And now I feel like a retart for typing that out after AC said he didn’t fancy talking about religion anymore and DBCooper made similar points.
I think ‘karma’ is a bunch of bullshit.
I have seen so many horrible things happen to people who would have never ‘deserved’ them. The most religious person I ever knew, my great Aunt, died from Syphilis related complications. She got Syphilis from her mother when she was born and by the time they figured out she had Syphilis it was too late. She was blind since she was 13 because it moved into her eyes. She died in her early 50s because it went too far without help (I don’t know why it did).
But she went to church every day. She prayed every night. She went to confession. On her deathbed she wept to my family explaining that she didn’t understand why she deserved to die like she did.
Because… she didn’t. She was a wonderful person with a energy for life like no other. She never did wrong to others and she did everything her religious background taught her to do.
I think the argument brought up about how everything happens for some divine reason isn’t exactly ridiculous… it’s just the divine reason doesn’t appear to have to be fair at all.
There are some, like my wife, who argue that if you die horribly, that is God saving you from something that was worse to come. I personally think my wife is insane - but that’s the way she looks at it.
Good to see you back around these parts, Krazy.
[quote]alex789 wrote:
And now I feel like a retart for typing that out after AC said he didn’t fancy talking about religion anymore and DBCooper made similar points.[/quote]
Sorry, alex! It’s the end of the month and I’m very busy - I just don’t have the room in my schedule to give this argument the time and energy it deserves. Perhaps another time! 
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
Good to see you back around these parts, Krazy.[/quote]
x2
He did a great job in this thread: Douche is Burning the Quran Around the Corner From Me - Politics and World Issues - Forums - T Nation
No matter what your opinion is about the subject, I give him a ton of credit by being consice and keeping his cool throughout the discussion.
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
I think I’m done arguing about religion. I’m not going to change your mind and you aren’t going to change mine.
Let’s agree to disagree then.[/quote]
motherfucker…I type all that shit up and you agree to disagree? Shit.
If you guys don’t knock it off, this thread is gonna get bounced to that other hell known as PWI!!! (:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
I think I’m done arguing about religion. I’m not going to change your mind and you aren’t going to change mine.
Let’s agree to disagree then.[/quote]
motherfucker…I type all that shit up and you agree to disagree? Shit.[/quote]
You’re quite the wordsmith! If it’s any consolation, I’ll concede that your “post” was bigger than mine! LOL
I really don’t have time to do this argument right. Perhaps we’ll pick it up again at the beginning of next month.
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
I think I’m done arguing about religion. I’m not going to change your mind and you aren’t going to change mine.
Let’s agree to disagree then.[/quote]
motherfucker…I type all that shit up and you agree to disagree? Shit.[/quote]
You’re quite the wordsmith! If it’s any consolation, I’ll concede that your “post” was bigger than mine! LOL
I really don’t have time to do this argument right. Perhaps we’ll pick it up again at the beginning of next month.
[/quote]
Lol. I’m just bustin’ your balls a little bit.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
And counter point, one by one:
-
The whole “everything happens for some divine reason” argument is ridiculous. People make decisions that are selfish cruel and cause pain a suffering to other people. That’s it. There is not an other explanation. A ten year old child getting molested here in the US or another one in Iraq getting their arms and legs blown off because of a bomb dropped trying to kill a terrorist is NOT serving any purpose. It is a consequence of selfish HUMAN behavior - nothing more. If there WAS a “god” out there with the powers that ALL religious texts attribute to him and he allows this to happen then he is an asshole. Certainly not the “all loving, gather your flock” kinda guy… So religion has it wrong. And if they are wrong about that, they are most likely wrong about everything else. There isn’t a SINGLE shred of evidence to support ANY of it.
-
Heaven and Hell, God and Lucifer, Angels and Demons are all religious concepts. No more real than the three headed dog in the Harry Potter series. But people say things like “the devil made me do it” or they go into church and “confess their sins”. Rather than receiving a consequence, they are told to say ten Hail Mary’s and I’ll see you next week - “all is forgiven”. If that isn’t teaching irresponsibility, I don’t know what is! The fact that the Catholic Church has been molesting little boys for A LONG FUCKING TIME and there hasn’t been anyone locked up is just crazy. Same with those crazy Muslim muther fuckers blowing themselves up. It’s blatantly wrong, yet there isn’t a consequence. God sure must “love his flock” if he condones that type of behavior. It’s all just an excuse. It serves a selfish agenda, not a divine one. But the “all powerful” man upstairs seems to be fine with it. I call bullshit.
