Meditations

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The Kakama
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Re: Meditations

Post by The Kakama »

Am I the only atheist that wants Bible study to be part of the school curriculum for this reason?
Probably not, but it wouldn't be fair to single out the faults of just this one religion.
Is this my final form?
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Isobel The Sorceress
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Re: Meditations

Post by Isobel The Sorceress »

Of course we should apply this to all religions equally.
Christianity just happens to be the major religion in most western countries.
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The Kakama
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Re: Meditations

Post by The Kakama »

Isobel The Sorceress wrote:Of course we should apply this to all religions equally.
Christianity just happens to be the major religion in most western countries.
So, a kind of study of all religions, to see their faults and strengths?
But that wouldn't exactly serve any real purpose in terms of curricular education.
And the faults of a religion can be interpreted differently, depending on whether you favour the religion or not.
Is this my final form?
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Isobel The Sorceress
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Re: Meditations

Post by Isobel The Sorceress »

The point here is that it would get the children to think independently.

Gotta go to work now, will be back later.
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Re: Meditations

Post by Redafro »

Thanks for the response. I feel the need to defend my beliefs, since you feel the most precious relationship in my life must be with a sadistic fairy tail. (I don't actually mean that in an ugly way, either that I think your being ugly, or that I'm trying to throw this in your face. I'm just trying to be accurate as to your own opinion.) I believe in God for a variety of reasons, some good, all no doubt biased... I don't think it is ultimately possible to have an unbiased belief.

1. I have a deep need for an ultimate meaning for existence, not merely one invented by people. Without a god, I see no way life can have ultimate meaning and without that meaning, I see no point in morality and much of what we call love. I would like to understand how people ground their values, love, and morality without an ultimate meaning, but so far I've not heard a reason that makes sense to me. I get practical morality, the universalizing the value of all humans so that I myself may be valued, but such a practical morality would only matter where and when one could be caught and would have no ultimate bearing.

2. As I sought God, I experienced him. I suppose you could say I indirectly experienced Santa Clause when I was a kid, but it became apparent to me from deduction of the claims about Santa Clause that my parents were behind the whole thing from a very early age... 4 or 5 I think. With God, however, the interaction I have with him, that is, when I pray not to inform him but in order to relate to him and set my mind towards him, I am changed. This change is quite fundamentally different than any trick a group of religious leaders could pull. It is deep in me.

I should point out that for me, there was a deep desire to know and experience God. This, one could argue, could be why God responded to me and not to some others who seek evidence for God but lack a real desire for him. Of course, another possibility is that my desire for God somehow catalyzed a psychological delusion. Yet if this is so, it seems clear to me to be a delusion which aids my moral outlook and ability to relate to the world, rather than a delusion which distorts and damages my interaction with the world. And that seems like a very strange kind of delusion. I'm biased, but I also find the latter unlikely as it would seem to suggest something like that our minds delude us any time we want something we can't have.

As for God being a monster if you actually read the bible, I actually do, at least once all the way through a year for the past 10 years or so. God doesn't act like Santa Clause I realize, but I don't think he should. I don't quite get anyone calling him a monster. Yes, he's vengeful against evil, but what hero isn't? But perhaps the scary thing is his jealousy, especially backed by so much power? I think it is a complex issue because his jealousy in the Bible is not over individuals, or even over the whole human race, but over a specific nationality he make a commitment to and who's progenitors made a commitment to him. It is not merely a case of "I wanted that person to love me exclusively and when they don't I'm gonna go psycho." It's much more complex and entirely non-modern as it is a commitment to people unborn at the time of the commitment. Our modern ideas of humanism are inherently contrary to this kind of idea, but that doesn't necessarily mean our humanism is right and God's jealousy is monstrous. I think it is much more complex than that.

The other issue is the one I brought up of course, that of eternal punishment for the evil. I'm still not entirely comfortable with that, but I'm beginning to believe their is a complex superstructure which may in the end justify it...

Is there something other than these ideas which causes you to call the God of the bible a monster?

