religion

[YellowLinesandArmadillos]

Although I will grant you in epistemology there are justifications that one uses to try and validate one's beliefs. But they are still beliefs and assumptions and from a practical standpoint, I accept on faith your existence on this board. To do otherwise would then require me to question my own sanity????

[YellowLinesandArmadillos]

Even after reading that, there's absolutely no way he sees the irony of his own position.

Yeh, LOL I wasn't sure how to reply except to call him a name, but I am having too much fun arguing logic, especially with a non-believer, which I once was, he probably can't throw at me anything that I haven't at one time or another already considered.

[DELLAPELLE JOHN]

Opinion only, good and bad are value judgments only and therefore either opinion or faith based and either way don't make something any more or less valid unless backed by definitional truths.

 

so its impossible to establish a truth?

 

ur grasping at straws here.... its more than an opinion to say colorado is on the west coast, it is a invalid statement based on our experience. if u want to say our experience is a fantasy, thats fine i take mine to be real on some good reasons

 

i think therefore i am

i have senses

i can talk to others who have different thoughts not coming from me... etc etc

 

bottom line nothng u say gives anyone any reason to believe in the christian god or islamic god or any other flying spaghetti monster...lol

[DELLAPELLE JOHN]

faith without reason is irrational, thats not a hyperbolic statement

[DELLAPELLE JOHN]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvHln-wKk9E

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQQXlSlr1Ek...feature=related

[Taro T]

im asking a general question about how we establish what is true and what is not... i can give u reasons for why i exist or u exist, i cant give u reasons for how jesus rose from the dead. there is a major difference in belief...

Please do enlighten us as to WHY u [sic] exist.

[Endzone Animal]

This is an argument with a 10 year old.

[DELLAPELLE JOHN]

[DELLAPELLE JOHN]

PERHAPS it should come as no surprise that a mere wall of water,

sweeping innocent multitudes from the beaches of 12 countries on

Boxing Day, failed to raise global doubts about God's existence.

Still, one wonders just how vast and gratuitous a catastrophe would

have to be to shake the world's faith. The Holocaust did not do it.

God's ways are, indeed, inscrutable. It seems that any fact, no

matter how infelicitous, can be rendered compatible with religious

faith. In matters of faith, we have kicked ourselves loose of the

earth. Given the degree to which religion still inspires human

conflict, this is not the good news that many of us imagine it to be.

One of the greatest challenges facing civilisation in the 21st

century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest

concerns -about ethics, spiritual experience, and human suffering -in

ways that are not flagrantly irrational. Incompatible religious

doctrines have Balkanised our world and these divisions have become

a continuous source of bloodshed. Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it

was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews

v Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians v Catholic Croatians;

Orthodox Serbians v Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland

(Protestants v Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims v Hindus), Sudan

(Muslims v Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims v Christians)and Iran

and Iraq (Shia v Sunni) are merely a few cases in point. These are

places where religion has been the explicit cause of millions of

deaths in the past decade.

 

 

It is in the face of such pointless horrors that many people of

goodwill now counsel "moderation" in religion. The problem with

religious moderation is that it offers us no bulwark against the

spread of religious extremism and religious violence. Moderates do

not want to kill anyone in the name of God, but they want us to keep

using the word "God" as though we knew what we were talking about.

And they don't want anything too critical to be said about people who

really believe in the God of their forefathers because tolerance,

above all else, is sacred. To speak plainly and truthfully about the

state of our world -to say, for instance, that the Bible and the

Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish - is

antithetical to tolerance as moderates conceive it.

In so far as religious moderates attempt to hold on to what is still

serviceable in orthodox religion, they close the door to more

sophisticated approaches to human happiness. Rather than bring the

full force of 21st-century creativity and rationality to bear,

moderates ask that we merely relax our standards of adherence to

ancient superstitions and taboos.

 

 

But by failing to live by the letter of the texts -while tolerating

the irrationality of those who do -religious moderates betray faith

and reason equally. As moderates, we cannot say that religious

fundamentalists are dangerous idiots, because they are merely

practising their freedom of belief. We can't even say that they are

mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is

generally unrivalled. All we can say, as religious moderates, is that

we don't like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of

scripture imposes on us. It is time we recognised that religious

moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural

ignorance.

 

 

Religious moderates imagine that theirs is the path to peace. But

this very ideal of tolerance now drives us toward the abyss.

