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New International Version, ©2010, 1 Peter 3:15:
But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,
I'm very much interested in the different ways people look at the world, and how they ended up having such different perspectives. I've read quite a bit about religion and philosophy, and I like hearing what everyone's opinion is, as long as that opinion is better thought out than ('I don't believe in god 'cause that's stupid,' or 'you have to believe, or you're going to hell!') However, most of the time when religion comes up on TL, it's in response to the news, and responses are very emotional.
I'd like this thread to be gentle and respectful, and about the reasons people have for their beliefs (or hope, or faith, if you will). It doesn't have to be about christianity, it doesn't even have to be about religion. It can be about other kinds of belief and hope. But in this thread, please be prepared to explain your position when asked to.
On the other hand, if you're not giving your own perspective, or explaining your position, but commenting on other people's ideas, please ask questions in a direct and specific manner, so they can actually be answered. Please refrain from insulting people if you think their reasoning is flawed. Point out the mistakes in their reasoning instead.
So, here goes:
I reject the notion of absolute certainty. I don't see how you can ever be 100% sure about anything that isn't a tautology. I do, however, notice a consistency in the world that my senses perceive. Things don't feel and look random and uncoordinated, but I can touch the things that I see, and I can hear the things that I feel. This consistency leads me to the belief that those things are real. That is, that they exist apart from me. I'm not positively sure about that. I'm not saying it's impossible that I'm making the world up as I experience it, but I feel like that would not adequately explain the consistency of the world. So, therefore I believe that I'm not making up the world. I believe it's real. I believe that you are real.
I consider myself to be a part of the world that I consider to be real, but not in a way that's fundamentally different from a cloud of stardust or a grain of sand. I don't claim to know that us humans aren't special, but I see nothing that makes me believe we are, or that life in general is, other than that it's a profound example of the principle of emergence. I haven't found a reason to believe that there's more than the physical world that we experience through our senses. So, for now, I don't believe that there's anything outside the material world.
I could go further, but since I'd like this thread to mostly be about things outside of my own materialist perspective, I'm not going to ramble on for now. So, now that that's out of the way:
What do you believe, and why?
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I'm not real I'm a robot
User was warned for this post
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I think relgion is doing more bad than good right now and i don't want to have anything to do with it.
I am a christian and i went to church as a kid, but i never hat a strong believe and i don't think that i need a higher power to live my life. For me it could just as well be the flying spagetti monster.
The world is a result of effects that can be explained with scientific methods. We are not able to explain every detail yet, but with time we will learn more about it.
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I see this turning into a huge flame war or debate.
I personally am agnostic. I don't follow a organized religion though.
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I just take what works and move on. I am part-Buddhist, which means I don't abstain from meat (I eat a balanced diet), but I do good to others and believe in cause and effect. Karma is the fancy-religious word for cause and effect really.
Do unto others what you want others do unto you. Simple.
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@IPS.ZeRo
If you say think religion is doing bad, do you think that that in itself is evidence that it's not true?
@ThePieRate
I'm really hoping this doesn't turn into a flame war.
You say you're an agnostic. To the best of my knowledge, that means that you reject the notion of absolute certainty about knowledge (as do I). The word 'though' in your last sentence, suggests to me that you expect me to think an agnostic would follow an organized religion. I don't see why I would think that, so I suspect that I misinterpreted your post. Could you please clarify what you mean when you say you're an agnostic (or otherwise explain what part of your post I misinterpreted)?
@Setev
Since you call yourself a part-Buddhist, I'm curious what beliefs you hold that are specific to Buddhism. I too believe that my actions affect reality, and thereby the reality of other creatures. I don't think this makes me a Buddhist, or part-Buddhist.
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I believe that everyone is entitled to their beliefs. I actually don't care if there is any god/almighty-force or not. A lot of things we experienced can be explained by physics and everything else either can be explained some time in the future or it can't, either way it doesn't make a difference.
We shouldn't live our lifes to fulfill the wishes of something unknown that might or might not exist, but instead in the best interest of everyone else we know and care about.
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Rather not be respectful to superstition... that just gives it credibility.
