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Originally posted by Renegade Actually, I would probably disagree with you there. Taken from "Existenialism as a Humanism": quote: [N]othing will be changed if God does not exist. [...] Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In other words, Sartre believed that regardless of your religious stance (or lack thereof) you're still going to be faced with exactly the same set of existential problems as everyone else. You still have to define your own moral system (the adoption of a religious morality is still your own "choice" - after all, there are many different religious moralities to "choose" from and you could always "choose" to reject any part of that moral system if you wished), you are still "condemned" by the necessity of free-will to make your own choices (again, even if you choose to live a life guided by a religious philosophy, that choice is still, at base, your own) and you are still responsible for who you "are" (we are, after all, the sum of our choices). Even if you try to introduce God into this inexorable human reality, it will - as Sartre said - "change nothing": we are still both absolutely free and absolutely responsible for our choices. You are right in saying that Sartre was "concerned" about the issue of God (in the sense that it was a common theme in his writings), but wrong to say that it "does matter" in the context of atheistic existentialism. Even if God's existence were successfully demonstrated tomorrow, our existential situation, as human beings, wouldn't change.

Several comments are in order here:

I would appreciate if, when you quote from text, you don't quote out of context:

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[N]othing will be changed if God does not exist. [...]

This tidbit has nothing to do with existentialism's position with regards to God's existence. It is clear that within context, it refers to Sartre's criticism of French secular morality in the 1880's that attempted to do without God while keeping a priori values intact. His use of "nothing will be changed if god does not exist" is his paraphrasing of the French secular position at the time, a position he proceeds to ridicule. Here is the full paragraph that contains the quote (I've bolded your quote and some interesting passages that are of relevance to our discusssion):

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And when we speak of “abandonment” – a favorite word of Heidegger – we only mean to say that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to the end. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to suppress God at the least possible expense. Towards 1880, when the French professors endeavoured to formulate a secular morality, they said something like this: God is a useless and costly hypothesis, so we will do without it. However, if we are to have morality, a society and a law-abiding world, it is essential that certain values should be taken seriously; they must have an a priori existence ascribed to them. It must be considered obligatory a priori to be honest, not to lie, not to beat one’s wife, to bring up children and so forth; so we are going to do a little work on this subject, which will enable us to show that these values exist all the same, inscribed in an intelligible heaven although, of course, there is no God. In other words – and this is, I believe, the purport of all that we in France call radicalism – nothing will be changed if God does not exist; we shall rediscover the same norms of honesty, progress and humanity, and we shall have disposed of God as an out-of-date hypothesis which will die away quietly of itself. The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse. For if indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one’s action by reference to a given and specific human nature; in other words, there is no determinism – man is free, man is freedom. Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimise our behaviour. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse. – We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never regard a grand passion as a destructive torrent upon which a man is swept into certain actions as by fate, and which, therefore, is an excuse for them. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion. Neither will an existentialist think that a man can find help through some sign being vouchsafed upon earth for his orientation: for he thinks that the man himself interprets the sign as he chooses. He thinks that every man, without any support or help whatever, is condemned at every instant to invent man. As Ponge has written in a very fine article, “Man is the future of man.” That is exactly true. Only, if one took this to mean that the future is laid up in Heaven, that God knows what it is, it would be false, for then it would no longer even be a future. If, however, it means that, whatever man may now appear to be, there is a future to be fashioned, a virgin future that awaits him – then it is a true saying. But in the present one is forsaken.

Clearly then, the non-existence of God does matter in his philosophy, in the sense that Man does not have recourse to God in order to justify choices as "good", "rational", or what have you, but has only himself to "fall back on". This is of critical importance in his attempt to articulate a system of ethics. More on that below.

Now, with regards to the last paragraph that you quoted, your explanation is accurate but severely incomplete, which leads me to disagree with your conclusion:

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You are right in saying that Sartre was "concerned" about the issue of God (in the sense that it was a common theme in his writings), but wrong to say that it "does matter" in the context of atheistic existentialism. Even if God's existence were successfully demonstrated tomorrow, our existential situation, as human beings, wouldn't change.

