[quote]Quick Ben wrote:
2+2 is indeed 4 and there is no way we can theorize around that fact. 2+2 will never be 5 however much we would wish it to be.
[/quote]
Excellent. I use the 2+2 analogy a lot. Mathematics are fantastic abstract objects.
[quote]
You’re arguing that I cannot argue against the existence of God without him being real. That’s false, and very feeble of you. The question is not “does God exist”, the question is why do you think you know him so well?[/quote]
I think I know him ok I still have a long way to go. It does drive me bat shit crazy when poeple put words in God’s mouth. “God hates fags”. Uh no, that’s not written ANYWHERE. Their will be more fags in heaven than their will be people who hate them.
Unfortunately, Ben, a lot of people have a translucent, 2 dimensional understanding of God, not a rich flowering relationship.
I am no holy roller, nor am I holier than thou but I do love God and he knows it. That’s much better than ramming scripture down people’s throat.
You don’t have to be a religious fool. All you need to do, is to love God and love your neighbor, then let God take care of the rest. It’s really that simple.
[quote]Quick Ben wrote:
And I’m not missing any point your making, I’m just watching you hang yourself. Something you have probably done on this forum many a time already.
I’m sorry that nothing makes sense to you without a celestial dictator there to fuck with human kind, but that masochistic need of yours doesn’t provide meaning for the rest of us. You should have been born in Saudi Arabia man, you’d love it there.
Being a child of your god would be as desirable as being the child of Joseph and Elizabeth Fritzl. At least you could fucking DIE and escape from that. In your world, the punishment is eternal. No wonder you grovel at your masters feet.
You’re a slave of your own diseased mind.
[/quote]
LOL!
I don’t know who your ranting (but I am betting it’s tirib) at, but that’s funny. You do make good points and are pointing out glaring theological flaws. But if it is who I think it is, don’t worry according to him I am going to hell with you. You’re dealing with a ‘Westboro’ mentality here. I agree with you, if God were like he and other fundamentalists say he is, then I wouldn’t want a relationship with a person, much less a God like that. I’d rather impale myself on a shovel than subject myself to what people describe as an evil jerk. God is neither
Be rest assured, though he left this world to be run by man, he takes care of those who seek him. In other words, God is not the dick tirib makes him out to be. This is why I don’t read his posts anymore. They border on mania and lack truth, depth sincerity and logic. I am addressing you because I do not want you to think that he is representative of all Christians. We don’t avoid your questions and throw random scripture at you and tell you to repent or go to hell.
You’re welcome, of course, to discourse with tirib all you want. Just don’t think that most of us are like that. He does not represent Christians as a whole. Quite the opposite, we’re quite peaceful and reasonable. We’re not like that damn it!
You people that argue about supreme moral authority and crime and punishment are missing the boat completely.
All God has to do to be God is to encompass everything. He IS everything. The concept of a God that sits outside of everything and passes moral judgement makes no sense at all. He is the absolute. I call it “he” because I can’t think of anything else. Shit, lets call it Bob… doesn’t matter.
And non-believers of Islam, Pat? Do they not act exactly as the Koran say they will?
I mean Jesus was a pretty smart dude, it wouldn’t be too hard to predict that his apostles would be persecuted and ridiculed. And yes, I have read the NT. I’m sorry I can’t treat it with the reverence that you do. I really have nothing against you, it’s Gregory the Masochist that makes the bile rise in my throat.
[quote]Christine wrote:
…like the ass needs another hole.
I’m sorry. Continue.[/quote]
I seem to notice Christine, you’ll drop some vitriol and hatred, but when the conversation gets serious, you run away. Why are you afraid to stand up for your beliefs?[/quote]
Ha! Sorry, I just meant that this argument had been done to death and never goes anywhere.
I didn’t think that was hating.
Whatever ya’ll believe is cool with me. Faith requires no proof, so what is the point of arguing it?
[/quote]
Yeah, it does, otherwise it wouldn’t have a manual. You really think we believe something that has no proof whatsoever? If it didn’t work, it would have no followers. I am afraid you really don’t know anything about it it this is what you think. Faith in God does indeed require proof as much as it requires faith. You need both. If there were no proof at all, it wouldn’t have many followers, only nuts.
If you take a stance on an issue, I think you should know about your stance, why it’s your stance and have stuff that defends that stance otherwise how do you know if you’re right? I am not satisfied with a guess are you?
If that’s the worst thing you have to fear, your life is awesome.[/quote]
One of the definitions of faith is the belief in something without any proof. I’m not attempting to insult anyone with this statement.
