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1. 

   Kodie
   Member

   I've always liked privacy. I know a lot of you are former theists, this question is also for current theists if they feel like answering. Sometimes, out in public, even, I feel nervous if I'm being watched. Not paranoia that I'm being watched, but kind of like if you are working alone, you feel one way, but when someone is watching you do it, you could feel different, like they will be critical, or fine driving until a cop is right behind you, then you are tense and feel likely to make a small mistake. Guilty? Low confidence? I guess I'd say I think I'm pretty good but might feel like someone else wouldn't think so that actually changes how I feel when they are looking. Maybe the tension subsides in performance situations, like working in an open office and everyone can see you all the time that you can forget that you can be watched and may be assessed.

   So how often does the awareness of god watching you all the time get in your head and change how you feel about what you are doing? I guess I'm not talking about things you were taught you shouldn't do that might heighten your awareness, but things you'd normally do? Things you'd feel shy about doing in front of another person.

   EDIT: Add to this matter, the popularity of belief your dead relatives are looking down on you from heaven. So, either/or.

   Posted 2 years ago #
2. 

   UrsaMinor
   Member

   If I thought my dead relatives were looking down on me, I'd never be comfortable having sex again. Especially not in front of my Aunt Helen.

   Posted 2 years ago #
3. 

   Mark the Pilgrim
   Member

   If my father has been watching me have sex, then I'm going to get an exorcist.

   Posted 2 years ago #
4. 

   fredjs
   Member

   My guess is those 'being watched' feelings are psychologically explainable, be it from that oh-so-common, slight bit of paranoia we all tend to experience from time to time to a full-blown disorder. Could it just be a lack of confidence? I don't see why not.

   When it comes to the myth of God's all-seeing eye, it's a strange thing to me. Would someone need to have a certain amount of insecurity as an individual to have a need for being constantly watched or to believe in God in the first place? It's possible. The other side of the coin is requiring to hold a perpetual level of terrifying fear for this God (who you must also love) because He's watching you and judges every single thing you do. When I was a believer I didn't question the idea of being watched. It was unsettling at times but I figured there was nothing I could do about it so I'd might as well live my life.

   Now here's the conundrum. If you believe in God and you believe He's watching every single thing you do and you're worried about doing the wrong thing and ending up in Hell, then doesn't this require one to ask themselves the following?

   1. If God has a plan for you then every thing you do is because it's part of His plan. Even if you commit murder you're still acting in keeping with said plan so nothing you really do is completely your choice anyway. So why be afraid? The truly sadistic thing about this is if God's plan is for you to murder and end up on death row then that's not much of an existence for you, is it? Especially if that crime would put you in Hell, which you didn't deserve because it wasn't your choice, it was God's. You were just the puppet. Ugh, this is giving me a headache. Next question...

   2. If you live your life wanting to do good things and aim to do so out of fear of Hell or whatever other wrath God may throw your way, then is not that intention to be good insincere? Is being good and treating others well because God said so or to ensure your place in the unheated section of the afterlife a truly moral way to live your life?

   Had I asked myself these questions when I was a theist, I'd probably have shrugged it off and told myself to trust God about these matters. (Thinking for one's self isn't something God seems to approve of.) Today I fail to see how an argument for eternal observation by any god would be in any way comforting.

   Posted 2 years ago #
5. 

   Daniel Florien
   Administrator

   I remember apologizing to a dead relative after masturbating once as a child. I thought they were watching me. Kinda embarrassing. But I didn't believe it enough to stop me!

   Posted 2 years ago #
6. 

   fredjs
   Member

   Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten. Didn't you know that?

   Posted 2 years ago #
7. 

   Nox
   Member

   Actually I find the idea of dead relatives smiling down on us more disturbing than the idea of an omniscient god. I mean if god sees everything he's seen some crazy sh*t by now. Probably not much phases him. But why is your dead grandmother watching you masturbate anyway? Doesn't she have anything better to do with eternity?

   Posted 2 years ago #
8. 

   UrsaMinor
   Member

   I'm sure that there are probably a lot of people who would disagree with me, but for me there are few things as boring as sitting around watching somebody else masturbate, from the vantage point of heaven or anyplace else. I'm more of hands-on kind of guy.

   Surely the dead have better things to do. Like decomposing and returning all those temporarily borrowed elements to the soil.

   Posted 2 years ago #
9. 

   Eudaimonist
   Member

   If we are talking about dead relatives or people watching, the idea is certainly fairly creepy. But when I was a Christian, the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent God watching over me was certainly a good thing.

   Posted 2 years ago #
10. 

    Kodie
    Member

    I wonder if the root of my question is more in my upbringing and personal experience that doesn't translate?

    My mother was very authoritarian and perfectionist. I felt like I could not do anything right, and if I was doing anything wrong, I always seemed to get caught. I wasn't scared of god, but I had terrible nightmares of policemen and going to jail for such petty non-crimes as merely looking through the locked gate to a park. I process this still two ways - one, I easily get self-conscious, two, I don't embarrass as easily as most people. I don't know how I manage both.