To be fair, if one reached that conclusion based solely on his/her reading of "Existentialism is a Humanism", then one cannot be fully blamed for that considering the fact that within philosophical circles, that text is considered ambiguous at best, and furthermore too condensed to do justice to Sartre's positions on many things (including God, his ethical system etc). If I remember correctly, this text is really a transcription of a lecture he gave a year beforehand, and was meant to be a "layman's" version of his phenomenological ontology contained in Being and Nothingness. But it has caused so many misinterpretations of the Sartrian position that even Sartre eventually regretted its publication.

At any rate, you are right to state that within Sartrian philosophy, whether God exists or not, Man would still have to choose his moral system (either to accept a currently existing one, whether it be secular or theistic, or create a new one), but wrong in concluding that therefore, God's existence "does not matter" within Sartrian philosophy. I wish I had more time to get into this in detail, but I don't, so I'll simply quote Frederick Copleston's explanation of my position, since I happen to fully agree with his interpretation of God's role in Sartrian philosophy and its connection to his ethical system, based on all my readings and understanding of Sartre (this is taken from "A History of Philosophy, Volume IX, page 365-366"):

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Sartre's position can be expressed in this way. Man is free; and this means that it depends on man what he makes of himself. He cannot however avoid making something of himself. And what he makes of himself implies an operative ideal, a basic project, which he has freely chosen or projected for himself. It is not therefore a question of man being under an a priori moral obligation to choose his values. For he does so in any case. Even if he endorses, so to speak, a set of values or of ethical norms which he receives from society, this endorsement is an act of choice. The values become his values only through his own act. This would apply to acceptance of commands and prohibitions which the religious believer conceived as emanating from God. God could indeed punish a man for disobediance; but if man is free, it depends on him whether or not he accepts the divine commands as his ethical norms. From this point of view therefore we can say that it makes no difference whether there is a God or not. Even if God existed, man would still have to pursue goals which he had chosen. At the same time, if there is no God, there can obviously be no fore-ordained divine plan. There can be no common ideal of human nature which man has been created to realize through his actions. He is thrown back entirely on himself, and he cannot justify his choice of an ideal by appealing to a divine plan for the human race. In this sense the existence or non-existence of God does make a difference. It is true that if a man accepts the ethical norms which he believes to have been promulgated by God, this implies that he has freely projected his ideal as that of a God-fearing man. The point is however that if in fact there is no God who has created man for a purpose, to attain a determinate end or goal, there is no given moral order to which he can appeal to justify his choice. The notion that there are absolute values subsiting in some ethical realm of their own, apart from a divine mind, is quite unacceptable to Sartre. It may indeed be the case that he could have approached the matter in a simpler way by interpreting "values" simply in terms of the act of evaluation. But he would still insist of course that if there is no God, there is no possibility of justifying man's act of evaluation, say as "rational", by appealing to a divinely determined ideal of human nature which is the measure of self-fulfillment or self-realization. To be sure, Sartre himself sees man as striving after the realization of a basic project, that of becoming l'en-soi-pour-soi, or God. But he adds that the project is doomed to frustration, inasmuch as the concept of unity of being in itself and consciousness is a self-coontradictory concept. And in this sense the (necessary) non-existence of God makes a difference. Sartre is anxious to dissipate the impression that he is concerned with promoting moral anarchy or encouraging a purely capricious choice of values and ethical norms. He argues therefore that to choose between x and y is to assert the value of what we choose (that x, for example, is better than y) and that "nothing can be good for us without being good for all". That is to say, in choosing a value one chooses ideally for all. If I project a certain image of myself as I choose to be, I am projecting an ideal image of man as other men. In other words, the judgement of value is intrinsically universal.

Note that, again, this is an explanation of the Sartrian position, not a attack or a defense of it. If you agree with it (which I do), then his belief that God does not exist does indeed play a role in his philosophy, specifically as it pertains to his ethical system. Hope this helps in clarifying my position.

