| Sri Lumpa said: I was trying to explain why your assertion that "You have to believe to see, not see to believe" looks stupid and I was not comparing snow to a higher power as much as comparing the belief in two unobserved phenomena, one of which happens to be a higher power and the oher happens not to be. Snow can be seen and felt on Earth, it has been witnessed by millions of people with thier eyes in this physical world, God cant, thats why your explnation fails. And kid from Sahara is likley to learn or at least hear about snow, so thats annotherreason why your debunking failed. Also, when I wrote it I took it you meant it literally but reading another post by padib where he said "even though the bible is clear that without faith one cannot see God" made me realise that you probably meant see the spiritual world, not see physical things. It still look stupid when taken at face value given that it is unqualified but I understand where you come from if that restating is what you meant: "You have to believe to see spiritual things, not see to believe". Well, I thought that was abvoius. I said it 2 posts back, that I dont present this as some divine evidence of God so you shouldnt take it that way. Im am just arguing that faith is very important to realizing and seeing God when you beleive in Him and its far from irrational. Assuming that I now correctly understand your assertion, my rebuttal would be that if it is your faith itself that causes you to see spiritual things then a muslim's faith or an hinduist's faith is sufficient for each to see spiritual things which leads to the logical conclusion (based on your premise) that every religious faith's spiritual world must exist as they all see it through their respective faith. Faith that shows loving God that promotes peace love, equality and respect? Than yes, they can see it too, as both of those religions promote the same things that God of Christianity and Christ does. Thats not a rebuttal, you almost confirmed my point. On the other hand, if their faith is not enough to conclude that these religion's spiritual worlds exist then their faith only gives them the illusion of seeing the spiritual world, in which case so does your faith gives you an illusion of seeing a spiritual world. Depends on the individual and his/hers faith. Spiritual world can bee seen trough faith.
Your assertion was:
I only needed to mention one to disprove it. Fine, I guess you did, lol. But the bigger picture still stands. Your argument sounds like blame the victim to me. Its true, I speak from experience. Just look at this web site for an example. Regardless, the fact is that atheism was frowned upon in those time (and still is in America nowadays, I believe* that it would be easier to get elected whilst being gay than whilst being an open atheist). But its not punishable by law, its only not welcome in some societies ( I already mentioned reasons for this), so they had no reason not to come out *yes, it is an irrational belief because I can't prove it, though an educated one. If I were to guess I would say that your religious belief, while irrational by definition, is also quite educated. Not knowing the exact details of your religious beliefs I was generally talking about religion in the abstract and getting more concrete in specific cases. But you need to look at the main point and purpose of Christianity if you want to fully understand it. Dont focus on small unimportant stories that were given to Christianity by other pagan religions. Religions in general do include statements about the world, and that is why they tend to clash with science if/when science sees the world differently. If your religious belief does not include such things then your religious belief cannot clash with science. Yes, but the nature of the world isnt the religion's main purpose. For the long time religious institiutions were the only source of science and knowledge, and thats why church manipullated religion and used it to explain the world. Also, within christianity your belief seems to be erroneous as Jesus said "Don't misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose." (Matthew 5:17) And the old testament says "Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the LORD your God that I give you" Deuteronomy 4:2 Yes, God commanded 10 commandments and Moses wrote it. Jesus however, coverd all 10 commandments by saying ''Love and accept your God as a saviour and never do anything to others that you dont wish to be done upon yourself'', hence why he accomplished law of Moses and promoted God's comands. But stuff like ''Book of Leviticus (part of the old testament)'' and similar hold no historical nor spirital place in Christianity. So while Christians may not need to obey the old testament laws because they are fulfilled in Jesus (supposedly, I don't see how as they are quite contradictory with the new testament but what do I know) they are still relevant and their edicts are still considered moral (even the ones we would find immoral today). They are contradictionary because they teach different things. Heck, go read the first 3 sentences of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish-Christian_relations Judaism primarily places emphasis on correct actions (or orthopraxy), focusing primarily on how to respond to the Mosaic Covenant God made with the Israelites, as recorded in the Torah and Talmud.[1] Christianity places emphasis on correct belief (or orthodoxy), focusing on response to the New Covenant that God made through Jesus, with some denominations believing that salvation comes not by any human action, but by faith alone (sola fide) and God's action. <---- Hence why ''faith'' is so important in Christianity Incidentally, while I am agnostic technically speaking (I hold no belief as to whether any god exist) and atheist practically speaking (I live my life by and large like if no god exist) I am philosophically neither because I consider such religious labels (as well as christian, muslim...) to answer the wrong question and to have a wrong assumption. The wrong question answered is "Does god x exist". My answer for all value of x is not yes, it is not know, it is "who cares". The truth value of a particular god's existence is irrelevant, what is relevant is whether the moral code expounded in its name is actually moral. If it is not and said god was proved to exist I still would not follow it (that would be like following lucifer if he had created the world and would thus be god instead of following yahweh if he had not created the world but had been created by lucifer and had rebelled and thus wasn't god). And if the religious code of a non-existant god is good then the lack of his existence should not prevent one from following it. Do you disagree with the morals God and Jesus Christ teached people upon? I guess you could say that I view the idea of "it is moral because god said it was" as the epitome of the fallacy of argument from authority. I beleive all morals given by God are good, not because they are from God, but because I agree with them
I do understand what you mean because believe it or not I used to have faith back when I was a kid and before I started questioning it. My argument is not that you can't feel like you know god's existence. My argument is that it is an illusion. If it is not then every religion's gods must exist for in all of them you can find people with enough faith that they just know that their god exist, or so they (and you) think. Read what I replied to your 2nd, 3rd and 4h paragraph. Somebody having hallucination without knowing that they are hallucination (like a paranoid schizophrene as opposed to someone knowingly taking LSD) won't believe in the hallucination because for him they are not hallucinations; he will know that they are real. But his knowledge of their realness does not make it so. Not at all. person that is still sane knows that hes having hallucinations, in fact most people realize the things they see during hallucinations are not there. Now I am not making the argument that religion is akin to paranoid schizophrenia (though I am not making the argument that it isn't either; I am simply silent on the subject) but the same principle apply. No, they dont. Schizophrenia is mental illness, just because you can see things that arent there due to mental sickness doesnt mean its anything like seeing God trough true faith, and by ''seeing'# dont mean seeing with your own eyes like hallucinations, but rather know that He is there, feel his presence.
