What religion are you?

[jgk3]

Re: What religion are you?

They are not of equal probability. It is most reasonable and logical to not place any confidence in supernatural and untestable hypotheses. Epistemologically, the assertion in this topic is that there is a supernatural answer. This is an untestable hypothesis therefore, logically, it should be considered to have no value.

What if God was not an object of belief but instead, a metaphorical concept used by humans to refer to the totality of all phenomenon around them that could be tested scientifically? Scientists almost do this already, they came up with a word called science that refers to a dictionary.com definition of:

"systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation."

But this leads to the question of... When do things become categorized as physical and material? The easy answer is when their properties can be observed and tested, of course. But in order for one to do this, the object of inquiry needs to be first, noticed. Our attention needs to be on it, does it not? Otherwise we will simply not think of it or any of its workings and thus, it would not have a chance to be assigned material or observable value. I'm sure you, with your logic, could predict based on experience that we will discover things in the future, that we haven't noticed yet with our scientific inquiries thus far, and those things will be observable and testable.

Maybe some people who have a love for science (as I do) will go ahead and call this present lack of knowledge or awareness for an assumed great many phenomenon as, present ignorance? But I will note, based on experience, that I assume there are workings that exist beyond my present attention, as you do, just based on a hunch I guess. How is this not supernatural belief if I am not presently capable of testing or observing something I have no present attention or awareness of?

Perhaps here, positing this supernatural idea (criticize my choice of wording if you will) as so absurd, because I'm not bowing down to it and adhering to a bunch of made up laws based on my belief for something I don't know yet or can test for that matter. I'm simply aware of the fact that there's way more beyond my attention, and I don't know if it's cuz I'm human, but somehow, that makes me feel small, part of some greater working of things than myself. This is where my spirituality comes from, is this absurd?

[Sako]

Re: What religion are you?

and what it feels like to attribute all this spiritual love to a figure you can speak to in the second person, but I've outgrown this requirement and I feel perfectly fine not using any person marker whatsoever when I am engaged in my meditations. Does this make me a heretic in your eyes?

Hell no. I’m proud of you, no pun intended. Just remember, one day you are going to die and you’ll have to answer for yourself. If you are a good person, my good friend, you will not be upset in the end.

God is essentially instantiated out of our heads, not because he is a fake or anything, but if we all had lizard brains, I'd say we would not be able to think of God, let alone be so fervent about epistemological issues.

That’s why we are privileged and aren’t lizards, lol, although many make us think of them like that from the way they talk.

This is all stuff we take for granted. All these problems come from our own creative, productive minds and the fact that through communication we bring these minds together to interact and influence each others attention, frames of reference, knowledge, thought patterns, etc...

Just like life came from our minds? Just like this universe came from our minds? Not everything is under our control. You fail to agree with that or do but fail to understand WHO provided us with this privilege. Why do you try to hide that fact? It’s natural, it’s the first question that comes to a persons mind.

Believe me, this might sound stale to some of you, but once you notice where all our thinking is coming from, things become mighty fun, you're more in touch with what I like to call, pointlessness.

Sorry bro, just like being stealing makes you a thief, being and/or thinking pointless or living in “pointlessness” makes me pointless. I can stop believing in God but saying God doesn’t exist and we were all just “meant” to be here makes me stubborn and being a scientific and a logical person if not a spiritually inclined person, I fail to close my eyes and walk on through this life. So, your paragraph makes you basically, this may sound stale, pointless.

You don't need to make a self inflictive religion out of pointlessness and become some sort of nihilist who wants to push everything away that cannot be logically proven to exist or be relevant, you can still be an Armenian who loves his church, who loves his country, etc etc...

