  However, to answer your poorly-worded question directly, I would rather live a fleeting moment of freedom than spend eternity with a tyrant and his followers.

So again, one word.  Integrity.

Rami Rustom - 09 October 2012 06:24 PM

ninjin - 09 October 2012 06:01 PM

Is it better to have parents than not to have parents? Well depends on the parents.
Being self-created is pretty cool though but sounds lonely.

What do you mean by “sounds lonely”? Being created by God is just as lonely. Now you might “feel” less lonely because you’re imagining talking to him, or imagining that he’s thinking of you, but that doesn’t make it any less (actually) lonely.

So growing up with parents is the same as being an orphan? Was news to me.
Personally if my parents were good I’d rather have parents. If they were evil I would rather not. But that is just me.

ninjin - 10 October 2012 04:52 PM

Rami Rustom - 09 October 2012 06:24 PM

ninjin - 09 October 2012 06:01 PM

Is it better to have parents than not to have parents? Well depends on the parents.
Being self-created is pretty cool though but sounds lonely.

What do you mean by “sounds lonely”? Being created by God is just as lonely. Now you might “feel” less lonely because you’re imagining talking to him, or imagining that he’s thinking of you, but that doesn’t make it any less (actually) lonely.

So growing up with parents is the same as being an orphan? Was news to me.

You equated a parent-child relationship with a God-person relationship. But they aren’t similar.

A child whose parents are living, gets to talk to his parents.

A person doesn’t get to talk to God.

We are part of God. Only thing is we forget it when we come to Earth,its part of the deal or game and the ultimate aim is to unite back with God after conquering the SELF.

harrys5 - 16 November 2012 05:34 AM

We are part of God.

I’ve never heard that argument before. What religion is that?

harrys5 - 16 November 2012 05:34 AM

Only thing is we forget it when we come to Earth,

So your view is that humans have a memory of the fact that we are part of God, and then we lose that memory at birth. My question is, where in the human physical body was/is that memory stored?

harrys5 - 16 November 2012 05:34 AM

its part of the deal or game and the ultimate aim is to unite back with God after conquering the SELF.

What does “conquering the self” mean?

Lindoia - 17 March 2012 11:18 AM

Why is in your view a world without God preferable to a world with a supreme Creator ?

I see a supreme omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, perfectly good God (in keeping with Judaeo/Christian thought) as an oxymoron.
The supremity notion, leads to followers who want to serve and transcend to weird domains….........

I would far prefer the notion of an ever evolving force of cosmic goodness as this seems saner and far less problematic…