[/quote]
That is one definition, but there is many more definitions are available too. More generically and more accurately describing religious faith is trust in someone or something. For instance, I look I the scriptures, I take it on faith that God does or will do what he says he does. It’s less applied to existence and more applied to the man-God relationship.
I didn’t think I was being defensive, I merely asked why you ridiculed the belief system. I have read the other things you have said to. You cannot claim to have been neutral or benign in your statements.
My main point is why do you mock, but never really carry the argument out to the end and defend it. You’ve done this several times, I think is a fair thing to ask. Do you believe in God and just hate religion or are you an atheist and hate religion too?[/quote]
You have trust in it. No problem. Proof is not a necessary part of faith. You may think that you have some proof, but I am simply skeptical of your proof.
I have ridiculed all religions equally. I do try to keep the ridicule out of threads such as these. My first post in the thread was a jab at the OP, not christianity. Like I said, I find them amusing, but they never lead anywhere. I don’t carry out the argument, because in the end it is futile.
I don’t hate religion at all! That would take too much effort on my part. I actually find religious beliefs to be highly interesting.
[quote]therajraj wrote:<<< What is your evidence?[/quote]I have legs now so only have a minute but this guy’s a classic LOL!!! First he goes on a campaign denying that anything can be known for certain and then he demands evidence for something.
Ben, you can get a head start by looking at the last several pages of the “Freewill” and “Why did God create Satan Part 2” threads. There, I even gave the advantage of looking me over first. Well, not exactly because it doesn’t really matter where you start. You’ll wind up where everybody does. I decided to forego the long road and just ask you for something OBjective you know for certain. We agree that you exist anyway.
Ahh shoot. Start with this page: http://tnation.T-Nation.com/free_online_forum/world_news_war/free_will?id=4523136&pageNo=11 Read carefully, assume nothing. (I hope that wasn’t just wasted breath right there.) Cortes is a quality banter buddy BTW. I respect him very much. I wept for a week when Elder Forlife got busy and bowed out. He’ll be back though. Read all those pages and you will be quite prepared. If you want to. I’m not tryin to tell ya what to do.
My epistemology is actually quite simple. It’s just absolutely foreign to sinful autonomous man.
[/quote]
You’ve done a wonderful job in misrepresenting what I wrote. You are an intellectual powerhouse!
If you’re not going to bother looking up your beliefs, type them here if you want.
[quote]therajraj wrote:<<< You’ve done a wonderful job in misrepresenting what I wrote. You are an intellectual powerhouse! >>>[/quote]My mistake. I mistook you for Raw Finn. Was in a hurry. I apologize.
Yeah, it does, otherwise it wouldn’t have a manual. You really think we believe something that has no proof whatsoever? If it didn’t work, it would have no followers. I am afraid you really don’t know anything about it it this is what you think. Faith in God does indeed require proof as much as it requires faith. You need both. If there were no proof at all, it wouldn’t have many followers, only nuts.
[/quote]
Number of followers equals truth? Well gee, those Hindus must really be on to something then.[/quote]
Where did I make the argumentum ad populem or argument beased on the popularity of a stance? I didn’t say because a bunch of people believe it’s true, it’s true. I said there is evidences to what we believe otherwise we wouldn’t believe it. Faith isn’t a complete lack of proof. Faith is a belief in something you cannot know beyond a shadow of a doubt. And by that definition, all live in faith.[/quote]
There’s very little we can know “beyond a shadow of a doubt”
A very convenient way to define faith to prove your point.[/quote]
I don’t know what convenience has to do with it? Belief in God is in many ways similar any other kind of belief.
For instance, do you believe that Black Holes exist? If so, what’s you proof or basis for such belief?
The act of belief here is very similar to that of religious faith.[/quote]
You defined faith in such a broad sense it basically covers EVERYTHING. The type of faith required to believe in Christianity/Islam/whatever is completely different. You don’t have a GOOD reason to believe in any of those religions.
I haven’t looked into black holes so I cannot comment.
I’ll use the Pluto example again. I can’t ever know for sure Pluto’s Orbital period is 248 years, but based on the evidence I have GOOD REASON to believe it to be the case.
There’s no GOOD REASON to believe the supernatural claims any religion makes. Tell me what GOOD REASON do you have to believe Jesus walked on water?
[quote]therajraj wrote:<<< You’ve done a wonderful job in misrepresenting what I wrote. You are an intellectual powerhouse! >>>[/quote]My mistake. I mistook you for Raw Finn. Was in a hurry. I apologize.
[/quote]
[quote]Christine wrote:
…like the ass needs another hole.
