The insanity of religion

2seaoat wrote:Is it your belief that god created the universe?

What part of the answer which was concise and accurate did you not understand.  Are you having difficulty with the concept of a priori?

Bob wrote:

Vikingwoman wrote: Are we more forward in our thinking that there is no reason we are here and we create the importance of our existence?

Think about your words:  "...reason we are here..."

The word "reason" is the key to the answer you're looking for.
If you read through all the various definitions for that word,  in all the various dictionaries,  it all describes something purely human.  
So what you're looking for is a human understanding of the nature of all that exists.  
But what we are and what we do and how we think,  is hardly the explanation for everything which exists.  Hell,  our "reason" doesn't have a  clue what actually exists.  What we know to exist is limited by our senses and our capacity to do HUMAN "reason".  Again with emphasis on HUMAN.
But god only knows what exists which is outside of or beyond any HUMAN "reasoning".
And I say "god only knows" for a reason because that's what god is to me.  God is whatever is beyond my capacity to comprehend.  Could be literally anything because it's inconceivable to my human mind.

2seaoat wrote:2seaoat, I asked you this in my last post but you didn't respond. How did you come to be a christian? Were you indoctrinated as a child?

I attended church regularly as a child.  About sixth grade I began to have questions which could not be answered logically.  By eighth grade, like you I was beginning to doubt the logical explanations which were being presented to me by very stupid people.  I found too many contradictions in scripture and found that much of religion was superstition, and simple ritual.

By ninth grade I had found Matthew Six and found guidance.  I no longer attended church regularly.  Easter or Christmas, but I found that I had a natural revulsion to people dictating to me what God was with simplistic concepts which made no sense in scripture or within the physical world which in eighth grade I had achieved a unitary sense of truth in science and math.  I found that I had created a paradigm which explained physics, geography, math, chemistry, and biology.  In my eighth grade mind I had advanced in my scholarly pursuits to have an understanding of the world I lived.  Now with each year which has passed, I have discovered that more questions are raised every day with branches of knowledge from my unitary paradigm, and with that more questions about what is not known and yet discovered, the importance of a unitary apex of perfection and truth became increasingly more obvious as I discovered that I could never understand empirically the world I lived and that my mastering of my paradigm as an eighth grader still basically guided my life in my physical life, but increasingly those assumptions of the truths of nature, math, and science were changing as our human knowledge base grew.   With this process came an ever increasing certainty that there is perfection and truth in the universe and it is at the apex of yet discovered reality.  Matthew six provided me with the portal to try to discover the unification of those truths and the perfection of the concept of God.  To that end I live my life simply following the Matthew six as guidance in my Christian beliefs.  I find it to simple to stand like the hypocrites who pray the loudest telling all the path to God, and I find it to simple to simply state God does not exist because I am incapable of understanding all truth in the universe at this time, and in the absence of such knowledge come to the illogical conclusion that God does not exist.  I am not indoctrinated, but free.

2seaoat wrote:

2seaoat wrote:2seaoat, I asked you this in my last post but you didn't respond. How did you come to be a christian? Were you indoctrinated as a child?

I attended church regularly as a child.  About sixth grade I began to have questions which could not be answered logically.  By eighth grade, like you I was beginning to doubt the logical explanations which were being presented to me by very stupid people.  I found too many contradictions in scripture and found that much of religion was superstition, and simple ritual.

By ninth grade I had found Matthew Six and found guidance.  I no longer attended church regularly.  Easter or Christmas, but I found that I had a natural revulsion to people dictating to me what God was with simplistic concepts which made no sense in scripture or within the physical world which in eighth grade I had achieved a unitary sense of truth in science and math.  I found that I had created a paradigm which explained physics, geography, math, chemistry, and biology.  In my eighth grade mind I had advanced in my scholarly pursuits to have an understanding of the world I lived.  Now with each year which has passed, I have discovered that more questions are raised every day with branches of knowledge from my unitary paradigm, and with that more questions about what is not known and yet discovered, the importance of a unitary apex of perfection and truth became increasingly more obvious as I discovered that I could never understand empirically the world I lived and that my mastering of my paradigm as an eighth grader still basically guided my life in my physical life, but increasingly those assumptions of the truths of nature, math, and science were changing as our human knowledge base grew.   With this process came an ever increasing certainty that there is perfection and truth in the universe and it is at the apex of yet discovered reality.  Matthew six provided me with the portal to try to discover the unification of those truths and the perfection of the concept of God.  To that end I live my life simply following the Matthew six as guidance in my Christian beliefs.  I find it to simple to stand like the hypocrites who pray the loudest telling all the path to God, and I find it to simple to simply state God does not exist because I am incapable of understanding all truth in the universe at this time, and in the absence of such knowledge come to the illogical conclusion that God does not exist.  I am not indoctrinated, but free.

Part two.  Please do not tell me you did not even bother to read the same, or are you so set in the sophomoric attack of religion that you approach all folks who believe as dunderheads who worship sky faries?  You really have not given a cogent response to anything I have written, except attempted to corral me in what other people stand up a pray the loudest as the truth....you are no better but when you pray to your paradigm, you do not even take the time to read Matthew 6.......you would be so easy to figure in poker.....so certain that your kings were the winning hand.

2seaoat wrote:
Part two.  Please do not tell me you did not even bother to read the same, or are you so set in the sophomoric attack of religion that you approach all folks who believe as dunderheads who worship sky faries?  You really have not given a cogent response to anything I have written, except attempted to corral me in what other people stand up a pray the loudest as the truth....you are no better but when you pray to your paradigm, you do not even take the time to read Matthew 6.......you would be so easy to figure in poker.....so certain that your kings were the winning hand.

Bob wrote:

But,  as to it having any relevance to my religion?  Nah.  For there to be any analogy to my minnows,  these fish wouldn't be audibly speaking English.  lol
That's sorta the whole point of my minnows.  They aint never gonna be talking to us or sending us emails or texts or smoke signals.  lol

2seaoat wrote:People with strong arguments are generally able to directly respond rather than fabricate strawmen and then attack those.

That is the current hiding place for god.  In time, I suspect we won't need god for that explanation either.

I have directly responded.  There is no need for any strawman, that was your choice with the Spahgetti God.  However, again you make a fatal flaw in logic.  You assume that the universe, nature, math, and science can be realized by man in its complete truth.....again a fools errand.

boards of FL wrote:I ridicule those who believe because the doctrines are so obviously false.  Hypothetical scenario.  Let's say that you have a son who is in first grade and it's report card day.  Let's say your son comes home with a sheet of notebook paper that reads: "This isz Matt's (your son's name is Matt) reporte kard!  Matt's got all As and a Beee"  would you be skeptical of that document?

Let's say your dog approached you one day with a sheet of paper that read: "A kneww laww haz bin past.  No mor katz r aloud n this hous.",  would you be skeptical of that document?

Let's say you read a book written in ancient barbaric times in which women were treated as property, slavery was prevalent, punishments were swift and incredibly harsh, and the general level of knowledge at the time was very low; and let's say that the book was said to be an explanation of the creation of our universe.   The book, coincidentally, is also incredibly harsh, ignorant, and barbaric.  Women need to do what their men say or else.  Etc, etc.  Many of the claims in the book can be factually refuted today based upon our current understanding of the world because we know considerably more today than the people did in the past when the book was written.  And if you don't believe this, you will but tortured in a pit of fire forever.  Wouldn't you be skeptical of that document?   What if there were thousands of these books, all making equally extraordinary claims and all being incompatible with the rest?   Wouldn't that make you even more skeptical?

boards of FL wrote:I have made no assumption that we have discovered everything about math, science, and nature.  In fact, I am certain that we have not.  We haven't even scratched the surface.  I am the one who is comfortable not knowing and conceding that our knowledge - as developed as it has become - is still incredibly limited.  You are the one who invents a place holder for not knowing.  The religious claim to know how the universe came to be.  I, on the other hand, do not. You're getting yourself and I confused here.  I have a reason to investigate how our universe came to be.  You, on the other hand, do not because you already know.  God did it.  People also used to see no need in investigating why the sun rises and sets.  Bill O'Reilly sees no need to investigate the reason for the changing tides because god did it.  Ancient civilizations felt no need to investigate why storms or natural disasters happen.  God did it.  And they felt that they must therefore do whatever they could (sacrifices, pray, etc) to appease that god so that they didn't bring any more evil upon themselves.  

