Howard Is
Lucky Mud
Bingo.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Why atheism and atheists are just wrong
- Thread starter dfnj
- Start date
Bingo.
We must be looking at different evidence. And the difference seems to be that some of the religious seem to be able to know this higher dimensional mind - and where deception and this look very similar.
Hmmm....I don't get that. Myths are stories we tell ourselves that comfort us. But they are, ultimately, stories and thereby not truth. I can get 'meaning' out of reading science fiction but I know it *is* fiction. To take it too seriously leads towards delusion.
Huh? I'm using what I perceive most people require as a minimal aspect of God: a consciousness, a creative mind, goodness, etc. I don't belive there is an entity with those characteristics.
I'm not sure why you need a 'God concept' to talk about those aspects of life that are awe inspiring. Just talkk about the experiences. Why bring in a myth at all?
Well, some people say that good literature 'speaks to reality' even if it is purely fiction. It seems that myth has many of the qualities of good fiction.
OK, this is just such a strange concept to me: 'make meaning'. And how is it that the myths do that? Yes, fiction can be moving and 'meaningful', but it isn't *true*. To take it too seriously is delusional. And, it seems that the same is true of myth. It can have great stories, but to take them too seriously leads to delusion.
No. It exists inside of our heads. Experiences are always inside of our heads. What exists outside of our heads are the sound waves.
For example, optical illusions are also 'shared experiences', but that doesn't mean they are outside of our heads.
I'd say that I am anti-supersition. And I see most God beliefs as superstitious. But so are many political beliefs.
It is a word with several different meanings. One dominant meaning requires there to be 'spirit world' of some sort and spirituality is seeking contact with that.
But another, very common definition, is the collection of rituals and ideas that serve to give meaning to one's life, that help us to experience the feelings of awe in the world around us.
The second type doesn't require spirits.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
That is not an atheist belief - there aren't any.
It's also logically incoherent (without time nothing can "spring into existence") and incredibly hypocritical for a theist, who, one has to assume, thinks that their amazing, omni-everything magic god just happens to exist, without any reason whatsoever. An exactly equivalent belief to the one you've just outlined about the universe.
Beauty is just a reaction, the reaction of a person who perceives something as beautiful. The next person may not see it that way. However, whether perceived as beautiful or not, at very least both can agree that there's something there to be perceived -- whether it's a piece of artwork, a face, or a natural setting.
Oddly, communication with God is always personal and secret. When the televangelist says, "God wants my congregation to raise $50 million," the unfortunate congregation has to take it on faith. When the prophet says, "Thus says the Lord," well, who knows if He did or didn't -- you've gotta take the prophets word for it, even if it's diametrically opposed to what the prophet at the next corner is claiming.
The hunger IS the math. Feelings and emotions are the algorithms that operate us.
What, you're saying that two people can't share similar thoughts, ideas, fantasies, and the like?
Howard Is
Lucky Mud
You can’t see the wind, but you can see what the wind moves.
Similarly, you can’t see someone’s soul - their essential qualities - but you can see what it moves.
A spiritual life is one where there is a felt connection between the individual and the universe.
This connection inspires the individual, generates feelings of gladness and gratititude, encourages and motivates, and enables a deeper sense of empathy, not only with humans but with all life.
An essential part of a spiritual life is a meditative/contemplative practice.
I will leave it at that.
And objects are real. Whereas ─ and please correct me if I'm wrong ─ what you're talking about seems necessarily to exist only in your mind, as a concept, as something imagined.
I've never come across a coherent definition of a real god, such that if we found a real candidate we could tell whether it was a god (or God) or not.
There isn't even a concept of real godness, the real quality a real god would have that a real superscientist (who could also create universes, create life, raise the dead &c) would lack.
I'm a materialist but I can be persuaded that I'm wrong if someone presents satisfactory evidence. In other words, I'm a materialist because so far I've found no credible alternative.
I don't think that's the problem. I think incoherence is the problem.