    All I really wanted to know is do Christians ever get the sudden realization that god is watching them on the toilet, and how does that help?

    Posted 2 years ago #
11. 

    Elemenope
    Moderator

    If we are talking about dead relatives or people watching, the idea is certainly fairly creepy. But when I was a Christian, the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent God watching over me was certainly a good thing.

    This reminds me of when I took Ancient Philosophy in undergrad, and we had just arrived at the Ring of Gyges. The professor asks the class who thinks their behavior wouldn't change if they could turn invisible at will, and one student strenuously insisted that it wouldn't, because God would always be watching and judging. The professor than asked the student to imagine that the ring also hid him from the eye of God.

    Talk about "does not compute".

    The student then strenuously argued that such a device would be impossible. So the professor (frustrated by this point) argued that perhaps the ring was created by God and that God agreed to himself that though he could look under the ring and see the occupant he would choose not to willingly. But then the student got crafty and pointed out that if there were causes that went hidden from God, even by his own will, that this would cause other events not so shielded from being accounted for by God (i.e. if a person took the ring and became invisible, and then stole a bunch of money from a bank, not only would God not know that the guy stole the money, but he would not be able to account properly for many other facts about the money [e.g. where did it go, and how, and why?]). Such an effect would quickly bleed into the universe such that many events would become quickly incomprehensible to God, as causation chains connected these unknowns to all factual matters that proceed from them.

    Which raises an interesting question: does omniscience create obligatory knowing? If you have the ability to know everything, but choose not to know something, can omniscience be preserved?

    Posted 2 years ago #
12. 

    JonJon
    Member

    Oy, that gets hairy fast...

    How did this student feel about predestination? (I feel some Calvinist vibes.)

    Leibniz would say that to abjure omniscience is impossible (I think.) Trying to think of other thinkers who might have tackled this, and the only thing I can come up with besides the Big L is Spinoza, who is almost as weird...

    To not know X, but to know the entirety of not-X does seem logically problematic, and I can't see how you could get around it by claiming that an omniscient being can merely focus his attention on not-X, and ignore X. Even if that were possible, it wouldn't really be lack of knowledge.

    This is problematic, because I've been using the exact construction this (presumably theist) student demolished to think about the problem of free will...

    Posted 2 years ago #
13. 

    UrsaMinor
    Member

    Which raises an interesting question: does omniscience create obligatory knowing? If you have the ability to know everything, but choose not to know something, can omniscience be preserved?

    Wait...isn't this a definition problem, at least in part?

    Omniscience = omni (all) + science (knowledge)

    I have always understood omniscience to be the state or quality of knowing everything, not merely capable of knowing everything.

    Posted 2 years ago #
14. 

    Eudaimonist
    Member

    "Which raises an interesting question: does omniscience create obligatory knowing? If you have the ability to know everything, but choose not to know something, can omniscience be preserved?"

    I think it could be preserved, but the distinction between the capacity to know and actual knowing might not be as distinct as it seems.

    I've heard this argument from theists before with reference to agency - that God chooses to not know the future in order to preserve free will. However, if it is true that God has the capacity to know event X but does not acknowledge it, then event X must still be set in order for God to have the capacity to know it. If event X is still set, then free will still doesn't exist.

    Posted 2 years ago #
15. 

    Eudaimonist
    Member

    "I have always understood omniscience to be the state or quality of knowing everything, not merely capable of knowing everything."

    Generally, there has been a distinction between inherent omniscience (the capacity to know everything) and total omniscence (actual knowledge of everything). Whether that distinction is merely mincing words is another debate entirely.

    Posted 2 years ago #
16. 

    Elemenope
    Moderator

    I've always preferred a pseudo-Molinist approach to the problem; God does not know everything, but rather his omniscience is restricted to the total number of possibilities and the probability of each possibility becoming actual. This sort of conception has the advantages of knowledge paradoxes not being able to knock the whole thing over for a house of cards, preserves enough theological room for (certain sorts of) actual free will, and explains why the Bible is so cagey about dates and timetables when it comes to prophecy. :)

    Posted 2 years ago #
17. 

    Eudaimonist
    Member

    But then all those warm, feel good messages about God having a plan for your life need to be translated to "God has a set of probabilities for your life". ;)

    Posted 2 years ago #
18. 

    Elemenope
    Moderator

    But then you could do tee-shirts, pickup lines, and faux-philosophical koans:

    "God has calculated there is 68.7% chance you will be a douche today. Prove him wrong!"
    "God flipped a coin when he made you, and clearly it came up heads!"
    "God helps those who play the odds."

    That last one reminds me, I've been playing Fallout:New Vegas (which, BTW, is awesome awesome awesome), and the new mechanic for increasing your stats is brain and body implants (instead of those damn bobbleheads in Fallout 3). You *can* get an implant that improves your luck, but the in-game justification for this enhancement is that it is actually a dedicated wetware Bayesian processor, good for helping the character subconsciously calculate probabilities and such.

    Kinda clever.

    Posted 2 years ago #
19. 

    JonJon
    Member

    "a dedicated wetware Bayesian processor"

    I want that so bad...

