Of course you didn't single me out. You excluded me. There's a difference.
You begin by saying that because you don't believe in omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence, you can't believe in a Supreme Being, and everything else you say flows from that statement. Those characteristics are associated with the JudeoChristian and Muslim Supreme Beings, but they're not universal, so the fact that you don't believe in them would have no effect on whether or not you could believe in Lugh, Brighid, Loki, Apollo, or Papa Legba. You have, in that statement, normalized the monotheist outlook as your 'default' for Supreme Beings, and everything you say from that point presupposes that default. Doing so completely disregards the entire realm of faiths for which a god (not a God) need not know all, see all, or love all. Most of the pagan gods only really help out the people who believe in and worship them, so your refutation of 'gods' is really only a refutation of the JudeoChristian and Muslim 'Gods' and doesn't apply to anyone who's not a monotheist.
Your only other argument against the existence of gods (or Gods) is that they cannot be proven to exist with empirical evidence to your satisfaction, so they must be fiction. Well, they cannot be disproven with empirical evidence to my satisfaction, and I don't accept "they don't exist" as the default for the fact that they can neither be fully proven nor disproven. They *may* exist, and I choose to live as if they do. You are more than free to live as if they do not, but please don't sit there disproving only one small facet of divinity and suggest it applies to all of godhood, and then try to tell me that you're not excluding polytheists from your worldview and logic.
Nothing you said in your post applies even the least little bit to my belief system. Not remotely, not at all, because it all proceeds from the notion that 'a god' is bound by the same definitions and parameters as 'God', and that which refutes the existence of 'God' for you then handily refutes the entire existence of divinity and gods.
"I don't believe it because I don't believe it," is a fine choice to make and from my perspective irrefutable. If it makes you happy and comfortable, so be it. But "It is fiction because I can disprove something that looks sort of like it," is insulting. Your talk of science and truth as applying only to your worldview is at odds with your later assertion that there is no One True Way. If there really is no One True Way (which I believe), then on some level science, logic, and truth can be incorporated into *every* belief system, and every belief system is better for the challenge.
And when you close your post with, "I'm not going to call you a Godded right-wing Jesus freak because you do believe in a God," I have a hard time with the protestations that you're not normalizing JudeoChristian monotheism as your default for religion and disregarding the variety inherent in other paths.
I'm sorry you've been proselytized to by people of various faiths. I've been called mentally ill, emotionally weak, stupid, deluded, and ignorant by evangelical atheists, *and* told I'm hellbound by the Christians, so I just might have you beat on that.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 06:35 pm (UTC)You begin by saying that because you don't believe in omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence, you can't believe in a Supreme Being, and everything else you say flows from that statement. Those characteristics are associated with the JudeoChristian and Muslim Supreme Beings, but they're not universal, so the fact that you don't believe in them would have no effect on whether or not you could believe in Lugh, Brighid, Loki, Apollo, or Papa Legba. You have, in that statement, normalized the monotheist outlook as your 'default' for Supreme Beings, and everything you say from that point presupposes that default. Doing so completely disregards the entire realm of faiths for which a god (not a God) need not know all, see all, or love all. Most of the pagan gods only really help out the people who believe in and worship them, so your refutation of 'gods' is really only a refutation of the JudeoChristian and Muslim 'Gods' and doesn't apply to anyone who's not a monotheist.
Your only other argument against the existence of gods (or Gods) is that they cannot be proven to exist with empirical evidence to your satisfaction, so they must be fiction. Well, they cannot be disproven with empirical evidence to my satisfaction, and I don't accept "they don't exist" as the default for the fact that they can neither be fully proven nor disproven. They *may* exist, and I choose to live as if they do. You are more than free to live as if they do not, but please don't sit there disproving only one small facet of divinity and suggest it applies to all of godhood, and then try to tell me that you're not excluding polytheists from your worldview and logic.
Nothing you said in your post applies even the least little bit to my belief system. Not remotely, not at all, because it all proceeds from the notion that 'a god' is bound by the same definitions and parameters as 'God', and that which refutes the existence of 'God' for you then handily refutes the entire existence of divinity and gods.
"I don't believe it because I don't believe it," is a fine choice to make and from my perspective irrefutable. If it makes you happy and comfortable, so be it. But "It is fiction because I can disprove something that looks sort of like it," is insulting. Your talk of science and truth as applying only to your worldview is at odds with your later assertion that there is no One True Way. If there really is no One True Way (which I believe), then on some level science, logic, and truth can be incorporated into *every* belief system, and every belief system is better for the challenge.
And when you close your post with, "I'm not going to call you a Godded right-wing Jesus freak because you do believe in a God," I have a hard time with the protestations that you're not normalizing JudeoChristian monotheism as your default for religion and disregarding the variety inherent in other paths.
I'm sorry you've been proselytized to by people of various faiths. I've been called mentally ill, emotionally weak, stupid, deluded, and ignorant by evangelical atheists, *and* told I'm hellbound by the Christians, so I just might have you beat on that.
Love,
Rowan