Let's get right down to brass tax.

The world is a better place when guided by humanism than by the belief (or fear) of an invisible being. The fact that this being is often personified is a reflection of our own vanity.

So whether a God or Yeshua or Allah or whoever exists. The messages of compassion, aid, and love are humanistic prinicples that we can all embrace without having to worry about some father figure who shakes his finger at us from thousands of years ago and says "Do it! Do it or I'll farking spank you!"

reading through some of these posts, i see people actually trying to tell people not to believe in religion.

the sad thing is that you look just as dumb trying to convince someone not to beleive in god as they do trying to convince you to beleive.

if you go through life trying to convert others to your views, you are a far bigger fool than any bible thumping zealot.

/agnostic

Crunch61: /No, probably not that one...

LOL!

Crunch61: /No, probably not that one...

Heh. Nope.

PeopleFirst: So where does that leave us and Job? He only asks for one thing: Trust Him.

I won't trust anyone or anything that gives me no reason to...especially not one who would allow me to be tortured by his arch-enemy (whom he created, BTW).

"Hey, Satan...watch what we can do to him now! No, trust me, Job...this is for your own good. YA RLY..."

You can believe if you want; personally I've found it personally unnecessary to have a deity. Let's just not chalk up to supernatural events those things that are perfectly well understood by naturalistic means (like how our bodies heal themselves).

mp3sum
Pascal's Wager. It's flawed. Try some basic philosophy, it may help to open your mind.

That wasn't advocating Pascal's Wager. That was me trying to say that Christian's don't have it all right. And I don't believe you have to have religion to have Love, just like I always cringe at the mention of "Christian Values." Don't most people think murder and steeling and lieing is a bad thing? Love is not exclusively Christian. But it was my church's focus on Love and forgiveness that made me feel that Christianity was right for me.

You can be a socialist, and still be ok with charging interest. Frankly, it's a good article, gone awry. Trusting the invisible hand of the market is not science, if we are to accept free-market theory, let's look at Wealth of Nations as it was written, not through some fasionable perspective. Smith wrote about intrinsic value, how he believed providence had imbued goods with some value. He also never envisioned the trade of labor itself, he wrote extensively about the trade of goods, but when it came to labor, he wrote The property which every man has in his own labour; as it is the original foundation of all other property." Yet we reward companies for outsourcing and downsizing, we reward the removal of the very things that are, in Smith's words, "the foundation of all other property."

"Power and riches appear then to be, what they are, enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniences to the body, consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most anxious attention, and which in spite of all our care are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and to cursh in their ruins their unfortunate possessor. "
-Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

I'm just here for the humorous graphical posts, of which there appears to be a derth.

A derth!

Yay! Talmud! Tatsuma, are you Cohain?

muninsfire

All I was trying to ask is why would god would commit so much energy to creating a heaven and a hell, and then keeping track of the billions of people on the earth?

He(or it, whatever whoever believes) is supposed to have unfathomable intelligence/knowledge/ability; -- and the best method of controlling humans he/it could come up with is the extremely inefficent heaven/hell/purgatory punishment in the afterlife?

Shouldn't god be capable of coming up with something a little better than that?

Tatsuma

I have no idea about the reliability of family trees, and the estimate of conversos in the colonization of Mexico could be true, for all I know. I would have to see better documentary evidence about Oñate to be convinced.

As to the inscribed rock, I would take that sort of thing with a grain of salt. Wags have been perpetrating hoax petroglyphs and hoax fossil finds and hoax archaeological finds all over the Southwest for many decades, especially in New Mexico. Look up the results of excavations at Sandia Cave to reference the difficulty of judging a hoax from real science.

Furthermore, petroglyphs are impossible to date. Pecking out basalt takes a long time if one uses the tools available to members of the Dominguez expedition. They'd have to camp out for days, and it would be pretty difficult to do it on the sly in such circumstances. Now, a 20th Century hoaxer with power tools might whip it out fairly quickly...in hours.

I wouldn't place too much stock in it.

elchip: So there's 4 alternatives?

What? No, 3 alternatives.

A) Righteous Gentiles/Jews: go to purgatory then the World to Come
B) Oblivious
C) Special room

Captain Fashion:

It's very easy: G-d is omniscient, He knows everything you're gonna do in your life, but he's not the one making decisions since you have Free Will. Just because He knows what choices you are going to make doesn't mean he's responsible for you making these choices. Again, the analogy of a father having a son, knowing this son is gonna die one day.

I guess that's a concept hard to wrap your mind around.
As for me, time go out and study

muninsfire: Not all of us learned the "Europeans really didn't discover anything" angle in school--some of us started before that became popular.