    Posted 2 years ago #
20. 

    Elemenope
    Moderator

    You're not the only one. Maybe thirty years, tops?

    Posted 2 years ago #
21. 

    LRA
    Member

    Meh, I always figured that if God knew everything, then he also knew when to give me some privacy.

    I also imagined magic barriers around the bathroom so that my relatives would not have to put up with watching me potty.

    In other words, I always thought there were some kind of supernatural measures in place to respect my privacy (back when those things mattered to me).

    Posted 2 years ago #
22. 

    Revyloution
    Member

    Ok Daniel, I keep coming back to your brief story. It kinda answers on of my life long questions: how do theists do things they consider immoral, while at the same time believing in an omnipresent god?

    I grew up in a secular home, so this is a really bizarre concept. I like to think of it in terms of 'if my mother was watching'. Ive done plenty of things in my life that I would have never done if my mother was watching. My conception of god is that he is quite a bit more judgmental than my mother (who's really a wonderful woman). I just can't figure out how someone could cheat on their wife/husband, steal anything, masturbate or even drive over the speed limit while simultaneously believing that they are constantly being watched.

    Id also love to hear JonJon's answer to that question.

    Posted 2 years ago #
23. 

    LRA
    Member

    Much like reality tv, they forget that the camera is rolling...

    Posted 2 years ago #
24. 

    Kodie
    Member

    I wonder too the same as Revy - I think later on when talking to some Christian, I'd asked her why Christians are not good, better than everyone else. They are always going on if there was no god (i.e., their version of atheism), they'd freely go out murdering and raping. It's so difficult for me to understand they think the only reason they don't want to is because there is a god. However, these same people will shoplift, take the last soda, and tell you to go fuck yourself, much less run a red light, leave their dog's business on the sidewalk, or not offer their seat to an elderly woman on the bus. No, I do not understand why they aren't better than us or even try. She said they were only human, sinners, capable of being ordinary flawed people.

    Really, the only explanation for that is they are godless human beings in the same society living under the same moral agreement the rest of us are. They think they are good enough but would go on 10 murder sprees before lunch tomorrow if there was no god.

    LRA - thanks for explaining about the privacy barrier. What you said about the cameras rolling reminded me of this one time I was in a dept. store changing room, and it was pretty quiet and all of a sudden from another booth, a woman started praying out loud, who must have thought she was alone. "Lord? Hear my prayer..." I was kind of frozen for a second trying not to make any noise and embarrass the woman, I guess I made some clatter or cleared my throat because she stopped.

    Posted 2 years ago #
25. 

    Eudaimonist
    Member

    I find it hard to believe that all of you have never done something wrong when someone else was watching.

    Posted 2 years ago #
26. 

    Elemenope
    Moderator

    I find it hard to believe that all of you have never done something wrong when someone else was watching.

    Generally that person did not have the ability to punish us. God'll burn your ass forever. A little different, I think. Generally the person looking on would be one or more of the following:

    1. powerless
    2. complicit
    3. the victim of the illicit act
    4. indifferent to its moral dimension

    Posted 2 years ago #
27. 

    Eudaimonist
    Member

    "Generally that person did not have the ability to punish us. God'll burn your ass forever."

    He'll also forgive anything as long as you say you're sorry! People are capable of holding grudges, ruining your name publicly, seeking revenge, etc.

    Posted 2 years ago #
28. 

    Elemenope
    Moderator

    Hence one of the other four criteria generally hold. If the person is complicit or indifferent, there is no grudge. And if they are powerless, they are generally incapable of retaliating. If they are the victim, that's generally the point of the act in the first place, and so their possible retaliation, etc., is already factored into the cost of the bad act.

    Posted 2 years ago #
29. 

    Eudaimonist
    Member

    My point was is that God's punishment really isn't that terrifying for believers, because you don't burn in Hell forever for getting drunk and sleeping with your best friend's girlfriend. The consequences in the here and now would be far more terrifying.

    Posted 2 years ago #
30. 

    Kodie
    Member

    No, I don't think most people are that calculating. What they tend to be is socialized. When I say I don't embarrass easily, I have just gotten more used to embarrassing myself regularly. This is an alien planet, and people are very peculiar in what they over-mind and under-mind, because I do watch and yet not learn. On the other hand, I get self-conscious a lot. I got in a fight with my friend this morning over some small mistake I made over 2 years ago. He's not holding a grudge, he's being a total dick. He says, ok, if we were together, you can't do that, you have to stop doing that. I never do that. I did it once. (What I'd done - Instead of walking swiftly out of a store, I stopped for a second and got in someone's way without looking around me). This is the kind of worldview I get, all my tiniest mistakes are glaringly offensive to someone.

    I think most people are afforded a lot more leeway than I am, and am penalized when I stop caring about everyone else for 2 seconds. How come? God-given right to be an ordinary dick about town? How many times in my life have I said "Excuse me," out loud and not in a withering deferential way, and people don't move. 3-4 times EACH. That's because in 2 years, nobody's going to harass them about their "habitual" obliviousness to the world around them, because they already know and don't care, no consequences.

    Posted 2 years ago #

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