I’m sorry. Continue.[/quote]
I seem to notice Christine, you’ll drop some vitriol and hatred, but when the conversation gets serious, you run away. Why are you afraid to stand up for your beliefs?[/quote]
Ha! Sorry, I just meant that this argument had been done to death and never goes anywhere.
I didn’t think that was hating.
Whatever ya’ll believe is cool with me. Faith requires no proof, so what is the point of arguing it?
[/quote]
Yeah, it does, otherwise it wouldn’t have a manual. You really think we believe something that has no proof whatsoever? If it didn’t work, it would have no followers. I am afraid you really don’t know anything about it it this is what you think. Faith in God does indeed require proof as much as it requires faith. You need both. If there were no proof at all, it wouldn’t have many followers, only nuts.
If you take a stance on an issue, I think you should know about your stance, why it’s your stance and have stuff that defends that stance otherwise how do you know if you’re right? I am not satisfied with a guess are you?
If that’s the worst thing you have to fear, your life is awesome.[/quote]
One of the definitions of faith is the belief in something without any proof. I’m not attempting to insult anyone with this statement.
[/quote]
That is one definition, but there is many more definitions are available too. More generically and more accurately describing religious faith is trust in someone or something. For instance, I look I the scriptures, I take it on faith that God does or will do what he says he does. It’s less applied to existence and more applied to the man-God relationship.
I didn’t think I was being defensive, I merely asked why you ridiculed the belief system. I have read the other things you have said to. You cannot claim to have been neutral or benign in your statements.
My main point is why do you mock, but never really carry the argument out to the end and defend it. You’ve done this several times, I think is a fair thing to ask. Do you believe in God and just hate religion or are you an atheist and hate religion too?[/quote]
You have trust in it. No problem. Proof is not a necessary part of faith. You may think that you have some proof, but I am simply skeptical of your proof.
[/quote]
At some point, what you have faith in has to bear some kind of fruit or your faith will cease. It’s simple opperant conditioning. There has to be a basis or foundation for faith to be maintained. You can believe in anything for a little while, but on going faith or trust is built on the basis of things.
I sense that non-believers have this notion that religion particularly Christianity is full of ‘abracadabra’ and ‘hocus pocus’, I see none of that and no need for that. It’s a very natural, not super natural thing.
I would figure you’d be skeptical of religion otherwise you’d be religious.
But you’re ridiculing things you don’t understand.
They do lead to some interesting places at times. It’s not futility, it’s about discourse. Perhaps if understood my positions, you would not find them ridiculous.
That’s a curious statement, what do you find interesting about them?
Yeah, it does, otherwise it wouldn’t have a manual. You really think we believe something that has no proof whatsoever? If it didn’t work, it would have no followers. I am afraid you really don’t know anything about it it this is what you think. Faith in God does indeed require proof as much as it requires faith. You need both. If there were no proof at all, it wouldn’t have many followers, only nuts.
[/quote]
Number of followers equals truth? Well gee, those Hindus must really be on to something then.[/quote]
Where did I make the argumentum ad populem or argument beased on the popularity of a stance? I didn’t say because a bunch of people believe it’s true, it’s true. I said there is evidences to what we believe otherwise we wouldn’t believe it. Faith isn’t a complete lack of proof. Faith is a belief in something you cannot know beyond a shadow of a doubt. And by that definition, all live in faith.[/quote]
There’s very little we can know “beyond a shadow of a doubt”
A very convenient way to define faith to prove your point.[/quote]
I don’t know what convenience has to do with it? Belief in God is in many ways similar any other kind of belief.
For instance, do you believe that Black Holes exist? If so, what’s you proof or basis for such belief?
The act of belief here is very similar to that of religious faith.[/quote]
You defined faith in such a broad sense it basically covers EVERYTHING. The type of faith required to believe in Christianity/Islam/whatever is completely different. You don’t have a GOOD reason to believe in any of those religions.
[/quote] I am not so clever as to have made up the word ‘faith’ and give it, it’s meaning. The word faith is what it is, and means what it means, this fact allows me to use it they way I did. The point is that what you understand what faith really means, you realize that everybody lives on faith because nobody can know very much with certainty. Especially physical matter.
I don’t believe in ‘religions’ therefore, certainly don’t have a reason to believe in them. I don’t believe in ‘religion’. Religion is means, not an end. Think about it like this.
Personal faith is like a cell phone and religion is like a cell phone provider. I make my connections to God through my provider, but the faith is mine and the relationship I have on the other side is personal. The religion is a vehicle to make that connection. If you count on religion to do shit for you, your faith is shit.