What I do isn’t because I’m an Armenian, what I do isn’t because I feel scared, what I do isn’t because I can’t prove God doesn’t exist, on contrary, I can, you can’t prove he doesn’t exist. I’m not a fanatic and I don’t get my ideas, views and/or opinions from mere thinking. I have lived through it all. I haven’t just started “thinking” about God. I have tried to understand God and without failure. You know why people who have a bit of knowledge if not a lot of knowledge about God, can’t describe him to you or other people, why there isn’t proof? Because God is an experience, it takes experience and knowledge to understand God, not just proof and puny scientific explanations. Just reading the Bible isn’t enough. I haven’t only read the Bible, I have lived have around the globe, which I thank GOD for and my parents through whom he gave me the privilege. God doesn’t just come down and help you personally, who the f*** are we? Faith isn’t as simple as you like or want it to be and your words only hint one thing, that you are close to becoming a great person but you aren’t ready yet. You will be though one day, don’t worry. There are people who learn for years but haven’t come to your level yet, a level you don’t fully understand. These questions and answers are a sign of belief already. We all have spirituality in us just like we all have to abide to the laws of nature, just some of us have revealed more or less of it.

It's just that at this point, you notice that it's beyond constructs such as scriptures, anthems, borders, etc... You just genuinely like the people, the culture and the feeling of love that you are sharing. There is no reason to force this perspective on anyone, it's just fun and pleasant for me to talk about and I want to share it.

I’m happy for you, bro, I really am, and don’t you ever think that I hate you or anything. Religion and Faith are complicated subjects and I respect your views and most importantly, you as a person. I just don’t want you to think that people do what they do because of the love they have for each other. They do it because of the love they have for God. There are people who are completely alone but they are ecstatic, something we can’t understand. Who do you think THEY feel love for? We both have a long way to go, bro, no doubt about it and I hope that we will talk more in the future with the same if not more respect for each other and everyone else. I wish you all the best and may not only God be with you and us, but may WE be with God in any way we can, whether we see him or not, no matter when or where, because he is always with us in our hearts, don’t ever doubt that.

[Sako]

Re: What religion are you?

Jeez, think about your statement here... First of all, you attribute gender to God, secondly you model him after this role of creator, which is essentially a concept. One of the distinguishing realities between humans and animals is our ability to conceptualize concepts.

Which you are doing right now.

We are so goddamn biased! Yet we insist that our judgments which essentially created "God" are provable!

God was never created, 1. And 2, we discovered him not created him. Just like no one believed aliens existed, they appeared one day, and everyone started looking for books, starting to believe. Don’t even try to prove me wrong here. God isn’t just air and energy, he is there, we just don’t see him because we don’t have the proper knowledge nor the proper ability to do so. Your way of thinking is biased and you want to see God? Well that’s just funny. You are demanding to see to believe. God isn’t SUPPOSED to come and show you he exists. He gave us free will and told us that those who want to go to him, like me, can come, and those that don’t, like you, can keep saying he doesn’t exist. I’m not a fanatic, I’m using my brains. Everything has a creator, nothing just pops up, and I believe there is more to life then just living this pointless life. Anything without God is pointless even if there is so much meaning to it. You don’t want to understand that fact. It’s not that you can’t. You just refuse to believe in something you can’t see, without even trying. You check out different religions, see what they have going on, and make your stand there, deciding it’s all useless. I don’t believe in religion because in the end, the point of religion is to be a good person and make you a pious person. There are laws to nature and decide to follow them. Ok, let’s say I don’t believe in God, lol, but I believe there are more powerful beings then humans and their ridiculous ways of misusing and judging life and everything their puny minds can’t understand, mine included.

When you don’t understand something, you don’t say it doesn’t exist. No one is forcing you to believe in God but saying he doesn’t exist just shows what a pitiful state you’re in. You look one way, the tip of your nose, and say nothing exists. You don’t need scientific proof to believe in everything. If it was like that, you pretty much shouldn’t believe in much.

I say, have your spirituality, love God if you will, but don't be so militant about trying to "prove" his existence, because this is pointless and it doesn't bring you any closer to God whatsoever, it just helps you defend religious institutions and get into conflict with people who aren't interested in making the same assertions about God that you do.

I’m not getting into a conflict, that’s what fanatics do. And doubt is what tests your belief, faith, etc. You don’t doubt do, you simply look for proof. God isn’t a treasure that you can find like a treasure hunter. Also, I don’t have to prove ANYTHING to you; I’m standing on the proof.