3 & 4) Religion and science have often been at odds, because science proves that religion is a bunch of made up bullshit. Most notably when Galileo was tried before an Inquisition in Rome and condemned to house arrest for the rest of his life for “daring” to suggest the heliocentric theory, that the earth revolves around the Sun. In fact it wasn’t until 1965 that the the Catholic Church revoked it’s condemnation of Galileo - I guess those pictures from space was enough evidence that he was right. But until then, EVERYONE believed the earth was flat, because they didn’t have the perspective to understand anything else. I submit for your consideration that event’s PRIOR to the Big Bang and other questions of “why” are simply beyond our current understanding, and that it will eventually be worked out and explained by science. The fact is that science has DISPROVED the divine origins of everything else, so why should the beginning of the universe be an exception?
As for spirituality, Go read The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukov. It’s a discussion about quantum physics and draws some pretty spectacular parallels between physics and “spirituality”. There’s not a whole lot that’s “spiritual” about it.
My argument about religion is that it does NOT exist as a spiritual guide, but rather was evolved to keep populations of people “in line”. I mean the King James version of the bible, the most popular translation that is currently being used, bears the name of the King who “translated it more accurately”. The questions you need to ask yourself is not about whether or not you are going to heaven, it’s why does the Church need my money? or Why aren’t any Catholic priests in jail for child abuse? Those are the questions that come to MY mind.
As for what I believe in, I believe in the laws of Thermodynamics, Gravity, Electromagnetism and other proven laws of physics. Perhaps those “laws” are God. If so, then we are on the same page. But do I think that Jesus’ MARRIED mother was a virgin? Riiiiiiiiight… That’s just fucking ridiculous![/quote]
AC, I think you are failing to see the forest for the trees here, in a way. It’s pointless to continually demand that there be proof of the existence of God or whatever name one assigns to their Higher Power. That’s what faith is: the belief in something without proof. Keep in mind, while I cannot prove that “God” exists, neither can you DISprove that he exists. So if someone believes in God despite a lack of evidence, this is not dogma (belief in something despite strong evidence to the contrary). For some people, science is just a way to explain how God works in terms that we can understand. So science doesn’t disprove anything about God. Nowhere is it written that science and God are two separate, mutually exclusive entities, despite many organized religions’ rejection of science. But that rejection is a discredit to the religion itself, not the concept of religion or the concept of a god(s).
Yes, selfish human behavior is the result of human action and not some sort of “divine plan”. But religion seeks to prevent this sort of behavior through doing good. There will always be evil. Without it, good has no value and there is no sacrifice to be made for the sake of “goodness”.
Let’s get into the realm of moral relativism for a moment here, in order to put things in perspective. There must be some sort of absolute authority, or an absolute morality, that we hold up as a standard. Now we could use science, but science is still extremely limited and science does not answer any questions about morality. Moral relativism is the concept that what is good and what is bad is entirely relative; it is dependent on the environment in which the moral choice is being made. In other words, WE become our own higher power because when these morality issues come up, we go with what feels right, not what IS right according to an unwavering ideal. So sometimes something may be good, other times it may be wrong.
On to point #2. Heaven and Hell may not exist, but we’ll never know whether or not they do. You saying that they are figments of the imagination is no less ridiculous than me saying that I KNOW for a FACT that they do exist. Neither of us will ever know the truth. But again, religion does not require proof. It’s FAITH and proof is immaterial. Don’t forget, there’s no proof that these things DON’T exist either, so this belief isn’t pure dogma.
