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Author Topic:   Opinions and conclusions about Religion and God.
PurpleYouko
Member
Posts: 714
From: Columbia Missouri
Joined: 11-11-2004


Message 76 of 280 (321458)
06-14-2006 12:43 PM
Reply to: Message 73 by jar
06-14-2006 12:31 PM


Re: Not a Problem.
It really is a win-win situation.
Yup. that's pretty much the way I see it too.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 73 by jar, posted 06-14-2006 12:31 PM jar has not replied

  
PurpleYouko
Member
Posts: 714
From: Columbia Missouri
Joined: 11-11-2004


Message 77 of 280 (321459)
06-14-2006 12:55 PM
Reply to: Message 74 by iano
06-14-2006 12:40 PM


Re: Not a Problem.
If 'I' am right then you don't have to wait until the day you die to find out. Like you could find out right more or less right now if you were ready too. But I don't know if you are. Only you know that.
Only problem is that the God you portay seems to be pure evil as far as I can see.
One of the following is most likely true.
Either
  1. You have been badly decieved and are now unknowingly working for the wrong team
  2. You are knowingly working for the wrong team.
  3. You are working for the right team but suck at explaining what is going on in a way that makes sense to anybody else (me especially)
  4. You are working for the right team and don't really understand anything much at all yet try to explain it anyway.
  5. Everything you say is right in which case God really is a nasty bastard and maybe the other team would actually be a preferable choice to any decent person.
  6. God doesn't exist at all and you are delusional
No I don't think I'm ready to find out the answer to this question for sure. I think options 4 or 6 would be my preferences. The evidence (or lack thereof) as I see it leads me towards option 6

This message is a reply to:
 Message 74 by iano, posted 06-14-2006 12:40 PM iano has replied

Replies to this message:
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iano
Member (Idle past 1941 days)
Posts: 6165
From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
Joined: 07-27-2005


Message 78 of 280 (321465)
06-14-2006 1:17 PM
Reply to: Message 77 by PurpleYouko
06-14-2006 12:55 PM


Re: Not a Problem.
They are all logical points. Here is another one for your consideration
7. I am working for the right team and irrespective of whether I explain it well or not, you are not able to see it. (1 Cor 2:14)
If you are not able to see it then you wouldn't have any evidential reason to pick logical reason number 7. Which doesn't change its chances of being the right reason.
A person can explain red to a blind man til they are...er.. blue in the face but unless someone removes the blindfold then they will never see it by explanation.
No one was ever explained into salvation. That is not the reason for explaining it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 77 by PurpleYouko, posted 06-14-2006 12:55 PM PurpleYouko has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 80 by PurpleYouko, posted 06-14-2006 1:40 PM iano has replied
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iano
Member (Idle past 1941 days)
Posts: 6165
From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
Joined: 07-27-2005


Message 79 of 280 (321470)
06-14-2006 1:37 PM
Reply to: Message 77 by PurpleYouko
06-14-2006 12:55 PM


Die Before You Try Theology
No I don't think I'm ready to find out the answer to this question for sure.
No sweat. It took me 38 years and my mother 55. Just don't take the die-first-find-out-later Gospels (like the one Jar is peddling) too seriously I'll die a happier man.
Later PY
Edited by iano, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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PurpleYouko
Member
Posts: 714
From: Columbia Missouri
Joined: 11-11-2004


Message 80 of 280 (321471)
06-14-2006 1:40 PM
Reply to: Message 78 by iano
06-14-2006 1:17 PM


Re: Not a Problem.
Yes I suppose your #7 is also valid but it again raises the issue of free will.
If I am physically unable to understand how to recognize God then I really have no choice whatsoever.
He has to first change me so that I can see him before I am able to make any choice at all.
Take your blind man analogy. Is it fair and just to tell him that if he cannot see "RED" for what it is then he will be punished for all eternity. It is obvious to anybody that he can't see it and never will until his blindness is cured. If the cure is freely available yet it is denied then the blind man has zero choice in whether he sees "RED" or not.
If the cure is given so that the man can see "RED" then he has the choice to see it or not. At that point, a refusal to do so can legitimitely be held against him.
If your point 7 is the correct option then I am that blind man. It is unfair to judge me for not seeing what I am incapable of seeing due to the way I was made. To be judged fairly I need to able to see it, do I not?
the passage 1Cor 2:14
1 Cor 2:14 writes:
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Appears to condemn the "natural man" for nothing other than his naturalness. The passage appears to be just another excuse to explain away the reason that this "natural man" thinks that the aleged "spirit of God" is about as real as the tooth fairy.
So let's assume that your option 7 is correct and that I am (quite obviously) one of the "natural" people mentioned.
Do I still get a chance? or is it forever denied me through the accident of being born this way?
Will I still be judged fairly? or will my in built blindness condemn me to hell regardless.
Corinthians seems to be silent on the subject.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 78 by iano, posted 06-14-2006 1:17 PM iano has replied

