For all those who believe in Christianity or Some form of it...
POSTED BY: RiveR6213
UPDATED: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 10:10
VIEWED: 25834
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Quote:
Originally posted by RiveR6213:
Come on FutureMrsFillion! Weigh in your opinion on this topic!
-River
What, and shock the masses?
I do not believe or disbelieve in God. I believe in good and evil. Mostly I believe in evil and therefore there must also be a good. I believe that Christ existed. I believe that he was a good person and that he lived his life the way we should. The Golden rule and all that. I do NOT believe in ORGANIZED religion. As far as I am concerned ALL the problems in this world are a direct result of organized religion. I am not sure if I believe in Heaven, but I do believe in hell. I believe that we continue on after death, but in what form I don't know.
Where will I go after death? I don't know, but I am hoping (considering my karma in this life) it will be pretty good.
---- plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose
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"We don't fear the reaper"
FORSAKEN original
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Quote:
Originally posted by RiveR6213:Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:
Actually - my bigger problem with the notion of hell is that no one - and I mean NO ONE - is intrinsically evil. Even you, River. You may have all kinds of evil plans, and even do evil acts, but I'll stack that against the amount of pain you've been through in your life. There's not a God out there who'll think that putting you through more pain and torment will solve the problem that is you. Certainly, not a God who deserves the title.
NO. I think I've dealt out more pain than I originally received in the beginning, therefore I've earned my ticket to hell because most of what I've done was done with glee, and a vengeful nature. I always believe in not doing things half measure.
If the Christian God exists I shall receive my reward for my campaign against life. All I know was my ass was "Pearl-Harbored" one day and I've been fighting the war ever since. At the age of 45 I have WON my war, now when I die I guess that's when my "War Crimes" against God, Christ, and humanity will begin. I will be found guilty (no surprise there) and sentenced to hell. There will be none of the screaming for mercy and saying that "Someone else made me do it" or "I didn't know what I was doing!" There will be none of that from me. I am guilty and am proud of it. I didn't let this fucking planet knock me down and that was worth every ounce of revenge, so I will get tossed into the lake of fire or whatever passes for hell. I guess God will be taking out the trash.
-River
Ah, but if Jesus died for everyone's sins, that includes you.
---- plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose
Bestower of Titles, Designer of Tshirts, Maker of Mottos, Keeper of the Pyre, Owner of a too big Turnippy smelling coat with MR scratched in the neck (thanks FollowMal!)
I am on The List. We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"
FORSAKEN original
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Constance, as a Christian, I am not to Judge or condemn another human being, nor to say whether or not a person is going to hell, but I am simply to tell you the truth as I understand it according to my faith in Christ...
what I write is with the utmost respect and sincerity.
About your post: if an apology is sincere and born out of love, then it means very much, but if there is no God, hence no life after physical death, and no Supreme rule of conduct on how we are to treat each other and live our lives with the corresponding consequences if we break these rules, what does it matter if you apologize or not as an Atheist? Is it to simply mend bridges and keep things flowing smoothly?
The very act of apology is to seek recompense...a desire to correct an error made by one's self. If there is no ultimate lawgiver, no divine God who enforces a set rule of behavior and the consequences for breaking those laws, then the only other authority to deal with is human, and human authority is all too easily defeated by rule breakers on every level from lying to murder to genocide. Without God, there will be no justice every single time a criminal escapes human law enforcement, is not witnessed committing a crime, or is not caught red handed. The same goes for breakers of every rule and every code of conduct from calling names to gossiping behind someone's back that would require an apology to be given in the first place. The if nobody sees it, then it didn't happen mentality will prevail, along with the shades of criminality as with illegal music downloads or speeding in a car...if no one sees you do you stop? Or if you catch yourself speeding do you go apologize to a police officer for breaking the law?
If you wrong a specific individual and your conscience gets the better of you and you feel bad and are prompted or compelled by it to apologize, what is the true motivation for an Atheist in offering an apology if not because it is inherently the right thing to do? (Mind you, an inherent right implies that there is an Ultimate right and wrong) If it's because you don't want to feel bad, it's selfish. If it's because you want another person to feel better towards you, it's selfish. If it is for any reason other than the fact that it is the right thing to do, it is selfish. My point is that if there is no God, then everything we do is based on how it makes us feel, not for any love of doing right for the sake of right...if it was for the love of doing right for the simple sake of doing right, then you would apologize to every single person who you have ever wronged in any way shape or form, whether they know about it or not, and more importantly, whether you know them or even like them at all.
