Life Without Belief

[Clara Tea]

Do you think it is possible to live without any beliefs what so ever?

“One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.” Joan of Arc

BELIEF IN ANYTHING:

You mean "belief in God," not "belief in anything or anyone."

Surely most people belief in something. An atheist believes (or hopes) that his wife won't cheat on him. An atheist believes that he can stand on a curb at a crosswalk and not be run over by an errant car (belief that people are good drivers, and that they are sane).

Without such belief, one has to be very weary of the world around them. It might not be safe to go out of your house.

EMPTY LIVES:

Atheists don't have empty lives. Some take perverse pleasure in playing with the unsound logic of theists. But, mostly their pursuits are good. They enjoy games, TV, sex, foods, challenging debates, and all of the normal things of life. Some even come to religious forums for unchallenging debates (factless, lacking all evidence).

Theists, on the other hand, sometimes believe that some unseen and unheard God is spying on them constantly, and that surely is unsettling.

PERFECTION AND FORGIVENESS:

Most theists are very far from perfect.

All humans are imperfect, but theists are even more so because they belief that God will forgive them if they sin. Thus you see some rather famous reverends sinning. Swaggart with a prostitute, Schuller's son (also a reverend) with booze in one arm, scantily clad blonde in another arm, his pants down in public and his penis sticking out (in the photograph). Of course they all believe that God will forgive them, so they frequently bend the rules that God set down. Thus, you see Mafia members murdering and extorting, then going to church on Sunday to say some "hail Marys." You also see street taggers paint graffiti and vandalize then go to church on Sunday to confession.

Therefore, atheists are certainly better people (kinder, and more in tune with God's laws) than theists.

LIES ARE NECESSARY TO COPE:

Theists rely on lies to cope with the realities of religion and life.

1. The lie that homeless people don't want to work (stated repeatedly by President George W. Bush).

2. The lie that helping the rich save taxes will make jobs for the middle class (in reality, it outsourced US jobs to take advantage of cheap foreign labor.

3. The lie that atheists have empty lives and only belief in God can fill lives.

4. The lie that mankind's influence on Global Warming is negligible and harmless.

5. The lie that God is loving (despite all of the mean and spiteful things that God has allegedly done).

Apparently, lies for Jesus are permissible.

 

[Clara Tea]

Yes, I think so. When (working from an idea of Descartes) I realized that I operate on the three assumptions I mentioned, and that I'd never noticed them because everyone else acts as if they share those assumptions, I found it very clarifying. They share the quality that it's not possible to demonstrate that they're correct without first assuming they're correct.

But those assumptions (beliefs) are in place because they work, and I suspect they work because evolution is ruthlessly efficient about how only the survivors breed; so they don't need to be known consciously, though if they are, you see they're assumptions of necessity.

Whereas assumptions about ─ beliefs in favor of ─ the supernatural are neither supported by evidence after they're assumed, nor necessary for survival and breeding.

As perhaps a qualification to that last statement, I'm inclined to think that religion and supernatural beings arose usefully from a combination of our evolved traits ─ first as gregarious primates who benefit enormously from cooperation, originally within our tribal groups, and therefore tend to survive better if our practices reinforce tribal identity and unity (along with kin, language, customs, stories, heroes &c); second as curious creatures whose instinctive response to the unknown is to attribute a reason (eg with lightning, dreams, luck at hunting, death, drought, plague &c); and so on.

Existentialism is a branch of philosophy dealing with the idea that we might not even exist. A common statement in existentialism is "am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a human, or a human dreaming that I am a butterfly." It begs the question of dreaming or consciousness, and questions whether or not we can believe our own eyes. Even Neil De Grasse Tyson has postulated that we live in a virtual world (computer generated pixels).

Some have concluded that the world is not real because a loving God would not allow a lion to eat a water buffalo alive, while it is screaming in agony. If all of the violence and gore in the world is just a computer generated simulation, then it might be permissible (or not). Not, if you consider the mental stress of thinking that the world is cruel and violent (which is just as bad as experiencing a cruel and violent world).

Frankly, I think that philosophers have overthought the idea of existence.

THE SUPERNATURAL WAS SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN:

Dr. Jessica Utts, currently of UC Irvine, performed experiments proving that ESP is real.

SUPERNATURAL BEINGS AROSE FROM TRIBAL IDENTITY?

No, the belief in so-called supernatural beings might have, but not the beings, themselves.

Many poker players blame the dealer for bad luck, but the dealer, if fair, merely deals the cards, and does not select them. If ancient man blamed some unseen deity for bad crops, (using the same lack of logic as the poker player), a religion would have been born.

Sometimes churches are social meeting places. Many church-goers have long since lost their belief in God, yet still attend church. It is the peer pressure, community dinners, and other events that still attract them.

 

[Clara Tea]

I believe that atheists too believe that life has a value that transcends the mere existence.

