The joy of religion - part xxxxxxxxx

[GagHalfrunt]

Some things one just know instinctively to be true.

People who believe in invisible men in the sky are idiots.


YES!!! It works!!! We all instinctively know that to be true.

 

[Moonbeam]

Ah. The old truthiness.

Truthiness is when the obviousness of instinct is overwritten by the need for emotional security. Truth is what is when ones armor is not. It adheres to ones being, it is ones being. Perhaps the knowledge derived from different qualities of consciousness, different conscious states, invisible to an outside observer, can be revealed by brain scans, I do not know, but shout of that I don't see any way to convey a difference to somebody who does not have the internal states to cause resonance.

 

[Moonbeam]

People who believe in invisible men in the sky are idiots.


YES!!! It works!!! We all instinctively know that to be true.

Like the idiots who walk around on stealth bomber ranges.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Like the idiots who walk around on stealth bomber ranges.

Not like that at all. The people who walk around on a stealth bomber range are likely to get free of the range if they simply keep walking. People who believe in invisible men in the sky are likely to be idiots forever.

 

[bshole]

Not like that at all. The people who walk around on a stealth bomber range are likely to get free of the range if they simply keep walking. People who believe in invisible men in the sky are likely to be idiots forever.

Believing in invisible men in the sky has an awful lot to do with emotional need. There are plenty of highly intelligent people who believe in invisible men in the sky. For many many people, happiness is impossible without an invisible man in the sky. The God concept isn't idiocy, it is millions of years of evolution in action, nothing more and nothing less.

 

[shira]

You must be very special to imagine you can be moral without the absolute truth of God to guide you.

You seek to taste a wine from a glass you have not lifted, a glass for which you believe you have no need.

No I don't. I don't want to drink "your wine." I don't seek inner peace or a sense of certainty. Just the opposite. A lifetime of experience with self-certain "enlightened" people has led me to accept that confusion and a lack of certainty are just fine.

Your perspective is fixed by unexamined assumptions you do not see. The insight that reveals that fact is revolutionary.

"Unexamined assumptions?" Could you possibly be any LESS specific?

This generalized "unexamined assumption" BS is just that, BS. Just think of the fun we can have with that ingenious concept:

"Moonie, you feel inner peace and a sense of certainty in your present state. But you have unexamined assumptions; if only you were aware of them, your inner peace and certainty would crumble. What, you aren't aware of any unexamined assumptions? Of course you aren't; that's why they're "unexamined."

Please note that I'm not disputing that almost everyone has "unexamined assumptions." But if you believe that an "unexamined assumption" is getting in the way for someone, you might want to offer some concrete examples. Otherwise, you're just inventing a lazy excuse to discount what someone is telling you.

While the world waited eagerly into the night to receive the data as to whether the sun would bend starlight, Einstein went to bed. He knew he was right because, well, I'm sure he thought he was especially special.

You're conflating objectively verifiable ideas associated with scientific theories with the purely subjective, unverifiable state of the human mind. You might also be interested in Einstein's "certainty" regarding the probabilistic behavior of particles, or his certainty that the universe was NOT expanding (he was so sure this was true that he introduced "lambda" [= "the cosmological constant"] into his general-relativistic equations to counteract the expansion otherwise predicted by his equations). And he was doubly-wrong in his certainty about his relativistic equations. Because after removing lambda (when it was proven to him that the universe was indeed expanding) and being "certain" that his original equations were correct all along, he was in fact still wrong (because of what we now know as dark energy).

So claiming that Einstein's "instinctive certainty" was somehow correlated with truth is total nonsense. And if it WAS nonsense for one of the most brilliant minds in the history of mankind, it can't possibly be nonsense for you, can it?

If you tell an egotist about an experience of loss of ego he is going to tell you you're bragging.

Stop with the self-serving distortions. If YOU, Moonie, tell someone "I've won and can't fall, but you can," and YOU, Moonie, say it over and over and over again, THAT's "bragging."