Now, I can’t speak for the Catholic Church because I have not been a practicing Catholic in years and it isn’t a source of spirituality for me. But I am familiar with the concept of confession. You claim that there are no consequences handed out by the Church during confession, except for penance. That is entirely correct, but the Church is not there to punish, nor is religion in general. If I murder someone and then confess my sins to a priest, of course there is no consequence…from him. But I most certainly will suffer the consequences from someone somewhere down the line, whether it be an act of revenge or the legal system. Or perhaps his punishment will come in the next life or in Hell.
#3-4 Science has disproved nothing in regards to God or religion. Sure, there are people who reject science within religious organizations, from the Pope on down. But as I have stated over and over, this is a messenger problem, not a message problem. Saying that God is bullshit because science has disproven him is just as ridiculous as denouncing science because it is at odds with God. Nowhere in the Bible does it disprove science, just like nowhere in science does it disprove God. And science will NEVER answer such philosophical questions as “why does the universe exist”. Yes, it can say that it exists because a bunch of scientific stuff happened, but this is very limited and in no way actually answers the question.
If someone asks me why I hit someone, I wouldn’t answer by saying that I hit him because my fist moved forward at a rapid speed until it contacted his face and then it decelerated. I would answer by explaining what it was in my psyche that led me to move my fist forward rapidly. But the first explanation is how science answers these metaphysical questions.
Religion seeks to answer these sorts of questions like the second explanation about hitting someone does. Believe me, I understand your perspective, and I was there at one point. But religion, Higher Powers, God, Allah, etc, etc does not exist in order for a power to right our wrongs. These things exist as the Absolute Morality, the standard that we strive to live up to in order to not only right wrongs, but to prevent them from happening in the first place. We will never succeed %100, but, in the words of the great philosopher Mike Singletary, if we strive for perfection then we can settle for excellence. I think most of your problems with religion stem from who is spreading the message rather than the message itself and it also stems from a mistaken idea of what a Higher Power is and what it exists for.
I’ll add this as well. Most people it seems have a tendency to anthropomorphize God and evaluate him or whether or not He exists through our own lenses. But God may not be a He or a She but rather an It. So to say that He condones things by letting them happen is insufficient because He may not actually have any sort of humanistic qualities. Humans condone things. Hell, look at science. If science is the Higher Power that we should look to for all the answers, then do we say that science condones the killing of innocents? Of course not. And it may be the same with God. We just don’t know, but we don’t NEED to know.[/quote]
Karma posted here on T-Nation for a bit.
[quote]alex789 wrote:
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
And counter point, one by one:
- The whole “everything happens for some divine reason” argument is ridiculous. People make decisions that are selfish cruel and cause pain a suffering to other people. That’s it. There is not an other explanation. A ten year old child getting molested here in the US or another one in Iraq getting their arms and legs blown off because of a bomb dropped trying to kill a terrorist is NOT serving any purpose. It is a consequence of selfish HUMAN behavior - nothing more. If there WAS a “god” out there with the powers that ALL religious texts attribute to him and he allows this to happen then he is an asshole. Certainly not the “all loving, gather your flock” kinda guy… So religion has it wrong. And if they are wrong about that, they are most likely wrong about everything else. There isn’t a SINGLE shred of evidence to support ANY of it. [/quote]
The selfish and cruel decisions that humans make are, from a Christian perspective, due to free will which God bestowed upon humans, meaning that they are free to choose to be good or evil.
I’m not a Christian myself, but that would be the argument. You also seem to be confusing the idea of God with the idea of the Christian God. The latter has been defined clearly by religion throughout the years, but the former, just the idea of a God of some kind, is much harder to disprove or say that he (or it) is an asshole because he doesn’t seem to care.
‘God’ may just be a sort of force or energy outside the universe that kicked it all off, or a cosmic entity that doesn’t care about us for the same reason that we don’t care about ants fighting on the dirt below.
People tend to humanize God so that when the word is mentioned we immediately think of the Christian God, or an old man in the sky, but the just idea of some supernatural being outside the known universe is much harder to rail against or disprove.
Again, you are humanizing the idea of a God. With regards to the Christian and Muslim God again though, the answer is free will. Bad things are done by supposedly religious and good people, but this only presents a problem if you accept the idea of a caring God but reject the argument of free will.