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PurpleYouko
Member
Posts: 714
From: Columbia Missouri
Joined: 11-11-2004


Message 81 of 280 (321473)
06-14-2006 1:41 PM
Reply to: Message 79 by iano
06-14-2006 1:37 PM


Re: Die Before You Try Theology
No sweat. It took me 38 years and my mother 55. Just don't take the die-first-find-out-later Gospels (like the one Jar is peddling) too seriously I'll die a happier man.
But what if he is right?

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Sour
Member (Idle past 2248 days)
Posts: 63
From: I don't know but when I find out there will be trouble. (Portsmouth UK)
Joined: 07-27-2005


Message 82 of 280 (321475)
06-14-2006 2:07 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Phat
06-12-2006 11:14 AM


This is a nice exercise.
I grew up nominally CoE, because the local school my parents sent me to required it. My Mother was a Sunday school teacher, but I know she never took the teachings as Gospel. I attended church as was required until I was about seven, and don't recall thinking much more than that the stories were interesting, but just stories and fables. I was never confirmed, it seemed like a pretty staid club.
I think organised religion is a con. Most formal religions seem to be based on the understandings of bronze age farmers who were just starting to have enough free-time to seriously wonder about Why. I think that previous to this most nomadic peoples had enough on their hands trying to survive, and every day was pretty much like the day before. It strikes me that early man would have had a lot of questions and no real way to answer them. Cooperation and common purpose would have been key for early tribes, and answers which seem valid would have carried a lot of weight for unifying purpose. I think as religions became more formalised the reasons where mostly power based, whether consciously or not. I do not doubt many genuine believers thought they were truly doing Gods will when acting horribly to their fellows, but those country and empire builders spurring them on were far more pragmatic about their goals. Modern organised religion is the opiate for the masses, and it is effective. I do not think most life-long followers of organised religion ever challenge their own beliefs. I have thought them to be not fully human; to paraphrase Einstein, just a spinal column would have been sufficient.
People want to know why. As has been said many times, religion provides an answer. Given the ultimate impenetrability of the question, it is good enough for those who can't or aren't willing to accept that there simply might not be an answer.
Personal spirituality is slightly different. For those who see the problem of determining which religion is correct, a comfortable ground is to make something up which is acceptable. If this helps people to live lives that they find fulfilling then it's not so bad. I'm not sure how most personal views differ from a belief in ghosts or water divining, but as a method to avoid existential angst it's healthier than many others.
At the risk of being pariahed as a fruitcake I will say that psychedelics had a strong influence on my current views. While on holiday during a university(CompSci) break I had a full-on flashback; physical collapse, hr below 20, convulsions, cold damp feet (if that means anything to anyone here) - the works. I think this was essentially an NDE, and the experience was similar to what I have read about them. The actual flashback lasted only 10 minutes, but was without a doubt the strongest most surreal experience of my life. God spoke to me. Literally. There were angels (of the traditional Christian type), singing, and a direct message/commandment from God - it was "Stop". As well as these religious themes, I heard a permanent tone that decidedly out-of-context, and the delicious paranoia (in retrospect) of being a constructed device that my Father (who was understandably panicking) wanted to reset with a secret reset button. I did document the entire experience over the next couple of days, and while the details have faded, the depth of the experience has not. Now after I'd managed to assimilate this experience I was left with the knowledge that God had spoken to me.
This was at the time that Drosnan was about to release the Bible Codes book, and the concept of a multidimensional manual was very appealing. I bought it (not the book, the idea). After a couple of zealous months (I downloaded Elijah Rips Torah examination program) I started to realise all was not as it appeared. I was still in the process of reading Leary and McKenna and talking to many people about my experience. When it became clear that bible codes are simply a statistical certainty in any wide enough text, together with further reading about psychedelia I understood that my experiences might be internally generated. One of the clinchers was that the human brain produces its own hallucinogens during traumatic experiences. I cannot recall my source for this, or if in fact the body produces tryptamines or another chemical. Maybe someone can help or refute this belief. What I experienced was internally generated.
I was always very curious about life and always wanted to know Why. I feel a strong sense of existence and know very little if anything can be _known_ at all. The psychedelic experience was fascinating to me, my first trip is still a seminal moment in my life. The initial rebirth into a the universe that is the same yet different still makes me tingle. The fact that perception is altered so much by a chemical strikes me as a clue that perception itself is internal. What we experience is _only_ a representation of the objective. I don't subscribe to McKenna's 'mushroom as pan-dimensional sentience', but there is certainly a lot to be learnt by cracking open the doors to perception.
I went through a phase of meditation and astral-projection, meditation remains useful, projection is of course internally generated. I read Castaneda without knowing it was mostly fraudulent, and bought much of it. By the time I left university I had a personal spirituality heavily influenced by Rudolf Steiner, tribal myth and gnostic ramblings.
Over the next couple of years reading pop-sci I left my wishwash behind and accepted that the universe might simply have no purpose that we can fathom. My uni thesis was a model of natural selection and reading Dawkins was fascinating. Watching and reading work by sceptics like Randi and Derren Brown, together with heroes like Feynman and Sagan (Demon Haunted World!) and even paying attention to Orwell's meaning behind doublethink (language as a framework for ideas and concepts) led me to drop any self-comforting supernaturalism.
Phenomena like synaesthesia, schizophrenia and body-dismorphia with counter-intuitive problems like Monty Hall convince me further that I would not necessarily trust my experience over science - in contradiction to JavaMan in his Problem with Science II thread.
Currently I am struggling with free-will, or rather the lack of it.
To summarise;
I believe I exist, and that there is an objective external reality. I do not currently have a belief in a supernatural creator or anything supernatural for that fact. While there may be a god or gods, they are not deserving of worship, and given that god is unobservable (other than by internal generation) and undetectable for all intents and purposes its existence is irrelevant (to paraphrase someone else on this forum).
So, to label myself, today I'd choose weak nihilist atheist.
Of course I could simply be a credophile who accepts whatever the last thing I read was.
p.s. Don't do drugs
p.p.s. Sorry for the length, I hope someone finds it interesting.