This is known as a "god of the gaps" argument.  You're basically saying "There are things that we don't currently know about or understand, therefore, god."   If that is the argument that you want to make, you're basically saying that god is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance.  God used to cause the sun to rise and set.  God used to cause the tides to go in and out.  God used to cause death.  God used to cause the changing season.  Today, god isn't really needed to explain hardly anything outside of  "What happened before the big bang?"  That is the current hiding place for god.  In time, I suspect we won't need god for that explanation either.

boards of FL wrote:Pascals wager is absolutely the worst philosophical argument for the existence of god that has ever been made.  Watch this.  There is a religion called Dragonism.  It's doctrine states that there is a 16 headed dragon called Yabtoraok.  Yabtoraok commands us to spend our entire lives learning as much about math and science as we possibly can.  If we fail to do that, Yabtoraok will torture us forever in a pit of fire.  

OK.  On one hand, I could consider this claim and then naturally write it off as complete nonsense.  On other other hand, what if it is true?  If true my skepticism will cause me to be tortured forever.  I suppose I may as well say that I believe in Yabtoraok since the possibility of being tortured for eternity far outweighs the cost of learning as much about math and science as possible.

We could apply this argument to the most asinine propositions out there.  The entire universe rests inside the eye of a clown.  If we don't spend our lives worshiping this clown, he will bring the worst imaginable evil upon us in the afterlife.  Well, may as well believe in that one as well.

And beyond that, lets assume that god does in fact exist for a second.  Do you honestly think that viewing the proposition of belief or skepticism through the lens of a self-interested wager would be considered acceptable to a god?  Come on now.

boards of FL wrote:If you had been born and raised in Kuwait, don't you think it very likely that you would subscribe to islam?  If you had been born in a particular region of the world where (insert religion) is prevalent, and if your parents were also (insert religion), don't you think it highly likely that you yourself would be (insert religion)?  Had you been born in ancient Greece, don't you think it likely that you would have worshiped Zeus?  And how unfortunate it would have been for you if you were born before the invention of christianity!  No matter what you did with your life, hell awaited you!

Isn't your current religious identification more attributable to random chance (time/era, geography, your parents) than a serious consideration of all religious claims available, and then a selection of the one that you felt seemed the most likely?

Salinsky wrote:

Bob wrote:

But,  as to it having any relevance to my religion?  Nah.  For there to be any analogy to my minnows,  these fish wouldn't be audibly speaking English.  lol
That's sorta the whole point of my minnows.  They aint never gonna be talking to us or sending us emails or texts or smoke signals.  lol

Umm no, Bob.

The fish in the movie only spoke in English so the audience could understand them.

They were unable to communicate with the humans in the movie in any way.

I'm afraid the analogy stands, and your understanding of the cosmos was illustrated nearly flawlessly in an animated movie aimed at 7-year-olds.

2seaoat wrote:

2seaoat wrote:2seaoat, I asked you this in my last post but you didn't respond. How did you come to be a christian? Were you indoctrinated as a child?

I attended church regularly as a child.  About sixth grade I began to have questions which could not be answered logically.  By eighth grade, like you I was beginning to doubt the logical explanations which were being presented to me by very stupid people.  I found too many contradictions in scripture and found that much of religion was superstition, and simple ritual.

By ninth grade I had found Matthew Six and found guidance.  I no longer attended church regularly.  Easter or Christmas, but I found that I had a natural revulsion to people dictating to me what God was with simplistic concepts which made no sense in scripture or within the physical world which in eighth grade I had achieved a unitary sense of truth in science and math.  I found that I had created a paradigm which explained physics, geography, math, chemistry, and biology.  In my eighth grade mind I had advanced in my scholarly pursuits to have an understanding of the world I lived.  Now with each year which has passed, I have discovered that more questions are raised every day with branches of knowledge from my unitary paradigm, and with that more questions about what is not known and yet discovered, the importance of a unitary apex of perfection and truth became increasingly more obvious as I discovered that I could never understand empirically the world I lived and that my mastering of my paradigm as an eighth grader still basically guided my life in my physical life, but increasingly those assumptions of the truths of nature, math, and science were changing as our human knowledge base grew.   With this process came an ever increasing certainty that there is perfection and truth in the universe and it is at the apex of yet discovered reality.  Matthew six provided me with the portal to try to discover the unification of those truths and the perfection of the concept of God.  To that end I live my life simply following the Matthew six as guidance in my Christian beliefs.  I find it to simple to stand like the hypocrites who pray the loudest telling all the path to God, and I find it to simple to simply state God does not exist because I am incapable of understanding all truth in the universe at this time, and in the absence of such knowledge come to the illogical conclusion that God does not exist.  I am not indoctrinated, but free.