Last edited by Epicurus on Feb-14-2006 at 21:27

god i wish i could speak about this the way my friend does because he's so brilliant at philosophy. i've talked to him before about this sort of thing because i find it interesting, but there is no way i could do this subject justice...

While I most certainly cannot prove that there is no god, it's already been proven that the God of Christianity, as they believe him to be, does not exist. It's called evolution.

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I Don't believe in god, I think it was just a story and people made a big fuzz about it. Something like the lord of the rings but instead of gandalf, jesus.

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Originally posted by Meat187 Because "American Football" is neither played with a ball nor with your feet. It should be called Handegg.

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Originally posted by Aquarian That's a cheat. If he has to change the rock into something else, then it's because he couldn't lift the original rock to begin with, meaning he can't be omnipotent. Or if you allow that, then because he can lift it, it means that he failed at creating a rock that he couldn't lift, so he's still not omnipotent.

But if he changes the laws of physics the rock is still the same rock (which justifys the "he can't lift it") and earler he couldn't lift it, utill he changed the laws (not changing the rock).

Supose if the pardox is taken away from the anology and stripped down, if god is omnipotent surely he can create a task which he couldn't do, and that would mean it would be something he couldn't do (and so not omnipotent). Or not be able to think of something he couldn't do and so again not be omnipotent.

And since I'm an athist (sometimes agnostic >> see why) it to me means there is no god. Though I could accept that if one was to look for a greater being I would see the universe as that. Which we are part of. But I wouldn't really call that a god.

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If you can read this, I'm seriously fucking bored.

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Originally posted by Aquarian Why don't you believe in giant inflatable clowns that orbit saturn and shoot laser beams at incoming asteroids?

u believe that too ??? i thought i was the only one...neat!

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Originally posted by Ygrene My philosophy is difficult to explain. Loosely translated, it is the melody in Sandstorm.

no srsly...

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Originally posted by D-res the stone paradox is a hell of an argument. the only argument i heard that "disproves" it, even though i dont think it does, is that God COULD but it isnt in his plan to do so or something so its an irrelevant question. bullshit because even hypothetically speaking, the answer is still that the idea of "all-powerful" is bullshit

the answer could be as simple as; physical power, strength or even existance as we know it are all human elements/factors...the rules dont apply to god coz hes the one that created them...
and if u really think about it, in order to "lift a rock" wouldnt that require some sort of physical form? if god had a physical form, wouldnt we be able to see him? imo god does physically exist, in the form we call our spirits

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Originally posted by Ygrene My philosophy is difficult to explain. Loosely translated, it is the melody in Sandstorm.

I don't think we can prove or disprove that there is a God (or Gods). I believe that God exists because of our desire to believe in such a thing. So the thought of God existing is so ingrained in our conscious that God could very well be many things, or it could be no things. Basically you can think of God as "existing" on many levels. There's the basic faith level, where one just accepts God as being there, without going deeper into what God is or truly experiencing God. There's the blind faith level, which is similar to the basic level, but this belief is beliving in God without every thinking about it, just believing in God because someone has told you to believe (like blind allegiance in a leader). Then there's the level of knowing God by way of devotion, where someone is so devoted to their faith, they spend a lot of time in prayer and meditation, trying to have a "relationship" with God. There's other levels to, but let me skip to one of the highest levels. Transcendental level, when one learns to think and experience reality outside themselves to truly become "God-like". Thats not to say someone becomes "God" but someone is fully integrated outside of the ego, and experience the "self-awareness" or "ecstacy", by in a way, analyzing oneself like a psychologist would. Spending a lot of time in contemplation can eventually get someone to experience this. Many monks (both Christian and Buddhist) experience this, and in many other religions. I guess you can call this the "retreat" experience, learning to retreat from the "here, now" and experience the "God-reality" (I can explain this further later).

