People - I /was/ a Christian

There's no contradiction. To be a real Christian is to have deluded oneself into belief in God - as opposed to a fake Christian, who proclaims a belief in God he does not feel to fit in with his peers. (I was one of those too, for a while, near the end.)There's no such thing as a real Christian in real communion with God, because there's no such thing as God. The writers of the Bible weren't stupid. Naturally, they included verses you could use to mentally inoculate yourself from the testimony of ex-believers.

how could anyone be a "real christian" is if christ and/or god do not exist?Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

i said nothing of the sort. i said that a lack of positive evidence prevents a positive conclusion. only because spaghetti has a known date of origin in two disparate locations and there is no witness of his noodly greatness otherwise from that period of time. existence is defined by perception. an entire population of blind creatures has no reason to believe in light or color. to them, they have every reason to believe that light and color are delusions. and i have little to no reason to believe that anything actually exists. my perceptions aren't very convincing. i didn't say that. i said that you have claimed in this thread that faith and belief are delusions and those who hold them are delusional. that's a serious accusation and a personal attack, not a criticism of a religion. i never said that. you're difficult and frustrating, but an asshole? no more than anyone else here. except omni. he's amazing <3 i've tried very hard to avoid those particular sentiments in my posts and instead discuss that the way that you describe people should be amended. i guess at least i'm consistent in my use of crutches. i should break my legs and get a trifecta!

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i'm not going to capitalize my posts, get better eyes.

But it doesn't prevent a strong conclusion. It doesn't prevent a confident conclusion. It only prevents an absolute conclusion, which I'm hardly asserting. Nonsense. If the color-blind wanted to honestly test if color-perception was actually possible, they might assemble a series of objects, and then, individually, ask color-sighted persons to identify the color.If everybody who claimed to see color saw the same colors, that would be evidence that color-perception was actually an existing sense that some people had.On the other hand, with 30,000 different sects of Christianity alone, it's abundantly obvious that everybody who claims to "experience God" experiences something completely different. Some people who pray for God's guidance conclude that homosexuals should not be tolerated. Some conclude that God has no opinion. Some conclude that God expects tolerance of all human beings.Oddly enough, when people pray to God to guide their attitudes on any subject, they invariably find that God agrees with whatever attitude they already had. Invariably, everybody who hears God speak hears a different voice. That's indicative of delusion, not of a shared objective reality that I'm just not capable of seeing. Just the first part. I've never said the second. And it's a violation of forum guidelines to accuse me of statements I haven't made. Belief in God is a delusion, by definition. Like belief that one is Napoleon Buonaparte when one is not.Does that mean that the religious are delusional? No, I don't think it does. I think that this is a delusion that normal human beings are susceptible to. It's hardly likely that we evolved to be completely resistant to any sort of irrational thinking.I don't think any less of the religious because I think less of religion. Indeed, I try to follow the only Christian principle I ever particularly liked - "hate the sin, love the sinner." Someone's religion doesn't obviate all the other positive characteristics that they may have. Oh, right Brenna, I forgot. You're the very soul of temperance and patience. I wasn't going to bring it up but come the fuck on - you have to realize how ridiculous it is for you of all people to complain about the contempt that I sometimes show. Is there anybody at all, besides Arach, at this board who you're not dripping with contempt for? You'd never know it from your posts.

so you want, basically, to spread what you feel is the truth? i think it's a little hard to claim objectively that there is no god. that's another thread, anyways. certainly, it's a lot harder than an anatomy lesson. your analogy applies very well to creationists in the geosciences... but not so much to philosophical questions. likelihoods are bad arguments. creationists make the same kinds of arguments about beneficial mutations. "unlikely," "doesn't," and "impossible" are all very different statements. that's just what brenna said to me earlier this afternoon.

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as you might know, i take a lot of art classes. i hear some fun stories from time to time from the professors about previous color-blind students.for instance, my color theory prof told us about two color blind people who made it through the color-mixing portion of the class and did better than the people who could see a "full" range of color. a photo teach told me a similar story, about someone who could name all the color compositions of a particular color that she couldn't even see.how, exactly, does the color blind person know that others aren't doing exactly the same thing they are, and that the color objectively exists? (ishihara tests maybe? i'm not sure what these people score on those...) what does red look like to me? what does red look like to you? are they the same thing?if we want to be fairly objective about this, we can compare something like camera sensors and not our own eyes. i shoot with a nikon dslr nowadays, and it happens to see red really poorly. it has a tendency to shift them to orange and blow them. compared to a canon, the two see color differently. which one's the objective? neither look exactly like the way my eye sees, and both have the same sensor construction.and fact is that everybody who sees color does NOT see the same colors. people have massively varying ranges of color vision. even the same person will see one color two different ways depending on the time of day and lighting conditions. or even just surrounding colors. i actually had a problem in my color theory class, because i couldn't see a color illusion i was supposed to duplicate. when you make a huge swath of a color, and then put a neutral gray square in it, it's supposed to appear slightly tinted with the compliment of the color of the surrounding, even if it's pure neutral gray. i don't see it, and i'm the only person the professor has ever taught that didn't. where everyone say a slightly blue square in the orange, i saw only gray.curiously, i knew i was right, because i knew how i mixed my paint. that square was absolutely neutral gray, just like i saw it. everyone else was "deluded."