In my mind, agnosticism, atheism, theism are useless concepts.

Pretty empty and weird concepts. You live on the created but refuse to believe the creator exists. True. Yet even your views accept some of those concepts to some extent.

I quite freely interchange between the supposed profiles of each category when I argue with people, as the enterprise of proving or disproving something as ridiculous as an abstract sense for the "existence" of such and such thing, using subjective judgments, is only productive to a point. It just illustrates the potential of a human mind's ability to build up argumentative schemes in their heads, drawing on whatever scriptures, books, facts, research, etc... that they could get their hands on that could help them in their epistemological mission.

For example, like you. You fail to understand that YOUR OWN ideas are also concepts. Science is all best guess. No one can even prove how the simple things in this world were created so how can they even imagine or start to imagine what God is LIKE. I look at everything more scientifically then you do here. I don’t fanatically say he exists and neither do I say he doesn’t because I see proof, I see books, I see people claiming, believing, and thinking about him, I see miracles, I see people dying and then coming alive again, etc. etc. etc. etc. All this doesn’t lead me to say that “something” exists, at least because everything has a source. We just can’t understand that source just like we can’t enter the sun or understand how it works. I may not believe God exists but saying NOTHING exists would make me look stupid and like them three monkey’s in India who shut their eyes, ears, and mouths. You are simple stating your views you aren’t stating any complicated judgments or opinions. Neither am I. I state the obvious and if you can’t understand that, forget about understanding God or seeing him, or believing in him, or anything. You haven’t taken a bad route you’ve just taken the absurd route. Humans are meant to serve it’s in our nature and is proven. And we weren’t meant to only serve other humans, we were meant to serve our creator not only the created. This life is so complicated, how can you say it was just there from the start like it’s just normal. Use your scientific brain. Forget about God for a second.

Then, you go on about how I "shouldn't" or "ought to not" talk about God in my way just because I haven't seen what you have seen, read what you have read (and for the record, I could say the same to you about your ignorance for my sources and background). I can say whatever the hell I want about God, or any concept. If society tries to silence me, if individuals get mad, if I am given a rep point whether positive or negative for my statements, I will laugh because none of these responses by humans prove or disprove anybody's statements or beliefs, these are just reactions.

Exactly, we stand on a 50/50 scale. No one is blaming you here, don’t change the topic. If I wanted to silence you, I wanted be writing here. Also, about sources, you couldn’t prove me wrong or have more sources then me because just from your tone, you don’t care less about any sources so stop acting like you’ve read so much and understood so little.

Personally, if you really want to know, I like God, you can even say I love God for a multitude of reasons, a funnier one being the amount of controversy he creates for people, but I don't care about such things like proving his existence or not, it is totally irrelevant to me. In fact, I can go on for days or weeks without uttering the name of God in my head, thinking about his nature, etc... I am just happy with what I see around me and I'm so satisfied by it that I don't mind agreeing with other people who feel the same thing and attribute it all to God. God is pretty much a metaphor for our similar appreciation of nature and the workings of the universe that we notice all around us.

Well, it could’ve been worse, I’m happy for you. The impersonalist approach is an approach nonetheless.

Religious people go a bit beyond this because they live by rules. This is something I have no problems with in itself, but it's important imo to note that simple thought/appreciation/faith in God is distinct from mere belief in God and all his workings, laws, miracles, etc...

Good point. Both parties agree that there is God though, to some extent. Belief is still better then being an atheist.

This is because the latter is more complex and requires adherence to a bunch of rules, often coming out of scriptures for many many people, though sometimes people will come up with their own rules or laws too. I for example have been called a religious person because I believe keeping healthy is a sacred thing that is necessary for sustaining my happiness, and I will go about rituals, such as martial arts, running, walking long distances, etc... as a means to adhere to this law of mine.

