Your thoughts on God and religion

[loseyourname]

Arman, you need to get over Freud and start responding to ME. In order to facilitate you in that endeavor, I will shortly post a more detailed description of my own worldview, so that you will stop mistaking me and quit grouping me with ideas I don't subscribe to.

Either sometime tonight or tomorrow morning.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname Arman, you need to get over Freud and start responding to ME. In order to facilitate you in that endeavor, I will shortly post a more detailed description of my own worldview, so that you will stop mistaking me and quit grouping me with ideas I don't subscribe to.

Either sometime tonight or tomorrow morning.

I am not "grouping" you with Freud, but your ideas are not new, they were argued by people way before us. In fact, all our ideas are in some way shape or form someone elses. How do we know that in 1000B.C. a slave in Assyria did not conceive of the idea of a flying machine? Or a God? or the rejection of anything other than what we think we see, such as post-modernism? We don't know that, but it is entirely probable. I refer to Freud because he is the essence of the psychoanalytic thought which popularized the non-belief in a God. Others before and after of course influenced that view, but in my opinion, he was the one that, with other psychoanalysts, that referred to this world as a bleak place, full of suffering, death, animality, and we are nothing more than just purposeless creatures wandering, and making ourselve believe we know something by creating God or religion or what not to make ourselves feel validated. So whether we like it or not, we can essentially trace our thoughts to some other thoughts and people that we ourselves might not want to subscribe to or have others categorize us in, but nonetheless that is so.

Of course if the world is a bleak place, and as far as post modernism goes, there is no reason to live indeed. Essentially, there are three views according to those who see the world and history as nothing but a a tragic place and full of suffering and misery. We blind ourselves by religion and the belief in God, and we lie to ourselves, or we embrace the materialism worldview buying alot of shoes, a nice car, and lots of sex, or we embrace the love of learning, and the aesthetic. But this view is only based on the assumption that the world is nothing more than suffering, tragedy, and destruction of human life, ignoring all the good things.

I would indeed like to see your view. Perhaps part of my confusion of what you adhere to stems from the fact that you haven't explained yet what you adhere to or hold as your view.

[loseyourname]

Quit telling me my ideas are not new when I haven't told you any of my ideas. You have a tendency to get these conceptions in your head and just run with them, seemingly ignoring what is actually being said and instead responding to what you think is being said. Go back and read some of my other posts, and as I said, I will post something more detailed shortly.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname Quit telling me my ideas are not new when I haven't told you any of my ideas. You have a tendency to get these conceptions in your head and just run with them, seemingly ignoring what is actually being said and instead responding to what you think is being said. Go back and read some of my other posts, and as I said, I will post something more detailed shortly.

Simply put, Freud would classify you in the realm of unbelievers.

And what's the matter, don't like the fact that someone before you could have thought of the ideas you think of? Now now, no need to feel threatened, because your ideas are indeed not new. You don't have to like it, but that's the way it goes. You have kept saying you will be posting something more detailed shortly for quite some time and all the while its been you thats managed to somehow judge everyone elses beliefs by the barometer of what you believe is right or wrong, or ought to be, since to you we will never know anything, thus me having faith I must be wrong because you don't know anything. God is with you my friend.

[Anonymouse]

Nothing is truly new; it has all been done or said before. What can you point to that is new? How do you know it didn't exist long ages ago? We don't remember what happened in those former times, and in the future generations no one will remember what we have done back here.

- Ecclesiastes 1:9-11

[loseyourname]

Fair enough. Time to put up or shut up, I guess. I'm not a materialist, but I am a skeptic. I have the suspicion of the existence of God, but that's all. I can't even begin to imagine any way to attain knowledge of such a being that has to be so far removed from anything in human experience that it would be completely unintelligible. Any attempt to use science would very obviously fail, since science deals strictly with material objects. Reason would likely also fail, as nothing about the very idea of a supreme being seems to be particularly reasonable. Divine revelation would likely be so overwhelming that it would be almost fully misunderstood. I severely doubt that any religion that has existed thus far or that any religion that will exist in the future will get it anywhere near right. I take the path that Socrates took - I will freely admit that I don't know, and that furthermore, I don't believe I can know, and that will have to be enough. Knowledge claims are not to be taken lightly. A million men have come and gone who were just as convinced as are you, but who presented incompatible ideas. Obviously, you are not all correct. It is likely that none of you are.

Whether or not a human soul exists, again, I don't know. I would like to say that it does, but I have no experience of any such thing. The human spirit is undeniable, as is individual spirit, but is this spirit any form of discernable object, or is it simply an idea? You have done nothing to clarify or even further an argument as you have provided nothing but bold statements backed up by only by the strength of your own conviction. If such an object as a soul does exist, what exactly is it? Is it an individualized awareness, and without a body, without a brain, without sensory capability, what is it an awareness of?