Science gives us an understanding of the universe and the laws that govern it. This does not necessarily disprove religion, only claims of religion that pertain to the physical universe and can be tested. Since religion by definition concerns itself mainly with the divine, this means that it and science can be reconciled quite happily.
Also, I disagree with you about finding out what was before the Big Bang. There is a limit to our understanding and ability to find things out. We haven’t reached it yet, but due to our position in and the nature of the universe I don’t think we will ever be able to know the answer to every question.
The problem with finding out what was before the Big Bang is that the Big Bang theory states that all matter expanded outwards from a singularity. Singularities by their nature erase all information from their past state, so it is extremely unlikely we will be able to do anything other than theorize what came before, if anything. Also, I’m not too sure about this one, but I think time was supposed to start with the Big Bang as well, which poses another problem with finding out what was before it, as it would be very hard to understand a universe or existence without time.
In fact, I think that the Big Bang could be seen to offer some evidence of perhaps some divine force, due to the fact that it inflated outwards. A singularity is what is at the center of black holes. It has infinite density, so the gravitational forces acting upon itself would be infinite. Add to this the fact that space and time only existed within that singularity, and I can’t see a reason other than a divine force as to why it expanded outwards, and due to the nature of the singularity I think it will be nigh on impossible to find a scientific explanation.
[quote] As for spirituality, Go read The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukov. It’s a discussion about quantum physics and draws some pretty spectacular parallels between physics and “spirituality”. There’s not a whole lot that’s “spiritual” about it.
My argument about religion is that it does NOT exist as a spiritual guide, but rather was evolved to keep populations of people “in line”. I mean the King James version of the bible, the most popular translation that is currently being used, bears the name of the King who “translated it more accurately”. The questions you need to ask yourself is not about whether or not you are going to heaven, it’s why does the Church need my money? or Why aren’t any Catholic priests in jail for child abuse? Those are the questions that come to MY mind. [/quote]
Religion was never intended as a means of control, rather as a way to explain the world by primitive cultures. Many have used it as a means of control, but this was not its original purpose.
The questions about the Catholic Church and its accountability regarding pedophile priests indeed need asking, but they do not make the claims of the church any more or less valid.
[/quote]
See my post above.
[quote]LarryDavid wrote:
Karma posted here on T-Nation for a bit. [/quote]
Yeah, I met her. Gorgeous girl, stunning rack.
[quote]pushmepullme wrote:
[quote]LarryDavid wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
And counter point, one by one:
-
The whole “everything happens for some divine reason” argument is ridiculous. People make decisions that are selfish cruel and cause pain a suffering to other people. That’s it. There is not an other explanation. A ten year old child getting molested here in the US or another one in Iraq getting their arms and legs blown off because of a bomb dropped trying to kill a terrorist is NOT serving any purpose. It is a consequence of selfish HUMAN behavior - nothing more. If there WAS a “god” out there with the powers that ALL religious texts attribute to him and he allows this to happen then he is an asshole. Certainly not the “all loving, gather your flock” kinda guy… So religion has it wrong. And if they are wrong about that, they are most likely wrong about everything else. There isn’t a SINGLE shred of evidence to support ANY of it.
-
Heaven and Hell, God and Lucifer, Angels and Demons are all religious concepts. No more real than the three headed dog in the Harry Potter series. But people say things like “the devil made me do it” or they go into church and “confess their sins”. Rather than receiving a consequence, they are told to say ten Hail Mary’s and I’ll see you next week - “all is forgiven”. If that isn’t teaching irresponsibility, I don’t know what is! The fact that the Catholic Church has been molesting little boys for A LONG FUCKING TIME and there hasn’t been anyone locked up is just crazy. Same with those crazy Muslim muther fuckers blowing themselves up. It’s blatantly wrong, yet there isn’t a consequence. God sure must “love his flock” if he condones that type of behavior. It’s all just an excuse. It serves a selfish agenda, not a divine one. But the “all powerful” man upstairs seems to be fine with it. I call bullshit.