But please continue pretending that if someone, completely in the context of a non-confrontational discussion about spirituality, says - once - "I'm learning more and more how to let go of my ego, and it feels really good," that I would jump all over that and claim they're bragging. Yeah, that's exactly what's been going on here.

I am a nobody. I have all the flaws. I am ignorant and my words may be poor. I may make my case worse than better for you. I can say however, that I believe that what happened to me, if it happened to you, you would be glad it did. It would not shake that opinion, I think also, if some called you drug addled or schizophrenic. The lover does not doubt the Beloved because the lover disappeared. When there is only love, should that state come into being, there is only love, only lone only love only love only love only love only love.

I know you're a nobody, just like me. I feel great compassion for you, because I know your intentions are the best. I recognize that your intentions are consistently better than mine are. In fact, I wish I were more like you in some ways, and that more people had your instincts.

But my respect for you won't prevent me from arguing with you every step of the way from time to time.

 

[Moonbeam]

shira: But my respect for you won't prevent me from arguing with you every step of the way from time to time.

M: I am going to try to start fresh then to see if I can't be clearer.

I believe, for example, that God is an invention, an encapsulation of ideas that express in a conscious state experience. The idea of God, then, does not have its origin in the fear of death or the need to feel oneself to be immortal, it is an expression of a state of mind in which those feelings are experienced. A state of oneness stops time. In a state of oneness the self and the universe are indistinguishable.

Such a state, if such a state exists, would require the collapse of duality. Duality arises out of our linguistic ability to name things, to divide one thing from another with words. It was in this way we invented good and evil and created the capacity to suffer, to name each other as good or evil and to punish or reward with pain and pleasure, to establish hierarchical and authoritarian control. In this way the door out, represented by unification with God by the collapsing of duality via loving him to the point of self extinction became a method of control through the methodology of fear and reward.

My point is that I believe that God is a creation born of the fact that the mind can experience a unified state. God exists because a God conscious state, any other name for it will have the same linguistically useless effect, is real and possible. God has to exist because he does exist, so to speak.

It is the same with certainty. Those who experience unity know that they are experiencing such a state and that it such a state exists. The state of certainty existed before the treachery of authoritarian certainty.

The same is true of unconscious assumptions. Somebody because aware of his or her unconscious assumptions and described them as such before others could say anybody can do that.

I will try to describe the unconscious assumptions that befuddled me. I lost my faith in God and my sense that justice exists collapsed. There is no reward for being good, no punishment for being evil. The saint and the mass murder wind up in the same grave. The universe is empty of love justice or meaning. That realization was more than I could take. I got a break when I learned about Zen, that there were others who saw the universe as I did but without suffering. I could not believe such a thing possible. That was the unconscious assumption I made. There has to be a God if there is going to be any meaning. What happened to me one night when the wind hit the house in which I was deeply involved in thought about why I suffered, was that the shock of the wind hitting the house shifted my state from thought to being. One moment I was far far into my self, my existential question, and the next conscious only of the wind. That caused all the pieces to fall into place. The experience of being was completely different than the state of thinking. Everything that I had longed for, the love of God, the sense of justice, the reward for goodness was suddenly there inside of me. God is the soul of my being and it is in me that His love has its origin. All the misery in the universe is caused by folk who do not know they and God are one and the same thing.

We do not look to the self for the kingdom of heaven because we have been taught that that self is worthless. I learned that fact later from somebody else who helped me feel what I feel, an unbelievable and totally hidden self loathing. I am pretty damn certain I have not gotten to the bottom of that one.

We see just the same sort of thing in bigots, in my opinion, a belief that good and evil exist and that somebody, say of a certain race, is evil because of their color. This is a condition imposed on them by their life experience and remains unexamined because they are certain there is a good which they also just happen to be defending. But the good is the flow of love from the self and not the hatred of evil. That good is real but the unconscious and unexamined assumption they make is that they know what is evil, they believe in something that does not exist. Their belief is propped up by the need they feel not to be an evil that does not exist. That is a mental trap from which they must die to their certainty to escape. If they do so they will be certain they did escape because bigotry IS a prison.