That’s a law of nature, dude, lol. It’s not a religious law. Next, those “bunch” of laws are far from your understanding. Bunch of laws? Also, let’s go with that approach, just a bunch of laws. Everything has its laws and natures laws weren’t set by people. Or are you so blind that you think this all existed from the beginning. WHY did all this happen then? Why are we here? Can you answer that question … SCIENTIFICALLY?

This is in fact similar to people who adhere to laws such as "Thou shalt not steal", except laws like this, like most laws in the ten commandments, are oriented towards how one should behave in society and not so much in solitude.

People went against the laws of life and that’s why, the commandments were written. Also, the Ten Commandments were laws of society that could prepare people, to give pass to people, to get mercy from the lord and even if not that, to be good people. Just like a father of two sons kisses the cheek of the son who doesn’t steal but scolds the one that did. People complicate life so much that in the end they become atheists. What I’m saying is so simple, a child could understand.

What's interesting is most religious law codes place an emphasis on interactions of social nature, whilst the laws which the monks adhere to seem to be reserved for their lifestyles moreso rooted in solitary existence.

These laws put an emphasis because humans, by their nature, are bound to break them. And also, don’t talk about things you don’t understand. Have you seen a monk or talked with one in your life? I have, with many. The reason they go solitary is because life in itself leads to sin. It is very difficult to live in an ocean filled with sin (the world) and for that reason, they choose to live together in solitary and believe it or not, they are a million times happier then you could ever be, me included. You look at material happiness, they look at spiritual happiness which you can’t gain in a few minutes. Don’t think their just stupid, senseless, people doing what they do. There are things you’re SCIENCE, could never describe, things I can show you but you have your eyes and ears closed, speaking all the same. It’s strange how a human mind works.

Now what does God have to do with creating all these rules, and so what if he did? What insight does that really provide? These laws were created for humans to accommodate their lifestyles to some established norm, and attributing their origin to the lips of God doesn't change that.

Just like a parent’s words are more touching, more serious, more highly looked upon, the same is with the words of God. You can choose not to follow them but prepare to pay the price. Those laws, to many, are the only way to remember God because of their condition, and many other reasons. Many aren’t ready and abide by God’s laws which are so simple yet people act ridiculous all the same.

Perhaps it just gives some authoritative backing in religious structures where it is taught that you will be personally punished for breaking the laws.

One shouldn’t have faith just out of fear but neither should they think a law doesn’t have consequences if broken. Just like robbing and/or any other activity has consequence’s. This world wasn’t built for happiness, you fail to see that. And Even if these rules were just thought out, it is best to abide by them. Every creature on the planet, besides humans, abides by laws; that’s why we are special. It is a privilege to be a human being, not a right, or a normal consequence or system.

Then again, there's also the perspective that humans accepted some of these laws because they seemed to work consistently, were inherently rewarding those who obeyed them in their normal environment, and punishing to those who did not. Once this relationship was observed, people decided to personify it in a very humanoid kind of divine figure who uses the same judgment and imagination of the people he created laws for.

Can you prove this? No. You are looking at the Chinese not the world. And even then, just like happiness has a source, just like anger has a source, just like love has a source, FAITH has a source. We look at God in different ways but he is the one, the only, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

Perhaps statements like "Man created/invented God, or God is created out of our imagination" come from thinkers who noticed this phenomenon, noting that everything we attribute to be derived from God's actions and nature required some sense of imagination and creativity on our part. I think it's realistic to recognize this.

These words have always been there alongside those who didn’t accept them because they are absurd. God was never created, we were created. It’s a law of life, a law of nature, a phenomenon of nature. Everything has a creator and since people couldn’t see God at a moment in time, they tried to create him in a certain way to always remember him in this ridiculous world. What is wrong with that??? Many of these scientists even believe God exists yet they still say or “prove” (haha) that he doesn’t exist. I talked to them, I know. Don’t make me laugh although I already am.

But then there's the idea that much of God and his nature is unknowable because there's only so much we can comprehend. In other words, there is only so much our imagination and creativity is able to come up with or produce, whether at a given point in our lives or in its totality, and thus we recognize our mental limitations for how we may construct this description God.