Yes, there is a reason for everything we choose to do, no matter what it may be. Atheist reasoning for doing good not surprisingly is based on the golden rule when it comes to treating others they way you want to be treated, but the motivation must certainly be different by definition. If you hurt people who will ultimately hurt you back it is very dangerous to be an Atheist with no life expectancy beyond the physical, and with every part of their being wrapped up in the human body, they cling to it very tenaciously because once lost it's lost forever...or so they believe. The reasoning for doing good for an Atheist is wrapped around either an arrogance that they are the ultimate intelligence of creation (which is the case if there is no God) and thereby must act the part, or simply the fear of experiencing or causing oblivion in someone else if you cross the wrong person, or choose the wrong reaction to any given situation...it is in any case a fear bound to the human body and anything that can affect the body, whereas Christians fear God, and rightly so, but that fear is born out of love, a fear of disappointing a Father/a cherished loved one...not a fear of dying or penalty. Christ paid the debt for our sins, and we are under Grace as Christians, so our sins are paid for, but we must live our lives in response and respect to th
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This thread is reaching its inevitable end and I would like to thank everyone who participated in it. Normally threads like this, especially threads that involve subject matters like religions, and beliefs usually end up becoming a stupid, name calling, swirling, word and ideological, dogfights of epic proportions, where everyone is right and will fight for that right to the bitter end session, but this thread was conducted in a very thoughtful manner, and all who participated had not only good points of view, but stated WHY they had that particular view. This is a good thing, and you are all a very thoughtful, intelligent, and enlightened people in which I am glad to be associated with. Now go back and run your little moon's
-River
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Quote:
Originally posted by FutureMrsFIllion:
I do NOT believe in ORGANIZED religion. As far as I am concerned ALL the problems in this world are a direct result of organized religion.
I don't disagree with you that people have done a lot of horrendous things in the name of religion. But all the world's problems? Maybe you were being hyperbolic--do you seriously think that every single problem everywhere in the world is attributable to religion?
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Originally posted by Causal:
1) What's the evidence?
2) The presuppositions involved in evidentiary support are beyond evidentiary support. On some level, everyone believes something that can't be proven.
#1) O boy, now I'm in trouble... By which I mean, this may take a really long reply because my own thoughts are pretty scattered about it. It's not something I've ever tried to express in words - I don't debate it often.
Hmm. Where to start. Generally speaking, I find that a society's God(s?) has a real close resemblence to the authority figures of that society. The God in the Bible is such a father figure - obviously male, and extremely human. Just - superhuman. A really smart, really powerful human. He speaks and thinks in words. He looks like a person, and has emotions like a person. Sure, he loves, but he also gets angry and jealous. He's possessive of his flock, and demands obedience. He's extremely concerned about little details of our lives that seem, (to me), to have little to do with the well being of our souls. What does matter who I have sex with and how? Isn't it most important that sex is an expressive of love and joy?
The idea that "belief" is absolutely necessary... now this would do me great harm. If I *believed*, I wouldn't be able to ask questions, and - speaking of myself only - I can only be the fullest expression of myself if I can ask questions. A Being who would tell me to just sit down and shut up and believe what he's saying just because he's saying it... that's NOT a divinity concerned with making me the best me I can be. That's a bad parent LOL!
Arrrg! I'm getting too bogged down with details and tangents... it's just that all these rules and tenets involved with religion are so tied up in the social mores of isolated groups of people. It's also reliant on the systems and time scales of a single planet, our lovely Earth. It seems (to me) that it isn't universal. These Divinities of ours never stretch further than our own understanding. Only slowly does religion expand to include the new things we learn about our universe - and that's after *we* learn them. Way after, in most cases.
Umm... as far as evidence, I'm not talking hard science here - evolution and physics and such. I'm talking more of psychology, which Cozen touched on. (with, obviously, a lot of arm-waving added on my part LOL!) The psychology of God as relates to human beings and vice versa... We need a reason for our existence, something to keep us centered and, really, to give us self-worth. God does that. Believing that we were created by something perfect makes us feel divine, and stops us from getting all tied up in hardcore existential crises. We can get on with our daily lives with a whole set of needs met, as long as we have religion to tell us we're worth something, and that being Good is a good thing.