Ok what this all comes down to is...could God, in a sense, be the idea of the "ideal self"? God could very well be what humans have created as what we wish we were. Thats not to say God doesn't exist, but our understanding of God is so vague that we have only reached an elementary level in our understanding of God. God could be all around us, as part of the unvierse, and part of living things such as humans, and from this we become closer to God, we become closer to ourselves.
I've thought, for many years, if God truly exists, and I think God does "exist" but like I've been explaining, not in the religious sense. There are many things we don't know about reality, about the universe and things in general, that in my opinion, to say that God just doesn't exist, or to say at the same time God exists, without truly questioning both, is not the right thing to do. I don't have anything against atheists, but there are many things we don't know, and can't all be explained by science.

Edit: This isn't "New Age" stuff per say, it's based on philosophical issues about God, as well as the idea of "mysticism" as i've discussed, translating into another idea called "transcendentalism" which i'm going to study, and have studied a little.

God could very well be a "contradiction" just as reality is a "contradiction", and or a "paradox". I guess you can think of it as the "God-paradox".

Last edited by Spirit5 on Feb-15-2006 at 04:17

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Originally posted by Ang ' ela_ie While I most certainly cannot prove that there is no god, it's already been proven that the God of Christianity, as they believe him to be, does not exist. It's called evolution.

Evolution is a theory. And no, I'm not a christian, so I'm not saying this with a bias. Evolution is a theory just like all other theories, and like all other theories, it has holes in it. So no, nothing has been "proven."

It is very possible to believe in science and believe in God, it is also possible to believe in evolution and be a Chrisian. Most mainstream Christians (i.e non fundamentalists) have begun (in the last 40 or 50 years at least) to believe in Evolution, and not take the Garden of Eden story literally, thats for the fundamentalists to do. The Fundamentalists like you think they are the majority, or that they speak for all Christians, but thats not the case. The whole hoopla over Intelligent Design was blown out of proportion by uneducated people who didn't know 1. What Intelligent Design really says and 2. What Evolution really says...basically they didn't understand either, but Intelligent Design seemed more like their Creation tale, so they locked into it. It was basically a way for them to get religion, particularly creationism, into Public Schools, where it doesn't belong. I'm not advocating Intelligent Design, but these school board members, such as in Dover, Pennsylvania, didn't understand either, just latched on to what they thought was creationism. It's possible to believe in both Intelligent Design and Evolution I think, because you can believe that there was an Intelligent Designer that created the big bang which created the Universe (something had to do, and something had to have "existed" before the big bang), and that one of God's plans was Evolution, and God could work through Evolution, and thus from Evolution it allowed our minds and bodies to become as Evolved (And Complex) as they are and to even create our own organisms. I have come to believe God does evolve, just as we evolve, it's called process theology, and is something i'm going to explore further.

I'm all for evolution, but I agree with OurManFlint that it is a theory, and it has some holes in it (it can't explain everything). I don't believe in Creationism of anykind (other than God working through Evolution, God creating the Universe), and I'm not a hardcore-Christian.

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Originally posted by Spirit5 I'm not advocating Intelligent Design, but these school board members, such as in Dover, Pennsylvania, didn't understand either, just latched on to what they thought was creationism. It's possible to believe in both Intelligent Design and Evolution I think, because you can believe that there was an Intelligent Designer that created the big bang which created the Universe (something had to do, and something had to have "existed" before the big bang), and that one of God's plans was Evolution, and God could work through Evolution, and thus from Evolution it allowed our minds and bodies to become as Evolved (And Complex) as they are and to even create our own organisms. I have come to believe God does evolve, just as we evolve, it's called process theology, and is something i'm going to explore further.

The term Intelligent Design has been pretty much appropriated (if not coined?) by the fundamentalist Christian right, and defined as a scientific theory (throught up by Michael Behe) contrary to evolution. Though it is not a theory inthe strict sense of the word, almost the entire scinetific community is very hesitant to call it scientific and if evolution is a scientific theory with holes in it than Behe's Intelligent Design pretty much is a giant hole with little bits of what looks like pseudo-scientific quasi-theory floating in it.

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