Believe

[Jedihuh?]

I believe in god. I don't believe in the Catholic religion or any others that have sprung from it. I believe jesus was a man who inspire counltess people to better themselves, i don't believe he was "the" son of god, such as we are all the children of god, and i cannot walk on water. sorry if that has nothign to do with what the current topic is about I read the first page and the last, the other 13 i have no read yet.......

 

Edit: I also believe god gives us choices so we can live our own destiny, not live in one that has been set for us.

Edited February 14, 2006 by Jedihuh?

[metadigital]

I don't have faith because in my life I have found out that faith and hope are a waste of time.  You can have faith and hope all you want but it won't change a thing.  Things will happen as they are supposed to happen regardless if you have belief, faith, hope, or any of the other useless crap religion tries to give you.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Interesting fatalist belief, there. But you are mistaken, hope changes the way a person feels whilst living.

 

...

Already I can see the chain reaction; the chemical precursors that signal the onset of an emotion, designed specifically to overwelm logic and reason, an emotion that is already blinding you from the simple and obvious truth ...

... Hope. It is the quintessential human emotion: simultaneously the source of [humans'] greatest strength and [humans'] greatest weakness.

...

The Architect, Matrix Reloaded

 

[metadigital]

*ahem*

 

Well, I was ranting, sorry.  Your post looked like another attack, and Hades's remarks can get on one's nerves after a while.  And you must understand, it's been one of those days.

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You have a lot of "those days", don't you Mothie?

 

A quiet word in your shell-like ear:

To be offended by others when they challenge an article of your faith, if you have insufficient faith then you may feel insecure. You may take it as a fault in you.

 

If you are confident in your own judgement (as subjective as that is) then you will not feel under attack. Others are free to believe as they choose; you should extend the same courtesy that you enjoy: the right to make up one's own mind.

 

[WITHTEETH]

I read an interesting article that Metadigital pasted once ... Monkeysphere Link

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Actually I was introduced to the link on this forum (Jags / Nartwak / apologies if I have mistakenly omitted your name here, whomever it was ... )

Here's a good question for everyone that had me stumped for awhile:

 

What is conscious living?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Attention.

 

Seriously, congratulations on solving one of the great metaphysical quandaries of civilization: from Socrates to Ren

[Gabrielle]

*ahem*

 

Well, I was ranting, sorry.  Your post looked like another attack, and Hades's remarks can get on one's nerves after a while.  And you must understand, it's been one of those days.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You have a lot of "those days", don't you Mothie?

 

A quiet word in your shell-like ear:

To be offended by others when they challenge an article of your faith, if you have insufficient faith then you may feel insecure. You may take it as a fault in you.

 

If you are confident in your own judgement (as subjective as that is) then you will not feel under attack. Others are free to believe as they choose; you should extend the same courtesy that you enjoy: the right to make up one's own mind.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What if one is faithless?

[Dark Moth]

*ahem*

 

Well, I was ranting, sorry.  Your post looked like another attack, and Hades's remarks can get on one's nerves after a while.  And you must understand, it's been one of those days.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You have a lot of "those days", don't you Mothie?

 

A quiet word in your shell-like ear:

To be offended by others when they challenge an article of your faith, if you have insufficient faith then you may feel insecure. You may take it as a fault in you.

 

If you are confident in your own judgement (as subjective as that is) then you will not feel under attack. Others are free to believe as they choose; you should extend the same courtesy that you enjoy: the right to make up one's own mind.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I'm not offended by attacks, I'm offended by ignorance. Also, I don't care for the "shell" comparison, so if you'll please be courteous, do not make unfair accusations like that. And, you're responding to a post made over a month ago? ...

[Surreptishus]

shell-like = ear, word in your ear. friendly aside

[Dark Moth]

I assumed he meant shell as in "a shell that blocks against other opinions".

[metadigital]

Religious people are not sitting on their backsides letting the world go to hell because only the next life matters. 

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That's Buddhism, isn't it?

[WITHTEETH]

We've been diving in to freewill and determinism alot lately and my answer is.... I don't know.

 

First i can see the importance of freewill so that a person acn believe he/she can change and also not to feel like an object, a cog which can bring pain and be destructive.

 

Next I can see how a self aware person can change his own mind when seeing a bigger picture.

 

Then science comes along and claims theres a cause to every effect, but some pshychiatrists/philosophers say that the mind is to complex, but that is just the the intelligent deisgn claim, its not really a "positive proof". So back that leaves me with determinism still.

 

I've also heard of casual determinsm, where I do have a choice but its only once choice and the rest don't matter because the one you will choose is already determined. A math equation only has one answer to it right?

 

But then there is indeterminism which i don't really understand cleary. In physics it has something to do with something that you can't predict, and that cause may have a chaos effect latter on because that cause wasn't determined supposedly. an example of this is with black holes. I'm not quite clear on how though, I will look this up further.

--For example Epicurus said that atoms motion was not falling but they moved around and crashed into eachother, and thats how we get change, the cause of that movement was "the swerve" and the swerve was indetermined. It probably started with one atom swerving, hitting another and another and another, ect...

 

Feel free to add edit and comment, I'm still not comfertable with any of this so tear it apart.

Edited February 14, 2006 by WITHTEETH

[WITHTEETH]

*ahem*

 

Well, I was ranting, sorry.  Your post looked like another attack, and Hades's remarks can get on one's nerves after a while.  And you must understand, it's been one of those days.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You have a lot of "those days", don't you Mothie?