Part two.  Please do not tell me you did not even bother to read the same, or are you so set in the sophomoric attack of religion that you approach all folks who believe as dunderheads who worship sky faries?  You really have not given a cogent response to anything I have written, except attempted to corral me in what other people stand up a pray the loudest as the truth....you are no better but when you pray to your paradigm, you do not even take the time to read Matthew 6.......you would be so easy to figure in poker.....so certain that your kings were the winning hand.

PkrBum wrote:What do you think about all those other accounts in the dead sea scrolls that the king james left out bob?

2seaoat wrote:The only thing that you have managed to respond to is the idea that man has (or, could have) perfect knowledge of everything.  The problem with that is that no one here has made such a claim.  In fact, I have said the exact opposite.

I am back.  The above is not my argument.  You think that Matthew 6 is just make it up as you go Christianity......you know the basis of the protestant reformation.  Let me help you.  My religious beliefs are based on scripture which was one of the main three arguments for the protestant reformation.  Its formal name was:

Sola Scriptura (by Scripture alone) was one of the watchwords of the Reformation. This doctrine maintains that Scripture, as contained in the Bible, is the only authority for the Christian in matters of faith, life and conduct. The teachings and traditions of the church are to be completely subordinate to the Scriptures. Roman Catholicism, on the other hand, holds Scripture and Tradition to be of the same inspired Deposit of Faith.

What you have argued that my make up chit as I go, is devoid of any theological understanding, or the importance of Matthew 6.  As much as this destroys your religion and paradigm that all who are Christian worship the Spahgetti monsters, it was the concept of Sola Scritura which provides the direct link with God independent of the very men you claim must guide Christian belief......you would fit in nicely during the Spanish Inquisition where your test of what a Christian is somehow in your mind is defined by the lowest intelligence of collective men doing exactly what Matthew 6 warns us to ignore.....and then you pat your self on the back and say.....ah ha........what idiocy, your strawman of the Spaghetti monster god as I have repeatedly explained apparently going over your head, could in fact be the portal to God, as could any number of other religions which seek God.

I asked you if you understood my sentence using the concept of a priori?  Because when I tell you my faith, you seem to repeatedly not get this simple concept.  God is truth and perfection, and the universe, nature, math and science are truth which God is the Apex, and this truth is revealed or discovered, or not.

I am certain you have never even taken one philosophy course either in undergraduate or graduate school because my discussion is nothing new and has been debated in degrees in philosophy for centuries, and on the old PNJ forum a poster named Requiem who was brilliant and schooled in philosophy and I would debate these very same arguments.  Kant argued that fundamental concepts of the human mind structure human experience.  You argue this human experience has not found the sky fairy. Traditional problems of metaphysics can be overcome by supposing that the agreement between reality and the concepts we use to conceive it arises not because our mental concepts have come to passively mirror reality, but because reality must conform to the human mind's active concepts to be conceivable and at all possible for us to experience.  So you ridicule as Kant argues because your mind conforms reality.  Yet, Requiem and I would debate Plato's allegory of the cave where like Kant correctly identifying that your reality must conform to your mind's active and limited concepts to be conceivable, so again....you ridicule.  However, Plato's cave the dwellers could only see shadows and never the reality.   I have argued that Matthew 6 has been a portal for Christians to find God within the Scriptures without all the baggage and without other men dictating the reality of a unitary God of truth and perfection which is the apex of the universe, nature, math, and science.  You ask this silly question, Did God create the Universe as if the literal discussions in Genesis define Christianity.  It does not.  How can that which has always been be created.  It simply is.  

Quite frankly your arguments are the eighth grade kid who in an unfiltered manner proclaims.....there is no God...prove God exists.   You believe in sky faires.   For thousands of years this discussion has been debated by the best minds in philosophy, and as easy as it is to show the absurdity of the belief system of a Clerk in Ky who is a Christian, it becomes much more difficult for the eighth grade kid to understand a prior or the minds conformity to your active and limited concepts.  I acknowledge I do not have the answer, rather I am not so foolish to limit my perception of the reality in Plato's cave to the shadows, for I have found that there are universal truths and perfection which can be seen in nature, math, and science and to the extent that I have not found the same, I find my faith in Matthew 6 to guide me, and I am at peace.  I miss Requiem.  He was brilliant.

PkrBum wrote:What a fricking mess of ideas. If words were water you'd have drowned boards a few pages ago... lol.