The joy of religion - part xxxxxxxxx

[realibrad]

I don't see how he could have any opinion of faith whatsoever since he says he doesn't have any.

I have opinions on art I do not own. I have opinions about actions that are not my own. I have opinions countries I do not live in. You have opinions on me, even though you are not me.

I am not sure I follow the meaning of your comment it would seem.

 

[Moonbeam]

I have opinions on art I do not own. I have opinions about actions that are not my own. I have opinions countries I do not live in. You have opinions on me, even though you are not me.

I am not sure I follow the meaning of your comment it would seem.

That was my point. You have all sorts of fucking opinions on all sorts of shit. What you never examine is the unconscious assumptions you hold that they reflect. You say, for example, that I may not understand utility, say the love between you and your girl friend. Where the fuck does your opinion come from that love is utilitarian. You give me some stupid reason like utility produces happiness. What is happiness? I ask you the question but you can't answer it because all you will do is respond with some more stupid thinking.

Imagine we have been driving along in a car together, say since this thread began and I ask you what driving is. In ten words or an infinite number of them, I want you to explain what driving is so that we can switch places and I or rather somebody who does not already know how to drive will be able to.

Tell me those words that will make me happy so I can be happy too. But I just want the meaning of your words on what it is to change me. I don't actually want to put in any effort myself. Make your definition so clear that I will know what happiness is just by thinking about them.

You live in your head it would seem, completely disconnected from the rest of your being. I don't see any happiness there so I'm out to change that. I see my job as talking to your thinker in a way that stops it from thinking. I took up that job because you professed an interest in knowing. My job then became to show you that while you say you want to know you do not really want to know because you think so that you won't know and are hanging on to it for dear life. You don't even know you hate a God whose faithful could kill your girlfriend on His imaginary command. Don't be Dukakis, be real.

 

[Moonbeam]

shira: You want to insist that what a person feels isn't actually what they feel. So if someone feels happy, you insist they're not actually feeling happy. If they feel sad, you insist that they're not actually feeling sad.

M: No. I'm saying if you think you are happy you think you are happy and if you think you are sad you think you are sad. What I am saying also is that your assessment of your state is dependent on the definitions you use to make them. I am saying further that those definitions are the products of conditioning, of feelings acquired and sometimes suppressed, such that your assessment of your state is a form of bigotry, an unconscious bias for or against things you have no idea you are biased for or against.

s: Twist that all you want; deny it all you want; use new words and pretend you're saying something different, more special. But the fact is that's exactly what you're saying. Actually, I don't care about any twists or denials or alternate phrasings you seek to make. I'm not going to read them, so don't bother trying.

M: Don't be arrogant. What I say to you isn't meant only for you. I told you I have no need for you to see. I got mine, remember. My arrogance consists of the fact that catering to your ego is not important to me. Your ego isn't you and has nothing to offer me. I got mine. Your praise or blame is worthless. Only the real you matters to me.

s: I believe everything is in the eye of the beholder. When someone tells me they think something is beautiful, it would be absurd for me to tell them they aren't perceiving beauty. If someone tells me they don't like chocolate, it would be absurd of me to tell them they're wrong. More than absurd; it would telling them that they're insane, and that I know this because I know better than they do whether they actually think something is beautiful or actually dislike the taste of chocolate.

M: Think of it as though you had a conservative brain defect and denied the reality of global warming. So when one of them tells you it's a beautiful fall in Alaska and they're enjoying outside BBQ and laughing their ass off in a bottle of beer you tell yourself, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and who am I to suggest they are insane. Let me tell you straight up, you are insane. The problem, of course, is not that you are insane, but how you react to that truth. You have a not so unconscious bias that tells you that being insane is a bad thing, something that would offend your ego and so you go all conservative brain defective on me to protect your cherished feelings. You are trapped in a world of duality, a world of good and bad, of endless false assessments because good and evil do not exist. All the good and evil in the world are manufactured by you in your own eye and that's the problem.

s: I have no reason to disbelieve it when people report what they're feeling or seeing. But you, clearly, think you know more about what a particular person is feeling than they do themselves and you don't hesitate to tell them so, as if that somehow makes you their spiritual guide to higher ground. But in fact your beliefs about what you think you know about others and your self-appointed role as their guide merely expose your arrogance.