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Arguments that convince myself do me no good if I keep them to myself. It's only in pitting them against others that their weaknesses, if any, are revealed. I talk about atheism because I want to hear the responses, because I'm under the impression that the existence of God and the validity of religion is an issue that's important.Sometimes it takes me a while to realize I've been convinced. You may yet convince me in the Sodom thread. I'm still thinking about everything you've said - even the stuff you think I haven't read. You convinced me, all those years ago, in the "Gender of Objects" thread, if not completely; it took me a long time to absorb what you had said, and it inculcated an interest in feminist thought that persists to this day. And a wider understanding of the phenomenon of gender.Of course, doubtless you'll simply interpret these remarks as me being an asshole, yet again. It's beyond possibility, I suspect, that I can ever convince you of anything but the most devious and degenerate intent on my part. I don't think the existence of God is a philosophical question. I think it's every bit as practical a question as any in the geosciences. If an interventionist God exists, that has practical consequences in reality that we can look for - and, suspiciously, have never found. So, what you're saying is, if I had tits, this thread would be 50 messages shorter? (That's a joke.)

So, what you're saying is - you were in a situation where everybody perceived something you knew was illusionary......and you think that undermines my position? Would it have been as invalid for you to insist that the square really was gray and that everyone else was mistaken... or deluded... as you now insist it is for me?Why the double standard? If you can be so sure that everyone else is mistaken, is suffering from an illusion, why can't I?

i'm sorry, did you assume i was arguing against you? well, i suppose "deluded" was the wrong word. everyone else also knew the square was gray, because we all went through the same process. the idea was to demonstrate the illusion so we could learn to either use or avoid it in paintings.but i don't happen to see that illusion, which makes me highly abnormal. well, this is more about different levels of perception. how do i really know that everyone else saw a blue square, when all i saw was gray? is the objective truth really that it's gray, or does the fact that everyone, everywhere, all the time (except me) sees blue make it blue? what is color, anyways? is it the composition of the pigments? is it the reflection of light? is it the electrical reaction in our eyes? or the processing in our brains?you may argue that it was quite objectively gray. it may well be. but the lesson here was actually that if everyone sees it as slightly blue, you have to compensate for that fact. it doesn't matter that it *IS* gray, all that matters is how people see it.another interesting example of perceptual differences can be had with sound. i happen to have an almost super-human hearing range. i can hear the electromagnetic fields created by things like televisions and computers, and even our air conditioning system. i worked in a department store's portrait studio for a while, and they had a store radio system. whenever they played music, there was this awful screeching noise. it would cut out when they came over the speakers for announcements and such. i was the only one in the store that could hear it, but it started to get so loud i would come home with migraines.i talked to the store manager, and she treated me like i was insane. no one else had ever complained, she said. the one time a customer could hear, i got him to complain -- manager yelled at me, like i somehow made someone else crazy too. i couldn't be crazy, i knew a few other people that could hear it too (brenna could, some of my family could). but everyone there thought i was positively nuts until it got so loud they could hear it too.what's the objective truth there? there was a noise, but it wasn't until a lot of people heard it that that fact mattered. and truth be told, there are lots of other noises that even i can't hear. they're there too.

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this little light of mine,
i'm gonna let it shine...

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well, frankly, if you argue that way simply to gather debate (isn't that "baiting?") don't get too offended when you get debate. fair enough. i'm quite stubborn myself. i think we'll both fight just for the sake of the fight, but the learning takes a while to set in. i do think the sodom thing is worthy of discussion -- i'm fairly convinced on that matter for a number of reasons, most of which you haven't touched on in that thread. i see you are revisitting it. no, quite the contrary. and i'm not saying that to be contrarian yet again. i'm glad we're being reasonable. no, not at all. i'm sure there are a few fields that you are far more versed in than myself, and i am not beyond hope of being taught something. i don't recall any particular instance off the top of my head where you have convinced me of anything, but it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility that you have before or will again. err, yes, but notice the qualifier: "interventionist." what if god does not intervene in any appreciable way? lol, no i'm saying that you're both jerks.

