I think this goes to the heart of the problem because there exists no such definition and billions of human lives have been needlessly wasted over the past couple of millennia to attest to this. It's not the atheists and humanists who must bear the responsibility for this because violent conduct is antithetical to the humanist ethic. I can think of plenty of conflicts where one gang of believers has turned on another because they believe the wrong thing but none where a gang of non-believers has turned on a gang of believers for believing.Newme wrote: Has anybody defined God yet, or is just the most dysfunctional definition of God being exclusively focused on with blinders to the countless others?
Humanism is not founded on belief and thus humanists don't organise themselves into groups to proselytise their views and punish those that don't share them. Although they might argue with theists, and indeed mock them, they don't feel threatened by them and therefore feel no need to either attack them or defend themselves from them in a physical sense. Ironically the reverse is also true because theists reserve their worst excesses for other theists and not for the atheists who they seem to simply regard with scorn and pity.
It's important to note that almost all atheists were once theists and the reverse is almost never seen and this tells us something. The humanist is FREE, in that he has unshackled himself from the chains of received wisdom and sought his spiritual fulfillment across the vast spectrum of human knowledge, rather than within a single narrow interpretation of it. There are lots of theists in this forum, which I find odd in a forum purporting to encourage philosophy and the advance of critical thinking. Theism is non-critical by definition, an opinion I could also extend to physics ( just to pretend I'm still on-topic). The analogy is valid, although both the theists and the physicists will furiously deny it, because criticism within both theism and physics is constrained within a specific paradigm which is placed beyond the reach of criticism. They both proceed from a foundational assumption which must first be accepted as canon law. The theists foundational assumption is immune to criticism because it is untestable by definition. We either accept it or we don't and its parameters are inaccessible to the tools of logic and reason which have informed the advance of human knowledge. Thus the humanist is affronted when these tools are misused to attempt this impossible feat. The physicist is granted the full use of these tools, which means his crime lies in leaving them in his toolbox, but I'll leave the details of that digression for another time.
I wish to speak on a personal note, although a similar world-view is shared by most scientists. I'm being besieged on all fronts by theists in other threads. I stand accused of regarding our universe as a mechanistic toy when in fact it is the opposite because it is an evolving complex entity. The way I see it is that a created universe is nothing more than a plaything of its purported creator which defines me as the slave of another, an existential position untenable for an examined and free mind. What then is our universe to me?
The universe is itself becoming and this offers humanity a far deeper meaning to its own existence than theism can offer because it defines us as simultaneously all of it and part of it. We are both observers and players in this evolutionary process because sentient beings are future-makers who determine the future of the universe. This is literally and physically true and this grants humanity both a purpose and a destiny, something which a received system of belief is unable to offer. Theism can offer this to an individual but humanism can offer this to life itself. So I have my own personal god all right, which I can define as my intimate physical relationship with everything that exists. I refuse to acknowledge the existence of the unknowable for exactly this reason because the universe that is itself becoming is the universe that evolves to know itself, in the truest Spinozan sense, and stripped of all mysticism and the supernatural. There is no "super" to nature, which means that no knowledge exists which is inaccessible to the human quest for it.
This is the way I see the world as a scientist which means the physicists have betrayed me. I can forgive the theists, for they know not what they do, but I will never forgive my own brethren for as long as they continue to insist that truths exist beyond the reach of the tools of logic and reason which we have evolved. My sense of awe and wonder at the complexity of our universe is amplified a hundredfold when I know that in essence it is an entity of exquisite simplicity which has evolved this complexity for itself. It is amplified a thousandfold when I know that our human destiny is to unravel this complexity and that we have the capacity to do it. Spoken in the name of science and humanism, which rarely pokes its head above the parapet to defend itself.
Regards Leo