M: Yup, that is exactly how I saw it.

s: Yeah, yeah, the wind against the house, the death and rebirth, the Koan and the all of the other amazing experiences that are impossible to express except through evasive language. Okay, you're a Zen-master arrogant prick. Better?

M: It is what the blind do with personal information. I am beginning to like the Buddha, also, too much brown rice gruel I guess, you can add that to my list of faults.

s: Clearly you disagree, and clearly I disagree with any possible phrasing of your disagreement. We're not speaking the same language and it's pointless to continue this discussion.

M: Doh!!!!!!!!!!! You're kidding me. Just exactly do you think I've been trying to tell you. The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. All you ever talk about is my finger by giving me one.

s: ---

Edit: Something just occurred to me that might be worth asking you.

Has it ever occurred to you that the reason you can't allow yourself to be vulnerable to posts is that you're that close to sinking back into the pain?

Self examination is a habit both destroyed me and saved me. My sense is that I am rather vigilant in that area, best I can tell anyway. I see this problem of vulnerability, about which I think you have a misunderstanding, like this: You are a suit of armor without a Knight and I am a Knight without a suit of armor. I am not vulnerable because I do not have or need any defenses. But in all those areas of conditioning that for me remain unresolved, and there are many for a nobody like me, there is at root pain from the past I have yet to remember. My enlightenment, if you will allow me to use that term, was a tiny flash of intuition that ended existential grief. I believe that for others the change happens much much much more deeply and even that there are schools that hold knowledge that can teach somebody how to make that awareness happen as a permanent state.

So as far as the issues that resolved for me, no, I can never again suffer like that. Invulnerability to pain does not happen via armor but by surrender as I have explained. "Did you but suffer you would not suffer." The painful part about pain is trying to not feel it. To feel what you really feel is to be inwardly united, at one with everything.

So maybe what I would suggest for you is to watch conservatives carefully and see if maybe they say they are happy but deny the truth of their actual state. Maybe you will also notice that they can't help it and deserve no scorn or blame. Father forgive us for we know not what we do.

I don't know what I'm doing!!!! Fuck you Jesus, you prick. Who the fuck would know better than me what I'm doing. I think he's trying to start a cult and charge money. Save us from our sins, my ass.

 

[Omar F1]

LOL. That's religions fault for picking the wrong turf to fight on. Seriously, most people that study evolution couldn't give a crap about your religion.

It's clearly motivated by a desire to find out the truth. If you feel that finding out the truth is an attack on your religion then that says more about your religion than it does about science.

A quick question; do you think that everything that refutes something in your religion comes from one agenda?

There is one particular verse in Quran that clearly and literally states "Tell them to venture through the earth and see how life had originated; so will Allah produce a later creation: for Allah has power over all things".
Based on that, I see pretty clearly that we were ordered to look around and grasp an idea about our creation. But for that order, we can be divided between two teams: the believers in his existence, from which those discoveries will strengthen their faith. However, for the other team it will keep steering them farther away from the notion of the God existence behind all this magnificence.

For example, the rotation of planets around themselves and the movement of the sun toward its unknown destination. Add to that our modern reach to the outer space rims or sending the probes to the other planets in our solar system to only find such a huge and vacant space.
All of those, and much more other discoveries; it enhance my faith and believe in the God's unique unparalleled creation - as he was trying to tell us since 1,400-years ago.


If, it was only motivated by desire to find the truth, then why do they keep a totally blind eye to what a huge group of humans' claim about the existence of a God's messenger since 1,400 years ago, a precedent yet revolutionary one that existed 600-years before him, and you may add to that a dozens of others that were sent to the Jews.
Why such bias from those truth-seeking scientists? why venture into the unknown immemorial history, placing some theories and claiming they were hard-proofed while in fact they depended on some hypothesis to the unknown, then theories were concluded based on half science/half guessing - of which they won't admit.



My religion and others as well, claim that the man was crafted by the God's own hands, breathed life into him, then brought down onto earth to grow on and breed his offspring.

I've previously stated a few points to what we do consider a proof against calling the human a mere output of a very long, unguided, natural selection and evolution process.
However, I'd like also to lay here the subject of "beauty".

