Why would God not matter?
ChastMastr
Shipmate
in Purgatory
I just now ran across someone (a celebrity, not a Shipmate) saying that "it doesn't really matter" to them whether or not God exists. I find that simply astonishing. I can understand someone believing or not believing, but I genuinely ask, why would the existence or nonexistence of God just not matter to someone?
Comments
This, I think, was the view of some philosophers (when I used to read them), who would be surrounded by Christians taking a fairly liberal view of God. Antony Flew is a good example. I read him in my youth when he was a vocal atheist, mainly going after rather liberal (or attenuated) ideas of God. In his later years he admitted that he had to accept that there was intelligence behind the universe, much to the joy of Christians heralding his conversion. But he never took it further, or really shown any interest in religion. He was a sort of Deist.
Something similar would be true of Buddhists. From my sketchy knowledge, The Buddha was never really bothered about whether God exists or not, and belief in a transcendent God is usually though of as optional. What matters is how life is lived, and I personally have never been convinced by the argument that without belief in God we all become amoral animals. That's just silly.
Which is why Full Fat Religion has more of a rationale for action because if you really believe in the God of the NT, then it really is odd not to do anything about it.
Yes, and it seems to trundle along without the *God of Love* doing much about the bad stuff.
Or does it mean “it doesn’t really matter to how I live my life”? And even that can go different directions: “It doesn’t matter because I’m going to do what I want to do regardless,” would be one direction, and “It doesn’t matter because I’m going to try to live showing love and kindness to all, without thought of anything like heaven or hell” would be another direction.
And it can also mean “I’ve never encountered an argument for why God should matter that I found convincing.”
I suppose if someone’s thinking of the kind of deism in which God simply isn’t involved in any way with creation, or even doesn’t care—as impersonal as, say, the Big Bang, just set up the universe and let it go—that would be less monumental in one’s life. (In that case, one might argue that such a being has a lot to answer for, like a kid who neglects his goldfish…)
Of course there are notions of God that range all over the place, not just those two options.
In a world with a barrage of extremely important material concerns, the question of God may seem frivolous, especially since God does not appear to be doing jack-shit about any of it that isn't already behind done by us.
What difference does it make?
My daughter has this sense sometimes as a teenager. Asked about going to church, she couldn't see the point, because it wasn't doing anything to stop climate change or any of the other very real issues that the world is facing.
Weirdly, all of this seems to be making me more convicted as a religious sort,but I do understand where it comes from, sometimes viscerally.
The first time I gave up believing in God, my life got better. It turned out that it was really Christianity of a certain pretty crappy type that I had been taught to believe in, not really God -- so whether or not God existed didn't matter to me at that point.
The second time, it didn't really change anything. I've found that secular meditation practices do the same things for me that prayer did. All the things that people say about prayer changing the person praying are true, but God doesn't need to exist for those changes to take place. Many people need to orient themselves toward a God they believe in or a higher power or something else outside themselves to achieve the objectives of prayer; I find that it all works better for me without such an orientation. Everything else I gave up was really about feeling alienated from the institutional church. So again, God's existence doesn't matter.
Frankly, I find the astonishment expressed in the OP rather astonishing itself. There are billions of people in the world. We don't all think and feel the same. Just because an idea is important to one person doesn't mean it's important to everyone else on the planet.
But they are good souls and much better at loving empathy than I am. They are also not snobbish, elitist and proud.
But....
in answer to Ruth's ,'I see no evidence of God acting in the world and I see and feel no evidence of God acting in my life.' I see it and feel it all the time. Lord have mercy! I am, apparently, with all my faults, called to Holy Priesthood.
Which does not astonish me. I've always known people who see and feel evidence of God acting my whole life ("some of my best friends ..."
A Diest would accept that. Thomas Jefferson was a deist. You can see it in his Declaration of Independence. He really hated miracles--would even cut them out of his personal Bible. However, a Christian would argue that God is intimately involved in the world, the proof of this will be proclaimed this coming Sunday.
A psychologist I knew explained that all people have to develop a rational way of understanding the chaos in the world. Some people who say there is no God interpret what they experience as proof there is no God. On the other hand, there are people who do accept the proposition there is a God and will experience that God in their lives. Both perspectives are completely rational for the person who holds that idea,
Agreed, Its seems evident that not everyone has a psychological need for the existence of God to explain stuff.
I'd say rationality isn't an obstacle but leads inevitably to agnosticism. Which is why I find reference to "proof" by @Gramps49 rather odd, unless you're using "proof" to mean "evidence", which is an odd use but one I've seen a lot more lately.
There are of course many who accept the proposition that there is a God but do *not* "experience that God in their lives" - many of us end up ex-believers; others of us are too hopeful - or pig-headedly obstinate - to let go. There is also such a thing as fear of being let down. Ascribe things going right to God, and what do you do when things go tits up? God looking the other way? God intentionally fecking things up for you? A devil who can thwart God's intentions? It's a much simpler model to say good things and shit both happen and need neither God nor Satan to put them into motion, irrespective of whether there is a God or not. Trying to find spiritual significance in events has never gone well for me.
