Logic vs Religion (Buddhism, pray, bible, faith, Christianity)

[eXiled]

Originally Posted by andys

To eXiled
Just wanted to express my sympathy for your loss. I hope you will find support from friends and family.
-Andy

Thanks for the kind words. We weren't that close. He's the father of a friend of mine, but always went out of his way for me. A very well-respected man in this community. Once again the reason why I fail to see the significance in religion.

[yossarian22]

What is illogical about deism?
Or Pantheism?
(I dismiss them off hand, but that is just me. I still show them some respect)
Generalizations are great aren't they. How about I call atheists a bunch of idiotic hypocrites who have merely substituted what they have faith in?

[MoonWater]

Originally Posted by andys

MoonWater, oh, you're a female. I didn't bother to look at the male/female icon. So much for my inquisitive mind!

it's alright, I guess my avatar can be misleading

I am slipping behind your lengthy and detailed replies and you'll forgive me if I do not have the patience to respond in kind. (I don't even know how to create those nice little gray boxes containing quotations!)

That's okay I tend to get carried away sometimes. And you can get those gray boxes by clicking on the "quote" button that will be in the box of the person you wish to reply to. For example if you wish to quote my post you can go to the bottom of my post and there on the right hand side will be a button that says "quote" Just click on that and then scroll to the bottom of the respond box and type your reply. Hope that helps

Let me attempt to make my position more clear and touch on the important areas. I maintain that anyone who is religious is religious for a reason. I have offered an explanation for this curious phenomenon, namely, that religions notoriously offer very appealing incentives for embracing their doctrines. I have offered two examples 1) the promise of a life after death in paradise and 2) a personal relationship with a supreme being who offers comfort, love, and guidance all through life. Other seductive offerings include knowledge of the meaning of life, a sense of belonging in something wondrous, even a feeling of being special or better than others. The list could fill volumes.

I understand your position. I also understand that religion doesn't work for you. And that is perfectly okay. All I'm saying is that not everyone believes because they were "seduced" into believing. In fact my experience, both with myself and with other religious people is that it has nothing to do with "seduction". I know one of the creeds of Christianity is to resist temptation. Ever heard the lords prayer "and lead us not into temptation" is a line that appears roughly in the middle. I know this for a fact because I said it every Sunday morning for about 12 years growing up. Also the idea of a personal God is a relatively recent one. Most of the earlier religions didn't believe in a personal deity. And yes the idea of after-life is rather prevalent but the after-life in question isn't always sunshine and roses*points to Greek culture*

Now, your position, is that belief is like spontaneous combustion—poof—it just happens. In your words, "I myself don't believe because I 'want to' I just do".

I did not mean it in the sense of spontaneous combustion, not at all. I guess I didn't word myself clearly enough but what I meant was that experience is (I believe) what causes most people to believe. I don't mean "poof" I mean "over time". That perhaps one experience causes a person to explore down one particular path. Then through further experience find that this is the path for them and continue to follow it. That is the way it was with me.

Well, I myself, don't believe this for a second. Religious (adult) people, I presume, don't believe in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Clause, or Jack Frost, but they do believe in Angels with wings, life after death, supernatural god(s), and other things that are just as goofy.

Whether or not it's goofy is a matter of opinion. I personally don't believe in santa clause or anything like that... I also don't believe in angels with wings or a supernatural god(s). I don't even believe in the supernatural at all. Now how can I say this and still call myself religious? Because I view "supernatural" slightly different than you do. Supernatural basically means "above nature" or "beyond nature". I personally do not see how anything could exist "above nature". In my mind if it exists it's natural. Thus if God exists he/she/it/them is natural not supernatural.

There HAS to be a reason. To believe in the unbelievable, requires a suspension of disbelief. There is not a tidbit of evidence to support any religion on earth. Just name a religion and I'll show you a Tooth Fairy leader with a congregation of believers (Joseph Smith, David Koresh, Sun Myung Moon, are some of my favourites.) People who are otherwise rational human beings are curiously drawn to such transparent nonsense and reverently abandon their precious faculty of reason, almost in an act of surrender.

so you think that just because a person is religious it means they have no sense of reason. That's a very broad(and very false) generalization your making. It's also a logical fallacy. Your assuming that what is true for some members of a group is true for every member of said group. Just because there are people who are religious who seem to lack reason doesn't mean every religious person has "abandoned their precious faculty of reason" in favor of religion.

