Religion — Page 33

Frink you must know by now that all who speak lie?

You can't trust that cat.

I honestly liked your first post, but I was trying to not post on this site (which has obviously been an utter failure--heck, I even said I was done for the night and here I am posting again).  I will try to get to it tomorrow.  I've really got to get serious and do some school work right now :)

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

CP3S said:

Okay, but it does say those things. Bingo admitted he rather liked the teachings of Jesus, and is rather fond of the guy (as am I).

I'd truly like to be too, but the evidence is still pretty scant that he even existed, outside of mythologically.

Well yeah, if he was real, most of what was recorded about him would be extremely exaggerated.

I personally think he is completely fictional, and even if he wasn't, he might as well be since he'd be so far removed from the Jesus we read about.

But I feel like the character of Jesus in the Bible is a total badass. I actually really like the story of the gospels through and through. The narrative of men waiting for a savior to lead them in rebellion against the Romans and to restore their once great kingdom, following this guy around and listening to him preach about peace but hardly listening as evidenced by the swords and daggers they carried with them (ever ready to fight and die beside him), then giving up and going back to their lives with dashed dreams of glory after he was executed, only to see him resurrected a few days later and to finally come to the realization about what he had been trying to tell them... Very good stuff!

Bingowings said:

Did I mention Buddha's birthday is celebrated on Dec 25th?

The fact that Jesus' birthday is celebrated on December 25th has everything to do with the Catholic church "converting" pagan holidays, and nothing to do with a legitimate belief of when Jesus may have been born.

darth_ender said:

In other words, I can't believe in something just because of some intangible feelings.

Yeah. Why would you believe something from an intangible feeling? Especially if that intangible feeling had very good reason to exist because everyone around pressed it into you from a young age.

It took me a long time to make the leap from theist to agnostic. It had been hammered into me from a young age. Bible stories at bedtime, Sunday school each week, say your prayers before bedtime and at every meal. I often felt guilty when I'd fall asleep before I finished praying. Sometimes I'd nod off in the middle of my prayer, and then I'd apologize and start over. It seemed unspeakably rude to nod off while talking to the creator and ruler of the Universe.

I spent a period of time still being a "theist" while not really believing before I became comfortable enough to admit to myself I was an agnostic. I went to church every Sunday, and I still prayed sometimes. One night, I met this really fun and attractive blond, we hit it off and talked for hours. Eventually we went back to her place, stayed up half the night watching movies, started making out, and things escalated. I woke up beside her the next morning, the sun shining golden on her curly hair and reflecting off the smooth skin of her naked body. I felt overwhelmed with warmth, excitement, happiness, anticipation. As it should be. No guilt. I'd always felt guilt in the past, even when things didn't go anywhere near as far as they had gone the night before. That day I was able to admit to myself that I was agnostic.

In other words, I came to believe this in part because of some intangible feelings.  Yes, feelings of happiness at having a sexual encounter without guilt.  Feelings that if God was real, he'd surely be scolding me now.  Yep, I had good feelings, so agnosticism must be true.

I don't mean to belittle your experience, but this sounds a lot like "witnessing."

I guess you didn't get what I was saying with my story. Perhaps I should have ensured the point was clearer. Let me attempt to clarify now.

My point was nowhere along the lines of, "an intangible feeling' convinced me there was no God". I was saying that I didn't believe in God, and that it took me a rather lengthy amount of time before I could let go of it all.

So more accurately:

In other words, that "intangible feeling" that told me God was real, that was deeply instilled in me throughout childhood, eventually faded; and it took that before I could admit to myself that I didn't believe.

It took me a few more years to accept the word "atheist", as I found it generally distasteful. Now I realize, by definition, that is what I am, and I don't resist it anymore.

Ultimately, I was saying that this feeling of "just knowing" that you guys talk about, I totally had it too (Or at least, I feel that what I felt was very similar to what several of your have described). Only, I now attribute it to the much more tangible concept of enculturation; rather than a sign or indicator from a supernatural source.