Nice dodge, so I presume you could predict what I was going to do with it and didn’t want to deal.
You have no better reason to believe anything about Pluto. Everything you know about Pluto is hearsay and you can’t prove you weren’t lied to. You can’t even really know it exists, muchless know anything about it.
You can actually experience religion for yourself. If you follow the basic tenets of love, respect and generosity what you are able to observe and receive as a result are real measurable things. You can evaluate the difference of before you acted that way and after and you can have a measuring stick on which to base.
The other side of that though, is sharing personal with another is hearsay to them, but you know it for yourself…To relay personal experience in a measurable deductive manner is very difficult to do.
I have 2 points here. You have no certainty on anything you, yourself cannot verify. However, you can have personal experience with religion, you cannot with Pluto. So in that sense, religious experience is MORE real than heresay which is most of what we consider facts. You cannot say I don’t have good reasons to believe what I believe. I have very damn solid reasons for knowing God exists, and knowing that I have personally interacted with him in some way. Don’t project your lack of experience on me.
If you followed a training program and it worked just like it said it would, would you consider that a ‘real’ program or a fake program? So is my experience with faith. If I outwardly act out what the faith compelled me to do, the results are exactly as proclaimed. If your results are the same as the claims of the instruction set, then I got a damn good reason for believe that instruction set is right.
Everyday we trust people to tell us the right things because we cannot experience it for ourselves. We listen to the news and hope we’re not being lied to. WE go to history class and hope that it was not altered, we trust scientists to tell us honestly about the world and the universe, we trust our doctors know what they are doing and aren’t going to fuck us up.
Everybody live on faith everyday in almost everything we do. Only deductive truths are certain. Problem with that, it deductive truths are metaphysical, never physical.
When using the Scientific Method, “God” is not in the mix and Never affects the outcome. “God” doesn’t violate the laws of physics. Which means one should take all the supernatural explanations for events out of written (by people) texts, and analyze appropriately.
Philosophical discussions on God/Religion… (appears to be the only argument for existence) I’ll abstain.
[quote]Quick Ben wrote:
You people that argue about supreme moral authority and crime and punishment are missing the boat completely.
All God has to do to be God is to encompass everything. He IS everything. The concept of a God that sits outside of everything and passes moral judgement makes no sense at all. He is the absolute. I call it “he” because I can’t think of anything else. Shit, lets call it Bob… doesn’t matter.
[/quote]
He doesn’t have to encompass everything and he most verifiably isn’t everything or we’d be God too.
I reckon it depends on who you talk to. I have never read the Koran so I cannot verify what it says, but some folks claim it tells them to be hateful and violent and others claim it’s all about peace.
I do know this, that what ever the book says, people who call for hatred and violence are going against God and those calling for unity love, and peace are acting in accordance to God.
I don’t really think we can get a good sense of who the muslims really are because all we see are the suicide bombing freaks. I know a soldier who did 3 tours, 2 in Iraq and 1 in Asscrackistan and his experience with the population are large is that most of those people are very, very, meek and humble. They’ve been beaten down so much that they just want to be left alone.
I don’t have any problem with muslims so long as they are peaceful and aren’t out to kill me. Islam has been wracked with heresay for centuries and they’ve never developed a way to deal with it.
I understand that sentiment… He has made me feel like not being Christian anymore sometimes with some of the vile and offensive things he says about God. Don’t worry, according to him, I am going to hell with you. I know he does great damage to the view of Christians as he manages to fulfill every vile stereotype. He belongs to the Reformed Baptists…They are the direct link back to Puritanism (yes, the witch hunts, and the cradle of violence and intolerance in early America.)
It’s actually an off-shoot of an off-shoot of Presbyterianism. Just keep in mind his litte sect has like 200 people in it. It’s not representative of Christianity or Christians as a whole.
I can assure that isn’t Christianity it’s a perversion of it. He claims that the Catholic Church, you know the one Jesus himself founded in MT 16:18, is of satan even though that is scripturally impossible. The reason I say that is because for the RCC to be the den of satan, Jesus would necessarily have had to lie to make his assertion right.
I know your struggles with tirib well, as I have tangled with him many times…So much so, that he is on my ignore list. It’s not that I don’t respond, I don’t even read it because if I do, it will piss me off and I will want to respond.
I am going to call you out on the reading of the NT thing. I don’t see you have a grasp of the subject matter. I am not saying you haven’t perused it, but you can have READ it. It’s extremely dense. While the OT has more books and pages in it, the NT has waaay more information in it.
