I can understand people believing in a grand designer, but why the leap...

by Psychotic Parrot 13 Replies latest jw friends

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  Psychotic Parrot

  from the grand designer to Jesus?

  People always justify belief in God by saying that the universe needed a creator to balance out the fundamental forces & set things in motion, etc... or in other words an intelligent first cause (who designed the designer though?)...

  But how do we get from this ambiguous grand designer to the Judeo Christian God, or Jesus, or al Lah? Where is the middle ground?

  If science is only beginning to unlock the mysteries of the universe & the beginning of time, then how could the middle eastern dudes living 1000-4000 years ago know so much? Why did they deserve divine intervention?

  I think that it's fair enough for someone to believe that the universe was created by an intelligent force (although i personally see no reason to believe that as of yet), but to make the leap from that to Jesus (for example) is where it all falls down for me.

  Jesus sounds like he was a cool guy, but nothing more than that really, just a hip little revolutionary who made a big impression on a handful of people who later became influential. And for me personally, Christianity as a philosophy was fucked up the moment the prissy apostle Paul started meddling in things. And as for the other major religions... just LOL
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  Narkissos

  Religion didn't start with, let alone from, the concept of a "grand designer" and the abstract sense of causality and totality it presupposes.

  It had to deal with more immediate things (death, illness, hunting or agrarian success) for a long time before reaching the degree of generalisation behind creation stories (which are not yet creatio omnium ex nihilo, but explanations of a particular order of nature from a particular cultural perspective). Even in the Bible which reflects a comparatively late development of Ancient Near Eastern traditions, the notion of creation doesn't come first (in the chronological order of texts). Yhwh is construed as a Saviour long before he is portrayed as Creator.

  Iow, the notion of "God" depends on a long and diversified cultural tradition which has little to do with the modern approach to "the origins of the universe". If you start with the latter the "leap" to the former seems arbitrary and fanciful indeed. But in fact nobody does. Those who pretend to offer "intelligent design" as a scientific hypothesis did not come up with this "hypothesis" through a purely theoretic process. They depended on a specific, historical, cultural, religious background. They already had the religious answer (the Jewish, or Christian, or Muslim "God") and simply translated it into more abstract and apparently scientific terms (e.g. ID) before they asked the questions which (hopefully) beg this answer. Now how they can come back from the abstract answer to the particular religious tradition they have held all along is certainly not on a rational path.
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  Elsewhere

  > But how do we get from this ambiguous grand designer to the Judeo Christian God, or Jesus, or al Lah? Where is the middle ground?

  I've wondered the same thing. This is why the Flying Spaghetti Monster is such a powerful tool in combating Intelligent Deign in schools. If they want to teach the kids that Jebus did it... they must also teach that the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it too.
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  jws

  I don't think those that start with an intelligent force do necessarily land on Jesus.

  I think those that started at Jesus (or Jehovah or Allah, or whatever) work their way back to an intelligent force. And even then, what they believe in does not resemble what deists believe. They do not believe in some sort of simplified intelligent force, they believe in a God who's intimately involved in human affairs. Yet they will advance the simplified intelligent force concept as bait. If you can swallow that little bit, now you accept a creator and maybe you can then be led to believe their stories and legends of a creator.
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  The Berean

  People need a figurehead, a material connection to the invisible. If not Jesus, someone else would have filled that role ... humans demand it!
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  leavingwt

  Well, many Christians will tell you that Jesus spoke to them personally. They invited him into their hearts and he accepted the invitation. He answers their prayers.

  So, for them, in a very real sense, it wasn't much of a leap.
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  Psychotic Parrot

  I'm not really talking about this from a historical perspective, as that is pretty well understood. I mean from a personal perspective. Because my dad for example cites the 'grand designer' idea as why he took to religion. But i've never fathomed how he got from believing in a grand designer to the world of dubdom...

  I was just wondering what the middle ground that leads from one to the other might be, but the more i think about it, the more i come to realise that perhaps that middle ground simply doesn't exist & it is purely delusion that leads from one to the other. Certainly those who claim Jesus 'spoke' to them are suffering a major delusion.

  And of course, as already mentioned, it is more likely that people start with Jesus/God/al Lah/Elvis (although this wasn't the case with my dad) and then use the 'grand designer' as a way of justifying it later on.
• 

  superpunk

  They invited him into their hearts

  Sounds dangerous.

  I think the answer is just geographical, and circular. Your parents raise you with a belief in a particular deity, you grow up and think there had to be a creator from incredulous reasoning, and the deity your parents raised you with fits the bill nicely.

  And then you never have to say "I don't know", or "I don't understand that yet".
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  jws

  I'm not really talking about this from a historical perspective, as that is pretty well understood. I men from a personal perspective. Because my dad for example cites the 'grand designer' idea as why he took to religion. But i've never fathomed how he got from believing in a grand designer to the world of dubdom...

  The idea of a creator can lead people to religion. For some it is not enough to just decide "this is too complex, it must have a creator", they need the next step. If there is a creator, there's a reason s/he created us and maybe s/he wants something from us.

  My guess is that your father wasn't completely religion free. He may never have been part of it, but if he's from a Christian country, it's all around. My kids have not been taught religion (that I know of), but they get exposed to Christian concepts like god, the devil, heaven, hell, angels, souls (ghosts), etc., just by watching cartoons.

  If/when you believe there is a creator and decide to check into God, you're most likely going to go with what you're familiar with (Christian religion in Christian countries, Muslim in Muslim countries, etc). Maybe your dad had some sort of general Christian beliefs, but just didn't like religions.

  Sure, the JWs may be different from what your average Christians believe. But they're still a Christian religion (in my opinion). Yet they're different enough that they can make you think that if you didn't like Christianity before, it's because you haven't tried them. It's because these others weren't teaching it right that you were turned off to them.

  If your dad went from being of no beliefs straight into the JWs, it was probably the JWs who got him hooked on this "grand designer" theory. And once he was talking with them, they started to step-by-step him into believing the rest. Look at all of those study books with their canned answers that you read and repeat and pretty soon accept. It's brainwashing. Your mind is given a premise and is taught to progress through to the conclusion they want you to come to.
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  Spook

  Because the assessment of the likelihood of a theological account is hinged on the background likelihood of God's existance. Given the assumption of a grand designer, it becomes much more "probable" that a given theological claim is true in the asessment of an individual. For example, if the fine tuning argument is true, then it is more probable that Theistic Evolution is true than it is that natural evolution is true.

  An absurd example of how stupid this is, given the assumption that a god exists who is willing and able to cause me to eat a banana for breakfast it is more likely that I should eat a banana than given naturalism if one assumes god posesses at least the following set of traits.

  1. Being fully rational.

  2. Being very powerful.

  3. Having a strong desire to cause me to eat a banana for breakfast.

  If we also accept the assumption that a rational being will always satisfy her desires when she is willing and able to do so, all things considered.