 

[Omar F1]

Yup. It's by looking at the past and going "Well, that's a bit fucked." that we further our morality.

What you're positing, is that the more dated a crime is, the less of a crime it is. Which is complete nonsense.

A rape committed 2,000 years ago doesn't stop it from being a rape.

No arguing that murder is a murder or rape is the worst crime could ever be done to a human being - no matter done in which age or civilization level. However, some communities are more barbarism than others, in which things might be tolerated more within the group itself, compared to other communities. It's obvious and must be taken into consideration.

You know, it's like advocating to invade other nations and try to change their ideology by force, because simply they're wrong. Operation Iraqi Freedom, for example.

Or one thing you don't know, that I've thought and wished actually of commanding an army to invade whole Africa and carry them over into the 21st Century.
Leave all bloodshed aside, you don't think that's gonna work, do you.

Hell, you've already seen fanatic muslims trying to impose theirstandards over other groups while living well and safe among their societies. Of course, you have touched how silly that ideology is.
Even for myself, coming from conservative society, I remember walking European street for the first time and seeing someone kissing his wife/friend, it was like what the heck. But it's something totally fine and acceptable in most of the world, nothing of my concern and I became totally fine with it afterward.

That was my point about not holding everybody to our own exact standards. It's both a fact and reality.

Free wiil? No, not according to the Bible. We've been over this. Around ten pages back or so.

We're both free and restricted, it's in my firm believe. I've also mentioned it around in page 55.

Also, I'm willing to believe that free-will is variable among humans. Clear example is those infants born at war time in which they'd be hit the same day and buried in the next. They never had the chance to live at all - born against their will and died against it.

Blaming all evil solely on Yahweh is nonsense?

Isaiah 45:7 - "I form the light, and create darkness. I create good, and I create evil. I, The Lord, do all these things."

And such verse also existed in Quran as well.
He clearly stated that he is the sole creator of everything, so good and evil is included as well. The main controversial question still, are we sure that he did order us to commit awful acts (beside enslavement in religious wars) and him being happy about it. Logic that comes from the same creator tells otherwise, at least.

There is also the answer, however, for those who claim that if God created them infidels why would they be held accountable for it. (answer in short; dozens of prophets were sent and yet met with denial)

Here is an Arabic article to clarify Islamic POV on that subject, I whish I could find exact translate in English, as they usually use much weaker language than their Arabic peers.
http://islamqa.info/ar/49039

Slaves are property; they can be beaten to death, so long as they don't die in under 48 hours. They are to be done with as you please; rape, torture, doesn't matter; they're objects, your property.

They have few rights btw. Looking back at early Islamic period I don't see such dark portray, IMHO.

But that's the whole basis for religion; bringing absolutes and commandments to live by. You'll have to take it up with religion, if you have a problem with what the religions command.

Well, life has taught me well that we should weigh in people before judge them out.
How we do weight God. Haven't you looked into all the grace and prosperity he have given us? never thought of it for once in your life, I take it.
You know, it's like I was born human and I deserve each and every feature within my body, beat it.
Come on, and I will repeat it again and keep repeating it, just look at our own bodies and the balance struck in such creation, compared to every other living being.

How could you possibly black-paint him because of only a handful orders in his books, which we deem extremely harsh, while ignoring all the justice/equality ones.


Life isn't about on/off switch, that is not how did he create life nor his religions. That is also a simple fact which we face in our normal daily life, almost each and every day.

 

[MongGrel]

If just seeing someone kiss their wife in public is a problem, you really have one to begin with IMHO.

Just my two cents, even though you said you were beyond that.

Just sounds backwards in general, if people do not like even seeing that why move to that area, some are even more lax.

Just for benefits of what someone does not enjoy in restricted areas ?

If so stay there.

 

[MongGrel]

To be honest, Sharia Law areas just sound like pent up sexual frustration to me.

