[quote]rsg wrote:
Renton wrote:
The only things anyone really needs to believe in are eating, resting, and iron.
Amen sist…I mean brother![/quote]
Damn straight twa…I mean mate.
[quote]AdamC wrote:
Does anyone think love is proof of God? I mean, why do we love? What is the purpose? Is it just for survival?[/quote]
Survival, helps form social structures conductive to passing on copies of your genes [bearing in mind relatives also have copies of your genes so them surviving/being healthy/reproducing is also a plus for your genes].
I have been muslim my entire life, but for a while now I’ve been drifting farther and farther from islam, unfortunately. I am just tired with these set doctrines, these rules, do this, do that so you can go to heaven.
Do I believe in God?
I believe in a higher power, yes.
Faith, a humans ability to believe in something far greater than oneself. Without question and without the need of empirical evidence.
Religion, humans ignorance to think they can understand a higher power and their futile attempt at the indoctrination of faith.
Belief, humans most powerful tool, that which allows them the ability to achieve great things. The ability to rise above the doubt and disbelieves of those around them. The power to withstand any and all advisories contrary to their belief.
I belief in myself and my unharnessed abilities to achieve what ever I belief is possible. I have the faith that there are powers that will help me achieve that which I truly believe. I also understand that I will never have the intelligence or wisdom to understand the depth of those powers, therefore I am humbled before them. After all I am just a mortal that wishes to be a god.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
theOUTLAW wrote:
Hmm… for supposedly such an intelligent man, you felt the need to quote another man’s philosophy instead of responding using your own…(unless, of course, you have the same philosophy).
I don’t make any claim to intelligence, and I especially do not make a claim to Philosophy. I know that I know nothing.
[/quote]
The last sentence cracked me up! Good one.
God exists. God has directly spoke to me; two words: “The Spirit”
That’s all God said.
Until that moment, the night of when someone very dear to me (my soon-to-be wife) died, most of my life was a shit pit.
Its been great ever since, though I do miss her terribly.
HH, I haven’t heard that story yet, please tell it again.
-DK
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
I have ultimate, abiding faith in the one Truth of T-Nation: there is a search engine, and we should use it.[/quote]
…I lol’d.
I think as humans we surpassed aourselves as soon as we became intelegent enough to question our own exsistance.
I think we had it good as cavemen, eating sleeping and fucking, thats basically what its all about.
Look at monkey’s those guys are having a fucking great crack, slinging poo around, fucking and eating all day, and not one of them sitting there thinking to themself ‘mmm I wonder how all this came to be’
As a species we have become to intellegnet for our own good andnow we have fucked up the whole sex food and sleep party
A better question is, does God believe in you?
Renton’s answer to Gael and orion and EE are very much what I would have said.
I respect a person of faith and belief. I don’t have to agree with it, I don’t have to believe it, it is just a quality unto itself and if you can’t understand it is possible you don’t want to and you just want to nitpick.
EE I don’t know why you feel the need to argue with someone about their belief. What does it matter to you? Don’t try and blow smoke up my ass and say you were just curious. You weren’t. What you wanted was to point fingers and call a believer “brain washed”.
Just accept it might not be your belief and no one is asking you to convert.
I don’t know what I believe yet but I think about it often.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
nephorm wrote:
theOUTLAW wrote:
Hmm… for supposedly such an intelligent man, you felt the need to quote another man’s philosophy instead of responding using your own…(unless, of course, you have the same philosophy).
I don’t make any claim to intelligence, and I especially do not make a claim to Philosophy. I know that I know nothing.
The last sentence cracked me up! Good one.
[/quote]
He lifted it from Socrates.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
I am an atheist. I reject the term agnostic because it is taken as a given that one cannot know god. One either has faith in a higher power or doesn’t. One who questions god’s existence is an atheist due to a lack of faith. Faith, by definition requires absolute confidence in ones beliefs. To question is to lack faith.[/quote]
But doesn’t an atheist have just as much faith in his conviction that there is no god?
In my estimation, most people who call themselves atheists should more properly be referred to as apatheists: people who just don’t give a shit one way or another about god.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
In my estimation, most people who call themselves atheists should more properly be referred to as apatheists: people who just don’t give a shit one way or another about god.
[/quote]
Most of the atheists I’ve met do give a shit, and are as vehement in their disbelief as most believers.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
I am an atheist. I reject the term agnostic because it is taken as a given that one cannot know god. One either has faith in a higher power or doesn’t. One who questions god’s existence is an atheist due to a lack of faith. Faith, by definition requires absolute confidence in ones beliefs. To question is to lack faith.
But doesn’t an atheist have just as much faith in his conviction that there is no god?
In my estimation, most people who call themselves atheists should more properly be referred to as apatheists: people who just don’t give a shit one way or another about god.
[/quote]
Apatheists.
I’m using this term from now on. Do I owe you royalties?
That’s ridiculous, nonbelief is the null hypothesis. Atheists don’t have any faith in their conviction because they don’t have a conviction. Of course is there was proof for God everybody would believe in him, but by his very nature he can’t be disproven.
[quote]The New Guy wrote:
But doesn’t an atheist have just as much faith in his conviction that there is no god?
That’s ridiculous, nonbelief is the null hypothesis. Atheists don’t have any faith in their conviction because they don’t have a conviction.[/quote]
Of course they have a conviction. A true atheist is just as convinced of the absence of God as the pious man is sure of His existence.