Whatever I said above. And still, I don’t see what you are trying to say is wrong in this paragraph. They just tried to make God more visible to them although many religions don’t even do that. They look up to God whether they see him or not.

I recognize all of this, yet I still like God, even though I seldom pray to him or anything. I prefer to meditate about whatever I feel is important at a given time. Sometimes for fun or for reminiscence I will pray to him to remember how to do it

There isn’t a special way to pray, lol. What are you trying to remember? A prayer comes from your heart. If you’re talking about religious prayer, that’s a good step away from stupidly saying God or “whatever” doesn’t exist at all.

[Stark Evade]

Re: What religion are you?

Just because I treat your "logic" as influenced by linguistic constructs, suddenly you assume I don't read your posts?

You didn't address the position I took in my post, which was not an argument from semantics. I'm not interested in combat with fallacious and ignorant arguments -- as is always the case with people who try to justify belief in things that are unjustifiable.

[jgk3]

Re: What religion are you?

There are millions of books and proven facts about God but you choose not to read them so stop trying to say, if you are, that there is no proof whatsoever that God exists. You can't simply use a small material object to see God, he isn't a material person. He is spiritual. You are talking about something so powerful that he could create this entire universe, how it works, and what we are even like. Including all the laws of life and death.

Jeez, think about your statement here... First of all, you attribute gender to God, secondly you model him after this role of creator, which is essentially a concept. One of the distinguishing realities between humans and animals is our ability to conceptualize concepts.

We are so goddamn biased! Yet we insist that our judgments which essentially created "God" are provable!

I say, have your spirituality, love God if you will, but don't be so militant about trying to "prove" his existence, because this is pointless and it doesn't bring you any closer to God whatsoever, it just helps you defend religious institutions and get into conflict with people who aren't interested in making the same assertions about God that you do.

In my mind, agnosticism, atheism, theism are useless concepts. I quite freely interchange between the supposed profiles of each category when I argue with people, as the enterprise of proving or disproving something as ridiculous as an abstract sense for the "existence" of such and such thing, using subjective judgments, is only productive to a point. It just illustrates the potential of a human mind's ability to build up argumentative schemes in their heads, drawing on whatever scriptures, books, facts, research, etc... that they could get their hands on that could help them in their epistemological mission.

Then, you go on about how I "shouldn't" or "ought to not" talk about God in my way just because I haven't seen what you have seen, read what you have read (and for the record, I could say the same to you about your ignorance for my sources and background). I can say whatever the hell I want about God, or any concept. If society tries to silence me, if individuals get mad, if I am given a rep point whether positive or negative for my statements, I will laugh because none of these responses by humans prove or disprove anybody's statements or beliefs, these are just reactions.

Personally, if you really want to know, I like God, you can even say I love God for a multitude of reasons, a funnier one being the amount of controversy he creates for people, but I don't care about such things like proving his existence or not, it is totally irrelevant to me. In fact, I can go on for days or weeks without uttering the name of God in my head, thinking about his nature, etc... I am just happy with what I see around me and I'm so satisfied by it that I don't mind agreeing with other people who feel the same thing and attribute it all to God. God is pretty much a metaphor for our similar appreciation of nature and the workings of the universe that we notice all around us.

Religious people go a bit beyond this because they live by rules. This is something I have no problems with in itself, but it's important imo to note that simple thought/appreciation/faith in God is distinct from mere belief in God and all his workings, laws, miracles, etc... This is because the latter is more complex and requires adherence to a bunch of rules, often coming out of scriptures for many many people, though sometimes people will come up with their own rules or laws too. I for example have been called a religious person because I believe keeping healthy is a sacred thing that is necessary for sustaining my happiness, and I will go about rituals, such as martial arts, running, walking long distances, etc... as a means to adhere to this law of mine. This is in fact similar to people who adhere to laws such as "Thou shalt not steal", except laws like this, like most laws in the ten commandments, are oriented towards how one should behave in society and not so much in solitude. What's interesting is most religious law codes place an emphasis on interactions of social nature, whilst the laws which the monks adhere to seem to be reserved for their lifestyles moreso rooted in solitary existence.