Please don’t let tirib color your view of Christianity. Look, if the only way you could be Christian is to be like that, I would be on your side of the fence. I wouldn’t waste my time with a puppet master who’s already determined my fate. So know that, if between reformed baptist and agnosticism, I’d take agnosticism too.
[quote]pat wrote:
Oh no, athiesm isn’t a lack of belief it’s a belief that nothing rather than something is ‘responsible’ for existence.
And if atheism was a lack of belief literally, you couldn’t even discuss it because you cannot discuss that which does not exist. The second you start discussing ‘it’ you start assigning properties and said ‘nothing’ suddenly becomes something.
[/quote]
Huh?
I’ve never discussed what I think is ‘responsible’ for existence.
to the second part: So wait, I can’t discuss the fact I do not believe in any supernatural claims?
I haven’t assigned any properties just what I wrote above.
[quote]Hold Up wrote:
When using the Scientific Model, “God” is not in the mix and Never affects the outcome. “God” doesn’t violate the laws of physics. Which means one should take all the supernatural events out of written (by people) texts, and analyze appropriately.
Philosophical discussions on God/Religion… (appears to be the only evidence of existence) I’ll abstain. [/quote]
After you have completed your research, and trust me, you do need a lot of it, then we can further discuss the nuances of particular parts. Please also have some basic grasp on logical principles or it will make the conversation exceedingly cumbersome.
I am not so clever as to have made up the word ‘faith’ and give it, it’s meaning. The word faith is what it is, and means what it means, this fact allows me to use it they way I did. The point is that what you understand what faith really means, you realize that everybody lives on faith because nobody can know very much with certainty. Especially physical matter.
I don’t believe in ‘religions’ therefore, certainly don’t have a reason to believe in them. I don’t believe in ‘religion’. Religion is means, not an end. Think about it like this.
Personal faith is like a cell phone and religion is like a cell phone provider. I make my connections to God through my provider, but the faith is mine and the relationship I have on the other side is personal. The religion is a vehicle to make that connection. If you count on religion to do shit for you, your faith is shit.
[/quote]
There are several definitions of faith, check your dictionary. The one you used makes it seem like believing in something with a scientific basis is equally as rationale as believing in supernatural claims. They really aren’t the same thing
[quote]pat wrote:
Oh no, athiesm isn’t a lack of belief it’s a belief that nothing rather than something is ‘responsible’ for existence.
And if atheism was a lack of belief literally, you couldn’t even discuss it because you cannot discuss that which does not exist. The second you start discussing ‘it’ you start assigning properties and said ‘nothing’ suddenly becomes something.
[/quote]
Huh?
I’ve never discussed what I think is ‘responsible’ for existence.
to the second part: So wait, I can’t discuss the fact I do not believe in any supernatural claims?
I haven’t assigned any properties just what I wrote above. [/quote]
I think you missed the point. Basically, you can have only one of two stances on ‘existence’ itself. That ‘existence’ is dependent on something for it’s existence, or nothing. You cannot say ‘neither’ because that becomes circular reasoning. A ‘thing’ cannot be the reason for it’s own existence.
It hearkens back to the cosmological form and the priciple of causation on which it is based.
If you take the literal definition of ‘nothing’, a complete absence of everything, then you can’t comment on it, because there is nothing to comment on.
All I was saying really is that ‘atheism’ itself is a belief, not a non-belief. It’s a belief based on a lack of expected conditions.
I am not so clever as to have made up the word ‘faith’ and give it, it’s meaning. The word faith is what it is, and means what it means, this fact allows me to use it they way I did. The point is that what you understand what faith really means, you realize that everybody lives on faith because nobody can know very much with certainty. Especially physical matter.
I don’t believe in ‘religions’ therefore, certainly don’t have a reason to believe in them. I don’t believe in ‘religion’. Religion is means, not an end. Think about it like this.
Personal faith is like a cell phone and religion is like a cell phone provider. I make my connections to God through my provider, but the faith is mine and the relationship I have on the other side is personal. The religion is a vehicle to make that connection. If you count on religion to do shit for you, your faith is shit.
[/quote]
There are several definitions of faith, check your dictionary. The one you used makes it seem like believing in something with a scientific basis is equally as rationale as believing in supernatural claims. They really aren’t the same thing
[/quote]
It is. That’s the point. If you can’t experience it for yourself, you cannot ‘know’ it.
I see Atheism as the Lack of Theism. More along the lines of taking the position that there are no “dieties”. Labeling “something” as God is rather naive, and intellectually lazy at best. (My opinion, of course).
God can’t be proven or disproven. But the justifications for the lack of proof are rather humorous.