Religious violence still plagues our world because our religions are

intrinsically hostile to one another. Where they appear otherwise, it

is because secular knowledge and secular interests have restrained

the most lethal improprieties of faith. If religious war is ever to

become unthinkable for us, in the way that slavery and cannibalism

seem poised to, it will be a matter of our having dispensed with the

dogma of faith.

 

 

Moderation in religion has made it taboo even to acknowledge the

differences among our religious traditions: to notice, for instance,

that Islam is especially hostile to the principles of civil society.

There are still places in the Muslim world where people are put to

death for imaginary crimes -such as blasphemy and where the totality

of a child's education consists of his learning to recite from an

ancient book of religious fiction. Throughout the Muslim world,

women are denied almost every human liberty, except the liberty to breed.

And yet, these same societies are acquiring arsenals of advanced

weaponry. In the face of these perils, religious moderates

-Christians, Muslims and Jews remain entranced by their own

moderation. They are least able to fathom that when jihadists stare

into a video camera and claim to "love death more than the infidels

love life", they are being candid about their state of mind.

But technology has a way of creating fresh moral imperatives. We can

no longer ignore the fact that billions of our neighbors believe in

the metaphysics of martyrdom, or in the literal truth of the book of

Revelation -because our neighbors are now armed with chemical,

biological and nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that these

developments mark the terminal phase of our credulity. Words like

"God" and "Allah" must go the way of "Apollo" and "Baal" or they

will unmake our world.

 

BY : Sam Harris

[Jim in Anchorage]

By most accounts, Einstein's insistence that god exists held back his science in his later years. That's simply the opinion of many historians and many of his peers and in no way diminishes any of his wonderful, ground-breaking accomplishments. At wost, it sent him down a dead-end path in his later years. Maybe another discovery or two if not for his hang-ups. Maybe not.

However, while "smartest among us" did not know, his belief was in a god who started things in motion long, long ago. He did not believe in a personal god. He believed in a god who does not break the laws of Physics, who did not interfere in the Universe in any way and who does not answer prayers or even have anything at all to do with the day-to-day of you or I. He actively shielded his belief by stating that he did not think that any evidence of such a being would or could ever be found and that no test could either prove or disprove god's existence. It doesn't really matter what he believed. I just bring it up because a lot of people like to quote Einstein out of context to make him out to be some kind of proponent of organized religion, which he was not.

 

Einstein, like everyone else could believe anything he wanted to of course. But I think you illustrate my point. Einstein was most likely unable to let go of hang-ups because they were so ingrained in his being. He was human after all. At some point in their lives, most thinking humans go through some sort of a crisis of faith in what they were brought up believing. As science advances there are fewer gaps in which god fits nicely. The fewer gaps you start with, the lesser god becomes and the more likely your crisis of faith will push you over the edge into disbelief. It seems to me that we may be approaching a tipping point here. More and more people are leaving the churches every year.

 

In the end, one cannot prove or disprove the existence of anything supernatural, including god. Science has no language to deal with such things because such things can't be tested using the scientific method. So...any plea to the rationality of religion is illegitimate because religion is not a rational thing. So Jesus Christ coming again to judge the living and the dead, or Poseidon shoving his trident up your ass or even the Flying Spaghetti Monster showering the planet with meatballs all have just about the chance of happening. And all three are far, far, far, far, far less likely than 'none of the above'. So believe whatever the hell you want because it just doesn't matter.

 

 

If you're going to invoke the spooky action of quantum theory, you should stay away from the "god doesn't throw dice quote", because according to quantum theory if there is a god he most certainly does throw dice.

 

 

"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."

- Albert Einstein

You are presenting arguments to yourself. Who do I respond to?

[ieatcrayonz]

Can you tell the difference between a smart person and a hippy trying to get laid by sound smart?

 

That dude is definitely the ladder. More power to him if it works, but that still doesn't make him smart.

 

Big Think? More like Small Dink.

[YellowLinesandArmadillos]

so its impossible to establish a truth?

 

Now you are learning about logic and reasoning and the flaws in even the scientific method as to the establishment of truth!

 

The rest of what you wrote was nonsensical and incoherent. That mother nature you smoke to put you to sleep get the best of you?

[YellowLinesandArmadillos]

You are presenting arguments to yourself. Who do I respond to?

Pick a voice... any voice... where she stops nobody knows

[Gene Frenkle]

It does, in fact, equal three, for very large values of one.