Beauty, gentlemen, is what I consider a persuasive evidence to the existence of a god behind all the observed life forms and the overall universe we live in.
My first post in this thread was to take a look insider our own bodies and see how the organs are very well placed and arranged in away, that beyond doubt, could be attributed to a well knowledgeable entity behind such layout.
I thought natural selection gave a probability of arbitrary transformation, do we find a single arbitrary placed organ?

If that isn't enough then have a simple look into the mirror and tell me what do you see. Our facial features are screaming beauty in every aspect and well placed part of it.
Go out and witness the sunset/rising moments, get far away of town; travel to many places and visit another countries, even watch some space documentaries; what other than beauty do we observe in our vast world.
Look to the all kinds of living creatures, all of them no exception, personally I only do see such a well crafted and beautifully skinned creation.

Who's behind all of that. Can't we give a slight possibility of a great, powerful and knowledgeable entity behind all that design.

 

[Omar F1]

Science is innocent such as a shoe is innocent. It breaks down to this.

Evolution fits the data we have, and makes predictions that we can verify. Its logical and rational. If your argument is that it conflicts with god, then you have to accept that god made a world that would point to evolution, but evolution still being wrong. That simply means that you can not use logic and rational argument in support of god, if his very existence conflicts with what is logical and rational. You must accept that you believing god exists is not logical or rational.

Evolution has nothing to do with atheism. Please try to keep that in mind, because I think you think evolution has something to say about god.

The scientist being atheist himself, it could really affect his judgment based on his findings, possibly resulting in drawing some wrong conclusions about such study.

If there was an intent to prove there never been a god except in our own fantasy world then they may find it, through their own perspective.

Evolution has nothing to do with atheism. Please try to keep that in mind, because I think you think evolution has something to say about god

Evolution's basic idea itself, sure. It's just a theory and part of it is a fact to a lesser extent than what being declared. However, to reach such consensus about its whole integrity is still something unbelievable for me.

A quick look about their scattered findings and probability to which age it came from, then linking it all to the currently living species is still not a beyond doubt %100.00 conclusive enough for me. I mean, probabilities are vast, and what we doesn't know yet is still much more that we really do know about what had happened since millions of years ago.
I mean, I believe they were too quick to draw their conclusions.

And don't forget, when I asked in the first place about who did create the magnificent creation of the human you quickly pointed to the natural evolution process.
To claim that it's purely natural unguided process is something that we refuse to accept. Add to it the claim about the human origins is also something that we do resent, based on both: our religious theories and our own observations in this life. That is part of our theory.

 

[MagickMan]

No, it isn't. You just don't understand its relevance. The idea of the largest prime number is inconsistent like I've shown that the idea of omnipotence is inconsistent. If either of those ideas are part of your idea of God, then we can confidently state that your idea of God cannot be instantiated in reality.

You mean your perception of reality, right? I have no "idea" of God, because there's no evidence to support such a being, but a lack of evidence is not, in and of itself, proof.

I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean. I get the feeling that you're still laboring under the false idea that I've claimed to have proven that no ideas of God are coherent or possible.

Backpedal.

Nonsense, my proof does not suffer from the inconsistency inherent in that question.


1.) The problem with the impossibly heavy rock question has nothing to do with the physical universe.

2.) There is no evidence that the physical universe is "finite." I'd be happy to disabuse you of that notion while I'm teaching you about a priori reasoning.

I understood a priori reasoning in elementary school, then not long after concluded that human perception falls short of understanding theoretical potential.

and yes, we do know the physical universe is finite because it's still expanding at a measurable rate and its physical mass can actually be calculated.

How would you know? You still think the conclusions of a priori arguments depend on some condition of physical reality.

*ugh* :\

 

[Omar F1]

This is nothing but your own incorrect interpretation. Darwins theory on the origins of species though evolution came about to describe the observations he made in the Galapagos.

Evolution is both theory AND fact. The theory describes the facts. I'm also betting that you actually would have no issue with each individual part of the theory.

• Children are not direct copies of their parents, (for any species)
• Some will be born and/or grow stronger, faster, smarter, better adapted to their environments than others.
• The stronger, faster, healthier better adapted animals will tend to survive long enough to procreate, more often than the less adapted.
• After 100's, 1000's or more generations the animal has changed enough that the current generation animal couldn't breed with the original and is now a new species.

That's it.