If life were meaningless, what is the point of making children?
Children who will live a life as meaningless as their parents '?

Well, someone has to perpetuate the meaninglessness.

 

[Clara Tea]

I believe in man, first.

Dante used to write : You men were not made to live as beasts, but to pursue virtue and knowledge

Goethe used to write: May man be noble, altruistic and good.

I am a theist but I think that life would be meaningless if we did not fight to make life worth-living. That is, by pursuing perfection, goodness, altruism.

The law of the fittest, aka jungle law...is not worthy of human beings.
Human beings are not animals.

Flagellation: Beating oneself as religions or sexual gratification.

If one is attempting to make life worth living, how do you explain flagellation? Some believe in original sin, so they believe that God wants them to punish themselves. It is a purification process....but miserable.

What about religions that believe that anything enjoyable is sinful? Puritans would torture someone who dances or sings (too much joy....perhaps incantations that tempt the devil). Reverend Savonarola's Bonfire of the Vanities (burn books and art because they are sinful).

Many religions, including the Christian religion, have made living hell on earth. They have tortured and murdered. Is that in the pursuit of making life worth living?

 

[Clara Tea]

I don't really care what seems real to you, it uses scientific methods to establish an accurate answer.

Scientific method: Assume that the universe started with a singularity (an assumption currently challenged by scientists). Assume that dark energy (recently discovered) has the property of reverse gravity, and is responsible for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe (space only, not space-time).

Scientists don't think of their theories as proven. Rather, they think of their theories as temporarily the best idea, and based on heaven research and facts. Often they are wrong, but they almost always correct themselves when proven wrong. So, they get closer and closer to the truth.

 

[Clara Tea]

So i can weigh, measured and observe. As other people also independently can.

Weigh love. Not everything can be measured. Perhaps faith in God is one of those things?

 

[Clara Tea]

Sounds to me like you believe in love; and not just as a biological sensation, but also as something which validates your existence. You believe in it’s value, no? You believe it matters?

Some seek proof that God exists. Prove love. Not everything can be measured. However, one could see sacrifices for love (giving up one's life to save family members). In many disasters, we see a mother's body slumped over her dead (or sometimes live) child. She gave up her life to save her child, and this love is tangible.

Can we measure the existence of God by the acts that only God could have done?

 

[Clara Tea]

belief is necessary in order to test against reality.

children practice the scientific method without knowing what it's called.

the problem arises when children refuse to grow up, stop questioning reality, and try to force reality into belief. physical maturity is not always 1 to 1 with mental/spiritual/psychological maturity.

everyone wants to be loved but not everyone is loving; so those who don't believe what is good enough for the goose is good enough for a gander will eventually eat crow.

Are you saying that anyone who practices science is a mentally a child? Does this include Einstein, et al?

Why is it more mature to belief in an unseen and unproven God?

Those who question reality (and existence) are called philosophers, and are universally accepted as among the most intelligent.

 

[RestlessSoul]

I'm talking about not being self-conscious. Conscious without the consciousness of self.

I believe this is achievable - a consciousness beyond ego, beyond the lower, divided self. But to attain such a state would be futile if it wasn’t accompanied by selfless action;
faith without works is dead (James 2:20); and
action well done has fruit without stain (Bhagavad Gita 14:16)

 

[blü 2]

Even Neil De Grasse Tyson has postulated that we live in a virtual world (computer generated pixels).

But that, like Last Thursdayism, is not falsifiable, thus not a claim worthy of a scientist except in jest.

Some have concluded that the world is not real because a loving God would not allow a lion to eat a water buffalo alive, while it is screaming in agony.

Anyone drawing that conclusion obviously hasn't read the Tanakh.

Frankly, I think that philosophers have overthought the idea of existence.

That's certainly a possible view. But it isn't mine ─ I keep wanting to know about reality as best I can.

THE SUPERNATURAL WAS SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN:

Dr. Jessica Utts, currently of UC Irvine, performed experiments proving that ESP is real.

Really? Odd that we still have to use the net, no?

 

[viole]

Do you think it is possible to live without any beliefs what so ever?

“One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.” Joan of Arc

I believe no.

Ciao

- viole

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

...
That's certainly a possible view. But it isn't mine ─ I keep wanting to know about reality as best I can.
...

That is not objective. That is in your mind/brain.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Do you think it is possible to live without any beliefs what so ever?

Might be possible, but I don't know what kind of person and how they could ever live in such a state. From birth we tend to form beliefs quite naturally, building on such to form ever more complicated and/or sophisticated ones, and it is often along the way that we tend to form some of the more pernicious ones - those that might harm others. Beliefs like, property is more valuable than a person's life, as demonstrated in the Rittenhouse threads, for example.

 

[ChristineM]

Scientific method: Assume that the universe started with a singularity (an assumption currently challenged by scientists). Assume that dark energy (recently discovered) has the property of reverse gravity, and is responsible for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe (space only, not space-time).