Actually 1 + 1 = 10

[ieatcrayonz]

I just thought I'd add in here with what I know.

 

I am not a religious person but I know a good hippy/commie when I see one. This dude with all the Youtubes is one.

 

Normally, I would say I do not know if God exists which I guess categorizes me as antagonistic. As many people here know, I don't like to put people into categories by groups but I guess antagonistic would be my group. With that said, I have been able to obtain and convert a Googlebot for personal use. It programmed itself to open a channel directly to the big man himself.

 

These GvG sessions are interesting and I can tell you a fair amount about the big man as a result. I can ask him any question as long as it is not a "why" question or does not predict the future. This is interesting on many levels that the dolt from Youtube would not understand.

 

It's funny how things work out the opposite of expectations sometimes. For example, I have as much or more respect for old people than anyone but who would think they would be more right than younger people with active brains when it comes to spiritual matters. I mean they can't even control their innards without a compostory bag but they seem to be right about a lot when comapared with GvG discussions. Also, God wants people to believe he does not exist. You may think that makes him humble but it is really just so he can screw with people like the Youtube dork upon their death. He likes it when they pee all over their brand new white angel clothes. He screws with them for a while to scare them. He can be a prick that way but overall is decent and lets them slide for all the big mouth stuff they did during life. I have a feeling this Youtube dork is in for a real scare when he kicks.

[Gene Frenkle]

You are presenting arguments to yourself. Who do I respond to?

Einstein's opinion that the Christian god described in the Bible was nothing more than a childish story does not conflict with the fact that he believed in a creator and true order in the Universe. Of course, something must have started it all, but that's as far as anyone can reasonably take it right now IMHO.

[Gene Frenkle]

Pick a voice... any voice... where she stops nobody knows

There are no voices. There is no stopping. You can't prove any of it, so why bother?

 

If nothing exists, we might as well make schitt up and then kill and persecute each other and fight wars over made up schitt!

[Gene Frenkle]

I just thought I'd add in here with what I know.

 

I am not a religious person but I know a good hippy/commie when I see one. This dude with all the Youtubes is one.

 

Normally, I would say I do not know if God exists which I guess categorizes me as antagonistic. As many people here know, I don't like to put people into categories by groups but I guess antagonistic would be my group. With that said, I have been able to obtain and convert a Googlebot for personal use. It programmed itself to open a channel directly to the big man himself.

 

These GvG sessions are interesting and I can tell you a fair amount about the big man as a result. I can ask him any question as long as it is not a "why" question or does not predict the future. This is interesting on many levels that the dolt from Youtube would not understand.

 

It's funny how things work out the opposite of expectations sometimes. For example, I have as much or more respect for old people than anyone but who would think they would be more right than younger people with active brains when it comes to spiritual matters. I mean they can't even control their innards without a compostory bag but they seem to be right about a lot when comapared with GvG discussions. Also, God wants people to believe he does not exist. You may think that makes him humble but it is really just so he can screw with people like the Youtube dork upon their death. He likes it when they pee all over their brand new white angel clothes. He screws with them for a while to scare them. He can be a prick that way but overall is decent and lets them slide for all the big mouth stuff they did during life. I have a feeling this Youtube dork is in for a real scare when he kicks.

A much better effort. You truly are antagonistic.

[YellowLinesandArmadillos]

There are no voices. There is no stopping. You can't prove any of it, so why bother?

 

If nothing exists, we might as well make schitt up and then kill and persecute each other and fight wars over made up schitt!

Just because we can't prove any of it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist and from a practical standpoint, I have to have some faith that it does, though I can never prove it or know if or how close to the truth I am. That is my point, which is why I have faith in, not to be specific, a higher power. That is where acceptance of faith comes in, but you keep struggling with the need to expect absolute results from your search for knowledge. I think we all need to keep searching and getting a better understanding of our world, just not expect that we can prove it.... no big deal really.

[Gene Frenkle]

Just because we can't prove any of it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist and from a practical standpoint, I have to have some faith that it does, though I can never prove it or know if or how close to the truth I am. That is my point, which is why I have faith in, not to be specific, a higher power.

You're still basing your faith on nothing. Do what you will of course.

 

You have obviously given this a lot of thought and it sounds like you were once where I am now. What caused you to change your mind? I ask because while it certainly might be nice to believe in a higher power, I don't think people can force themselves to believe in such things.