As someone who doesn't believe in a God who's anywhere close to human form, I have to ask myself these questions: why do I exist? what difference do my choices make? how do I get satisfaction out of being one little cog in this random, messy universe? How can I go on knowing that none of this will be explained to me after I die?
Actually, trying to answer these questions, while challenging, is kind of fun. Personally, I'm glad I don't have a book telling me what to believe. I enjoy the hunt for truth. I enjoy being a bit lost, and knowing that the universe is a puzzle I'll never solve. That, to me, is true Divinity. The universe is bigger than any of our fancy sciences or religions will ever come close to capturing, and there's a lot of beauty in that. I think so. But then, I'm a little weird.
I warned you it would be long! And probably doesn't come close to answering you. But really, I'm not trying to change your mind. I understand that not many people would be happy living with my belief system. I'm just trying to explain myself.
As to your #2 - I'm kind of confused as to what you mean and how it relates. Too many big words and big thoughts for a Friday morning. :biggri
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Quote:
Originally posted by FutureMrsFIllion:
I do NOT believe in ORGANIZED religion. As far as I am concerned ALL the problems in this world are a direct result of organized religion.
Well, here it is: if it weren't organized religion, it would be organized something else: politics or corporations, which have at their heart the same evils that religion unfortunately frequently deteriorates into. It's not the organization or society; it's the corrupt membership.
Quote:
Originally posted by RiveR6213:
This thread is reaching its inevitable end and I would like to thank everyone who participated in it.
NOOOOoooooooo!
Quote:
Originally posted by RiveR6213:
Normally threads like this, especially threads that involve subject matters like religions, and beliefs usually end up becoming a stupid, name calling, swirling, word and ideological, dogfights of epic proportions, where everyone is right and will fight for that right to the bitter end session, but this thread was conducted in a very thoughtful manner, and all who participated had not only good points of view, but stated WHY they had that particular view. This is a good thing, and you are all a very thoughtful, intelligent, and enlightened people in which I am glad to be associated with. Now go back and run your little moon's
I have only scanned a smattering of this thread and will relish the time when I get around to enjoying it in full. From what little I've seen here, 6213, I believe one of two things: either your reputation is undeserved or at least exaggerated, OR you've changed your ways. Not being active in RWED often at all, even lurking, I am in no position to judge you. Perhaps, God is.
I have only two comments to make at this point. On the matter of free will versus predestination, my believe is that it is quite literally a matter of perspective, not of the "observer" or "entity", but of the very concept itself, the "event". Until an event "actually" occurs, anything is possible, with some more probable than others: there are infinite (?) options of choice available for a soul to pick from--yes, no, yes with this but not that, no except for that--and have complete freedom to do so. Not saying there's no reasons or influences making some choices more appealing and others appalling, but they are there. The instant the event occurs, it is immutable and everything--every event, every experience--leading up to it becomes inevitable, making it all totally predictable (given an omniscience to do so) and imputing predestination upon it all since no other outcome is now possible (or ever was...).
The second comment I'd like to make is that I see mathematical terms and theories and logic being volleyed back and forth and, while it is occasionally helpful in describing reality, we mustn't confuse it with reality. I do not believe there is an equation that will explain, describe, or convey us to, Heaven or Hell, if they exist which we cannot prove by any science. We like balance and symmetry and all their children. Karma, Kismet and so on. If p, then q. We like boundaries and thresholds. That's because we are finite beings. We want to understand. We want clarity. We want to be told what is right and what is wrong so we don't have deal with moral ambiguity or dilemmas. We like things black and white.
As none of the atomic models exactly reproduce the workings of an atom (in truth the only "model" which could do so is an atom itself), so there is no Hitchhiker's Guide for the games of life and death. Virgil could only lead Dante so far before Beatrice had to take over. If you had to pick a model of the atom that best descibes how it would look if you could actually see it, the electon cloud model is the closest. That is what I am offering you. It's not a formula that gets you to heaven. It's a gift. It's not an act or state that sends you to hell, it's a lack of trust.
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Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:
#1) O boy, now I'm in trouble... By which I mean, this may take a really long reply because my own thoughts are pretty scattered about it. ...
I want you to know that I respect your choices--I hope that nobody's read me as trying to force anything on anyone. But it strikes me that whereas you originally started off talking about evidence, you've wound up talking about your feelings about things. Is that what you meant when you said "evidence"?