I'm interested in discussing any of the ideas I laid out above, so if any of them spark your interest, please dig in.

EDIT: Ooops, didn't see the extra page of comments. I for one love the idea of having classes in school which give kids a fair outline of all religions. The tricky part is, however, that for it to truly be as unbiased as possible, you would have to have each view point presented by those who believe it is true and are well informed about the belief, and those who do not believe it is true and are well informed. (And of course, what are your standards of well informed.) Otherwise, your just constructing straw men, and that does not aid free thought. (I'm still kinda ticked at an otherwise very fair minded atheist podcast called Reasonable Doubts because they interviewed their own kids as to why they don't believe in God and the kids said "because it is stupid to believe their is a guy sitting around on clouds." Come on, that is the Warner Brothers cartoon version of God if I've ever heard it.)
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Anteroinen
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Re: Meditations

Post by Anteroinen »

Redafro wrote:
Isobel The Sorceress wrote:
There is still some problems I have, like why must it be for eternity,
Because temporary prizes and punishments are not sufficient to create strong enough desire for the prize or fear of the punishment. You need to have the absolutely largest carrots and sticks if you want to control people.

IMO this is a clear sign that religions are indeed made by man, and are just tools of power and control.
I can sympathize with this and in fact think this IS the case with many specific instances of all religions, but it is only one possibility, one of many interpretations and completely proving or ruling out any one of the possibilities is a feet pretty much impossible. For me, your particular interpretation seems true in some instances but not in all because 1. I really don't answer to any religious structure and question all religious authority openly, and 2. I've had my own continual experience with God which I have a very hard time chalking up to anything less than an authentic experience. So the only question I have is if there is a model of heaven and hell that is logically compatible with a good god. I think it is a problem and requires some non-traditional understandings of God which is what I've been working on. It still results in some unfortunate situation, namely people choosing hell, but what I have to answer is if it makes sense and if the experience of God I have is justification for believing it is so.
Why do you then suppose that Hell and Heaven exist? Why, for instance, aren't all sent to the same place as is the case with many other religions? Or maybe there is Heaven, but no Hell and those who don't believe in God die, their souls evaporating like the gas they are. You indicate that your experience with God hasn't yet revealed the true nature of things to you anyway, so why posit a morally questionable dichotomy – assuming God is good here of course?

I might return to add something about your other post, but I feel we discussed those points in our previous discussion – sorry, by the way, if I insulted you back then, I didn't mean to be overly argumentative. It is just that you were quite literally the first person ever to have such a serious discussion with me on the topic, I got lost in the heat of the moment.
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Redafro
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Re: Meditations

Post by Redafro »

No no, I didn't get offended, but it was quite the barrage. :D I meant what I said when I said I would have to think more about your questions. It was a very healthy exercise, though a bit stressful.

Something that is perhaps not always made clear to either unbelievers or even to believers themselves is that when we come to the bible as a document dictating the primary concepts of our belief, we aren't necessarily coming to it because of some property of the bible itself. I do think their are some amazing properties to the bible mind you, but those alone are not what make me believe. The bible didn't glow in my hands, it didn't speak audibly to me, it didn't hold up under all scientific and philosophical scrutiny without at least many questions being raised. (Just as an aside, the evidence I've seen on BOTH sides is inconclusive as to how accurate any set of Christian or non-Christian claims about the bible are. The bible is still an open book in that sense, har har.) What brought me to read the bible as the primary body of data for my belief in God is that I was hungry for a perfect God, one who wasn't simply a fable or even an amazing idea, but a God who for all intense and purposes changes me and makes me a better person. When I came to the bible, believing not in the bible but in a God that could leave some document to us and BY us (hence its non-glowie, not always clear nature), I found that I was getting to know the God I had been looking for, one who could change my life.

