Lightkeeper
Well-Known Member
Are imagination and fantasy important to our well-being? Do atheists discount imagination and fantasy? Are imagination and fantasy important to our society and culture?
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Imagination and Fantasy
- Thread starter Lightkeeper
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Ardhanariswar
I'm back!
ya, in history, our imagination and fantasy were the only things to explain how we came to be, how things are they way they are and what is to become of us.
Atheists are the biggest users of imagination and have quite fanciful minds
Ceridwen018
Well-Known Member
BAM, jiggah! Nice one, Mister Emu.
I think that imagination is incredibly important to our well-being and society...how do you think the wheel/plane/lightbulb/chair with the little thingys nailed to the legs so it wouldn't fall backwards when you lean back (thank you, Simpsons ) came to be? Those are all products of imagination which was then applied to reality.
As far as fantasy goes, I enjoy the Harry Potter books just as well as the next person, and it can be fun to escape inside your own mind and meditate or whatever. The problem comes in when you start trying to replace reality with fantasy.
I think that imagination is incredibly important to our well-being and society...how do you think the wheel/plane/lightbulb/chair with the little thingys nailed to the legs so it wouldn't fall backwards when you lean back (thank you, Simpsons
) came to be? Those are all products of imagination which was then applied to reality. As far as fantasy goes, I enjoy the Harry Potter books just as well as the next person, and it can be fun to escape inside your own mind and meditate or whatever. The problem comes in when you start trying to replace reality with fantasy.
Lightkeeper
Well-Known Member
Who decides where the line is drawn between reality and fantasy?
Mr Spinkles
Mr
I agree, imagination and fantasy are very important to us as individuals, and our society and culture.
Mister Emu--
Mister Emu--
Hehe, actually I think imagination is an important asset. It takes a good deal of imagination and a thinking outside the box to consider that the pervailing beliefs of the times are wrong. I only wish people explored this imaginative possibility more.
Green Gaia
Veteran Member
My imagination and fantasy world are very important to me. Don't know about the rest of y'all.
Don't know about the rest of y'all. Lightkeeper
Well-Known Member
Imagination invents, fantasy rests the mind and prepares it for invention.
Hope
Princesinha
Ah....the imagination. If no one had any imagination I think this world would be such a dreary place. Think of all the novels, and poems, and paintings that wouldn't even exist if no one had any imagination! Imagination is what enhances, beautifies, and even creates ( in one sense ). Imagination, for me personally, has been a wonderful 'escape mechanism' in very difficult periods of my life. To sit down and write a story of my own, my own little world to escape to, when in my real life things are crumbling to bits, has been an enormous outlet.
But, unfortunately, like most things, if used in the wrong way, it can do a lot of damage as well. There does still need to be a balance. So, actually, what I said above can be turned around, I'll admit. Imagination also can produce much ugliness, and much evil. It all depends on how we use it. An important key is to control our imagination, and not let it control us.
Think of all the novels, and poems, and paintings that wouldn't even exist if no one had any imagination! Imagination is what enhances, beautifies, and even creates ( in one sense ). Imagination, for me personally, has been a wonderful 'escape mechanism' in very difficult periods of my life. To sit down and write a story of my own, my own little world to escape to, when in my real life things are crumbling to bits, has been an enormous outlet. But, unfortunately, like most things, if used in the wrong way, it can do a lot of damage as well. There does still need to be a balance. So, actually, what I said above can be turned around, I'll admit. Imagination also can produce much ugliness, and much evil. It all depends on how we use it. An important key is to control our imagination, and not let it control us.
Master Vigil
Well-Known Member
Alot might say the imagination is where we meet the divine. Or atleast make it useful to us. I believe without imagination, the world would be boring. And without imagination, religion would be boring. The same goes for science.
Kungfuzed
Student Nurse
I don't discount imagination. I just call it what it is - imagination. It exists in the mind. I agee with everyone else that it's a useful tool and makes life alot more interesting. It can be used to improve reality through inventions, art, and stories. Or it can take you farther away from reality down the road of delusion.
eudaimonia
Fellowship of Reason
Lightkeeper said:
Yes, we need imagination and fantasy to inspire us, encourage us, teach us, and to spark creativity and new ideas.
Only if you believe that your imagination or fantasies are necessarily real. But as long as you understand that they are imagination or fantasy, I think it is healthy. I'm reading a fantasy novel right now, and I have written fantasy stories, and I play a fantasy MMORPG...
Ask yourself this: is art important? If yes, then so is imagination and fantasy.
eudaimonia,
Mark
Yes.Lightkeeper said:
I don't.Lightkeeper said:
