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Sand
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18 May 2008, 5:58 am

Why bother? I am not interested in gaining either followers or fooling around with publishers.



oscuria
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18 May 2008, 6:15 am

Sand wrote:
Ah, but I do have something which may be entirely new. Throughout the many ages humans have posited all sorts of human-like beings in imitation of their various rulers to demand, as their rulers did, obeisance and tokens of subservience. Since they could not conceive of a universe with an inherent structural order which resulted in the fantastic and wonderful complexities that produced the galaxies, the various different stars, the strange planets and, at least locally and most probably throughout the universe, the odd creatures such as myself, the dinosaurs, the intricate wonders of even the simplest living cell and so forth. But from recent centuries humans have observed that it does not require a sacred spirit to make the planets revolve around themselves and the Sun nor make a dried leaf gaily spin as it drops to the ground. There are unsupervised forces that do this and, of course, much more. What has not been realized is that thought, which arranges all these intricate phenomena, does not require either a mysterious spirit supervisor nor even consciousness. Thought is essentially a filtering process which permits some things to occur and prevents others from happening and this thought is accomplished merely by the non-conscious interaction of the few basic forces active in this our universe. The universe does its own "thinking" and not only does it quite well, it does not permit deviation from its rigid laws. It does not require worshiping or tokens of faith and it is absolutely pitiless insofar as its regulations be obeyed. It has no more concern for mankind than it has for a stone rambling through the gravity fields of a galaxy but it is impossible to disobey. No God is necessary.


I don't understand what you mean by "could not conceive..." Are you claiming that the people were too ignorant to understand or too ignorant to believe? Or none of these at all?

What is consciousness? What is thought? What is worship?

I find Jesus' words very wise in this matter: “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”
(I usually don't like quoting scripture--it seems tacky)

To not acknowledge because it is "unnecessary" is shaitan.



slowmutant
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18 May 2008, 6:22 am

Sand wrote:
If there is a level far beyond my capability to understand then here is no point in my attempt to understand or deal with it in any way. Better not bother.


What big cop-out that is! :x



Sand
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18 May 2008, 6:32 am

From the earliest civilizations humans have assigned android type gods to control the various phenomena they have observed. Some controlled the cosmos, some threw lightning bolts, some made the grass grow, etc. They patterned the forces of nature on themselves and they way they accomplished things. They did not conceive of forces existing on their own to work the various happenings in their lives. It was only with the post middle ages that science began to assume forces without a conscious motivator such as gravity, magnetism, etc.
Consciousness is an awareness of a subsystem such as a living thing of its surroundings, itself, and the relationships between the two.
Thought is the ability to discern relationships and manipulate them. This can be done by virtual modeling and through manipulating the virtual relationships or by actually manipulating the realities as occurs in nature.
Worship, insofar as I can figure (since I have never worshiped anything) is a personal subjugation to an assumed superior force or being.
I have no idea what shaitan is or means to you since I assume it is some sort of imaginary demon.



Sand
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18 May 2008, 6:35 am

Not a cop out at all. If you truly believe that something is beyond understanding then in what way can you understand it? It is a denial of your assumption to do so.



oscuria
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18 May 2008, 3:23 pm

Not all the religions have android deities. They generally understood that whatever deity they summoned did not have human characteristics. They did assign it anthropomorphism, but this is only a natural occurrence with humans. We treat everything as another.

I asked these three questions because if you understood them, you'd understand that they all fall in line with each other and are relevant. As you posted, " it does not permit deviation from its rigid laws." What other explanation for a Supreme Being is there? Considering that even the elements of the universe worship the universe itself. I am merely rendering unto the Supreme what IS the Supreme's.

Shaitan can mean many things in the context of how it is being used. In my usage, I implied it as being disrespectful or adversary to Truth.





If something is beyond our understanding there is no use in explaining. There would be no use in giving proof because it will always be out of the reach of people who care not, and always in the curiosity of those who admire and submit.



Sand
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18 May 2008, 9:03 pm

As someone with an endless sense of curiosity I have deep respect for people who look carefully at the universe and attempt to puzzle out how things work. If there is any faith in this activity it is the faith that things eventually yield understanding with the proper attitudes of inquiry. To declare that there are things that are not possible to understand is to succumb to defeat in this enterprise without even trying. There is no way anyone can know that there are things beyond our understanding. Sometimes it takes centuries of trying but so far the universe has always given up its secrets.

To doubt everything is the greatest respect for the nature of the universe since doubt leaves open alternate pathways of understanding. It is the way to new learning and each opening of comprehension leads to new flexibility in other directions. No theory or belief should be immune to doubt since that is what freedom of thought is all about.