I would simply like for you to admit that you don't know, that all you have is faith, and that faith is not knowledge. Knowledge is something at least approaching 99% certainty. If you have that kind of certainty, then simply put, you have no need for faith. I don't take on faith the fact that the curtains to my right are off-white in color and closed. I take that on sensory perception. Even that requires a slight leap of faith, in that I have faith that my senses are accurate. I have no choice but to have that faith if I ever hope to be able to attain any form of knowledge. But I have no similar sensory perception of anything nonmaterial in nature, to say nothing of the divine. I have no experience and when I so much as attempt to imagine what the divine would be, I can come up with nothing. I would like to know what you have come up with, and how you came up with it. I'm not completely dismissing you here. I'm giving you a chance. By all means, take that chance.

I also think Freud was an idiot and I agree with him on almost nothing. So please, stop arguing with Freud.

[Anonymouse]

I believe God created everything, for something cannot come out of nothing, for this goes into the relationship of causality, cause and effect, in Latin, the phrase "ex nihilo nihil fit" meaning from nothing, nothing can be made. Science has observed this indeed. If X then Y, if program then outcome, if it gets cloudy then it rains, wind causes waves, automobiles move because of an engine.

My argument for the basis of a soul, a spirit, free from all the earthly laws and materials is free will. It is, and I doubt you will accept this, the one piece of evidence to me that supports the existence of a soul, in strictly argumentative terms, aside from my own spiritual experiences.

Free will is being able to choose my own actions and question, free from other laws or causes. Unlike the laws we exhibit here on earth that take place in the realm of cause and effect we are responsible for our actions in the choices that we make. Free from the causal chains that make up our world, we can initiate causes out of our own will. You want to exercise free will? Intentionally cough, or raise your leg. Anyone can do it. I think I can. "I think, therefore I am", uttered Descartes. Free will is the immaterial basis of oneself, the soul. It is our ability to make choices free from any causes, and rather is in itself a cause. We can do a truth tree to determine of indeed this deductively flows.

When one of your friends does something stupid, we often say "God you're stupid. Are you dumb? Don't you watch what you're doing?". This type of thing happens all the time in many different situations. Someone does something foolish and the other calls them "God", then insults them by saying that they are "stupid" or something, such as, "God, what did you do that for? You idiot!" Can you see just what it is I am trying to show here? We are part of a collective consciousness. We are in God and God is the father of all creation.

I believe God gave us our soul, mind, body, free will, however you wish to hyphenate it. I believe it is our duty to question everything. I however have faith in God and God I cannot question. I have questioned God. I was an atheist, then an agnostic, but I have once again come back to believing in God. Because he gave us the ability to choose and to question I believe indeed it is a healthy thing what Socrates prescribed. However, having found my spiritual wavelength, that I cannot question for that has been proven certain to me in my own experiences in ways that dwarf me and would be hard to believe for your common skeptic for me to sit here and translate it. Essentially it is based on what outlook we take. Do you believe God steps in our lives at times, in other words a miracle, or do you believe in random chance?

[loseyourname]

Chance is far from random. It is completely predictable if you know all of the factors that go into it.

I'm going to take a leap here and say that what you are espousing is that all of the material world is deterministic in nature, but that human beings manage to transcend this through the workings of a conscious interface between soul and body that acts free of material laws and is somehow capable of influencing them. This should one day be demonstrable, as our knowledge of the brain increases. One day, if you are correct, we should be able to observe neurotransmitters or perhaps enzymes within the neurons disobeying the laws of physics. Then you will be proven correct. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname Chance is far from random. It is completely predictable if you know all of the factors that go into it.

I'm going to take a leap here and say that what you are espousing is that all of the material world is deterministic in nature, but that human beings manage to transcend this through the workings of a conscious interface between soul and body that acts free of material laws and is somehow capable of influencing them. This should one day be demonstrable, as our knowledge of the brain increases. One day, if you are correct, we should be able to observe neurotransmitters or perhaps enzymes within the neurons disobeying the laws of physics. Then you will be proven correct. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Until then, you are free to exercise your free will and choose what you want to believe.

[töö____müch]

I think without accepting a religion, but simply developing a real realisation of the importance of compassion and love, and with more concern and respect for others, a kind of spiritual development is very possible for those persons who are outside of religion... cause religion is not something outside, but in our hearts. The essence of any religion is a good heart...
Just one more thing ... it is much more beneficial to try to implement daily the shared precepts rather than to argue about minor differences in approach..