Thanks for the summary and refreshing my memory.
I remember exactly the three first points being taught at school, it's fair and sound theory.
However, the fourth point is where most of the controversy lies.

In short, here are some main objections that is in my mind right now:

* The human was created as a human in the first place, not a descendant of Apes and did not pass through a natural evolution/selection process.
* If the evolution process has started exactly as it's currently believed to, then it was rather intentional and well guided process by the creator of both that basic cell and the earth it reproduced itself on.


Anyway, let's not forget that each and every one of us is an evolution process in himself, I guess.
Starting from the moment of engagement between a male & female and ending by death.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

You mean your perception of reality, right?

No, I mean reality. Reality is not incoherent. If your idea is incoherent, it is not instantiated in reality. This is fundamental stuff.

Backpedal.

Bull. Fucking. Shit. Go all the way back to my original claim, and read what I said.

I can prove certain gods don't exist.

Emphasis added.

In post #495 you said:

The only confusing thing is your "proof" that there is no God.

To which I responded in post #501:

But I didn't prove there is no God.

In post #508 maluckey accused me of the same thing:

...you claimed to be able to prove God does not exist...

To which I responded in post #511:

No, I didn't.

I have been totally consistent the whole fucking time, so WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

I understood a priori reasoning in elementary school, then not long after concluded that human perception falls short of understanding theoretical potential.

You did not understand a priori reasoning then, and you clearly do not understand it now. A priori reasoning has nothing to do with human perception whatsoever.

and yes, we do know the physical universe is finite because it's still expanding at a measurable rate and its physical mass can actually be calculated.

Now you're just making stuff up. Go ahead and show me those "calculations," however. I think they'd probably be as funny as your description of relativistic quantum mechanics.

 

[sandorski]

There is one particular verse in Quran that clearly and literally states "Tell them to venture through the earth and see how life had originated; so will Allah produce a later creation: for Allah has power over all things".
Based on that, I see pretty clearly that we were ordered to look around and grasp an idea about our creation. But for that order, we can be divided between two teams: the believers in his existence, from which those discoveries will strengthen their faith. However, for the other team it will keep steering them farther away from the notion of the God existence behind all this magnificence.

For example, the rotation of planets around themselves and the movement of the sun toward its unknown destination. Add to that our modern reach to the outer space rims or sending the probes to the other planets in our solar system to only find such a huge and vacant space.
All of those, and much more other discoveries; it enhance my faith and believe in the God's unique unparalleled creation - as he was trying to tell us since 1,400-years ago.


If, it was only motivated by desire to find the truth, then why do they keep a totally blind eye to what a huge group of humans' claim about the existence of a God's messenger since 1,400 years ago, a precedent yet revolutionary one that existed 600-years before him, and you may add to that a dozens of others that were sent to the Jews.
Why such bias from those truth-seeking scientists? why venture into the unknown immemorial history, placing some theories and claiming they were hard-proofed while in fact they depended on some hypothesis to the unknown, then theories were concluded based on half science/half guessing - of which they won't admit.



My religion and others as well, claim that the man was crafted by the God's own hands, breathed life into him, then brought down onto earth to grow on and breed his offspring.

I've previously stated a few points to what we do consider a proof against calling the human a mere output of a very long, unguided, natural selection and evolution process.
However, I'd like also to lay here the subject of "beauty".

Beauty, gentlemen, is what I consider a persuasive evidence to the existence of a god behind all the observed life forms and the overall universe we live in.
My first post in this thread was to take a look insider our own bodies and see how the organs are very well placed and arranged in away, that beyond doubt, could be attributed to a well knowledgeable entity behind such layout.
I thought natural selection gave a probability of arbitrary transformation, do we find a single arbitrary placed organ?

If that isn't enough then have a simple look into the mirror and tell me what do you see. Our facial features are screaming beauty in every aspect and well placed part of it.
Go out and witness the sunset/rising moments, get far away of town; travel to many places and visit another countries, even watch some space documentaries; what other than beauty do we observe in our vast world.
Look to the all kinds of living creatures, all of them no exception, personally I only do see such a well crafted and beautifully skinned creation.

Who's behind all of that. Can't we give a slight possibility of a great, powerful and knowledgeable entity behind all that design.