Scientists don't think of their theories as proven. Rather, they think of their theories as temporarily the best idea, and based on heaven research and facts. Often they are wrong, but they almost always correct themselves when proven wrong. So, they get closer and closer to the truth.

And you use quantum engineering to post your comment which we know works. And will continue to work, there may be improvement it may even be scrapped if a more efficient form of signal switching than the transistor is developed but it works accurately.

I dont think i am proven but i can weigh, measure and observe. I.e. i know i exist, you don't need belief when you know

 

[ChristineM]

Weigh love. Not everything can be measured. Perhaps faith in God is one of those things?

Love can be observed on an mri scan.

As can god.

I.e. physical brain activity

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

And you use quantum engineering to post your comment which we know works. And will continue to work, there may be improvement it may even be scrapped if a more efficient form of signal switching than the transistor is developed but it works accurately.

I dont think i am proven but i can weigh, measure and observe. I.e. i know i exist, you don't need belief when you know

Again. Please submit your actual method to a scientific organisation. You have made methodological naturalism irrelevant.

 

[Colt]

Well, we are suppose to get rid of our thought too.
But, is that anyway to go about living?

We couldn't even have a conversation without the belief that the words I use will be able to properly convey my intended meaning.

So it'd be a pretty strange life.

I don't understand what you mean by "we are supposed to get rid of our thoughts"?

Consider this, when I was a child our family used to go to Virginia beach each summer. We stayed in an old beach house on 51st and Atlantic ave, about a half block from the beach access. Us kids were back and forth to the beach all day, skipping across the hot sand to the cooler sand of the shore. Sweet iced tea, ham bisquets and back to the beach! The house had an old screened in, wrap-around front porch. Squeaky screen door, painted wood floor etc.

In your mind, as you read that story you had to be able to "conceptualize" the beach experience. If you could not attach conceptual frames to what I was describing then it would be like reading a language that you didn't know. Even though the concepts in your mind may not actually be perfect pictures of 51st and Atlantic ave, the house, the beach etc, its sufficient to understand my story.

My insights come from the Urantia Book


RELATIVITY OF CONCEPT FRAMES

"Partial, incomplete, and evolving intellects would be helpless in the master universe, would be unable to form the first rational thought pattern, were it not for the innate ability of all mind, high or low, to form a universe frame in which to think. If mind cannot fathom conclusions, if it cannot penetrate to true origins, then will such mind unfailingly postulate conclusions and invent origins that it may have a means of logical thought within the frame of these mind-created postulates. And while such universe frames for creature thought are indispensable to rational intellectual operations, they are, without exception, erroneous to a greater or lesser degree.

Conceptual frames of the universe are only relatively true; they are serviceable scaffolding which must eventually give way before the expansions of enlarging cosmic comprehension. The understandings of truth, beauty, and goodness, morality, ethics, duty, love, divinity, origin, existence, purpose, destiny, time, space, even Deity, are only relatively true. God is much, much more than a Father, but the Father is man’s highest concept of God; nonetheless, the Father-Son portrayal of Creator-creature relationship will be augmented by those supermortal conceptions of Deity which will be attained in Orvonton, in Havona, and Paradise. Man must think in a mortal universe frame, but that does not mean that he cannot envision other and higher frames within which thought can take place.

In order to facilitate mortal comprehension of the universe of universes, the diverse levels of cosmic reality have been designated as finite, absonite, and absolute. Of these only the absolute is unqualifiedly eternal, truly existential. Absonites and finites are derivatives, modifications, qualifications, and attenuations of the original and primordial absolute reality of infinity.

The realms of the finite exist by virtue of the eternal purpose of God. Finite creatures, high and low, may propound theories, and have done so, as to the necessity of the finite in the cosmic economy, but in the last analysis it exists because God so willed. The universe cannot be explained, neither can a finite creature offer a rational reason for his own individual existence without appealing to the prior acts and pre-existent volition of ancestral beings, Creators or procreators." UB 1955

 

[blü 2]

That is not objective. That is in your mind/brain.

No, but it's as objective as I can make it. And as you know, there's an entire universe out there to explore, describe and seek to understand.

Marvelous!

 

[ChristineM]

Again. Please submit your actual method to a scientific organisation. You have made methodological naturalism irrelevant.

You know well that I don't do philosophy and guesswork, woo and mumbojumbo is irrelevant to me.
The scientific method has been around for a few centuries, is my input realty required just because you don't like it?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

No, but it's as objective as I can make it. And as you know, there's an entire universe out there to explore, describe and seek to understand.

Marvelous!

Yeah, the problem is that parts of you are subjective, yet you are in the objective universe, right?
So I am the only mind, right? Anything not in my mind is objective and since you are not in my mind and subjective, you are not real. In effect you don't exist, because I am the only mind.