Yes, well, given the sad state of affairs of the intellectual life in the USA, many people still haven't got it through their skulls.

grxymkjbn : For that matter, Noah never built an ark either - because he never existed.... just like Moses.

I bet you will find that Noah existed, however (when quoting me, please feel free to include this ENTIRE LINE), like with most myths, a simple story was blown way out to encompass some sort of belief. Noah was probably some poor farmer who built a boat to take his goat, his 6 wives, and 3 sons. We know there was massive flooding, but not the kind that kills the entire world. Now, as the story was passed along, the boat got bigger, the creatures grew in number, until it made it into the BIg Book Of Myths (bible). Poor Noah, some uneducated farmer with a small boat is now elevated to god's holy servant. **snicker**

superluminal girlI prayed for those people who died in the Tsunami, just like I pray for victims of war and poverty all over the world. Humans were meant to die. Whether or not God physically created earthquakes, he did set something into motion which lead to our world which led to earthquakes. Fault lines are also not all bad; without them we wouldn't have the Rocky Mountains or the Himilayas

Good thing you praying ended the Tsunami. Praying only comforts yourself! HAve you asked these victims if they appreciate your prayers? I bet if you went to Lebanon right now, they wouldn't care that you prayed, only that they can take your seat on the plane you rode over. And frankly, having recently driven through the Rocky Mountains, it sucked...sucked....sucked!!!!!! No thanks from me!!!

superluminal girl I feel sorry for you if you've never had an experience that felt divine.
Sloth_DC:Why?

I too, feel sorry for anyone who hasn't gotten a good and righteous lay! Oh wait, I bet she meant god, well, I cry out oh god! does that count?

//which day did god make the Dino's

WarpZone,
I don't see conversion attempts. I too am eggnog stick. Discouraging discussion is kind of weak. Make your arguements and don't attack people personally. Everything will turn out fine.

allanhowls: "Hey, Satan...watch what we can do to him now! No, trust me, Job...this is for your own good. YA RLY..."

Er--that's not really how it goes. And besides which, it's a parable.

Free Spool: Shouldn't god be capable of coming up with something a little better than that?

It's not a method of control, though. If it were, then there wouldn't be free will.

i am waiting for the day the civil rights movement has a larger section in our history books than the foundation of this country.

/who is james madison?

So everyone except for the not-nice go to the "purgatory" pre-World to Come for up to 12 months, then, Tatsuma? (unless, say, you die the instant Yom Kippur ends...)

superluminal girl

thanks for that well thought out answer. Your church sounds like a pretty progressive and open minded community, if more churches were like that I'd bet there'd be more religious people.

/not me tho
//lol

mp3sum: Free will would only really apply if I did not have the foreknowledge of the ultimate result: eternity in Heaven and Hell.

Ah, here's where the faith comes in.

You have FAITH that there's a heaven and hell in the afterlife. This is predicated on your faith in the afterlife--which is predicated on your faith in G-d. Your faith in G-d is predicated by what you choose--of your own free will--to believe.

See how that works?

No. Because my faith says to me that this religious belief in God, Heaven and Hell is absolutely correct. These things DO exist, as I must believe in the absence of proof. My religion IS the correct one, all it's dogma is true, and if I behave poorly than I am going to Hell. What choice?


superluminal girl

I guess it has something to do with a personal relationship with God.

Jesus H, you're a scientist! And you've settled on a spiritual Truth without even knowing why? You "guess" it has something do with your relationship with God? What if it's just a mental itch, a need to believe in something greater than yourself? What if your mind is just playing tricks? Don't you want to know spiritual Truth, and not just take a random intuitive stab at it?

As a trained Physicist, I have no chioce but to look at uncertainty and ask difficult questions. I didn't become a Christian because I got to belong to something, I converted because the people I found made me feel good; and truely believing in a message of love over all things makes me feel good.

You've determined the True nature of the universe going by what makes you feel good. Seriously, philosophy. The Age of Reason happened many years ago and it's still very relevant today :)

It's not a method of control, though.

Then what is it?

pontechango: Yes, well, given the sad state of affairs of the intellectual life in the USA, many people still haven't got it through their skulls.

Yeah, no kidding. Education's in a sad state in these parts.

You seem to divide beliefs into two groups, those you approve of and those you don't, and you do this with your own personal, albeit arbitrary, moral code.

And you seem bent on attacking me for having a personal belief. Yes, I am a Christian. But you can't put all of the bad things Christians have done, in the name of God, on my shoulders. I have my personal beliefs. They are that we should love God and love every human; I am a pacifist, and I consider myself to be a very tolerant person.