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Replies to this message:
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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 83 of 280 (321477)
06-14-2006 2:11 PM
Reply to: Message 79 by iano
06-14-2006 1:37 PM


Re: Die Before You Try Theology
iano writes:
It took me 38 years and my mother 55.
I was practically born where you are now. I could quote scripture long before I could read it. I was as convinced as you are by the time I was twelve (and I probably knew the Bible better then than you do now ).
But I moved on. There are lots of people around here who have been where you are and have moved on. Your biggest mistake is thinking that you "have it" and we don't. Many of us "had it" and realized that it wasn't "it" after all.
(You're a bit like the eight-year-old who looks at women's underwear in the Sears catalogue and says, "It doesn't get any better than this.")
... the die-first-find-out-later Gospels....
The Gospel is not about dying at all. It's about living. The best way to live this life is to enjoy it as much as you can and to help othera enjoy their lives as much as they can. There is much more satisfaction in that than in your empty beliefs.

Help scientific research in your spare time. No cost. No obligation.
Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 84 of 280 (321486)
06-14-2006 3:02 PM
Reply to: Message 53 by riVeRraT
06-14-2006 7:59 AM


Re: Crash's entirely predictable thoughts on the subject
The church I go is not the kind of church that tells you things.
What's the name of your church?
I ask because I suspect you're thinking that my experiences in church happened in one of those stuffy, olde-tyme-religion churches that brooks no disagreement from established dogma.
That's not the kind of church I went to. The church I went to was a church that said stuff like "we're here to challenge your beliefs", "we're not here to tell you what to believe", "don't check your brain at the door", "we don't judge people", "we're about community", "church isn't just for Sunday", etc.
None of that was true, though. Oh, sure, they did a fairly good job of making it look like they were putting all that into practice, but at the end of the day, that church:
1) was located miles outside of the town
2) was deserted except for Sundays and holiday services
3) judged people
4) told you what to believe
5) was only interested in challenging your beliefs if your beliefs differed from what the church said was right
etc. In other words, I'm very aware that there's a lot of churches that are telling people that this church isn't judgemental or dogmatic. What I'm here to tell you is that the fact that people are walking right out of these churches and onto internet discussion forums like this one to tell us evolutionists that we're wrong because the Bible says so, and that evolution is an evil belief that will send you to hell, and that gays and women who get abortions are abominations, all proves that these churches do exactly what I've been saying they do. At least the stodgy olde-tyme churches are more upfront about it, and don't try to hide it behind a facade of phony progressivism.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 53 by riVeRraT, posted 06-14-2006 7:59 AM riVeRraT has replied

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ramoss
Member (Idle past 612 days)
Posts: 3228
Joined: 08-11-2004


Message 85 of 280 (321487)
06-14-2006 3:04 PM
Reply to: Message 78 by iano
06-14-2006 1:17 PM


Re: Not a Problem.
Purple is right. The explaination does not make sense at all.
And it doesn't matter what 1 Corth. says. That is just a book written by a man, translated by man. This whole 'Spiritual discerned' nonsense is just a 'pat on the back' for people to justify themselves to themselves.
There is nothing 'spiritual' about that.

