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On May 13 2009 16:00 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:
yeah i agree, PH, though there are such stereotypable people who fit into molds, there are also many who have their own quite unique interpretations of existence
i read a quote somewhere but cant remember who it was from or the exact wording but it was something like
'if i were to address a common person i would say that i am an atheist, but if i were speaking to a group of philosophers i would have to say that i am an agnostic as i acknowledge the possibility of gods existence in the same way that i acknowledge the possibility of the homeric gods existence.'
always liked that description
oh nevermind i found it
"As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods."
— Bertrand Russell
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Physician
United States4146 Posts
god is the future, literally
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Considering how kids these days act, I really do not hope they're God.
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i dont believe in religion but when asked by religious people, i say yes just to skip all the "OMG you're gonna go to hell for not believing God"
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On May 13 2009 12:07 D4EMON wrote:
Hinduism in particular is a religion I find kind of interesting. Here is a religion which offers the concept of reincarnation—which is a kind of eternal life—but that a follower’s primary objective, and ultimate reward, is to ‘get out of the cycle’. The implication here is that they are okay with the idea of their being nothing after death--which is something that I can agree with. Where I disagree though is the further implication in there that seems to say: life is painful, and to not exist is preferable to existing—which I think is only partly true, where the intensity of its truth proportional to the “quality of life” that you experience—whatever form that might take.
These ideas are not unique to Hinduism, for they can be found in the Buddhist religion as well. The main thing to comprehend behind their mystical superficialities is that desire is the cause of all the world's suffering, to which every human being contributes in equal measure. In order for one to cease to be a cause of the world's suffering, and to permanently cure his own, he must become free of all desire - and in doing so, he must subject himself to suffering (however ironic this may seem at first glance). While this ideal is probably unattainable, after thinking about it enough, it makes perfect sense to me, and I even consider it to be quite true.
What I have just said is also prevalent in the doctrines of Christianity and Islam, though each religion has its own way of presenting it. While I don't entirely agree with him, I also find what Schopenhauer says in On Religion: A Dialogue to be particularly interesting:
But religion is not antithetical to truth; for it itself teaches truth; only, because its field of action is not a narrow lecture-room but the whole world and all mankind, it has to adapt itself to the needs and abilities of a large and assorted public, and cannot present the truth naked. Religion is truth expressed in allegory and myth and thus made accessible and digestible to mankind at large: for mankind at large could never endure it pure and unalloyed, just as we cannot live on pure oxygen. The lofty goal of life can be revealed to the people and kept before their eyes only in symbolical form, because the people are not capable of grasping it literally.
What is really quite annoying are all the atheists who consider religion to be just "a bunch of fairy tales" designed to make people feel content with their lives (I'm not referring to anyone in particular). Most of them haven't even touched a Bible or any other religious text in their lifetime. And if they have, then they made the mistake of reading everything literally. Religious texts should always be interpreted in a metaphorical sense. The stories in these texts are more than simple fairy tales, and one does not even need to be a God-believer or any sort of mystic for that matter to take their ideas seriously.
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On May 13 2009 17:10 Forgottenfrog wrote:
i dont believe in religion but when asked by religious people, i say yes just to skip all the "OMG you're gonna go to hell for not believing God"
I did the same even when I was a practicing Catholic.
Trust me...no matter what branch of Christianity you're a part of, evangelists from every other branch are equally annoying.
I would say, "oh yeah, I'm a part of your organization too! How coincidental! Yeah, I'm just visiting my friends in this area. I actually go to the one in [insert random city here]! Yeah, so yeah god bless and all that and now leave me alone, kk? ^^"
I've written two pages of my essay now.
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Netherlands6142 Posts
What's so great about heaven anyway
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free sex beer and candy! DUHHHH
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On May 13 2009 12:53 EsX_Raptor wrote:You guys believe whatever you want to, as much as you want to, whenever you want to. Nobody cares. + Show Spoiler +
+111111111111111111111
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On May 13 2009 12:07 D4EMON wrote:
My parents do though, as well as a couple of my friends--they ask me why I don't go to church anymore. I think it's better I don't tell them--at least not yet.
Not believing in god doesn't mean you cant take a few of the teachings from Christianity. One being that you shouldn't deny what you believe in. I went through a stage before I declared myself atheist where at first I was scared of how people would take it, EVERYONE in my family are hardcore religious, all my friends are hardcore religious minus a few. Most of all, I didn't want people to see me as all the negative views of atheists, such as but not limited to: Lazy(too lazy to have faith/go to church), lacking in morals, heathen, something to be pitied.
One day I just figured fuck it, if people misunderstand me than that's their problem. My mum is probably the only one who knows I'm an atheist for good reasons, the rest of my family just looks down at me when the subject comes up and my friends don't give a shit either way lol.
Don't be a pussy, if your not a christian, don't hide because of it... if your family cant accept your way of life whether your Buddhist, Hindu or atheist then that's not very christian like of them at all.
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congrats on breaking out and into the pursuit of truth! I was fortunate enough to never have to deal with this part:
My parents do though, as well as a couple of my friends--they ask me why I don't go to church anymore. I think it's better I don't tell them--at least not yet
Yikes! That must make a lot of tough/awkward situations. I have two good friends who are religious and it is odd enough that we sidestep this elephant all the time. I cant imagine doing that constantly.