Now what does God have to do with creating all these rules, and so what if he did? What insight does that really provide? These laws were created for humans to accommodate their lifestyles to some established norm, and attributing their origin to the lips of God doesn't change that. Perhaps it just gives some authoritative backing in religious structures where it is taught that you will be personally punished for breaking the laws. Then again, there's also the perspective that humans accepted some of these laws because they seemed to work consistently, were inherently rewarding those who obeyed them in their normal environment, and punishing to those who did not. Once this relationship was observed, people decided to personify it in a very humanoid kind of divine figure who uses the same judgment and imagination of the people he created laws for.

Perhaps statements like "Man created/invented God, or God is created out of our imagination" come from thinkers who noticed this phenomenon, noting that everything we attribute to be derived from God's actions and nature required some sense of imagination and creativity on our part. I think it's realistic to recognize this.

But then there's the idea that much of God and his nature is unknowable because there's only so much we can comprehend. In other words, there is only so much our imagination and creativity is able to come up with or produce, whether at a given point in our lives or in its totality, and thus we recognize our mental limitations for how we may construct this description God.

I recognize all of this, yet I still like God, even though I seldom pray to him or anything. I prefer to meditate about whatever I feel is important at a given time. Sometimes for fun or for reminiscence I will pray to him to remember how to do it and what it feels like to attribute all this spiritual love to a figure you can speak to in the second person, but I've outgrown this requirement and I feel perfectly fine not using any person marker whatsoever when I am engaged in my meditations. Does this make me a heretic in your eyes?

God is essentially instantiated out of our heads, not because he is a fake or anything, but if we all had lizard brains, I'd say we would not be able to think of God, let alone be so fervent about epistemological issues. This is all stuff we take for granted. All these problems come from our own creative, productive minds and the fact that through communication we bring these minds together to interact and influence each others attention, frames of reference, knowledge, thought patterns, etc...

Believe me, this might sound stale to some of you, but once you notice where all our thinking is coming from, things become mighty fun, you're more in touch with what I like to call, pointlessness You don't need to make a self inflictive religion out of pointlessness and become some sort of nihilist who wants to push everything away that cannot be logically proven to exist or be relevant, you can still be an Armenian who loves his church, who loves his country, etc etc... It's just that at this point, you notice that it's beyond constructs such as scriptures, anthems, borders, etc... You just genuinely like the people, the culture and the feeling of love that you are sharing. There is no reason to force this perspective on anyone, it's just fun and pleasant for me to talk about and I want to share it.

[Sako]

Re: What religion are you?

This is important, read it all or not at all.

Wow, the sun behind the clouds is the worst analogy ever. We know the sun exists because we can still see it's light from behind the clouds and because we have seen it before. There is plenty of evidence for the sun.

Actually, this is the best analogy. What about the blind people out there who were born blind. They have never seen the Sun. Now, should they say it doesn’t exist??? The truth is, you are basing your belief on seeing is believing and you can see but not with your mind. You have to see with your heart, something many don’t understand. Stop analyzing everything and open your eyes. I can equally say that many things don’t exist, scientifically and you or any scientist could never prove me wrong. Science, my friend, is best guess, you’re forgetting about that. Everything has a creator which has been proved in every way possible and this world is also created by someone. Or do you simply think that nature just formed up one day? Well that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

When you read about science, you start to understand what science is like but you don’t understand everything. In the exact way, the science of God is more difficult to understand because you can’t just look or read but you must believe and base everything on faith. Your heart has to see, not your eyes or mind alone.

There are microscopes that help you see atoms and molecules you could never see without them. In the same way, you need a “microscope” to understand God, a much more powerful microscope, one that is easy to get. People just go the hard way, hating the fact that there is a God up there that put them here purposefully. I don’t blame them, they just hate how their suffering here and try to find artificial ways to get to God. This world is almost an illusion. It drags you down but being a good person and nonetheless believing that there is someone more powerful then you is all you need to go forward in life, not in material life.