3 & 4) Religion and science have often been at odds, because science proves that religion is a bunch of made up bullshit. Most notably when Galileo was tried before an Inquisition in Rome and condemned to house arrest for the rest of his life for “daring” to suggest the heliocentric theory, that the earth revolves around the Sun. In fact it wasn’t until 1965 that the the Catholic Church revoked it’s condemnation of Galileo - I guess those pictures from space was enough evidence that he was right. But until then, EVERYONE believed the earth was flat, because they didn’t have the perspective to understand anything else. I submit for your consideration that event’s PRIOR to the Big Bang and other questions of “why” are simply beyond our current understanding, and that it will eventually be worked out and explained by science. The fact is that science has DISPROVED the divine origins of everything else, so why should the beginning of the universe be an exception?
As for spirituality, Go read The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukov. It’s a discussion about quantum physics and draws some pretty spectacular parallels between physics and “spirituality”. There’s not a whole lot that’s “spiritual” about it.
My argument about religion is that it does NOT exist as a spiritual guide, but rather was evolved to keep populations of people “in line”. I mean the King James version of the bible, the most popular translation that is currently being used, bears the name of the King who “translated it more accurately”. The questions you need to ask yourself is not about whether or not you are going to heaven, it’s why does the Church need my money? or Why aren’t any Catholic priests in jail for child abuse? Those are the questions that come to MY mind.
As for what I believe in, I believe in the laws of Thermodynamics, Gravity, Electromagnetism and other proven laws of physics. Perhaps those “laws” are God. If so, then we are on the same page. But do I think that Jesus’ MARRIED mother was a virgin? Riiiiiiiiight… That’s just fucking ridiculous![/quote]
AC, I think you are failing to see the forest for the trees here, in a way. It’s pointless to continually demand that there be proof of the existence of God or whatever name one assigns to their Higher Power. That’s what faith is: the belief in something without proof. Keep in mind, while I cannot prove that “God” exists, neither can you DISprove that he exists. So if someone believes in God despite a lack of evidence, this is not dogma (belief in something despite strong evidence to the contrary). For some people, science is just a way to explain how God works in terms that we can understand. So science doesn’t disprove anything about God. Nowhere is it written that science and God are two separate, mutually exclusive entities, despite many organized religions’ rejection of science. But that rejection is a discredit to the religion itself, not the concept of religion or the concept of a god(s).
Yes, selfish human behavior is the result of human action and not some sort of “divine plan”. But religion seeks to prevent this sort of behavior through doing good. There will always be evil. Without it, good has no value and there is no sacrifice to be made for the sake of “goodness”.
Let’s get into the realm of moral relativism for a moment here, in order to put things in perspective. There must be some sort of absolute authority, or an absolute morality, that we hold up as a standard. Now we could use science, but science is still extremely limited and science does not answer any questions about morality. Moral relativism is the concept that what is good and what is bad is entirely relative; it is dependent on the environment in which the moral choice is being made. In other words, WE become our own higher power because when these morality issues come up, we go with what feels right, not what IS right according to an unwavering ideal. So sometimes something may be good, other times it may be wrong.
On to point #2. Heaven and Hell may not exist, but we’ll never know whether or not they do. You saying that they are figments of the imagination is no less ridiculous than me saying that I KNOW for a FACT that they do exist. Neither of us will ever know the truth. But again, religion does not require proof. It’s FAITH and proof is immaterial. Don’t forget, there’s no proof that these things DON’T exist either, so this belief isn’t pure dogma.
Now, I can’t speak for the Catholic Church because I have not been a practicing Catholic in years and it isn’t a source of spirituality for me. But I am familiar with the concept of confession. You claim that there are no consequences handed out by the Church during confession, except for penance. That is entirely correct, but the Church is not there to punish, nor is religion in general. If I murder someone and then confess my sins to a priest, of course there is no consequence…from him. But I most certainly will suffer the consequences from someone somewhere down the line, whether it be an act of revenge or the legal system. Or perhaps his punishment will come in the next life or in Hell.
#3-4 Science has disproved nothing in regards to God or religion. Sure, there are people who reject science within religious organizations, from the Pope on down. But as I have stated over and over, this is a messenger problem, not a message problem. Saying that God is bullshit because science has disproven him is just as ridiculous as denouncing science because it is at odds with God. Nowhere in the Bible does it disprove science, just like nowhere in science does it disprove God. And science will NEVER answer such philosophical questions as “why does the universe exist”. Yes, it can say that it exists because a bunch of scientific stuff happened, but this is very limited and in no way actually answers the question.