And completely unimportant to the above point, but just to clarify a little more, least my character and values be understood to be less than they are, it wasn't about having feelings of happiness because I had a sexual encounter. It was that happiness that comes from a new relationship, from having met a person you really hit it off with and can't wait to see again, the anticipation of wanting to see what the future might bring, the acceptance that it may end in heartache, and the feeling that even if it does it'll totally be worth it, etc. Previously those exciting emotions would have been overshadowed by my feelings of guilt (not a deity scolding me, but an ill feeling of having violated my own personal mores), and when for the first time they weren't, it surprised me and led me to admit to myself that I really didn't believe anymore, a reality I tried to hid from myself for a period.

CP3S said:

Bingowings said:

Did I mention Buddha's birthday is celebrated on Dec 25th?

The fact that Jesus' birthday is celebrated on December 25th has everything to do with the Catholic church "converting" pagan holidays, and nothing to do with a legitimate belief of when Jesus may have been born.

Ultimately it's down to the Winter equinox being easy to pin down (which on the Julian calender falls on the 25th not the the 21st).

Many saviors have that as 'the birth' celebration, Horus, Saturn, Mithras etc, and almost every religion has a solstice ceremony.

I mentioned it as an addendum to all the other 'Buddhish' aspects to the Jesus story.

Wise men visiting the savior born to be king, to a virgin bathed in a holy light fits both of them.

TV's Frink said:

darth_ender said:

TV's Frink said:

darth_ender said:

I don't approve of Frink's advocacy for abortion.

Um, okay.  I'm sorry that your understanding of God precludes the idea that he (she, whatever) would understand and, lord help you, approve.

Taking lessons from Bingo in how to many words to make a difficult-to-decipher simple point ;)  You clearly don't approve of everything I do.  Apparently there's a lot of "not approving" of my belief in the Bible here.  I don't understand why "not approving" is such a cause to get everyone's tights in a tangle.

Like I said to Warb, when you say you don't approve, I hear a parent scolding a child.

But that's fine.  It's my little bit of weirdness.

When I say I don't approve, I in no intend it to come across as a scolding.   I am not really sure how simply saying I don't approve of X, comes across as scolding someone for X.   I have never scolded someone for being a homosexual, and nor would I.

CP3S said:

It took me a few more years to accept the word "atheist", as I found it generally distasteful. Now I realize, by definition, that is what I am, and I don't resist it anymore.

could have sworn you once told me you were an agnostic.

Maybe he has new information ;-)

Warbler said:

CP3S said:

It took me a few more years to accept the word "atheist", as I found it generally distasteful. Now I realize, by definition, that is what I am, and I don't resist it anymore.

could have sworn you once told me you were an agnostic.

If you've read my post, you'd see that I explained it took me a while to become comfortable with the word "atheist", and for a long time identified with the term "agnostic".

darth_ender said: I think all points have been made over and over.  Rather than accept that some people believe something different based on different criteria, this zealous missionary effort to dissuade a belief in Christ because of a rather obscure passage that was seldom enforced, even less so at the time of Jesus.  It seems that rather than accepting there are good people who believe in a book that has a lot of truth, perhaps more than they are willing to accept, every atheist's purpose is to shove their own reasoning down someone else's throat.

I don't know how many times I've been told that Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are annoying because they keep coming back and sharing their beliefs.  What about those who keep coming back and demanding that you see things their way?

The problem may be that the whole book is often shoved under the noses of people as the whole truth and nothing but the truth (oaths are still sworn on it).

Yet there are passages that most reasonable minded believers don't believe and would never follow inside it's covers.

And while some of the cruel punishments prescribed in the Old Testament were rarely carried out do you hear much about the laws against wearing clothes of two different twine or against shell fish, tattoos or the wrong beard trim or hair cut outside of conversations like this one?

Do Christians and Jews still deliberate over which country it's okay to sell their children in?

And yet the homosexual lines (and it's still open to debate if it's actually about homosexual sex anyway) get pulled out again and again and again by people who do take it seriously and really would like to lock us all up again or worse.

Mathew 5 29-30/Mark 9 43-48 that nonsense if it really doesn't square with how you would behave to your fellow men. 

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

I believe that we are asking all the wrong questions, and that we are as a species incapable of asking the right ones.