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 86 of 280 (321488)
06-14-2006 3:05 PM
Reply to: Message 82 by Sour
06-14-2006 2:07 PM


I believe I exist, and that there is an objective external reality. I do not currently have a belief in a supernatural creator or anything supernatural for that fact. While there may be a god or gods, they are not deserving of worship, and given that god is unobservable (other than by internal generation) and undetectable for all intents and purposes its existence is irrelevant (to paraphrase someone else on this forum).
My brother!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 82 by Sour, posted 06-14-2006 2:07 PM Sour has replied

Replies to this message:
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Sour
Member (Idle past 2248 days)
Posts: 63
From: I don't know but when I find out there will be trouble. (Portsmouth UK)
Joined: 07-27-2005


Message 87 of 280 (321490)
06-14-2006 3:14 PM
Reply to: Message 86 by crashfrog
06-14-2006 3:05 PM


You mean I paraphrased your brother?

This message is a reply to:
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 88 of 280 (321493)
06-14-2006 3:30 PM
Reply to: Message 87 by Sour
06-14-2006 3:14 PM


You mean I paraphrased your brother?
Lol, no. It was my intention to greet you as my brother, or maybe as my sister, or as a kindred of some kind, for you expressed a view almost entirely congruent with my own.

This message is a reply to:
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iano
Member (Idle past 1941 days)
Posts: 6165
From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
Joined: 07-27-2005


Message 89 of 280 (321496)
06-14-2006 3:38 PM
Reply to: Message 80 by PurpleYouko
06-14-2006 1:40 PM


Re: Not a Problem.
If I am physically unable to understand how to recognize God then I really have no choice whatsoever.
He has to first change me so that I can see him before I am able to make any choice at all.
Not physically unable. Spiritually unable. Technically you have a dead spirit. Born with its heart stopped. You are reliant on his action to resurrect it. He can resurrect you know. The process of that spirit being brought back to life is a series of blasts to the heart from that instrument (the name of it escapes me now) which applies a jolt to the heart.
Take your blind man analogy.If your point 7 is the correct option then I am that blind man. It is unfair to judge me for not seeing what I am incapable of seeing due to the way I was made.
I am not judging you. You cannot help your blindness. You didn't even make yourself that way. I'm just telling you are and that I once was. And I simply point to that which can restore sight. You don't have to believe me, but I have to tell you.
Appears to condemn the "natural man" for nothing other than his naturalness. The passage appears to be just another excuse to explain away the reason that this "natural man" thinks that the aleged "spirit of God" is about as real as the tooth fairy.
It could be an excuse (option whatever) or it could be the truth (option 7) It is not condemning. It is stating the actual position
So let's assume that your option 7 is correct and that I am (quite obviously) one of the "natural" people mentioned.
Everybody is born with their spirit clinically dead. Everybody but 1.
Do I still get a chance?
God want that none should perish but that all would come to repentance (repentance being a change of mind about him or turning towards him)
or is it forever denied me through the accident of being born this way?
It was no accident. It was a result of a deliberate act of sin by an ancestor of yours. God didn't make it that way it is but he is attempting to do something about it. He even went so far as allowing himself to be crucified. Its a measure of how serious this gig is.
Will I still be judged fairly? or will my in built blindness condemn me to hell regardless.
If you reject his attempt to save you from the path you are on then you will be judged fairly, be found guilty and condemned to hell. Judgment is only a declaration of the verdict. And you were born guilty. Fair judgement will take into account the level of your guilt and the level of punishment due. It sounds very harsh PY and I am sorry it is that way. Look into your heart and see the sin. You can't see it all but all you have to do is see their is enough to condemn you before a holy God. One for whom any sin is digusting - that is how clean he is.
Adultery = looking a woman lustfully. Murder = being angry (in an unright way) with another. We don't think these things are bad. But we are in the company of other sinners so of course we won't think they are bad
The blind leading the blind

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Replies to this message:
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iano
Member (Idle past 1941 days)
Posts: 6165
From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
Joined: 07-27-2005


Message 90 of 280 (321497)
06-14-2006 3:40 PM
Reply to: Message 88 by crashfrog
06-14-2006 3:30 PM


For every congruant there is an equal and opposite incongruant. See above

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