You are saying that holding my beliefs to be right and holding others beliefs to be wrong is flawed. The only other solution is to hold no beliefs at all. Our civilization is founded on beliefs. Our government is founded on beliefs. We can get into a philisophical discussion on the absoluteness of right and wrong, but I won't allow you to try to say I'm a bad person, or the same as a white supremacist, because I'm not.

I'm advocating that I should be able to have my own personal beliefs, and my personal beliefs are based on love, so it follows that I would disagree with anyone whose beliefs were based on hate.

Spank my ButtMonkey: Oh wait, I bet she meant god, well, I cry out oh god! does that count?

And I really like hearing "Oh god!" screamed in my ear, but that doesn't really make me religious...or god.

Tatsuma: If He created Man to have a relationship with him, why wouldn't He care?

If he cared he wouldn't be so keen on wiping us out everytime we don't meet his expectations.

He also wouldn't demand our loyalty as a prerequisite for entering Heaven.

mp3sum

Tatsuma is intelligent, but how can you admire intelligence that goes unchecked with wisdom?

Why not? Wisdom typically, though not in all instances, is acquired through age and experience. He referred to himself as "too young" in response to another question of mine. Whether or not you agree with his positions at this time I'd say he's got a pretty decent set-up to take a stab at wisdom later in life.

superliminal girl: And you seem bent on attacking me for having a personal belief. Yes, I am a Christian.

You've been here almost 2 years, you should realize that this site is very anti-theistic.

Free Radical: If he cared he wouldn't be so keen on wiping us out everytime we don't meet his expectations.

He also wouldn't demand our loyalty as a prerequisite for entering Heaven.

But if Tatsuma is right, neither of those statements are true.

mp3sum: No. Because my faith says to me that this religious belief in God, Heaven and Hell is absolutely correct. These things DO exist, as I must believe in the absence of proof. My religion IS the correct one, all it's dogma is true, and if I behave poorly than I am going to Hell. What choice?

Right up there--"Because my faith says to me that this religious belief...is absolutely correct."

You're choosing to have that belief. You're choosing to have faith. It's your choice to be all dogmatical about it, too. This is free will.

Free Spool: Then what is it?

It's what happens after you die. You may as well say that bathrooms are a means of control, but they're just where you go when you have to poop. The afterlife is where you go when you need to die.

If god really is omnipotent, then the only way he's not malevolent would be if he just brought everyone to heaven from the beginning. You can talk about all this "you gotta let them learn from their mistakes" crap all you want, but fact remains that he allowed the pain and suffering of actual humans to occur, when it was within his abilities to stop it. Pretty much, he broke the good Samaritan rule. When you punish a child or let it make its own mistakes, it only causes a minor inconvenience for one person. When you do it to all of humanity, you kill off and/or cause suffering to thousands-millions of innocent humans. There is simply no comparison.

mp3sum
And you've settled on a spiritual Truth without even knowing why?

I think the problem here is that I have my time for science, and I have my time for religion/philosophy. I gather the information from both, and I try to make decisions based on truth and faith. I do not believe that science and religion are completely compatable, nor do I believe they are incompatable. Why is it so hard for you to accept that I have scientific beliefs and religious beliefs and that I can hold sometimes two opposing thoughts in my head at the same time. The problem seems to be that you can only hold one thought in your head at a time, you just happened to choose rabid atheism instead of rabid Christianity.

Free Radical: He also wouldn't demand our loyalty as a prerequisite for entering Heaven.

All questions of whether or not that's true aside--do you demand certain things [ "Don't drink all the beer and throw the bottles into the TV" ] from people who show up at your house?

absoluteparanoia

Let's get right down to brass tax.

The world is a better place when guided by humanism than by the belief (or fear) of an invisible being. The fact that this being is often personified is a reflection of our own vanity.

So whether a God or Yeshua or Allah or whoever exists. The messages of compassion, aid, and love are humanistic prinicples that we can all embrace without having to worry about some father figure who shakes his finger at us from thousands of years ago and says "Do it! Do it or I'll farking spank you!"

Ummm... yea this had to be repeated.


superluminal girl

mp3sum
Pascal's Wager. It's flawed. Try some basic philosophy, it may help to open your mind.

That wasn't advocating Pascal's Wager. That was me trying to say that Christian's don't have it all right. And I don't believe you have to have religion to have Love, just like I always cringe at the mention of "Christian Values." Don't most people think murder and steeling and lieing is a bad thing? Love is not exclusively Christian. But it was my church's focus on Love and forgiveness that made me feel that Christianity was right for me.