The existence of God can be neither proved or disproved. Nor can his absence. And as to that, you can’t prove the absence of anything.
So, without evidence, both the believers and the atheists have nothing but their faith and conviction that their respective position is the correct one.
Unless they don’t really give a shit, in which case they become apatheists like Beowolf.
[quote]Renton wrote:
Gael wrote:
OctoberGirl wrote:
I respect a person who has a sincere faith.
Why?
Gael - let me ask you something - do you have faith in anything? I’m not just talking about a God, but anything at all. An unshakable belief in something you cannot possibly prove?[/quote]
Where there is insufficient or incomplete information available, the correct response is to form tentative hypotheses and opinions that can be falsified in the light of continued discovery. The word “unshakable” is indeed poetic, but it really just means stubborn. I have changed my mind many times on my opinions, and will continue to do so. I hope I never reach a point where I become “unshakable” in any of my convictions.
My question had to do with the attitude OctoberGirl expressed and that I have frequently encountered that says “I may not agree with your faith, but I respect you for having faith.” These people don’t necessarily believe in God, but they believe in belief. It’s a strange thing, and Douglas Adams has some very relevant words here:
[quote]Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That’s an idea we’re so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it’s kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? - because you’re not!’
If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it, but on the other hand if somebody says ‘I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday’, you say, ‘Fine, I respect that’. The odd thing is, even as I am saying that I am thinking ‘Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?’ but I wouldn’t have thought ‘Maybe there’s somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics’ when I was making the other points. I just think ‘Fine, we have different opinions’. But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody’s (I’m going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say ‘No, we don’t attack that; that’s an irrational belief but no, we respect it’.
It’s rather like, if you think back in terms of animal evolution, an animal that’s grown an incredible carapace around it, such as a tortoise - that’s a great survival strategy because nothing can get through it; or maybe like a poisonous fish that nothing will come close to, which therefore thrives by keeping away any challenges to what it is it is. In the case of an idea, if we think ‘Here is an idea that is protected by holiness or sanctity’, what does it mean? Why should it be that it’s perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows, but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe, no, that’s holy? What does that mean? Why do we ring-fence that for any other reason other than that we’ve just got used to doing so? There’s no other reason at all, it’s just one of those things that crept into being and once that loop gets going it’s very, very powerful.[/quote]
[quote]The New Guy wrote:
That’s ridiculous, nonbelief is the null hypothesis. Atheists don’t have any faith in their conviction because they don’t have a conviction. Of course is there was proof for God everybody would believe in him, but by his very nature he can’t be disproven.[/quote]
It might be ridiculous, but some atheists do have a lot of conviction. For example: the atheist who went to court to have “under god” taken out of the pledge of allegiance so his kid’s mind wouldn’t be warped, or something. Or, check out Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great: The Case Against Religion. You don’t have to actually read the book, just look at the title. Hitchens is a smart guy, but fanatically anti-faith.
[quote]Gael wrote:
Renton wrote:
Gael wrote:
OctoberGirl wrote:
I respect a person who has a sincere faith.
Why?
Gael - let me ask you something - do you have faith in anything? I’m not just talking about a God, but anything at all. An unshakable belief in something you cannot possibly prove?
Where there is insufficient or incomplete information available, the correct response is to form tentative hypotheses and opinions that can be falsified in the light of continued discovery. The word “unshakable” is indeed poetic, but it really just means stubborn. I have changed my mind many times on my opinions, and will continue to do so. I hope I never reach a point where I become “unshakable” in any of my convictions.
I think if you do then you can answer your own question. If you don’t then you couldn’t possibly understand the answer.
My question had to do with the attitude OctoberGirl expressed and that I have frequently encountered that says “I may not agree with your faith, but I respect you for having faith.” These people don’t necessarily believe in God, but they believe in belief. It’s a strange thing, and Douglas Adams has some very relevant words here:
Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That’s an idea we’re so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it’s kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? - because you’re not!’
If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it, but on the other hand if somebody says ‘I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday’, you say, ‘Fine, I respect that’. The odd thing is, even as I am saying that I am thinking ‘Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?’ but I wouldn’t have thought ‘Maybe there’s somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics’ when I was making the other points. I just think ‘Fine, we have different opinions’. But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody’s (I’m going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say ‘No, we don’t attack that; that’s an irrational belief but no, we respect it’.
It’s rather like, if you think back in terms of animal evolution, an animal that’s grown an incredible carapace around it, such as a tortoise - that’s a great survival strategy because nothing can get through it; or maybe like a poisonous fish that nothing will come close to, which therefore thrives by keeping away any challenges to what it is it is. In the case of an idea, if we think ‘Here is an idea that is protected by holiness or sanctity’, what does it mean? Why should it be that it’s perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows, but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe, no, that’s holy? What does that mean? Why do we ring-fence that for any other reason other than that we’ve just got used to doing so? There’s no other reason at all, it’s just one of those things that crept into being and once that loop gets going it’s very, very powerful.[/quote]
oh the irony of someone using someone else’s words to dismiss the belief someone else may have in another’s words.
hey you keep quoting those writers… cuz… you know… they must have it right.
another thing is, if it doesn’t affect you and someone else has a happiness or satisfaction from something, why do you want to destroy it or ruin it for them?
I am unshakable in my belief that I love