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I believe in God for metaphysical reasons, which by nature are hard to put into words. Forgive me if this ends up being incoherent:
Basically, when I think about the Universe as a whole, and imagine what it ought to be, it doesn't make sense to me that it should be so particular. Why one thing and not another? Why here a planet, there a law of gravity, and not something else? What is so special about our particular Universe that it beat out all of the infinite potential Universes that don't actually exist? There's a lack of symmetry there.
The most appealing Universe to my mind would be the "zero Universe"--that is, nothing exists. Nothing is the common multiple of everything: if nothing existed, symmetry would be preserved. I couldn't ask, "Why is there nothing and not this?"
Unfortunately, cogito ergo sum, as Descartes says, so, strange as it is, something has to exist. The next best possibility for me is that Everything exists: God is everything in potential; if he then decided to create the universe that we inhabit--well, I still don't fully grasp it, but at least the scale of the question seems to have been reduced.
(I hope that that didn't sound like pure metaphysical babble. Read it with sympathy, if you would: I'm not trying to convert anyone; only to put my vaguely expressed ideas on the subject into words.)
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@Morfildur: How can you not care if there's a god? If the god of the fundamentalist christians actually exists, that means that you're going to be tortured for eternity. Do you not care about that?
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This should really be moved to blogs.
On December 21 2010 23:34 WilbertK wrote:
This consistency leads me to the belief that those things are real. That is, that they exist apart from me. I'm not positively sure about that. I'm not saying it's impossible that I'm making the world up as I experience it, but I feel like that would not adequately explain the consistency of the world. So, therefore I believe that I'm not making up the world. I believe it's real. I believe that you are real.
With regard to the bold, the fact that it's so consistent should be a more than adequate reason to believe your'e making it up. Read The Black Swan by Taleb.
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@qrs: I don't see how you get to your conclusion. Could you not just as easily conclude that there must be an infinite amount of different universes out there?
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On December 21 2010 23:57 bonifaceviii wrote:
With regard to the bold, the fact that it's so consistent should be a more than adequate reason to believe your'e making it up. Read The Black Swan by Taleb.
I'm really sorry, but I'm not able to read every book that's suggested to me.
From my personal experience, every time I imagine something, there's inconsistencies in it. I know that your brain tries to polish those away, but if I'm going to dig deeper and deeper into one of my fantasies, I always end up contradicting myself. Reality, however, doesn't contradict itself. Am I missing your point?
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I used to believe in god when i was a kid (suspicion is pretty much non-existent in childhood, imo).
And then i grew out of it as i got older, as it should be.
So i stopped believing in god like i stopped believing in santa claus.
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On December 21 2010 23:57 WilbertK wrote:
@Morfildur: How can you not care if there's a god? If the god of the fundamentalist christians actually exists, that means that you're going to be tortured for eternity. Do you not care about that?
Well, if I may add my own input to this, I'd say that it is because he hasn't been presented with adequate, or any proof for that matter, of the existence of such an entity. He can't care about an entity that he doesn't believe exists.
To put this into context, I can't, or maybe won't, care about UFO sightings. However, I might be wrong, but, there is no convincing proof of such an object exists, which results in me not caring about the implications.
(Surely the corn fields symbols could be a proof but it has been revealed, in lots of cases, with reproducible results, that these are fake in the sense that these were intentionally made by humans.)
My two cents.
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For me it's not about how WORLD began 
It's about conscience. How you behave, how you view things and respond.
I believe in universal laws, bible is the book which describes them beautifully.
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I am a nonbeliever for personal reasons based on family history filled with devout christians.
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On December 21 2010 23:50 Morfildur wrote:
I believe that everyone is entitled to their beliefs. I actually don't care if there is any god/almighty-force or not. A lot of things we experienced can be explained by physics and everything else either can be explained some time in the future or it can't, either way it doesn't make a difference.
We shouldn't live our lifes to fulfill the wishes of something unknown that might or might not exist, but instead in the best interest of everyone else we know and care about.
I heard somewhere that this guy is a smart man.
There are a ton of atheists on TL. I'll speak for myself. I'm an empirical man. I respect everyone's beliefs as long as they don't push/force theirs on me.
I'm a religious man in the sense that I have created my own moral/ethical code to follow, which I believe will lead to a healthy and fulfilling life.
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EPT