So what you're saying is you need religion in order to function as a moral person in society? Also, if you don't believe absolutely that your religion is the Right one, is is Pascal's wager.

superluminal girl I feel sorry for you if you've never had an experience that felt divine.

This sums up a huge part of the problems concerning the religious mindset right there. Thank you.

Tatsuma: It's very easy: G-d is omniscient, He knows everything you're gonna do in your life, but he's not the one making decisions since you have Free Will. Just because He knows what choices you are going to make doesn't mean he's responsible for you making these choices. Again, the analogy of a father having a son, knowing this son is gonna die one day.

I guess that's a concept hard to wrap your mind around.

Actually, I don't think I'm the one having a problem with the concept.

Like I said before the father/son analogy doesn't work because a human father doesn't know with 100% certainty what his son will do.

Say I built a sophisticated robot with a positronic net and all that, and I knew with 100% certaintly exactly what the robot was going to do in every situation. Even if the robot was self-aware and had Free Will, what right would I have to judge his actions if I knew beforehand with 100% certainty what he was going to decide to do because I programmed him that way?

You say that g-d doesn't judge you until you've done something, but how does that matter if he knows with 100% certainty exactly what you're going to do, and what's more he created you knowing full well that you were going to do exactly what you did?

He might as well just judge you before you are born and not create you at all, if he's just going to be a jerk about it.

LVLLN: When you punish a child or let it make its own mistakes, it only causes a minor inconvenience for one person. When you do it to all of humanity, you kill off and/or cause suffering to thousands-millions of innocent humans. There is simply no comparison.

No, there is no comparison--because you're conflating the issues of individual humans with humanity as a whole.

Are you malevolent to the rosebush when you prune it?

IdBeCrazyIf: Yes I do, but I also don't give me friends the keys to my house let them in, tell them to have fun but you can't do this, that, or the other and then expect my house to be pristine when I come back.

You've never had someone housesit for you? O.o;

2006-07-25 12:19:49 PM Spank my ButtMonkey
I bet you will find that Noah existed, however (when quoting me, please feel free to include this ENTIRE LINE), like with most myths, a simple story was blown way out to encompass some sort of belief. Noah was probably some poor farmer who built a boat to take his goat, his 6 wives, and 3 sons. Poor Noah, some uneducated farmer with a small boat is now elevated to god's holy servant. **snicker**

Noah was a nudist and a wino. :)

So what you're saying is you need religion in order to function as a moral person in society? Also, if you don't believe absolutely that your religion is the Right one, is is Pascal's wager.

Will you read what I'm actually writing instead of assuming I'm some bible-thumping ingrate? I chose a religion because it agreed with what I felt in my heart to be the essence of morality, not the other way around. 1. This is a personal issue, and I don't understand why you are so against me having faith. 2. Conscience and morals are an entirely different argument.

elchip: So everyone except for the not-nice go to the "purgatory" pre-World to Come for up to 12 months, then, Tatsuma? (unless, say, you die the instant Yom Kippur ends...)

Well everyone deserving of the World to Come, yes. I'd wager most of our main figures probably spent some times there, even if a mere seconds. (Not talking Moshe, Avraham and guys of their class, but the latter ones)


fatal_exception: Why not? Wisdom typically, though not in all instances, is acquired through age and experience. He referred to himself as "too young" in response to another question of mine. Whether or not you agree with his positions at this time I'd say he's got a pretty decent set-up to take a stab at wisdom later in life.

hey, I stopped stabbing people ages ago!

elchip: You've been here almost 2 years, you should realize that this site is very anti-theistic.

Yeah, that too. I love this place, but the anti-theist are pretty strong. But so are the anti-(insert cause).

Free Radical: If he cared he wouldn't be so keen on wiping us out everytime we don't meet his expectations.

He also wouldn't demand our loyalty as a prerequisite for entering Heaven.

neither of these statments are true.

Mr.Churka: Yay! Talmud! Tatsuma, are you Cohain?

nah, unfortunately, no service at the Temple for me. It's a good thing, on the other hand, I really am not worthy.

If you go through life trying to convert others to your views, you are a far bigger fool than any bible thumping zealot.

No. You're someone who cares enough about others to try and offer them help. If you believe that someone who doesn't share your beliefs is going to fry in Hell for eternity (which I don't), then the best thing you can do is warn them and try to "save" them from that fate.