 

A quiet word in your shell-like ear:

To be offended by others when they challenge an article of your faith, if you have insufficient faith then you may feel insecure. You may take it as a fault in you.

 

If you are confident in your own judgement (as subjective as that is) then you will not feel under attack. Others are free to believe as they choose; you should extend the same courtesy that you enjoy: the right to make up one's own mind.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Wise words. also you don't have to be sure of the answer, its alright to be indecisive, and its even greater i think to not be attached to a certain Idea. If your attached to the idea, then it may be hard letting it go when in reality it may be wrong inthe first place.

[Dark Moth]

Wise words, but meta fails to understand why I'm "offended" in the first place. As for my beliefs, I feel perfectly alright with clinging to an idea (provided it's within reason). Ideas are what help give us purpose and make us who we are. If we just are tossed around by the waves, believing everything we are simply told without reason, then we really believe in nothing.

[metadigital]

While genesis is up in the air (methinks much is symbolic), the flood and exodus haven't been disproven. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I thought you were proud of your fundamentalist belief in the Bible as the absolute divinely-inspired word of God?

religious beliefs are per definition an irrational choice. there is no evidence to support the existence of a god/gods. that's all that matters. the lack of, expected, evidence is a very strong proof of the non existence of a god.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Strong evidence that there is no God? I have a few questions regarding that point if you don't mind. If there is strong evidence proving the non-existence of God, why would the majority of earth's population remains religious and the percentage for pure athiests stays less than 10%? Why would so many greatest minds throughout human history strongly believe in the existence of god? People like Newton, Descartes or Socrates; on top of being the greatest scientists, they are also great philosophers and made many breakthroughs in the field of religion.

 

I agree with you that there is little physical evidence for a universal god or a creator, but over 5 billion people alive today and those great names I just mentioned can easily stand as proof that a personal god exists. Of course, whether the proof is substantial is still up for debate, but you must realize that at 1:5, athiests do not have great odds here.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What's that, julian's probabilistic rationale of the existence of God? So God does do dice? Be careful with this argument.

 

I would agree that there is no compelling evidence for or against the existence of God. From the COED(11ed):

faith

n noun

1 complete trust or confidence.

2 strong belief in a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.

→ a particular religion.

 

ORIGIN

Middle English: from Old French feid, from Latin fides.

 

Faith requires no proof. In fact, with proof, there is no need for faith.

[Dark Moth]

While genesis is up in the air (methinks much is symbolic), the flood and exodus haven't been disproven. 

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I thought you were proud of your fundamentalist belief in the Bible as the absolute divinely-inspired word of God?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Shows how much you know about me then, doesn't it? (but I am proud of it, though maybe not for the reasons you think) I believe it is truth, I just don't take every single aspect of it literally.

 

Is that all, or is your tongue still eager to administer more sarcasm?

Edited February 14, 2006 by Mothman

[metadigital]

Do we require the study of science and reasoning behind beauty to appreciate beauty?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It is not required, but once you have it, it enhances the beauty. When I look at a sunset, the fact that the light took just under nine minutes to reach my eyes, from the 4000

[metadigital]

It's very much like for someone to study the mathematics behind facial features first to realize that certain faces are beautiful.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What about studying the mathematical relationships of the face after deciding it is beautiful, and discovering a pattern? A beautiful symmetry of numerical precision that echoes the viage in its putritude.

 

Ex post facto a posteriori deductive reasoning can be acceptable, especially with a perfect abstraction like mathematics.

[Dark Moth]

^_^ Edited February 14, 2006 by Mothman

[metadigital]

Beyond Belief

Whether or not you call yourself religious there are things you believe in. The notion that humans are essentially benevolent, perhaps

[metadigital]

We believe

In the beginning religion didn't exist, so why did we feel the need to invent it, asks evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar

[WITHTEETH]

Awesome post metadigital. related to MonkeySphere also. I never thought of theology as the stick. I wish i could get the rest of the article but ohwell. Thanks!

 

I wonder if another intention could grow out of interglobablization, or if there is already some 6th intention out therm what it is, or would be. Do you know? Or how one could arise?

Edited February 16, 2006 by WITHTEETH

[moreKOTORplz]

nice article, I still follow what gould wrote "science and religion can co-exist, but one cannot explain or prove the other."

 

ironically he wrote this at the end of his life time after years of science cynicism.

[WITHTEETH]

True correlation doesn't mean causation but this article does give a theoretical possibility to explain religion. It makes sense, not that I prescribe to it because its just theoretical so far, a great possibility.

[metadigital]

Awesome post metadigital. related to MonkeySphere also. I never thought of theology as the stick. I wish i could get the rest of the article but ohwell. Thanks!

 

I wonder if another intention could grow out of interglobablization, or if there is already some 6th intention out therm what it is, or would be. Do you know? Or how one could arise?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There are two more articles, called "Particles of faith" and "Glad to be gullible". They are each as long as the above, so I might try to scan them in rather than type them out.

• Particles of faith
  Belief seems intangible until you take a close look inside the brain, says Alison Motluk
  
• Glad to be gullible
  Some people believe in the weirdest things. They may be onto something, says Clare Wilson
  

...

[Gabrielle]

I so enjoy your wisdom and unlimited knowledge Meta. What would we ever do without you?

Edited February 16, 2006 by Gabrielle

[metadigital]

Even I do not know that. "