Quote:
As to your #2 - I'm kind of confused as to what you mean and how it relates. Too many big words and big thoughts for a Friday morning.
So my original observation was this: "The presuppositions involved in evidentiary support are beyond evidentiary support. On some level, everyone believes something that can't be proven." What that means is this: everyone has a standard for what counts as evidence for or against something. I firmly believe in the Christian God, and I see the massive changes in my life over the last 6 years (as well as the changes I've observed in others) as evidence of God's grace in my life. I take that change to be valid for evidentiary support. But not everybody would agree that changed lives counstitute evidence for God (maybe even most people wouldn't). But I can't prove conclusively that there is a God or that changed lives constitutes evidentiary support for that God.
Now, many people think that they will be more secure if the restrict evidentiary support to what can be demonstrated by the physical sciences. This rests on a pair of presuppositions. In the first place, there's the presupposition of material reductionism--that is, the belief that only physical things exist. But the interesting thing about that is that it can't be proven. It may make perfect sense to some people, but that doesn't constitute proof, any more than I can prove God's existence by claiming that that makes sense. Because how could the sciences ever disprove the existence of non-physical things? The sciences by definition deal only with what is materially observable and non-material things would be by definition not materially observable. So even if there is non-physical stuff, the physical sciences will never be able to examine it.
In the second place, it's impossible to prove that some thing does not exist (unless it's impossible for the thing to exist, like a round square). This is because existence isn't a property that can be predicated of a thing (like, for instance, size or color). Existence isn't a property of a thing--rather, existence just means that there is some thing (namely, me) that has the particular cluster of properties that constitutes me. With me so far? So we can't say that God doesn't have the property of existence, because existence isn't a property that can be predicated. So any claim about God's existence will have the following form: there is no X such that X is God. Or put another way: given any X, X is not God. In more plain language, this makes the claim that no matter what thing you pick out in the entire universe, that thing is not God. Can you see the difficulty in proving that? In order to conclusively prove that, you'd have to produce and examine every X in the universe--which is, of course, an impossible task. So God's existence can't be conclusively disproven--it's impossible! Now, what does that have to do with anything? Just this: the data of the physical sciences can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God. So if one chooses to use just the data of the physical sciences one can neither conclusively prove nor disprove the existence of God.
A second problem with the notion that only the physical sciences can provide evidentiary support is this: its fundamental assertion is contradictory to its claims. Let's unpack that. The notion that only the sciences can give us meaningful truth comes from a philosophical movement known as logical positivism (LP). Acc
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Quote:
Originally posted by JonnyQuest:
The second comment I'd like to make is that I see mathematical terms and theories and logic being volleyed back and forth and, while it is occasionally helpful in describing reality, we mustn't confuse it with reality. I do not believe there is an equation that will explain, describe, or convey us to, Heaven or Hell, if they exist which we cannot prove by any science. We like balance and symmetry and all their children. Karma, Kismet and so on. If p, then q. We like boundaries and thresholds. That's because we are finite beings. We want to understand. We want clarity. We want to be told what is right and what is wrong so we don't have deal with moral ambiguity or dilemmas. We like things black and white.
But there's a difference between a thing's describing reality and a thing's being a reality. Take the law of contradiction, the foundation of logical thinking: no thing can both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. You seem to think that this is just a description of reality--a description that might be more or less flawed. But I take this to be a reality itself. That is, not only do I think that that statement is true, I think that it has to be true, I think that it's impossible for it to be false. I think that it is a necessary truth--that is, it is true in any possible world. It isn't that the law of contradiction is a convenient description of a reality we observe (this presupposes a pretty radical form of empiricism). Rather, the law of contradiction is part of the foundation of reality--true everywhere, and impossible to be false. The crucial thing is to note that the law of contradiction isn't a human invention--it would still be true even in the possible worlds where human beings don't exist. So it's not that we've just invented the law of contradiction to describe our reality--in the law of contradiction we've discovered one of the foundations of reality itself. And if that's the case--and I believe that it is--then it's possible to talk about God using logic (given that the law of of contradiction is the foundation of logical thought). I know this is the minority opinion on the board, that most people think that God is beyond "our" logic. But on my view, it's not "our logic"--it's God's logic. And in virtue of this, we can use it to talk about God.
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