From: exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: god is not relevant
Date: 8 Sep 92 19:38:16 GMT
Organization: Ericsson Network Systems, Inc.

In article <IedVgW200VotQ731Em@andrew.cmu.edu> jn1a+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jad Nehme) writes:
>From: jn1a+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jad Nehme)
>Subject: Re: god is not relevant
>Date: 3 Sep 92 14:03:14 GMT

>Excerpts from netnews.alt.atheism: 2-Sep-92 Re: god is not relevant
>Keith A. Schneider@cco.c (878)

>> ethridge@bnr.ca (Allen Ethridge) writes:

>[stuff deleted]
>> >Or is god relevant?  If so, how and why?  What's he/she/it needed for?

>> Well, God is relevant to some people.  Some people need the comfort against
>> the envirnoment.  Some people need to be assured that they will be eternally
>> happy (since their life on Earth is so miserable).  Some people want
>> to feel happy when someone dies...  hmm...
>> Well, perhaps you should ask someone  in whose life God plays a major
>> role.


>Is the relevance of god dependent on its (should it be Its?) existence
>or is it dependent on people's belief in its existence?
>Let me explain in more detail: it seems that with god we can't know
>what's happening.  For simplicity, let us assume it exists.  It could
>just have given us the bible to see how fooled we are by a book.  There
>is no way of knowing its intent because, in Christian's theory, he is
>supposed to be, somehow, amazingly smart, even smarter then us.  After
>all, the dude's omniscient and omnipotent. Since we can't know anything
>about it even when assuming it exists, what is then the relevance of its
>existence?  The question is not asking about the relevance of people
>believing in it, but the relevance of its existence?

>-Jad

Very nice, Jad. Also, let's remember that if we could answer the question of 
the existence of God [provided the "answer" included or entailed a 
sufficiently elaborated or at least clear conception of "God"], this would 
immediately be of enormous importance for the solution of many of the most 
contentious problems of philosophy, or would at least provide the main 
body of a solution to them. It would be relevant to the question of the 
purpose and origin of the world and of human beings, which, I would claim, 
is the central problem in metaphysics; for if there is a God who created 
the world, this would indicate that man also has a divine origin, and thus 
would be relevant to long-standing questions aobut man's ultimate nature 
and the meaning of his destiny. 

Thus, I would have to say that it certainly does matter whether or not there 
is a God; I don't understand someone who says he is indifferent to the 
question of God's existence.  One of the great atheists of our time, 
Jean Paul Sarte, indicated its human importance when he wrote, "It is 
distressing that there is no God."

But, as it is always worth repeating and emphasizing, it is not so 
much the question of God's existence per se, but of his nature [what God 
is], that is really in question, and is the truly prior and fundamental one 
that must be settled first. ---The most important ingredient to success in 
any enterprize, is to ask the right first questions (my paraphrase of 
Aristotle).
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