Consider the world as viewed by a species right "below" us on the evolutionary ladder - say, chimps.  Try as we might, a chimp will never understand concepts that we humans consider to be "ultimate questions" - such as the origin of the universe, the vastness of space, the Big Bang, what is "God", etc.  Heck, the chimp can't even play checkers, it can't even understand the concept of abstraction at that level.  We wouldn't even try to explain any of these concepts to the chimp, because we know it is beyond the chimp's capactity to understand no matter how hard we try.  To a chimp, the "ultimate questions" are things like, "how do I get out of this cage?", or "who can I get some food from?", or maybe in a flash of brilliance, "what is on the other side of that hill?".  They aren't even capable of some of our modes of thought, such as "irony".

Now, move one rung UP the chain from us - assuming that somewhere in the universe there is a lifeform further evolved than humans.  To them, our "ultimate questions" are about as interesting and deep as the chimps "ultimate questions" are to us. We always imagine a superior race landing on earth, answering our questions and enlightening us with their insight. That we would learn so much from them. It think it is far more likely that they won't even try to share their knowledge with us, because even just one step up the chain, it would be completely beyond our capacity to comprehend what they are even referring to, let alone understand it.  They might even tell us that, or they might not even bother.  Now imagine 5 or 10 steps up the chain - it would be like comparing our insights versus those of an earthworm.  And they would have modes of thought that we can't even imagine, let alone experience.

I found your logic quite interesting and reasonable.

By this line of reasoning, I'm not even sure what we consider to be the "universe", or "time", or "travel", or "creation", or "God", are anything of significance whatsoever, and that whatever is REALLY at the top of it all (if that is a view that even holds), is something of a nature we cannot possibly fathom, let alone interact with.  And to me, this makes the message and the medium of religion - in any of its current forms - an almost hilarious concept that by definition misses the point.

The primary difference is where I ultimately come to my conclusions.  Obviously, if I believe in God, I believe him to be several rungs above us.  I do believe we are incapable of understanding him or his reasoning.  However, if I believe him to be such a superior being and I trust that his reasoning to be far above my own, I can still trust that he is capable of teaching me on my level.  Going back to the primate analogy, though a chimp cannot comprehend our motives, our reasoning, our "ultimate questions," we may teach the chimp something.  We can teach a chimp some art, some more advanced communication (primitive levels of sign language), and can give very limited insight into our way of thinking.  God, though far above us, is infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely capable.  Sure he would know the exact ways to teach his children how to understand on some basic level what his motives are, what our greatest questions can and should be.  Chimps can be taught, and we are far more capable than chimps.  I believe God has a lot to teach us.

Bingowings said:

darth_ender said: I think all points have been made over and over.  Rather than accept that some people believe something different based on different criteria, this zealous missionary effort to dissuade a belief in Christ because of a rather obscure passage that was seldom enforced, even less so at the time of Jesus.  It seems that rather than accepting there are good people who believe in a book that has a lot of truth, perhaps more than they are willing to accept, every atheist's purpose is to shove their own reasoning down someone else's throat.

I don't know how many times I've been told that Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are annoying because they keep coming back and sharing their beliefs.  What about those who keep coming back and demanding that you see things their way?

The problem may be that the whole book is often shoved under the noses of people as the whole truth and nothing but the truth (oaths are still sworn on it).

Yet there are passages that most reasonable minded believers don't believe and would never follow inside it's covers.

And while some of the cruel punishments prescribed in the Old Testament were rarely carried out do you hear much about the laws against wearing clothes of two different twine or against shell fish, tattoos or the wrong beard trim or hair cut outside of conversations like this one?

Do Christians and Jews still deliberate over which country it's okay to sell their children in?

And yet the homosexual lines (and it's still open to debate if it's actually about homosexual sex anyway) get pulled out again and again and again by people who do take it seriously and really would like to lock us all up again or worse.

Mathew 29-30/Mark 9 43-48 that nonsense if it really doesn't square with how you would behave to your fellow men. 

Wow, rereading my own quote, I made some weird grammar errors.  I won't bother fixing it, though, since it's already been quoted.  I think everyone knows what I meant.  In any case, I don't believe anything on this earth to be infallible.  I believe some things are close, some things are closer, and I do believe in personal revelation from God, but I believe that when he is working through human vessels, sometimes the imperfections of those vessels show through the work.  Yes, I agree that parts of the Bible are quite applicable today.  Some things, on the other hand, are quite out of date.

darth_ender said:

Bingowings said: Mathew 29-30/

um,  maybe I've got a bad Bible, but the Bible I have doesn't have a chapter 29 or 30 of Mathew.  In my Bible, 28 is the last chapter of Mathew.   If the '29-30' stands for verses and not chapters,  I would love to know which chapter they are from.   As I am ignoring Bingo and refuse to click on his posts, does someone else know what part of Mathew Bingo was referring to?

