The Blasphemy Challenge

One is a devotion, one is an obsession.

Nope. Learning requires a teacher, and the teacher had to get the thought from somewhere. If we start out without god-sense, as a lower life form, we have nothing to teach.

Sure, there is no secret code to seeing beauty. I only remember so vividly a time when I thought that beauty was all there was. It was so much, and so little.

Doesn't explain where it comes from though, does it?Unless, of course, the teacher is God.

Oh, I don't care who the teacher is, I want to know where he got his 'god-sense'.So, now you want to say there is no god-sense, but a made-up story to fool the gullible. If this is your belief, then you do indeed have no religion, nothing beyond the natural to explain your existance, nothing but science to appease your searching mind. I can't imagine limiting my mind so much, when it has been given to me with so much capacity for something more. I can find fault in your words even if I look into myself. There is no gullibility, not even for you.

Yeah, by a few people. There is also the possibility that patterns do exist in things which can not be tested, and that shamans are the only ones who CAN see them. Science, remember, can only test what it can understand. The important thing is that humans have the ability to recognize and miss patterns. Any correlation between religious tendencies and people who don't miss patterns, or vice versa?Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

Nuh, uh. God has a long white beard and He is pretty fit for His age.Unfortunately, my imagination doesn't come with any guarantees, and most likely won't get me anywhere near to anything which mught be true about God. May as well put my apples in a basket while I go climbing in the orchard. If I come down with more apples, good. If not, at least I have what I have.

Interesting stuff, Doddy.Now, your graph says that believers and non-believers both use the left side of the brain equally.Believers, here, have used the right side in a different way. Would it be correct to infer that they use the right side of the brain MORE? Please correct me if not. How do we know which side is being used without the test? Is that based on which hand we prefer? And can we noramlly choose to an extent which to work with?If so, can this be taught? And what are some other areas where the right side of the brain is utilized more often than the left? Too many questions, yes.

Of course not. All of us are welcome to observe and study phenomena, whether we believe God created it or not. No, it is limiting to study only those things which we can observe. Religion is not science, remember? It does not study what is observed, or proven, but what might be. It is not limiting unless the believer himself limits it. Yes, you could say this. In the dark ages, imagination was great. You must remember, the enlightenment and the rennaissance were not the first instances of critical thinking in men. They were just a more wide spread acknowledgement of its value.

We all need to dictate less to our imagination, and we all need to dictate more if our imagination takes us beyond the scope of sanity. In the end, the issues of death and beyond death, are beyond our ability to do anything BUT imagine, so in that sense, one belief is as good as another. The only thing we have left is imagining other possibilities, which it seems we are very good at given the multitude of new religions which form. It is nice to study all of these ideas, but nothing to gain except finding a system which matches your own imagination.

I am not going to discuss this any further. The whole issue of 'art' is something personal in the road to my own understanding of God. It is beyond the topic or the scope of this thread, and I regret even bringing it here to be de-moralized. No, I am not. It was a late-night semi-serious discussion between Ringo and myself that I do not expect to have any meaning outside of that which is already posted. I use no such word as 'god-sense' in normal vocabulary.

So all participants utilized both parts of the brain equally? Yet there is a difference in 'how' they used them? I do not quite understand the 'calibration' thing. Without a question of dominance, how do you account for the different results? I understand this. I guess I am curious if there are other types of people who seem to have the same results in detecting abstract patterns as do relgious people. Actually I can research it a bit myself, it is one of those things where I want to know more about it and it is hard to narrow down my questions.

Nah, you have forgotten already this; we need to dictate more if our imagination takes us beyond the scope of sanity. It is not belief in religion alone that can drive men to insanity; there is lust, money, ambition, and power, to name a few.

And non-believers are lacking this 'enhancement'?

Why do you keep making science and relgion competitors? It is so unneccesary when you could just accept the fact that they deal with different areas. You seem to be having difficulty understanding. I said; It is limiting to dictate your imagination so much that it can not concieve of anything beyond the natural, not 'instead of' the natural.