Believing in something there's no evidence for is a beautiful thing? How is that not a glorified imaginary friend?

YES, believing in something is beautiful, even if it has no evidence. And seriously, yu make me laugh when you say there is no evidence. The one thing that has never changed is religion. It’s been alive more thousands of years and there will always be believers like me and non-believers like you. That’s how this world works. We are all the same, we all get the equal opportunity but we are different by our choices, our faith, our belief, our actions, and our EXPERIENCE.

In this world, there are three types of people. Those that believe after you tell them once, those that nonetheless have to stick their finger in the fire to say it burns, and those that won’t believe even if they burn their entire arm off. There is so much evidence. Clinical deaths, miracles, hell, WE’RE miracles, we’re not just freaks of nature or just animals. If a person doesn’t love, doesn’t feel sorrow, doesn’t believe, he’ll just be an animal because we have a choice, animals DON’T. We can go forward if we want or skate all the way back. They just live until they die. Why do you think we have a choice?

Let’s say, GOD DOESN’T EXIST, ok? Even then, if a person still goes through a religion that his heart is close to, he still stays on the right path because he is pious. Draw a line down a piece of paper and mark what a materialist can do and what a spiritualist can do. A materialist is dangerous because he can do anything, forgetting that there is more to life. A spiritualist is more under control and is much more pious, more open, more free then many Americans with green cards. We are all criminals in this world, that’s why we’re here. Some have done minor crimes, some have done major crimes, but we are criminals nonetheless. Those who learn go up, those who don’t go down. I’m not saying let go of everything in life and just become a fanatic believer. Faith and fanaticism are two different things. And remember one thing, FAITH isn’t learned from a book, it is learned by your heart. Science is learned through material means and every scientist in the world could never describe how this world works completely or how THEY even work. Oh, and just incase, the scientists have proven that people have a soul along with animals. Think about it.

No one said the world as we know it appeared out of thin air (though there wouldn't be that either I suppose). There are explanations for how the universe and the Earth, and the life on Earth came to be. You just choose not to educate yourself about that.

HAHAHA, I’m the one not educating myself? I could explain how it all happened and how it works right now, your right, everything does have an explanation but it’s the person who decides whether he wants to believe it or not. If GOD was so easy to see, he would just be cheap. He gave us freewill and I can see how you use it.

Those explanations currently supported by heaps of scientific evidence provide a more probable and parsimonious explanation than does the belief that some conscious supernatural being created it all.

How is that? If you haven’t believed in your life, how can you understand the science of God or belief? There are books explaining how but it takes more then just eyesight to understand, it takes insight to understand.

Those who choose to understand the universe are making better use of their time than those that shrug away their lack of understanding by saying we're just human we're not meant to understand or attributing it all to "God."

Isn’t the creator more interesting then the created??? You wanna talk about the players who won the football game or how soggy the football field is/was? Who said I “shrugged” away? And how do you know that I don’t know more about this universe then you? And WHO said that we don’t understand God? Your views are as dull as they come. Just stale. You base everything on sight and that’s why you will always be blind. I base everything on sight and insight. And NO, we weren’t created to understand God in every way, that’s impossible, you can’t even begin to understand how powerful he is and out of fear or confusioun generated out of analasis, you demoralize him. We were created to serve, it’s proven. We were created to respect God and not criticize him but people have become so full of it that they can throw stones at him verbally and physically. That’s why they will never understand who he is or even WHO THEY ARE.

One last thing, my friend, let’s say people blindly believe. You know how much worship people do in different countries? You couldn’t do as much as they do in a year, in your entire lifetime. These people, if they believe in nothingness, how do you think they stay motivated? How do you think they stay on track EVERY DAY. They don’t give up for centuries. False hope isn’t enough to do that, no matter how you look at it. They get their motivation from God, and stop sniggering at that just because you can’t understand how it all works. God helps them go forward. He gives us all opportunities but only sheds more light and happiness on those that go forward and try, YES, even blindly sometimes. It is unexplainable and that’s why believers can’t all just write books about. Science and material objects are explainable and you can believe it by just reading a book. You have to work to reach God though and people don’t want to, and not because they can’t see God but because they think it’s a waste of time.