Poetic, but vacuous. For example: "Add to that our modern reach to the outer space rims or sending the probes to the other planets in our solar system to only find such a huge and vacant space."

No, we already Knew there was vast and empty spaces, thanks to Science and Mathematics. We learned many other things though, by taking those trips. We also understand how the planets move in relation to each other, thanks to Science and Mathematics.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is an ancient sentiment first expressed by the Greek philosopher Plato. Meaning, that it is a Subjective perception of the Viewer, it is not an Objective truth handed down to us. We see beauty, but what may be Beautiful to one may not be Beautiful to another. This is no more a Proof of a Creator Being than the taste of bacon or the scent of a Rose is.

 

[FelixDeCat]

lol atheists

 

[soulcougher73]

lol atheists

Wow. Deep bro. Tell us more.

 

[MagickMan]

No, I mean reality. Reality is not incoherent. If your idea is incoherent, it is not instantiated in reality. This is fundamental stuff.

You perception of reality (and it does appear to be incoherent to most).

Bull. Fucking. Shit. Go all the way back to my original claim, and read what I said.

Eat. Shit. You. wise and beautiful woman. You've proven fuck-all, you ignorant blowhard motherfucker.

I have been totally consistent the whole fucking time, so WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

Consistently full of shit? I agree.

You did not understand a priori reasoning then, and you clearly do not understand it now. A priori reasoning has nothing to do with human perception whatsoever.

AHAHAHA!! Oh, fucking hell, this is hilarious! You sound like one of those pathetic college freshman who's taken a Logic 101 course and "realized", "whoa, now I understand everything". Keep going, you're precious.

Now you're just making stuff up. Go ahead and show me those "calculations," however. I think they'd probably be as funny as your description of relativistic quantum mechanics.

Really? I'm making shit up? :awe:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(volume)
http://www.spacetelescope.org/science/age_size/

You've been a real joy tonight, simply priceless.

 

[FelixDeCat]

Wow. Deep bro. Tell us more.

Its true though.

 

[WelshBloke]

lol atheists

Lol fantasists

 

[Eli]

If there is a God, it is very much like Q from Star Trek; a Kardashev Type IV being that delights in constantly fucking with us.

Believing in a God in 2015 is fundamentally no different than believing the Earth is both flat and the center of our solar system. Clearly, the universe must revolve around us. :awe:

Personally, I would like our species to live for quite some time to come. No, I don't mean another 6,000 years. Let's try for something meaningful - hundreds of thousands of years. That means we need to quit fighting about stupid shit like gay rights, abortion, birth control and climate change, get our energy crisis under control, and get our asses off this rock.

Maybe then we'll actually find a "God" - a being more supreme than us.

Though I doubt we'll like it if we do.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

You perception of reality (and it does appear to be incoherent to most).

Is that supposed to be English?

Eat. Shit. You. wise and beautiful woman. You've proven fuck-all, you ignorant blowhard motherfucker.

Consistently full of shit? I agree.

AHAHAHA!! Oh, fucking hell, this is hilarious! You sound like one of those pathetic college freshman who's taken a Logic 101 course and "realized", "whoa, now I understand everything". Keep going, you're precious.

Look, you can piss and moan and stomp your feet all you want. You don't have a counterargument or else you'd have made it.

Really? I'm making shit up? :awe:

Yes, indeed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(volume)

I'm not gathering anything meaningful from this link.

http://www.spacetelescope.org/science/age_size/

Do you understand that even if there is a boundary in the past of the universe (which it does not appear that there is) that it does not mean that there is any boundary in the future? Nor does it mean that total energy of the universe is finite.

You've been a real joy tonight, simply priceless.

Did you have anything... y'know... of substance?

 

[MongGrel]

If there is a God, it is very much like Q from Star Trek; a Kardashev Type IV being that delights in constantly fucking with us.

Believing in a God in 2015 is fundamentally no different than believing the Earth is both flat and the center of our solar system. Clearly, the universe must revolve around us. :awe:

Personally, I would like our species to live for quite some time to come. No, I don't mean another 6,000 years. Let's try for something meaningful - hundreds of thousands of years. That means we need to quit fighting about stupid shit like gay rights, abortion, birth control and climate change, get our energy crisis under control, and get our asses off this rock.

Maybe then we'll actually find a "God" - a being more supreme than us.

Though I doubt we'll like it if we do.

