Rakamatootoo asked:

Do you believe god is a idea engrained in all of our minds (in some way)? Or is god as John Lennon
sang, "A concept by which we measure our pain"? Or do you believe neither? (This really isn't a
problem for me, I just want your opinion.)

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Why do you think the reality around you is "real" — or don't you think so? Do you think the reality
around you is only a dream — like Tschuang-Tzu who woke up after dreaming to be a butterfly —
and then asked himself if he was a butterfly dreaming to be a human?

Or if you think somebody loves you — or if you think you are loving somebody: how do you "know"
this to be the fact? Maybe you err on both assumptions?

So what does it mean to be "an idea engrained in all of our minds"? Some people simply have the
"experience of God" — but they cannot "prove" God to be real like you cannot "prove" your feelings to
be "real" — or your surroundings at that. Is "reality" "an idea engrained in all of our minds" — or is
love?

Some people have tried to disprove God by experiment. Galton asked a reasonable question: If God
is responding to prayers of true believers, there should be significantly more miraculous recoveries
from bad illness among those true believers and their relatives. But the statistical data available on
the illness and death of ministers and their families didn't show any significant difference from other
statistical samples. But then the true believers would say "The ways of the Lord are strange and
unsearchable by us dumb humans!" (compare Romans 11:33). Popper calls this the "ultra stability" of
an opinion: The argument is formulated in such a way that no counterargument will destroy it. Once a
sect predicted the doomsday for a definite day and hour — and nothing happened. One could have
thought that the faith of the true believers would be shattered to pieces by this outcome. But they
said: "Since we were praying all the day, God spared mankind for another time." So maybe the idea
of God is simply the great stabilizer of souls, the one great hope left to make lifes burden bareable
like somebody clings to the hope that his true love is really returning his own feelings. Nobody can
disprove that. The philosophers Feuerbach and Marx therefore called the belief in God "the opium of
the people". But if this opium enabled people to build the great orders and monasteries and
cathedrals and to explore nature like Kepler and Newton did then it's a really strong stuff and much
better than the sort Hitler or Stalin offered — or maybe even "the American Creed", "the pursuit of
happiness". We all are caught in some dream or living under a delusion. May it be a good one!

And then compare what I answered to Jeremy. (Jeremy asked: What is faith, in the context of our
life-view? If our actions are based on what we believe (about God, our nature, the afterlife, etc.), then
what is the basis of our belief? ...)

Hubertus Fremerey

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