I'm not sure where @Boogie was going with that line, but I've heard it and also think it's kinda true to my experience.
A short explanation is that "love" and "hate" both require a pretty serious emotional investment in someone. "Indifference" doesn't. Often, moving to "hate" requires first loving something, or having an expectation that is big enough to be seriously disappointed. How could I hate something if I never expected anything better from it?
The common thread, I think, is attachment. There might be some who think you can love without attachment. In that case, I can see how the saying @Boogie referenced can be a bit more confusing.
By rational I do not mean well thought out, but that they are workable in that one can live with either proposition in finding order in a chaotic world.
About the question “Why would God not matter?” For me I don’t personally find the Christian God—the one who is said to be Jesus, who died for people’s sins, and whose followers believe you go to heaven if you trust in him relevant to my life. I guess I don’t really believe in life after death in the way that Christians do. I think we live on through our kids (if we have any) or through the memories of people who knew us and whose lives we might have effected. I think of death like turning off something electrical for the last time. Fades to black.
I used to believe in eternal life through Jesus, but I kind of moved away from that belief for a few reasons. One thing that bothered me was that it seemed strange to me that it was given to only one group of people, in one place and time. Then I went through some really awful experiences and the people who seemed the most focused on being “saved” didn’t really help me much at all and some of them made it a lot worse. On the other hand, people who didn’t necessarily have the same religious beliefs or who grew up with more of a cultural Christianity were actually much more supportive and kind.
Over time, I guess I started to think of Christianity, especially the focus on saving one’s own soul, as self-centered. But I do think that the kindness part of Christianity is what really matters and that’s something I respect.
I really hope I am not offending anyone with this. I do not really see myself as non-christian, more like a partial one without a personally interested god and no eternal life, with kindness as the main thing that matters. If this post is out of order, please ignore or delete.
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
And I agree with you that the kind of Christianity that is focused on “saving souls” is self-centered and off-kilter.
Your post alludes to something I’ve been pondering with this thread. There are certainly those, such as the celebrity referred to in the OP, who say—sincerely, I’ll assume—that God doesn’t matter to them. But there are also a lot of people who say God does indeed matter to them, but whose actions say otherwise. The latter strikes me as a bigger problem.
Indeed. I’m reminded of when Jesus said that there would be those who say, “Lord, Lord,” but whom He never knew:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 7:21-23&version=NASB
And then talking about how we treat the “least of these” showing how we treated Him:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 25:31-46&version=NLT
Acting lovingly is where God can be found, and most religions express that in some form. I happen to have had a Christians upbringing, so I can express it and think about it in terms of Christian statements and stories, while an inclusive approach allows me to find it in other searches for meaning.
Sending hugs and prayers, for what it’s worth.
As we're into honest sharing in this thread (and it's all the better for that') I can witness that I'm the opposite of our beloved Marvin, viz: "I’m pretty much in a place where God only matters to me in terms of [being with me and helping me ] in my premortem existence." Neither He nor I seem to have any interest in my postmortem destination. As a rational scientist I'm kinda with Burgess. That is, " I think of death like turning off something electrical for the last time. Fades to black."
Just beautiful. I would, if I could, hope ... like really hope (is hope a gift?) to see you (and others on this forum. You know who you are, KarlB, chastMastr et al ....) there.
Well the first definition of "proof" in M-W is "the cogency of evidence or of demonstrated relationship that compels acceptance by the mind of a truth or a fact." So yes, evidence is rather involved. But the evidence has to be (a) cogent, and (b) compelling. And what's the use of evidence that isn't?
Hear hear.
So was I. It’s God who didn’t return any of my calls.
It's not so much glib, as dismissive. If someone says, there is no answer from God, it's weird to change that around, so that their experience is nullified. You aren't listening.
The "maybe God's silence is the answer" thing is something I've heard my whole life, and it has always sounded like made-up bullshit. If God can't be bothered to respond, God's an asshole. There are people in utterly dire situations right this second who are praying to God and not getting an answer. If "silence is the answer" does something for them, I won't question it, but it hasn't ever done anything for me.
This is all a priest can do. To suffer with those who suffer, rejoice with those who rejoice. Oh, and, 'Don't be an asshole'.
With particular reference to those who believe they have a divine mandate for total arseholery.
The list is endless, and ends up shaming all people of faith.
Oh indeed. Possibly "*especially* if you think your arseholery is divinely mandated".
I've lost count of the number of people who say, effectively, "I'm not sexist/homophobic/transphobic but God is so I have to act this way"
Never occurs to them that the problem isn't that God isn't that way. It's that their interpretation of God isn't that way.
Not being an asshole is a negative, but earnestly to be desired, virtue. Next is to aim at positive ones - love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness etc. I'm trying. 'Very trying', comments Mrs RR.
God matters to me because He/She is helping me out of my natural arseholedom ... and more fit for human company ..... slowly.
There are arseholes and arseholes.