Bingowings said:

darth_ender said: I think all points have been made over and over.  Rather than accept that some people believe something different based on different criteria, this zealous missionary effort to dissuade a belief in Christ because of a rather obscure passage that was seldom enforced, even less so at the time of Jesus.  It seems that rather than accepting there are good people who believe in a book that has a lot of truth, perhaps more than they are willing to accept, every atheist's purpose is to shove their own reasoning down someone else's throat.

I don't know how many times I've been told that Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are annoying because they keep coming back and sharing their beliefs.  What about those who keep coming back and demanding that you see things their way?

The problem may be that the whole book is often shoved under the noses of people as the whole truth and nothing but the truth (oaths are still sworn on it).

Yet there are passages that most reasonable minded believers don't believe and would never follow inside it's covers.

And while some of the cruel punishments prescribed in the Old Testament were rarely carried out do you hear much about the laws against wearing clothes of two different twine or against shell fish, tattoos or the wrong beard trim or hair cut outside of conversations like this one?

Do Christians and Jews still deliberate over which country it's okay to sell their children in?

And yet the homosexual lines (and it's still open to debate if it's actually about homosexual sex anyway) get pulled out again and again and again by people who do take it seriously and really would like to lock us all up again or worse.

Mathew 5 29-30/Mark 9 43-48 that nonsense if it really doesn't square with how you would behave to your fellow men. 

^fixed for Warb.

ok.

xhonzi said:

Bingowings said:

(I don't even like most show tunes).

You mean you're not a...?

He's the exception that proves the rule.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

darth_ender said:

The primary difference is where I ultimately come to my conclusions.  Obviously, if I believe in God, I believe him to be several rungs above us.  I do believe we are incapable of understanding him or his reasoning.  However, if I believe him to be such a superior being and I trust that his reasoning to be far above my own, I can still trust that he is capable of teaching me on my level.  Going back to the primate analogy, though a chimp cannot comprehend our motives, our reasoning, our "ultimate questions," we may teach the chimp something.  We can teach a chimp some art, some more advanced communication (primitive levels of sign language), and can give very limited insight into our way of thinking.  God, though far above us, is infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely capable.  Sure he would know the exact ways to teach his children how to understand on some basic level what his motives are, what our greatest questions can and should be.  Chimps can be taught, and we are far more capable than chimps.  I believe God has a lot to teach us.

Very good - Yes, this is one possible scenario and a logical follow-up to my post, from the point of view of someone with a religious foundation.

Indeed, from a scientific viewpoint, I would list your description as one hypothesis among many, and to some degree in place of the one I offered.  At that point, in the absence of any sort of "test" that could potentially advance one of them (or another) to the level of "theory" (to which I think any scientist would agree none exists), I find myself considering which is the more likely scenario amongst possibilities.  To wit, here are two such possibilities, the two brought up so far (later I will bring up others):

1. [mine] We are one of many species in the universe, trapped by our limitations just as other species on earth are (even) further trapped by theirs, and we, like them, are unlikely to ever know very much about what it all "really means", or
2. [yours] The highest form in the universe is communicating with us and telling us to do some seemingly illogical things, for our own good.

I'm with you so far.  

While I would agree that #2 is certainly possible, if I am even going to consider it, then I need to explore it.  When I do, I find that there are other equally compelling interpretations not on the above list.  My reasoning therein goes back again to the chimp:

From the chimp's perspective, if a human teaches it how to paint, or do sign language, that person might as well be God.  The chimp, if it is capable of such thoughts (and it might be) considers the possibility that indeed we are Gods, it has no way of knowing there is anything higher, and so concludes it to be true.  And lo and behold, YES, we DO tell it to do things that don't make any sense to it - like staying out of the cupboard, or not running out the door into traffic - things that it can't understand why it isn't allowed to do, but are definitely important that it do (or not do)... just like our God is supposedly doing for us.

Still with you.