So I believe in Hell, in a very real sense, against my will. Because I believe in a God who CAN leave a testimony of his nature to us, and because that document seems to be legit in that it changes my life for the better, I believe he did leave behind such a document. And if I am to truly be humble and acknowledge my inconsistencies and limitations, my tendency towards faulty conclusions due to ignorance and bias, then I must come to that document not with scissors to cut out the bits I find too difficult or even contrary to who I think God ought to be, but trusting that somehow what I'm reading is true and makes rational sense. I'm sometimes tempted to interpret the parts about Hell as metaphorical, and in fact their is some evidence to that end. Gehenna is the term usually used for Hell, and it means the garbage dump outside town. So it could be that Hell is not an eternal state of suffering, but an eternal state of death, of being separated from life and thus ceasing to exist. I would prefer to believe in that kind of Hell, but the context of Hell in the bible seems to indicate that is not the case, and since I believe in hell because I believe in the God who revealed himself in the bible, I'm kind of stuck with it. :/

But I didn't quite answer one of your questions. I think heaven and hell are states of relation to God, not really really good and really really bad locations. The idea is that if God is the perfect being from whom all good things emanate, then being in his presence is Heaven and being separated from him is Hell. So, heaven exists because God exists and hell exists because individuals capable of rejecting God exist. That's my view anyway.
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Re: Meditations

Post by The Abacus »

Gemini wrote:I believe in something. Something out there.
Same here. I've been through enough, sometimes encountering highly strange occurrences (unexplained nostalgia, long list of coincidences, deja vu etc.) that I believe in something greater than the physical world. Sure, you can say they have their explanations, but to me it looks like some giant set-up.
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Anteroinen
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Re: Meditations

Post by Anteroinen »

That is interesting in that I have never felt there was an occurrence in my life that was indicative of anything out there. For this reason, sometimes it is just really hard to understand what it is that people feel is out there. I assume I can't ever truly understand (and neither can you understand me, ah the bane of human existence and separation of consciounesses). After all, for me it is just as obvious that the opposite true and I can't comprehend that there could be something out there. I fully realize that this is just as poor a reason to not believe in "something" as basing it on contrary feelings, but I guess there is no helping it. I mean, when it comes right down to it, all the arguments I can give against "something out there" or God are just descriptions of why I don't think certain specific views are accurate and why I don't buy that particular thing. It is just an unfounded opinion I guess. Then again, neither can anyone proves god's existence, so... we are all just as justified in our ignorance.

It is a bit like explaining what a feeling feels like, I suppose? And then arguing over which feeling is more authentic.

EDIT: Deep sighs of melancholy.

EDITII: Gah, I made a post with only vague melancholic statements, the kind which I loathe, gah, gah, gah.
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Re: Meditations

Post by Redafro »

Yes, it is like that, isn't it? We are all isolated within ourselves, yet it is possible to share similarities and do our best to express our positions, to know each other on a more then mere superficial level. At some point I decided I didn't want to attack beliefs but to get to know them better, to see them as deeply as I could from within the belief holders view. Granted, to do so perfectly is impossible, but even the attempt grows who we are, increases our capacity to sympathies and understand, even if not perfectly. Universalizing the value of all people means valuing their beliefs as well, and seeking to understanding them. Though I do think I find it more accurate to value the potential of all people, rather than where they are at this moment. This recognizes the capacity of all people to grow, to gain a more accurate belief, one which we by our nature must come to with the help of each other, not isolated by ourselves.

Ah... so it comes back around: we overcome our isolation by humbly asking and being asked about our beliefs, our passions, our ambitions, needs, etc. I emphasize asking and being asked because of the dynamic of potentially forcing our views on others. By asking questions, we benefit ourselves and others and avoid this problem, and hopefully encourage the one we are asking to ask us in return.

Hehehe, and considering where we are having this conversation, I can't help but compare that statement to the Subnet. We are isolated as we wonder around the subnet, only having experiences of our locations, reading notes, and having the desire to... discover? Do all of us here on this forum have some sense of our isolation, a desire to escape and discover? Yet I believe the greatest adventure, the greatest capacity we have to discover, is to ask and be ask about ourselves.
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