Let me repeat this again: To believe in the unbelievable, requires a suspension of disbelief.

If it's unbelievable then people wouldn't be able to believe it. And if they believe in it how does it require suspension of disbelief? After all the person believes it, there wasn't any disbelief to begin with(unless of course one went from atheist to theist but even that wouldn't require a "suspension" of disbelief... more like an "expulsion")

Why people are so drawn to religion is, no doubt, more complex than my simple explanation. It surely includes other factors, not the least of which include lack of education, gullibility, insecurity, the need to find a comfortable meaning of life, etc. It is a fascinating topic. I would not be surprised if more than one Doctoral Thesis has not been written on the subject.

Again your making a very broad generalization and again committing the same logical fallacy as mentioned above. You assume people believe because of "lack of education, gullibility, and insecurity. While this may be true for some it certainly isn't true for all. I can tell you that from first hand experience

Before I end, you ask me "Can you name any one religion that has 'fallen' because of 'evidence'"?
Here is an example of lack of education, at least in the area of Logic. The burden of proof (evidence) always rests upon the shoulders of the one who asserts a proposition. Not surprising, many believers are not familiar with Logic, and are often heard revealing their ignorance of it by uttering demands such as, "Alright, maybe I can't prove my religion is true, but you can't prove it is false!" How silly. I trust you do understand that one's claim that Santa Clause exists, demands evidence from the person making the claim, not evidence from others to refute it.

I am very much aware of this which is why I asked you to provide the evidence. I didn't ask you to prove or disprove religion or god. You made the claim that "evidence is the fall of religion". I merely asked you to support this statement by naming a religion that "fell" because of presented evidence. Surely you can see that that is not the same as asking you to provide evidence that religion is wrong or God is non-existent.


p.s. sorry it's so long.... looks like I got carried away again

[Michel07]

I would point out that Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Gregor Mengel ( the father of modern genetics) to name only a few were men of logic and belief in God. They are not exclusive. People who say they are exclusive are only trusting their own logic which in itself is not a very good argument.

[Sola'lor]

Originally Posted by guilo

Why do religion and logic not go hand-in-hand?

Why do humanity and logic not go hand-in-hand?

[Captain Civic]

Originally Posted by yossarian22

Generalizations are great aren't they. How about I call atheists a bunch of idiotic hypocrites who have merely substituted what they have faith in?

You can't do that! Then you're singling out all atheists as dumb people!

[eXiled]

Generalizations are great aren't they. How about I call atheists a bunch of idiotic hypocrites who have merely substituted what they have faith in?

Hmmm... very christian of you calling people dumb. I realize you may be kidding, but in the off chance you're not... =)

People just think differently. Some like myself, need logic to be proof, that way there's some little shred of something that we can relate to and hold on to.

[guilo]

Well, I read through all the replies, and thank you to everybody contributing. Something MoonWater wrote though, captured my attention. She said that her life would be much less complicated if she did not have a religion. I get the feel of the complete opposite. The moment I start thinking of a world where religion is obsolete, all these questions of how, why, what the ___!, comes to mind, because there is no basis to it all. I once had a great physics teacher who explained it like this. The world as we know it is like an inflated balloon. All the air inside the balloon represents what we know to be true, or "the known knowledge". The balloon's surface area represents the questions that we ask about the knowledge we do not know. And all of space outside of the balloon, represents "the unknown knowledge". Whenever we answer some of the questions, in other words, some of the unknown knowledge becomes known knowledge, and the balloon inflates and the surface area increases, more of the balloon's surface area is contact with space, in other words, more questions arise about the knowledge outside. That just sums up what I'm struggling with. As I reason existence, I find lots of possible answers, but that only leads to more questions. If you have a religion though, there is no need to ask the questions, you merely accept a possible answer which somebody already formulated. That is the easy way out. In other words, to me, religion simplifies everything, and atheism or agnosticism complicates everything.

[PureX]

Originally Posted by guilo

If you have a religion though, there is no need to ask the questions, you merely accept a possible answer which somebody already formulated. That is the easy way out. In other words, to me, religion simplifies everything, and atheism or agnosticism complicates everything.

This is not true of all religions, or all expressions of any given religion. Also, I see nothing wrong with taking some of our focus off our questions, and placing it elsewhere. Like on dealing with our suffering, etc.