In the LDS church, we believe that we were spirit children of heavenly father, and that we needed to be sent away to Earth in order to learn many things, including faith. God knew we would make mistakes while we were here, and that the sins we would commit would keep us seperate from him forever. He sent the greatest of all his spirit children to be his Earthly son and atone for our sins so we could return to his presence when we died.
Those who die having rejected God will feel ashamed to be in his presence, and will spend eternity away from him, consumed with guilt.
The closest thing to a Mormon Hell is a complete seperation from God, reserved for those who did believe in Him, and still rejected Him.

superluminal girl

Wogus I subscribe to your "natural laws" theory, but I call it Science. That's not the same thing as faith.

Maybe I'm not following you, but I wasn't attempting to make an argument for, or against, faith or faith-based arguments.

The thrust of my argument was, simply, that the general principal of "personified deity" is at the source of much unnecessary suffering. So many arguments about God, how God interacts, or "fails" to interact, with humanity simply disappear when the personality-factor is removed. God does not hear us when we pray, does not cause the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike, smite evil-doers, cause flowers to bloom, the tides to rise and fall or the sun to rise and set.

The (potentially) infinite set of Natural Laws I refer to fall into two discrete groups: the Known and the (at present) Unknown (capitalized for clarity). The Known we can call Science, the Unknown we can call whatever you want. My point being, regardless of the degree of our individual, or for that matter collective understanding, these Laws operate positively and absolutely.

We as human beings are subject to these laws, inscrutable as some may be, and too their conjunctive effects. Those who either do not understand these Laws or choose to ignore them, come into conflict with the order of the Universe, and suffers accordingly.


IdBeCrazyIf: Thank you. Your complimentary first-copy is in the mail. ;)

LVLLN: If god really is omnipotent, then the only way he's not malevolent would be if he just brought everyone to heaven from the beginning.

Read the story of Adam and Eve recently?

Captain Fashion: Like I said before the father/son analogy doesn't work because a human father doesn't know with 100% certainty what his son will do.

A father doesn't know with a 100% certainty that his son will die? that's a dumb father there!

muninsfire: All questions of whether or not that's true aside--do you demand certain things [ "Don't drink all the beer and throw the bottles into the TV" ] from people who show up at your house?

Yes, but I don't send them to eternal damnation if they refuse.

superluminal girl

And you seem bent on attacking me for having a personal belief. Yes, I am a Christian. But you can't put all of the bad things Christians have done, in the name of God, on my shoulders. I have my personal beliefs. They are that we should love God and love every human; I am a pacifist, and I consider myself to be a very tolerant person.

I'm not attacking you for having personal beliefs, I'm asking why you look down upon others (ie. White supremacists) for having personal beliefs? Doesn't sound very tolerant...

You are saying that holding my beliefs to be right and holding others beliefs to be wrong is flawed. The only other solution is to hold no beliefs at all. Our civilization is founded on beliefs. Our government is founded on beliefs.

No, I'm not saying that, I'm just questioning your reasoning and youre assuming my motives. So since our civilization and government did it, it must be right?

We can get into a philisophical discussion on the absoluteness of right and wrong, but I won't allow you to try to say I'm a bad person, or the same as a white supremacist, because I'm not.

You'r right, your belief in God is much more scientific and provable than the belief that white men are superior to other races.

I'm advocating that I should be able to have my own personal beliefs, and my personal beliefs are based on love, so it follows that I would disagree with anyone whose beliefs were based on hate.

First you say you're a tolerant person, than you say you disagree with anyone who's not on the same page as you morally. You may want to have a nice meditative chat with yourself and figure all this out.

The problem seems to be that you can only hold one thought in your head at a time, you just happened to choose rabid atheism instead of rabid Christianity.

I'm not an atheist.


fatal_exception

mp3sum

Tatsuma is intelligent, but how can you admire intelligence that goes unchecked with wisdom?

Why not? Wisdom typically, though not in all instances, is acquired through age and experience. He referred to himself as "too young" in response to another question of mine. Whether or not you agree with his positions at this time I'd say he's got a pretty decent set-up to take a stab at wisdom later in life.

Wisdom is just an understanding of the self and it's relationship with he world. How much time it takes to acquire it is up to the person wielding the mind. If he's going to take a stab at it later in life that's fine, but arguing for unprovable truth right now is certainly counter-productive.


muninsfire [TotalFark]

mp3sum: No. Because my faith says to me that this religious belief in God, Heaven and Hell is absolutely correct. These things DO exist, as I must believe in the absence of proof. My religion IS the correct one, all it's dogma is true, and if I behave poorly than I am going to Hell. What choice?

Right up there--"Because my faith says to me that this religious belief...is absolutely correct."

You're choosing to have that belief. You're choosing to have faith. It's your choice to be all dogmatical about it, too. This is free will.

How can I choose to have faith in something that is absolutely true? I have to believe, because it's true.