One final point. People who are afraid to doubt their most firm beliefs are insecure people whose whole outlook depends upon not looking deeply into what they claim to be final answers. To be free of this rigidity is the greatest freedom and, in the end, the greatest security since there are probably no final answers and in the end the universe which seems to be endlessly flexible and fascinating will discover the chinks in a rigid belief and destroy someone who refuses to change.



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18 May 2008, 9:16 pm

I believe that God exists, but I focus way more on his love than on his wrath.


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19 May 2008, 7:41 am

Rossi wrote:
The biggest problem of you guys (thread opener and supporters) is, that you are picking attributes of religion, process them through your "science-or-nothing"-mind, of course come to the conclusion that it makes no sense and therefore must be a lie, delusion, even flawed mental health of the believers.

You have two options - open your mind for religion or leave it.
If you open your mind for religion you just have to accept that it is insufficient to judge God from purely human concepts or attributes (e.g. this world does not fit my idea of a benevolent god, therefore god would be rather sadistic). You have to accept that there is a level of existence in this world that is far beyond the scope of our understanding and conceptualization.
If you try to fully understand God you (any human being) must fail by nature, because God must be far beyond human scope ! Therefore taking your inability to understand God as a proof of his nonexistence is flawed by nature.

I know that you will reject that idea, because you choose option two - you leave it. You call anything beyond your scope delusion. But maybe it's still worthwhile for you to just think about the fact, that there may be a different concept of life and the world, different to your "I don't believe in what I can't see, touch, smell, express mathematically"-concept - that there is no right or wrong, just two options.


Many Atheists have that view, but I don't to a degree. I have no problem with spirituality. The problem I have is that people interpret spiritual experiences through their belief system and thus believe that they have been "touched by God" or something similar. I have had spiritual experiences myself but I have had no compulsion to attribute them to a supernatural being, to me it seems like a feeling of oneness with the universe. IMO the notion of "God" debases the universe by trying to apply concepts of human social reality onto the physical world.


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19 May 2008, 7:49 am

iamnotaparakeet wrote:
snake321 wrote:
Ok, this can be for people of any monotheist religion, be it christianity, islam, judaism, w/e. So, you believe there is a humble, all powerful, all loving god..... Yet, god requires mere human beings (who are no doubt like ants compared to him), mere humans, to bow and worship him... That doesn't sound like a very humble act in my opinion.
Sounds more like subjugation, which is more or less slavery. For god to require us to bow to him or worship him would be very very egotistical, would it not? Plus it's like this, imagine I could somehow communicate with bugs, and I demanded them to worship me. What's the point?


I don't think that God is humble or by any means has to be. For you to insert that belief, well, that is your entire argument.


As in my previous post, this is a big reason I have a problem with the notion of "God." Humility, compassion, love, etc. are concepts of human social reality, they have no existance outside of human minds. IMO "God" is merely a misleading concept based on applying elements of human "folk psychology' (that is, knowledge of human social reality, with it's concepts of sapient agents with intentions, desires, and plans) onto the physical world.


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Sand
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19 May 2008, 11:43 am

The speculations about God being this or that or the other considering the monstrous inconsistencies of the whole area boils down to basic comical mental acrobatics. One sector claims that God is so superior that no amount of human speculation can encompass the reality of a being so posited. Another attempts to rationalize God with current morality of a rather local nature - each social group throughout the world specifying something different involving localized cultural traditional diets, costume, sexual behavior etc. Since there are extreme differences in these from culture to culture it is unlikely any consensus will ever be reached. And yet this impossible discussion goes on and on and on with no possibility of a general consensus.



slowmutant
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19 May 2008, 11:49 am

Agree to disagree, Sand. That's your best option.



Sand
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19 May 2008, 12:01 pm

It is not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing. A good many of the people here are not stupid. Why do they continue this endless meaningless unresolvable talk?



iamnotaparakeet
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19 May 2008, 12:03 pm

Each person wants the last word?



slowmutant
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19 May 2008, 12:20 pm

Sand wrote:
It is not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing. A good many of the people here are not stupid. Why do they continue this endless meaningless unresolvable talk?


YOU continue it because YOU want the last word. As you said, a good many people here are not stupid. Debating is debating for the sake of debating. It's not about words, ideas, or the truth. It's about competition and ego. The endless back-and-forth is fuelled by vanity, hostility, and boneheadness. On that note I hereby withdraw from this debate. Seeya.



Last edited by slowmutant on 19 May 2008, 12:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sand
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19 May 2008, 12:22 pm

Does that sum it up. Each one is convinced of their own personal solution and since there is no conceivable way to come to a general agreement the blather goes on? I suppose in more dynamic venues guns are pulled and people who disagree are blasted out of existence. So much for religion and good fellowship.