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Forums - General - Let's Talk About Religion

akuma587 on 14 March 2009
That Guy said:
Its funny how the pendulum has swung the other way. Back 400 years ago, if you did not have a religion, then you were considered an uncivilized heathen. That was a very intolerant viewpoint at the time.

Now, especially in this forum, if you ARE religious, now you are the uncivilized heathen. So now its the atheists who assert this intolerant viewpoint.

I believe both viewpoints are equally wrong and there's no reason to cast a whole group of people to be "stupid."

Definitely.  Anyone can be an idiot.  There are plenty of people who are managing to do that just fine without any help from religion.

 



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson

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That Guy on 14 March 2009
WessleWoggle said:
That Guy said:
WessleWoggle said:
Khuutra said:
WessleWoggle said:
That Guy said:
im_sneaky said:
I'm fine with being people being stupid, and I'm fine with people, stupid or not, trying to make other people stupid. So I don't have a problem with religious people trying to convert. To become religious, there must be a weak link in the first place.

I find that somewhat backhanded and offensive. Basically you're saying religious people = stupid. Its like you're saying, "I'm fine with people being stupid, so I don't have a problem with Republicans. There must be a weak link somewhere in the first place."

 

Sure there are religions out there with peculiarities, but let's not put everyone who is religious under the "stupid" umbrella.

I disagree, we should put all religious people under the stupid umbrella because they're all stupid for endorsing the man made plague known as religion.

In my opinion sneaky should have said ignorant, not stupid. You can hold faith based beliefs while remaining smart, but you can't hold them without being ignorant in some form or another.

Guys you are getting close to what I talked about in the OP.

I forgot, I'm sorry.

But I'm not trying to be offensive. It's a fact you have to be ignorant to hold a faith based belief, because faith is when you believe in something without any reason, and people with faith based beliefs are ignoring the fact that their belief has nothing to do with logic.

EDIT: I didn't see the above post by Louie before posting this. Also this post was meant to clarify, not offend.

 

 

no, what you just defined is credulity. Faith is always based on evidence. And it does not always have to do with religion either.

 

People put faith in the President to get us out of this recession. Why? Because he planned out something that sounded reasonable and based on his past record of service, we decide to put our trust, faith (and in turn, our votes) in order to enable him to carry out his plan.

However, if the President promised to cut taxes and then during his term he instead raised taxes, then we would quickly lose faith in him and would not trust him to do anything else right either.

Faith is not blind; it is very active, it grows or dies, and its always based on a record of past actions. Current actions that confirm the record of past actions of course would cause one's faith to grow. Actions that run contrary to the record of past actions obviously would case one's faith to die.

 

Sorry, that's what I define faith as. I know there's other definitions for faith, like if you have faith you're going to win a fight because you're physically stronger, then it's faith based on evidence, but the word faith in this context can easily be replaced with the word idea or thought.

Faith, in my definition, is blind.

Faith, in your definition is synonymous with idea.

I have faith that the presedent will get us out of this recession.

I have the idea that the president will get us out of this recession.

 

 

 

I'm not going to engage in a definition war with you but if you believe an idea or cause based on my definition of faith, it is definitely not blind. And there are many out there who believe based on my definition; they would not be blind or ignorant either.

As far as flipping the card, yes that is bad argument and a logical fallacy, since it really just begs the question;

A. God wrote the Bible

B. We know this is true because the Bible say so

The burden of proof always falls upon the positive statement. I can make the same argument on the existence of green men on mars and simply state "PROVE TO ME THAT GREEN MEN ON MARS DO NOT EXIST! LOL" No, the burden falls on me to provide positive evidence of green men; not to show the lack of negative evidence; if that makes sense or not.

 



vlad321 on 14 March 2009

Khuutra use the search function up. There was a thread named almost the exact same thing with like 7 pages already up.



Tag(thx fkusumot) - "Yet again I completely fail to see your point..."

HD vs Wii, PC vs HD: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=93374

Why Regenerating Health is a crap game mechanic: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=3986420

gamrReview's broken review scores: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=4170835

 

Khuutra on 14 March 2009
vlad321 said:
Khuutra use the search function up. There was a thread named almost the exact same thing with like 7 pages already up.

Never!



vlad321 on 14 March 2009
Khuutra said:
vlad321 said:
Khuutra use the search function up. There was a thread named almost the exact same thing with like 7 pages already up.

Never!