What real quality does 'spiritual' denote here? What real test will tell us whether some real thing is correctly called 'spiritual' or not?
What, exactly, is the issue here? For the reasons I've given, I don't see any at all. Please feel free to talk me through such errors of mine as you perceive.
Wait...you agree with the OP in terms of what reality is?
You can also see how the air affects things chemically. You can also liquefy it and even solidify it (or, actually, its various component chemicals). We can weigh it. We can detect its pressure.
Please provide evidence that there is a soul that is anywhere close to the evidence that there is air and wind (moving air).
So, no actual spirits or souls needed, right?
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
It's an unfair game.
In America you can't bring religion into the classroom. But you can
bring secularism into that class - and all its nihilist, sexual, drug addled
baggage. Secularism declares it is not a religion - but it holds we came
from nothing, for no reason whatsoever, and "no hell below us and above
us only sky."
So secularism can be taught, but "religion" can't.
And yes, time sprang into existence with the beginning of the universe,
whatever that beginning ultimately is found to be.
Science says the "expanding universe" pushes into "nothing." This same
"nothing" existed before the universe. It was a "nothing" like anything we
can comprehend - not even empty space or laws of physics ---- absolutely
n.o.t.h.i.n.g.
If I could conjure up a unicorn (we are reminded unicorns are in the bible,
but unicorns is just a translation for "horned animal."} out of thin air we
wouldn't necessarily violate physics simply because the universe runs on
probability and all things are possible - just unlikely. But conjuring up the
universe is way more magical than my unicorn appearing. And people,
without thinking about it, are relying upon magic to explain how it all began.
joe1776
Well-Known Member
Of course not. In your post No. 7 you called the OP's claim a fantasy. You didn't call it a thought or an idea.
What I'm saying, and what you seem to be straining to deny, is that it's highly unlikely that Max Planck, given his level of intelligence and expertise on the topic, would offer his opinion based on a fantasy, something imagined and devoid of reason, since his peers would likely ridicule his opinion if they could.
Phaedrus
Active Member
Secularism is simply anything that is not related to religion. It includes the good things in life, but instead you decided to strawman in order to get your twisted bias across.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
My stats below demonstrate that what we term "good"
changes. We no longer have an objective standard for
the word. One day someone who supports polygamy
will be "good" and someone who opposes it will be
called "bad" or "polyphobic" or whatever.
But yes, I see secularism as a form of religion. It has,
in its general form, a notion of where we come from
(nowhere) a reason for our being (none) and a place
where we go (nowhere.) It's values has to be whatever
is in vogue at the moment. It's a Nietzsche world.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Is this even serious?
Secularism is about separation of religion from the state - it doesn't have a set of beliefs about origins.
You've totally misunderstood this. The universe isn't expansing into a "n.o.t.h.i.n.g." and (if certain assumptions are made) there was no before the big bang for the "n.o.t.h.i.n.g.", of which you speak, to exist. It's that "outside the expanding universe" doesn't refer to a place and "before the big bang" doesn't refer to a time.
If we take general relativity seriously, the whole of space-time is a manifold and time is just an observer dependant direction within it, but the manifold itself is timeless. No "springing into existence" needed. You seem to be stuck in a kind of Newtonian mindset.
Anyway - you ignored my point. Your god, if it exists, is totally without any explanation, which is an exactly equivalent problem to the existence of the space-time. The difference is that we know the space-time does actually exist.
A god who just happens to exist for no reason and creates a universe, is no less mysterious and unexplained than a universe by itself that just happens to exist for no reason.
Hence to witter on about how "magical" your straw man version of cosmology is, while confusing it with atheism to boot, is hypocritical.
Phaedrus
Active Member
In the end, you are simply warping through semantics the meaning of something in order for it to suit your twisted bias toward that which you consider an enemy of what you believe.
Secularism is no more a religion than atheism, despite your deep desire for it to be so in order for you to be right in your bias.