Faith is a difficult subject but remember, analyzing makes everything more complicated and there things that are COMPLETELY unexplainable. I could tell and even SHOW you things that could make your hair stand on end so stop fruitlessly trying to prove that God doesn’t exist. You aren’t talking to someone who blindly says he exists or doesn’t. You don’t believe in God? Don’t, but don’t criticize those that do just because it’s hard for you to scientifically prove it.

The same process applies to science, except instead of deriving your ideas and data from scriptures, you get it from the scientific apparatus and all the litterature that has been produced by it.

There are millions of books and proven facts about God but you choose not to read them so stop trying to say, if you are, that there is no proof whatsoever that God exists. You can't simply use a small material object to see God, he isn't a material person. He is spiritual. You are talking about something so powerful that he could create this entire universe, how it works, and what we are even like. Including all the laws of life and death.

[jgk3]

Re: What religion are you?

Actually I didn't understand what you were trying to say either.

language is a metaphor, nothing we say can be objectively traced to something observable in existence, or even to our own thoughts, which aren't constructed out of English by the way but by universally human mental constructs. We intend to impart messages to eachother, but in order for this to work, we need common frames of reference for the given topic of discussion, otherwise there will be misunderstanding.

If I say God, this is just a word. People have their own ideas of what this God means to them, often those ideas are construced not because the individual actually sees those things in God himself per se, but because they want to give their idea of God legimacy by qualifying him in all sorts of ways that they hope other people can understand and relate to.

So where does existence of God come into play if the whole game is about convincing you to see something I see?

The same process applies to science, except instead of deriving your ideas and data from scriptures, you get it from the scientific apparatus and all the litterature that has been produced by it. In the end however, the battle for epistemological truth is rooted in your desire to convince other people that what you are thinking is very persuasive and undeniable, not that you actually get to experience that "realness" yourself, whatever that is. You're just describing something to someone else using your language faculty.

For the record, religious people aren't constructing their arguments out of "faith", they're just using faith as some idea included in their argumentation, regardless of the fact that most of us understand that faith has something to do with a feeling, as opposed to what we connote from the word "logic". In reality, religious people are using exactly the same method of argument during these heated battles as scientists do, but they are exchanging different sets of mental constructs to eachother. Both however are arguing for a common type of idea called "objective reality" that they wish to associate their religious or scientific ideas with.

This is not to say that science or religion are absurd, but the battles between them seem to be caused by ignorance for where the misunderstandings originate from to begin with. That and the desires of individuals to defend their respective institutions by arguing against eachother.

You can't convince "the other side" to see it your way, they'd first of all have to experience the usefulness of the scientific apparatus and appreciate its usefulness, not merely have it's logic explained to them time and time again by its advocates. Both sides are striving to use logic, neither side has a monopoly over it. At the end of the day, it's not the "logic" itself that makes a scientist happy, it's the fact that their inquiries and methodology are producing satisfactory results for them based on their adherence to the scientific method. The same applies for ardent "believers" in God. The approaches are different, and yes we can note that both institutions in general influence society in differing ways, but when it comes to individual vs individual, it is not easy to prove one to be more logical than the other. I think the best that can be achieved is for both sides to recognize their limitations in perception without implying some kind of elitism that can be felt by their counterpart.

[Siggie]

Re: What religion are you?

Just because I treat your "logic" as influenced by linguistic constructs, suddenly you assume I don't read your posts?

Actually I didn't understand what you were trying to say either.

[jgk3]

Re: What religion are you?

I'm sorry but did you even read my post?

Just because I treat your "logic" as influenced by linguistic constructs, suddenly you assume I don't read your posts?

[Inthemood]

Re: What religion are you?

No, your just wasting your time though.

Not if it gives me pleasure. By the way, the candle in your avatar is not lit.