 

[Omar F1]

If just seeing someone kiss their wife in public is a problem, you really have one to begin with IMHO.

Just my two cents, even though you said you were beyond that.

Just sounds backwards in general, if people do not like even seeing that why move to that area, some are even more lax.

Just for benefits of what someone does not enjoy in restricted areas ?

If so stay there.

Tolerance and understanding of others' ways - are needed for different communities to coexist in peace.

While some standards are non-negotiable, others can be easily lowered down when you have to. And that works both ways, btw.

Prohibiting kissing publicly isn't backward at all, in other group's book - exactly as eating frogs isn't a disgusting habit for another. We've our differences, that was intended from the start.


Anyway, sad days where hatred and tensions are so high. Problem though, it would only get worse.

 

[MongGrel]

If you do not like seeing seeing someone kiss their wife in public stay out of the US I guess.

I've went on cruises where they stopped at islands with public nude beaches, I didn't go to the beach and whine about it later.

You should avoid Martinique at all costs I imagine.

 

[Omar F1]

You didn't get my point at all, in the first place. Ignore the core of the message and instead focus on the example itself.

Neither you do have to accept all the others' standards nor impose all of yours upon them. It's kind of diplomacy, like in politics.

If you do not like seeing seeing someone kiss their wife in public stay out of the US I guess.

You should tell that to every muslim immigrant out there, especially those whom born in there and going wild afterward.

 

[MongGrel]

You didn't get my point at all, in the first place. Ignore the core of the message and instead focus on the example itself.

Neither you do have to accept all the others' standards nor impose all of yours upon them. It's kind of diplomacy, like in politics.


You should tell that to every muslim immigrant out there, especially those whom born in there and going wild afterward.

Have a nice day.

 

[MajinCry]

No arguing that murder is a murder or rape is the worst crime could ever be done to a human being - no matter done in which age or civilization level. However, some communities are more barbarism than others, in which things might be tolerated more within the group itself, compared to other communities. It's obvious and must be taken into consideration.

Obvious and must be taken into consideration? Not at all. If a community commits rape and enacts sex slavery, that community is to be punished. I'd prefer with death penalties for the rapists and slavers, but I'd settle for life imprisonment.

You think morals are subjective. They are not.

Quantize the harm. The more unnecessary harm done by an act, especially if it's for the sheer pleasure, the more immoral it is. Social circles, societies, communities, counties, the year, the era, the location? Doesn't matter one bit.

Morality is not dependent on what everybody else is doing. Rape is rape, and rape is bad. Rape 1,600 years ago, committed by Mohamed (e.g) is bad. Rape 20 years ago or so, committed by Junko Furuta's hundred odd rapists and torturers, is bad. Rape committed by Jimmy Saville, fifty years ago or so, is bad.

You know, it's like advocating to invade other nations and try to change their ideology by force, because simply they're wrong. Operation Iraqi Freedom, for example.

What? If people are immoral, efforts are to be made to bring justice unto them, for the sake of the victims.

Or one thing you don't know, that I've thought and wished actually of commanding an army to invade whole Africa and carry them over into the 21st Century.

Wouldn't work; religion cannot be stamped out by the sword, and it is religion that regresses societies and cultures. Take a look at any country that takes their religion seriously; Saudi Arabia, for example.

Leave all bloodshed aside, you don't think that's gonna work, do you.

Hell, you've already seen fanatic muslims trying to impose theirstandards over other groups while living well and safe among their societies. Of course, you have touched how silly that ideology is.
Even for myself, coming from conservative society, I remember walking European street for the first time and seeing someone kissing his wife/friend, it was like what the heck. But it's something totally fine and acceptable in most of the world, nothing of my concern and I became totally fine with it afterward.

Unless it's an act committed during an assault/rape/whatever, kissing causes no harm. Quite the opposite; it feels pretty nice. Or so I'm told. *Sniffle*

That was my point about not holding everybody to our own exact standards. It's both a fact and reality.