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Why does it have to be awkward? I have discussions about God with my agnostic and atheists friends all the time (im a christian). When you talk to the normal people of both sides you can have very nice conversations, just both sides need to realize that its stupid to just demean the other side. Some of my best friends are hardcore atheists and we get along great. People just take things personally in these debates. Both sides can come off as condescending and arrogant which is REALLY annoying. The only time I get upset with atheists is when they just spout off shit about blind faith then it turns out I know more about the science of evolution/origin of life then them. I mean seriously some atheists just spout off about science when they know shit about it. Which basically means they are placing blind faith in science, which is a man made concept. So to all you non believers out there please KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT before you try to attack ppl of faith.
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You can't prove or disprove God.
So many people keep saying that... but hey, why is it so?
Some religious theories are easy to disprove or dismiss.
There are some people that believe God does not meddle in the physical world at all. He is still out there somewhere, and he is still omnipotent and omnibenevolent, but at the same time he does squat. They still believe in some divine justice or whatever, but it is all reserved for the afterlife.
It is really the perfect religious theory, because it is absolutely non-observable and hence non-fallible. But it has a huge drawback. Praying to God for anything in our current world, anything physical, anything while you are alive... it is just pointless. We don't need such a God. It does provide the comfort of an afterlife, so there are some people that actually go with it, but for most this isn't enough.
So even most non-scientific, religious people would usually dismiss this theory.
Scientifically, Occam's razor lets me dismiss such a theory as just redundant entities.
Then there is another option - God does actively meddle in our universe. He changes things occasionally, in response to prayers or for testing our faith or for whatever other divine reasons. He does not let things to always run according to the universe's natural laws. I see a few problems with this theory however.
First off, if God created the universe and its governing physical laws just to later go and violate them, isn't that a contradiction? Why would he even bother setting those laws in the first place then... or why would those laws not be good enough to be left untouched, without the need to meddle in them and change things?
Second, there are a couple of moral and ethical questions. For example, the question of free will and changing people's decisions. I don't know if you realize, but a lot of things that people pray for, a lot of changes that they want, are in fact a violation of the free will of other people. Wether you want to pass that school exam next week, or to get a job promotion, or to have the girl you keep stalking fall in love with you... those are all things that depend on the other people, and I doubt a fair God should/would meddle.
Another thing is that generally, whenever one person benefits it is on account of someone else. Harsh as it sounds, but it is a fact of life. Take money as an example - it is limited, and the richer you get, the poorer someone else has to be. If all people get richer simultaneously, money just loses its value so we are back to where we started. So how can you expect God to answer your prayers for winning the lottery instead of the guy that would've won normally? Or to get a promotion instead of your co-worker? Or to get a brilliant idea instead of the competing researchers? Or many many such examples.
Granted, there are also some really pure and good types of wishes, like curing someone from a disease they have or preventing some natural disaster or simply having a nice sunny day, which I can't find a bad side about. And even the ones that I find questionable, may be just OK in someone else's moral view. Maybe you believe it is ok for God to reward the "better" people on account of the "worse" people, or even to brainwash some very "bad" people to change their decisions, etc... I can't argue with that.
My whole second point here does not rule out God's interventions, but it does make you think about them and what kind of them are likely or possible and what aren't.
Third, such "meddling" by God should be scientifically detectable. With advanced enough science, we should eventually be able to make predictions about some sitiations, and they would not match the observations if God changes something. Granted, our science is still very far from the point where it would be able to understand, let alone predict complex systems such as a human brain, so we can't yet hope to detect wether God actually meddles in people's decisions... but why can't we detect some simpler things? Even just a statistical analysis of a (non-sexually-transmitted  ) virus's death rate difference among virgins versus drugdealers or something similar...
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I was a Christian when younger; it can be hard to grow out of childhood indoctrination. Then I thought about it a bit and became an atheist. But if people try to get into a discussion I just adopt the "don't care" or "agnostic" approach, since I don't need religion despite what they think.
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On May 13 2009 14:24 PH wrote:
Empirically proving or disproving the existence of something considered above natural law and rationality in its premise is retarded.
This is the most interesting statement on this thread, and I am so sad that I missed it when initially reading through.
So with my previous post, I suggested exactly that it should be possible to empirically prove the existance of "violations" to the natural law. Now I am retarded 
I really would like to know more about what you meant here. Is your point that we would simply change our understanding of "natural law" once we discover the violations so that it incorporates them? And what if that is not rationally possible?
I can see it already... 44929th law of PH: an atom exposed to high ionising radiation for any amout of time will not be affected by it if and only if the atom is part of the body of a person who followed the bible's fasting prescriptions all his life or he has said hail mary three times last night.
Seriously, I really want to understand you.
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On May 13 2009 12:07 D4EMON wrote:
II'm actually fine with the fact that after death I'll simply cease to exist--in a way it's even liberating to view it this way.
one of the major reasons that many people are atheists, imo
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One of the things I find most fascinating is Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorems. Mathematics is one of those things that's completely logical and deductive. And yet, within a system powerful enough to have natural numbers, there will be truths in that system that we cannot prove, otherwise the system contradicts itself. Just an interesting thought; could there be truths in our natural universe that cannot ever be proven or even perhaps even observed?
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Why everyone believing or not in god has to relate to a religion? We can't believe in a superior entity without choosing a religion?
Everybody knows all the religions are at least 99% bullshit. I believe in a god but I don't consider myself christian or muslim or jew etc.
If you disregard religions and just look at it logically, there is more chance that there is a god then there is not.
I mean, the Bible, the coran, near death experiences....
"There is no smoke without fire" The existence of a god is very unlikely but the possibilty that billions of people over thousands of years were all wrong? Even more unlikely.
P.S. I hate blogs
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EPT
