The 'dream content' argument.
Have you ever had a dream? Describe to me that dream? Prove to me the contents of that dream? It's impossible. You can't prove to me what that dream was about, it was only in your head. But you KNOW that you had that dream, and it's content. I can call you a liar and a fraud, but you know, and have faith, that that dream was real. This is the same way I believe in God. If I know God exists, for the same reason you know your dream exists, can you say that my God and your dream both don't exist?
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I've seen this question posed in a number of ways on different websites over the years, but I've never seen a decent answer for it. For the record I'm an atheist (agnostic atheist) but I just happen to love trying to see both sides and I've personally not seen a good (in my opinion) answer for it. It hits a nerve with me because I dream regularly, and if I was asked to prove the content of a dream I couldn't. It's only a truth to me personally.
The best answer I can think of has to do with content, that a dream is a personal relaity but the dream doesn't mean anything to someone else, where as the concept of a God, by definition, is to be agreed upon by many. But in a strict theist sense, there's no reason why a god couldn't reveal themselves to people on a personal level, and provide no evidence.
Thoughts, challenges, answers?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Mark Aird on -
Dreams comprise transient nervous potentials which can be measured, and which our brain interprets as dream content. The electrical activity is real - the dream's content is not. It's akin to watching a movie at the cinema. The brain sees the light on the screen and interprets the image. The image isn't real - it's just light on a screen. When the light stops, the image, and our interpretation of it, goes away.
Claim of a god's existence, on the other hand, is not a claim that we interpret some natural phenomenon as god, but that the god exists objectively in it's own right, independently to us and irrespective of our interpretation of it.
I quietly suspect that anyone who seriously uses this argument to infer a god's existence is wholly resistant to logic. So as always, there is no point speaking with them (apart from the personal amusement which itself is all too fleeting and inevitably results in exasperation and the stunning realisation that some people have a higher body temperature than IQ).
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Permalink Reply by Walter Maki on -
This thread makes me think of some dialog in the movie "No Country for Old Men" (paraphrased)
"Is that story true about so and so?" (response) "It is true that it is a story"
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Permalink Reply by Akshay Bist on -
Thats pretty simple.
A dream is something you imagined in your sleep. You accept that what happened in your dream wasn't real, where as believing in god is something completely different.
Questions like these just go onto prove that theists who are hell bent on debunking atheism are so devoid of imagination & rational thought.
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Permalink Reply by Nelson on -
Heather: LOL! Let's just not try to apply that to any of your body fluids, please.
not that kind of party huh? :)
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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on -
Nah, just not that kind of party. I prefer to leave the ingestion of flesh and body fluids to child molesting cultists who simultaneously tout the merits of unsafe sex and celibacy.
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Permalink Reply by Natarajan Shanker on -
The main difference between knowing you had a dream and knowing "god", is that in the latter case you're lying, and in the former case you're not.
The other difference is that my dream is my own. I do not expect YOU to believe it, follow it, teach it to your children or eat up everyone's tax money in its name. In case of your god, you do all these things.
Rate this :)
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Permalink Reply by John G. on
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Stephen King made a whole bunch of followers (fans) from his dreams. If we just tweak Stephen King into a more Hubbard style, presto!
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