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that sure sounds like an absolute conclusion. they've no way to know they aren't making it up. not completely different. also, their moral codes can be explained by their cultural affiliations better than by their religious affiliations. ok, perhaps not delusional, but actively deluding themselves, which sounds the same to me. [qs]Belief in God is a delusion, by definition.[/s]assuming god isn't real, which you haven't proven. i said i was trying to avoid that vibe in this particular exchange. i'm not dripping with anything. in certain occasions, i get very irritated at specific individuals, much like you. and, i refuse to be squishy and nice to people who are assholes. but aside from those particular exchanges in question, i've no concern for any of it. i happen to be a very disaffected and detached person, especially on the internet. what i am is blunt. what you see is grating and anti-social. i'm not scowling, i'm just not smiling. deal with it.and i suppose this means this conversation is now over because of course we're no longer discussing your christian experience, but rather my personal "flaws". isn't that convenient.Edited by brennakimi, : No reason given.

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i'm not going to capitalize my posts, get better eyes.

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Probably because I've never seen Buz condemn all Muslims. I've seen him criticize those who are hypocritical and I've seen him speak out against Islam over its religious veracity-- all of which I do too.

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When he characterizes Islam as a violent religion because of the violent behavior of a few of Islam's followers, he most certainly is condemning all Muslims.He is doing exactly what you called "flawed reasoning" and "wrong".

Yeah, I did. From context, it seemed like you were presenting an example in rebuttal.Was I mistaken? Never mind, if so. I get that too. My TV has a failing flyback transformer, and the coil oscillation noise is mind-shattering, sometimes - but my wife can barely hear it, and neither my parents nor hers hear it at all. (Deafness runs in her family to some degree. No one's ever lived long enough in mine for us to know.)An interesting aside, but again, in each case there exist tools that would have allowed you to demonstrate, without a doubt, that it wasn't just a matter of perception of subjective reality - that there was actually an objective reality that you were accurately perceiving and others were not. A simple spectrum analyzer would have shown a loud sound up around the 20 kHz range in your department store. A spectrometer would have shown the precise frequency of reflected light reflecting off your grey square.The fact that humans differ in perceptive ability doesn't impeach the fact that there is an objective reality out there that it's possible to be wrong about. The fact that blind people exist doesn't mean that there's no such thing as light. On the flip side of the coin, the fact that people experience cotton-candy clouds and rivers of lemonade in their dreams doesn't mean that the Big Rock Candy Mountain is an actual place.Your examples are interesting, but they don't impeach the conclusions I've already arrived at. We're not talking about detecting sounds at the extreme range of human hearing. We're talking about the existence of an infinitely creative and benevolent force who, if it existed, would profoundly change the face of the universe.(That's not so much a refutation of your point as it is an attempt to draw all this back onto topic.)

I clearly have a lot less interest in the eternal struggle than you. I'm all for debate but when parties are at loggerheads, I'd like it to come to an end before the really nasty attacks start happening. You know? Then who gives a shit about him? We might as well all just be atheists if we're saddled with a do-nothing God. What's the difference?

just providing more accurate and detailed information in the hopes of furthering discussion. it was closer to 30 -- i tried matching it to "you shouldn't be able to hear these" tones, to determine just how far out of normal hearing range it was. my best guess (from memory, now) was about 27 kHz (which yes, i can hear). well, yes. i'm not arguing that objectivity does not exist. it does. it has to. i'm just arguing that experience and perception are quite subjective.in the color example, i subjectively did not experience something everyone else did. objectively, what they saw was and illusion. in th sound example, i heard a sound that everyone else could not. objectively, the sound was there, but the people who could not hear it thought i was delusional. with the color, we can objectively test it with a densitometer* and with the sound, something like your spectrum analyzer. but what precisely is the objective test for god?the subjective "i've seen no evidence" isn't really good enough. it wasn't good enough for the sound no one heard -- it was there, but nobody could hear it. * actually, since i talked about cameras above, it's worth noting that densitometers have to be calibrated and such. what's to say they're really objective?well, how exactly would it profoundly change the face of the universe? you might argue that by ockham's razor, a god that doesn't is irrelevent -- and you'd be right. but ockham's razor doesn't say the small variables eliminated for the sake of simplicity don't exist. you might not need lorentz contractions when calculated the speed of your highway travel on the way to work, but it still has an effect.

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