I'd always imagined god would be a bit like Dr Manhattan in Watchmen, aloof and impersonal, but Dr M freely admits he isn't.

If there is one. If there is, I imagine god is judging me atm, in his all knowing power.

I would think god is possibly throwing down things like ant farms across the universe, let alone just in our galaxy, and just watching things evolve. Of course he wouldn't have to sit and watch them evolve, he would be everywhere at once, maybe the universe is like watching a movie or listening to a song to a supreme being. and we're all just entertainment at the moment. That would be like Q.

Does god have a god, and if so, does his have one also ?

It's pretty much just philosophy 101 I'm posting more or less.

If he's out there would be well beyond my abilities to perceive him.

Unless I'm elected the next pope maybe, but I don't think they let baptized Lutherans apply for that job.

 

[shira]

So maybe what I would suggest for you is to watch conservatives carefully and see if maybe they say they are happy but deny the truth of their actual state. Maybe you will also notice that they can't help it and deserve no scorn or blame. Father forgive us for we know not what we do.

I don't know what I'm doing!!!! Fuck you Jesus, you prick. Who the fuck would know better than me what I'm doing. I think he's trying to start a cult and charge money. Save us from our sins, my ass.

Moonbeam, yet again you've missed it.

Stop. Stop the denials and rationalizations until you've read through to the end.

A conservative may be destructive to many of those around himself, or even to himself, by this actions and beliefs, but if he FEELS happy he IS happy.

Stop. Stop the denials and rationalizations until you've read through to the end.

It would be totally appropriate to tell someone that they're hurting people as a consequence of their beliefs. It would be totally appropriate to tell someone that they're allowing their emotions to interfere with their judgment. And there's even room - given actual evidence - to tell someone that they're mistaking one feeling for another (such as mistaking lust for love).

Stop. Stop the denials and rationalizations until you've read through to the end.

But YOUR mistakes (there are three) are that (1) like so many true believers before you, you're certain that there's only one preordained "valid path" to certain emotional states, and that without first following the preordained path for an emotion, the emotional experience isn't valid. (2) You then make the further mistake of concluding that if an emotional experience "isn't valid" then the person can't actually be feeling the emotion they experience. Finally, (3) you generalize these two errors to essentially everyone, so that (for example) if a random person tells you they're happy, you "know" they're not feeling what they claim.

In a nutshell, if someone tells you they're happy, you "know" that they haven't gone through the heavy lifting required to obtain happiness, therefore their happiness isn't valid, therefore they're not actually happy.

Moonbeam, I'm happy, and will probably remain so until my death. I'm sorry that's a problem for you.

 

[Eli]

I'd always imagined god would be a bit like Dr Manhattan in Watchmen, aloof and impersonal, but Dr M freely admits he isn't.

If there is one. If there is, I imagine god is judging me atm, in his all knowing power.

I would think god is possibly throwing down things like ant farms across the universe, let alone just in our galaxy, and just watching things evolve. Of course he wouldn't have to sit and watch them evolve, he would be everywhere at once, maybe the universe is like watching a movie or listening to a song to a supreme being. and we're all just entertainment at the moment. That would be like Q.

Does god have a god, and if so, does his have one also ?

It's pretty much just philosophy 101 I'm posting more or less.

If he's out there would be well beyond my abilities to perceive him.

Unless I'm elected the next pope maybe, but I don't think they let baptized Lutherans apply for that job.

Admittedly, I'm an atheist leaning agnostic. We very well could be some being's snow globe. That wouldn't change much, though - it still wouldn't be anything like the god(s) we have conjured.

It's just so painfully obvious that the 4,000+ religions that exist in the world today are completely man made. Made by man, for man... to control man. Let alone the perhaps tens of thousands that have existed in the last 75,000 years. Which would you pick?

What if we've got it all wrong and should be paying tribute to some god that existed thousands of years ago, only to be forgotten?! I bet it's not too happy...

Quick, sacrifice something!

 

[FelixDeCat]

If there is a God, it is very much like Q from Star Trek; a Kardashev Type IV being that delights in constantly fucking with us.