Thus, if some seemingly omnipotent being really came down from the sky and performed miracles and told us to do certain things, wouldn't it be much more likely that it was simply a slightly higher species, such as we were doing with the chimp?  We spend a LOT more time communicating with dogs, cats, rats, chimps, etc., than we do trying to communicate with earthworms.  I would think that the entity most likely to try and communicate with us (or help us, or experiment on us, or heaven forbid tease us) would be one not so much higher than us.  To us it would seem infinitely above us, because it can do things we cannot even fathom.

I think you raise interesting questions here, though I would disagree on a particular point.  There is a large gap between the chimp and the human, much like the large gap between the human and God.  But the chimp is incapable of reason.  The chimp is not fully self-aware.  The chimp is not technically sentient, as intelligent as it may be.  It's behaviors are motivated entirely by what it instinctively aims for in self preservation.  No matter how much more effort we put into teaching chimps, their brains have pretty much hit a ceiling as far as they are able to mentally grow, and without some substantial evolutionary leap, they will never learn true language (in the sense that they can form an infinite number of combinations to express ideas).  They will never learn to write their names.  They will never learn to even construct anything like a model airplane.  The gap between human and God is far larger, but at the same time we were created in his image, capable of knowing right from wrong.  As our creator, he obviously has some vested interest in us and our wellbeing.  And having given us some capacity to understand, as well as the capacity to act in faith, he grants us the opportunity to exercise both virtues.

Further, opening that possibility contradicts the supposition that what we think is "God" must be good and must be followed.  It could just as well be some race that is breeding us.  Maybe that's why we're not supposed to be homosexuals.  Or it could be a little kid toying with us.  Or it could indeed be good, and we should follow its rules even though it isn't a God.  There are many possibilities.

Some possibilities are scary, especially since most interactions between humans and lower animals are decidedly to the animal's detriment, and in many of those cases the animals are made completely unaware of their impending doom.

As I said, God clearly seems vested in our best interest.  Your other possibilities are interesting.  Discussing it as a matter of faith, faith-based experiments seem to show that God has led most individuals who continually exercise that faith in him to find greater happiness.  From a more scientific standpoint, if this superior being who exercises authority over us were merely toying, it seems he'd have destroyed us long ago, rather than continue to allow us to better ourselves, extend our longevity, and grow to doubt his existence more and more.

One of the biggest differences between science and religion, is the notion of "sacred".  Science holds nothing sacred.  So the biblical interpretation of things is certainly possible, to a scientist even.  But when I think about what is the most likely interpretation - even supposing the observations described in the Bible really happened - in the absence of a supportable theory I think that there are more likely interpretations than what religions conclude.

Occam's razor.  About 2 1/2 years ago, the great scientist Stephen Hawking came out of the closet, so to speak, as an atheist.  For years he had advanced our understanding of physics while still giving God the credit.  What was his amazing reasoning?  Was it that evidence pointed against the existence of God?  Was it that there simply was not enough evidence to substantiate him?  No.  It was because God is redundant, because these laws just exist, and because of these laws, the universe will form itself.  Nevermind the confusion of existence, where do matter, energy, and pre-existing laws come from.  I'm not saying that my pill is easier to swallow for everyone, but to simply cast God aside because "the natural laws did everything" is no simpler an answer.  I feel Occam's razor applies equally well to both scenarios, as both require some leaps.

And I haven't even yet discussed what I consider to be far more likely still - that the observations in the Bible didn't really happen at all.  How many people saw Luke miss with the grappling hook?  How many alien abductions have been reported?  What about all the wacky stuff on late night radio?  Why is it that only those wild stories in the Bible (Koran, etc.) are the "miracles", and the others aren't?  From a scientific viewpoint, indeed, the Bible stories really could have beeen miracles, just like indeed maybe there really were prints out there where Luke missed with the grappling hook.  But I think it is far more likely that those "miracles" simply didn't happen, for the same reason that it is far more likely - and there is more evidence supporting - that Luke didn't ever miss with the grappling hook, and that we really DID land on the moon.  (note that I say this despite the fact that my mind tells me I saw Luke miss the grappling hook!)

Which therefore brings me back full circle, to hypothesis #1, above, and why I remain an atheist.

This is fine with me.  I started a new paragraph on faith, but I don't have time to go deeper with it right now.  Simply put, a lack of evidence is not evidence.  I have a different type of evidence than you.