Nope. You presented a straw man. Kissing causes no harm, generally; it's not an immoral act. Those who take issue with kissing have no moral superiority, and should be ashamed for wishing to forbid the display of affection.

We're both free and restricted, it's in my firm believe. I've also mentioned it around in page 55.

Also, I'm willing to believe that free-will is variable among humans. Clear example is those infants born at war time in which they'd be hit the same day and buried in the next. They never had the chance to live at all - born against their will and died against it.

That's not an issue of free will; there isn't any will present. That's an issue of circumstance.

And such verse also existed in Quran as well.
He clearly stated that he is the sole creator of everything, so good and evil is included as well. The main controversial question still, are we sure that he did order us to commit awful acts (beside enslavement in religious wars) and him being happy about it. Logic that comes from the same creator tells otherwise, at least.

Yahweh did command evil acts. His favorite prophet, according to the Islamic religion, was a raping, child molesting, rampaging warlord with a penchant for slavery. And that's the same prophet that people say "Peace be upon him" for.

There is also the answer, however, for those who claim that if God created them infidels why would they be held accountable for it. (answer in short; dozens of prophets were sent and yet met with denial)

Here is an Arabic article to clarify Islamic POV on that subject, I whish I could find exact translate in English, as they usually use much weaker language than their Arabic peers.
http://islamqa.info/ar/49039

I don't speak Arabic. That article is useless.

Nothing goes against Yahweh's will. Ergo, when someone is raped, Yahweh made it so. When an infant died, Yahweh made it so. When Hitler killed the Jews, Yahweh made it so.

They have few rights btw. Looking back at early Islamic period I don't see such dark portray, IMHO.

Yeah, they have the right to either leave their family behind and get freedom for themselves if they're male, have slaved away for seven years and don't care about the slave owner keeping the slave's family.

Pfft. Please.

Well, life has taught me well that we should weigh in people before judge them out.
How we do weight God. Haven't you looked into all the grace and prosperity he have given us? never thought of it for once in your life, I take it.

All the grace and prosperity he has given us? The fuck? It's through the efforts of men, and men alone, that society (at least in the west) has transcended iron age barbarism. Guess what the Abrahamic texts preach? You guessed it, iron age barbarism.

Killing rape victims for being raped? Oh, how graceful!

Commanding sex slavery for non-hebrew virgins? How loving!

Creating a world filled with suffering and violence? Praise be to Allah!


Fuck off.

You know, it's like I was born human and I deserve each and every feature within my body, beat it.
Come on, and I will repeat it again and keep repeating it, just look at our own bodies and the balance struck in such creation, compared to every other living being.

Humans have the worst teeth imaginable. We have teeth that don't even fit in our gums, that cause sores and bleeding.

Humans are incredibly inbred; it only takes two generations, on average, for a child, born of incest, to have all sorts of problems.

Humans have to create shampoo to have clean hair.

Humans need planes to fly in the sky; birds just flap their "arms", so to speak.

Humans need oxygen tanks and diving suits to swim in water for long lengths of time; fish are able to stay underwater, naked, for yonks.

Humans tend to develop poor eyesight as they age, requiring the creation of glasses.

Humans sometimes cum over themselves when they sleep, because they haven't ejaculated often enough.

Humans are absolutely pathetic for the first thirteen years or so of their lives; try pitting a 5 year old against a 5 year old tiger. See how that works out.

The list goes on.

Your ego, inflated by just being a naked ape that is half a chromosome away from the chimpanzee, is too damn big.

How could you possibly black-paint him because of only a handful orders in his books, which we deem extremely harsh, while ignoring all the justice/equality ones.

Jimmy Saville gave millions of pounds away to charity. He also raped hundreds of kids.

Hitler enacted the slaughter of millions of people. He also spread Christianity.

The US military has given us superglue. It also committed horrifying amounts of rape and slaughter in Vietnam.

It's pretty easy.