Believing in a God in 2015 is fundamentally no different than believing the Earth is both flat and the center of our solar system. Clearly, the universe must revolve around us. :awe:

Personally, I would like our species to live for quite some time to come. No, I don't mean another 6,000 years. Let's try for something meaningful - hundreds of thousands of years. That means we need to quit fighting about stupid shit like gay rights, abortion, birth control and climate change, get our energy crisis under control, and get our asses off this rock.

Maybe then we'll actually find a "God" - a being more supreme than us.

Though I doubt we'll like it if we do.

Without God life would be empty, hollow and meaningless.

 

[FelixDeCat]

Lol fantasists

You mean atheist fantasists?

 

[WelshBloke]

You mean atheist fantasists?

There's a difference in that while the creatures in my fantasies distribute punishment and pleasure I don't let them bleed into the real world. It's when you start thinking that your imaginary creatures are real that the difference becomes clear.

 

[Eli]

Well after following God for 45 years, I know my life is much richer because of it. Without God life would be empty, hollow and meaningless.

Fuck that. ()

But why? Why would it be those things? My life isn't empty, hollow or meaningless.

It doesn't matter what you believe. It just simply doesn't matter. It's up to you to live a happy life. Through the billions that have lived before us, the remotest untouched tribes and even in most cases the major religions of today, the vast majority are happy people. It only becomes a problem when free thought is hindered(proselytizing), progress is hindered, and others are killed in the name of your God. The idea that each of these people went to each other person's Hell when they died is obviously completely ludicrous.

I used to believe in a God because that's what I was taught growing up. I didn't know any better. The reality is that nothing would change - except your perception of the world would "suddenly" fall apart. You would have to start over. You would have to think about everything. You would suddenly be accountable for all of your actions. No putting it in God's hands. No asking God for advice. That's a hard thing to have happen, I admit. It takes time to process.

But these are good things. It's a good thing to think for yourself. It's a good thing to take responsibility for your actions. It's good to be in control of your life.

My life didn't suddenly become empty, hollow and meaningless when I realized it was all a bunch of nonsense. Quite the contrary! My life would be empty, hollow and meaningless if I had to be "god fearing, or else"! I do not want to be a slave of fear.

Your religion didn't exist 2000 years ago. I sincerely hope it does not exist 2000 years from now. The world will be a better place when the business that is organized religion is relegated to the history books. Christian Mythology... Has a nice ring to it, eh?

 

[WelshBloke]

Well after following God for 45 years, I know my life is much richer because of it. Without God life would be empty, hollow and meaningless.

Fuck that. ()

Seriously? That's all you've got in your life?

 

[Moonbeam]

Shira, I am not trying to take your happiness away from you. I'm not telling you that you should be miserable so you can improve in some way. I told you about coffee grounds in case I insufficient acidIty in their soil might, if present and corrected, give you even more berries to enjoy. I am also perfectly aware of the fact that a person who is in a positive state in their own personal estimation can't simultaneously be in or consciously experience anything but that state.

What I am suggesting is that how we perceive the world, how we react to it, how it is represented to us in our awareness, our opinions of how we feel about it can be caused by feelings we experienced in the past that we are not consciously aware are doing that.

Take, as an example, let's say for this thread, a religious bigot, say somebody who buys into some religious text that says you have to believe only in god x to get to heaven and he is perfectly happy killing people who believe in God y because they are dangerous and destructive agents of the devil. This is a happiness that is predicated on the feeling that one is doing god's work. The person is happy, but he is also insane. This is possible because the fear of wrong gods was inculcated into him at some time in the past, perhaps brutally inculcated. He is happy killing evil people and it is because he is happier killing than he would. Be remembering and seeing what his bias has turned him into. He is happy but I find it perfectly reasonable to say that happiness that derives from the death of others is not a truly happy place to be.

So my point is that we are not always conscious of the feelings that creat what we consciously experience and this could be called not knowing what one really feels.

The reason that people evolve or recover, or heal or acquire wisdom, etc. is because they grow in self understanding, they lessen the grip of negatives in their past. This is the whole point of psychotherapy, that our. Feelings of unhappiness have roots in the unconscious. So what is the psychological state of a person who has awakened to full consciousness, who is not affected by feelings he doesn't know he has. Can he or she be a bigot or would such a person have at command their full human potential. If we were created in God's image or we created God in ours, such a person, in my opinion would manifest whatever God is. That, in my opinion, is where religion or atheism can lead to.