Do you mean self-realisation? Or, to use a christian term, epiphany? I mean when a person is convinced that a higher power (God) exists due to his spiritual experince in life and faith. If so, not only do you not even need faith for it as you can also gain it through meditation and even sleep can suffice (hence the old advice to sleep on things) but I would argue that it is not so much the gaining of new knowledge as it is our brain analysing what we already know without our conscious input (which can often get in the way). it really depends on what exactly are you trying to realise or discover trough meditation. Now, I've personally never done anything like meditation myself, so I dont know weather or not you can discover the existance of higher being with meditation . I am not very educated on that stuff If such epiphany is about the material world or philosophy then you can test such newfound understanding to check if it is correct. If such epiphany is about knowledge of supernatural things then it is derived from your former belief and is nothing more than a rearranging of same into a coherent whole. As it still has its foundation in beliefs it cannot be termed rational (whereas the case in the preceding sentence can be verified or disproved and if verified is rational).
I agree that theism and science are different, but it does not follow that theism's axioms are necessarily true. As for true and righteous faith to be necessary, many (including me incidentally) go through the same process with similar results through mediation which does not necessarily require faith (just ask an ardent atheist like Sam Harris). Read what I said above Such things help us organise our thought and can lead to new thoughts but it is not so much the gaining of new knowledge as much as the revelation into our consciousness of things we already knew inconsciously (whether on their own or as a synthesis of unconscious thoughts). To reprise my example of the boy in the desert (sorry), he could imagine the concept of snow without seeing any or being told about it (no need of faith or meditation for that, just imagination) and could through such a meditative process convince himself that there has to be such a thing as snow somewhere in the universe but that perception of knowledge would not be actual knowledge until he travels to a place where there is snow. But the snow would still exist, and thats the main point. Its not important how you ''imagine'' God on his visual appereance, what matters is that you have faith in him and that faith is later on proven Of course he would believe that he know that there is snow just like you believe that you know there is a god because from his subjective view it is knowledge even though it objectively isn't. As for all religions delivering the same message I would say that a lot of them deliver the same core principles (peace, love...) but they often contradict them; which is why you can have a situation where some christians (not all) believe that it is logical and moral that unbelievers be sent to hell by a loving god to be tortured for eternity for failing to believe in a religion's subjective beliefs (like the deity of Jesus). Except that those Christians are wrong and your view on Hell is very wrong as well. Hell isnt a place , its a state of soul where a person PUT HIMSELF INTO. Its a state of soul in after life where soul is without god, but the soul putted it self there not God, for Gods love towards man is too big for Him to torture and burn his people.Stuff like fire, demons and torture are used as symbolics to present the afterlife without God. You example fails, God would never hurt a person. And Jesus really did exist, its a historical proven fact. If god was so just and loving he would at worst send to hell those humans who have an evil heart and send to heaven those that have a good heart regardless of whether they believed in Jesus, maybe with a purgatory period before acceptance where he would correct them in their incorrect beliefs about the world and morality. And God does that, except he doesnt send people to Hell. You dont have to beleive Jesus Christ was son of God, just beleive in his teachings.
Yeah, I retract that as I did not understand that you are claiming that it could lead to spiritual knowledge but that you are not claiming that it can lead to physical knowledge.
It is a scientific theory which means that it will never be proven. It is however highly unlikely to be disproven because of the huge amount of evidence supporting it. I think the loudness of scientists on this subject is simply a reflection of many religious people's attempts to replace it with their beliefs. You would not see such vehemence with respect to the theory of gravity or to insist that the earth is an oblate spheroid because hardly anyone would bother to claim that there is no such thing as gravity and those few who claim that the earth is flat are not taken seriously. The strong defense of evolution is because it is under an attack that may succeed, not scientifically because it can't, but politically; and such a political defeat would not be a defeat of evolution as much as a defeat of the scientific principle, the corruption and perversion of science for religious ends and the start of a new dark age. If it has huge amount of evidence supporting it why dont you beleive in it and why is it still considerd a theory? |
Sorry for the late reply, for some reason I have totally forgotten about this thread