 

Man when I was typing that "function" I was so thinking of anotheer word with f, u, and c in it.



Tag(thx fkusumot) - "Yet again I completely fail to see your point..."

HD vs Wii, PC vs HD: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=93374

Why Regenerating Health is a crap game mechanic: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=3986420

gamrReview's broken review scores: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=4170835

 

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Louie on 14 March 2009
That Guy said:
WessleWoggle said:

Sorry, that's what I define faith as. I know there's other definitions for faith, like if you have faith you're going to win a fight because you're physically stronger, then it's faith based on evidence, but the word faith in this context can easily be replaced with the word idea or thought.

Faith, in my definition, is blind.

Faith, in your definition is synonymous with idea.

I have faith that the presedent will get us out of this recession.

I have the idea that the president will get us out of this recession.

 

 

 

I'm not going to engage in a definition war with you but if you believe an idea or cause based on my definition of faith, it is definitely not blind. And there are many out there who believe based on my definition; they would not be blind or ignorant either.

As far as flipping the card, yes that is bad argument and a logical fallacy, since it really just begs the question;

A. God wrote the Bible

B. We know this is true because the Bible say so

The burden of proof always falls upon the positive statement. I can make the same argument on the existence of green men on mars and simply state "PROVE TO ME THAT GREEN MEN ON MARS DO NOT EXIST! LOL" No, the burden falls on me to provide positive evidence of green men; not to show the lack of negative evidence; if that makes sense or not.

 

The only thing I really dislike about this topic is that you can basically have arguments for days and it's never going to end anyways.

Personally I really like a lot of religious people but I think religion itself (some religions at least) has lost its use.

I'm especially talking about catholics here, the pope and the Vatican to be precise.

I don't understand how you can teach people in Africa to stop using Condoms for example. If your wife or husband if HIV positive you'll get infected anyways so saying "just have sex when you are married" doesn't help, really. It just makes the situation worse in South Africa.

Also what happened to that 9 year old brazilian child is just terrible. She was pregnant with twins and they had to make an abortion because the twins and her would've died otherwise. The church then banned her but her father in law who abused her wasn't because he didn't violate the rights of god.

And what the pope did with Williamson... well yeah. Williamson is a Nazi that's it. You shouldn't try to get Nazi's back into your church really. And he doesn't respect the jewish religion either.



That Guy on 14 March 2009

I sort of understand the catholic stance on contraception, since they believe that preventing the sperm from reaching the egg counts as an abortion (correct me if I'm wrong, catholics!).

As for myself, I am a proponent of wrapping it up if you don't plan on having kids.

During an AIDS epidemic, its probably a bad idea to be promiscuous anyways. I mean, seriously. Would you do it with a girl with AIDS, even if you wrapped it up?

As for any particular church, well it will fall or stand by the evidence of its actions. Assuming the existence of God, do you think God would approve of a Church that does something like what you described?



Louie on 14 March 2009
That Guy said:

I sort of understand the catholic stance on contraception, since they believe that preventing the sperm from reaching the egg counts as an abortion (correct me if I'm wrong, catholics!).

As for myself, I am a proponent of wrapping it up if you don't plan on having kids.

During an AIDS epidemic, its probably a bad idea to be promiscuous anyways. I mean, seriously. Would you do it with a girl with AIDS, even if you wrapped it up?

As for any particular church, well it will fall or stand by the evidence of its actions. Assuming the existence of God, do you think God would approve of a Church that does something like what you described?

 

Of course it's a bad idea anyways but still... better using a condom than nothing right?

About your last sentence: I think it's rather about what the people want. If society doesn't accept the view of a religion it is going to die. That's happening to the catholics currently.

I think explainging such things with the existence of god is dangerous in the first place, though. You should never try to use god as a reason for anything, really. It prevents you from having your own thoughts which is probably the worst threat to humanity.



That Guy on 14 March 2009

No, its a valid hypothetical question. Just because a group claims to be a proponent of person X does not mean that thing X necessarily stands behind that group. Person X just happens to be God and the group happens to be a particular denomination. I could replace "group" with William Ayers and his fictional group "terrorists for Obama" and Person X to be Barack Obama.

If William Ayers decided to come out of the woodwork, started a Political action committee called "terrorists for Obama" and started blowing up buildings in the name of Barack Obama, do you really think Obama would approve or stand by Ayers? I think not.



wfz on 14 March 2009

Nintendo is the only real religion!

Take that, Jesus!