Life isn't about on/off switch, that is not how did he create life nor his religions. That is also a simple fact which we face in our normal daily life, almost each and every day.

You're babbling nonsense. Stop babbling nonsense.

 

[buckshot24]

Obvious and must be taken into consideration? Not at all. If a community commits rape and enacts sex slavery, that community is to be punished. I'd prefer with death penalties for the rapists and slavers, but I'd settle for life imprisonment.

You think morals are subjective. They are not.

I agree but why do you think morals aren't subjective? You believe yourself to be a meat machine dancing to his DNA, on what basis are morals objective?

 

[MajinCry]

I agree but why do you think morals aren't subjective? You believe yourself to be a meat machine dancing to his DNA, on what basis are morals objective?

That is not what I believe. In fact, that's what you believe; that we're just mere automatons moving according to the will of an evil deity. This was demonstrated with previous Bible passages, but I just found the absolute clincher.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 - "Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you."

With life, sentience is granted. Humans have a fairly advanced form of sentience (or we just think we're more advanced, when it's just that we are unable to interpret the intricacies of other sentient species). With this, comes the ability to choose whether or not to do something.

You are looking at the most basic building blocks of matter, and then trivializing the result; you're focusing far too low level.

It would be like saying that swords can't cut people, because swords are made from metal, which is mostly made out of minerals, which take the form of rocks. And said rocks tend to be lodged in the belly of mountains. You can't cut someone with a mountain, so you can't get cut by a sword.

The logic is...Lacking, to say the least.


I already stated why morals aren't subjective; morality is the measurement of harm, and the protection from it.


Generally, the more harm inflicted, the less moral an act is. The more harm that has been negated/avoided, the more moral an act is.

For example: raping someone is immoral. Stopping someone from raping is moral.

 

[buckshot24]

I already stated why morals aren't subjective; morality is the measurement of harm, and the protection from it.

What if somebody disagrees with that assessment?

 

[feralkid]

What if somebody disagrees with that assessment?

They get put on the list?

 

[MajinCry]

What if somebody disagrees with that assessment?

If they just say that they disagree and then harshly breathe through their nostrils, I patronize them and say "Okay buddy.", nod my head slightly and give them a thumbs up.

If they say that they disagree and why, then we debate.

 

[buckshot24]

They get put on the list?

That's funny. No, it takes more than disagreement.

 

[buckshot24]

If they just say that they disagree and then harshly breathe through their nostrils, I patronize them and say "Okay buddy.", nod my head slightly and give them a thumbs up.

If they say that they disagree and why, then we debate.

Sort of like trying to argue which flavor of cookies are the best. But lets try.

What if I came across Hitler as a 2 year old baby. Would it be morally wrong of me to strangle him to death? What if I did it slowly and tortured him for 10 years before accidentally killing him? Are any of these actions morally wrong or right?

 

[MongGrel]

That's funny. No, it takes more than disagreement.

It must be one his new rules type of a thing...

ftfy

Damn, you MADE THE LIST!

And it wasn't even in the thread being shat upon by the "You're on the list!" creationist ignoramus.

To the list.

:whiste:

 

[buckshot24]

It must be one his new rules type of a thing...







:whiste:

The sad part is you took the time to try and make out to be a hypocrite. I didn't put the last guy on the list for disagreeing with me. The ignoramus thing did it.

Instead of wasting your time with this trivial stuff why don't you just post some irrefutable evidence that mutation and selection is sufficient to explain the diversity of life?

 

[MajinCry]

Sort of like trying to argue which flavor of cookies are the best. But lets try.

What if I came across Hitler as a 2 year old baby. Would it be morally wrong of me to strangle him to death? What if I did it slowly and tortured him for 10 years before accidentally killing him? Are any of these actions morally wrong or right?

Do you have the knowledge that the child will grow up to do the acts he committed as an adult (e.g, you used time travel)? If so, the former is not wrong. A less painful method of death would be preferable 'cause, y'know, it's an infant.

The latter, however, is. That reads like an act done for pleasure, unlike the former.