If someone asks me why I hit someone, I wouldn’t answer by saying that I hit him because my fist moved forward at a rapid speed until it contacted his face and then it decelerated. I would answer by explaining what it was in my psyche that led me to move my fist forward rapidly. But the first explanation is how science answers these metaphysical questions.
Religion seeks to answer these sorts of questions like the second explanation about hitting someone does. Believe me, I understand your perspective, and I was there at one point. But religion, Higher Powers, God, Allah, etc, etc does not exist in order for a power to right our wrongs. These things exist as the Absolute Morality, the standard that we strive to live up to in order to not only right wrongs, but to prevent them from happening in the first place. We will never succeed %100, but, in the words of the great philosopher Mike Singletary, if we strive for perfection then we can settle for excellence. I think most of your problems with religion stem from who is spreading the message rather than the message itself and it also stems from a mistaken idea of what a Higher Power is and what it exists for.
I’ll add this as well. Most people it seems have a tendency to anthropomorphize God and evaluate him or whether or not He exists through our own lenses. But God may not be a He or a She but rather an It. So to say that He condones things by letting them happen is insufficient because He may not actually have any sort of humanistic qualities. Humans condone things. Hell, look at science. If science is the Higher Power that we should look to for all the answers, then do we say that science condones the killing of innocents? Of course not. And it may be the same with God. We just don’t know, but we don’t NEED to know.[/quote]
Karma posted here on T-Nation for a bit. [/quote]
Yeah, I met her. Gorgeous girl, stunning rack.[/quote]
I’d imagine. Her avatar was hot I remember.
Just because I feel like pitching in, I don’t think karma exists in the mystical sense. I do think that treating other people like shit will probably lead to other people treating you like shit. That, and some people will be assholes no matter how you treat them.
I don’t see any reason to favor belief in karma or reincarnation over heaven or hell. And I think they’re all pretty unlikely. If you’re looking for a reason to be kind to other people, consider empathy. We’re all in the same hole here. There are better and worse ways for us to live. And I’d say the best reason to live is for the people we love.
Aw, shucks!
Thanks angry chicken and imhungry!
I believe in some sort of karma. Let me share…
A few months ago after I got rehired at work, I got stuck with this old British plumber named Rick. Rick’s not all that bad a guy, but can be quite the asshole if the workload’s getting bigger and you aren’t going as fast as he thinks you should be. Well, we were working on something one day and nothing was going the way we wanted it and Rick was losing his patience faster than a fuse burns. Eventually toward the end of the day he lost his composure on me because I made a simple, fixable mistake. I heard every term for fuckup under the sun and then he started getting creative. Well, not even a day later I was sent to work in my company’s sheet metal fab shop for the day because Rick had to set up a new job. I learned later that day that while loading a piece of equipment, Rick’s achilles tendon ruptured and he was put in the hospital.
A week later I was put on a job with one of the better, more patient formans in our company.
Karma. She can be a bitch.
[quote]Hodge_Podge18 wrote:
I believe in some sort of karma. Let me share…
A few months ago after I got rehired at work, I got stuck with this old British plumber named Rick. Rick’s not all that bad a guy, but can be quite the asshole if the workload’s getting bigger and you aren’t going as fast as he thinks you should be. Well, we were working on something one day and nothing was going the way we wanted it and Rick was losing his patience faster than a fuse burns. Eventually toward the end of the day he lost his composure on me because I made a simple, fixable mistake. I heard every term for fuckup under the sun and then he started getting creative. Well, not even a day later I was sent to work in my company’s sheet metal fab shop for the day because Rick had to set up a new job. I learned later that day that while loading a piece of equipment, Rick’s achilles tendon ruptured and he was put in the hospital.
A week later I was put on a job with one of the better, more patient formans in our company.
Karma. She can be a bitch.[/quote]
So you’re saying that the plumber’s inability to come to grips with your inefficiencies and shortcomings as an empployee mandates that his achilles tendon snap in half? Yeah, karma sure is a bitch…