Evolution is wack;God is the only way that makes sense! - Part 2

Religion is simply a specific kind of theism.

Did you and Wynn just get back from your honeymoon? The place was going kind of well while you two were off doing whatever.

 

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Balerion,

What kind of ''theism'' is it, specifically?

Erm... yeah! She's upstairs, unpacking.

I've been here all along.

jan.

 

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Well, the lack of worldwide evidence of a flood is convincing evidence that a worldwide flood did not occur. Similarly, the lack of evidence of an elephant in the fridge is convincing evidence that there's no elephant in the fridge. Convincing evidence is what science looks for, not absolutely conclusive never-can-be-changed evidence.

We're confident of what evidence of a flood should look like. Creationists extrapolate evidence of a flood to worldwide flood, which is unjustifiable.

If you want to change the Bible to even more nonsensical woo-woo, that's fine with me. My only aim is to prevent you from teaching woo-woo nonsense in the public schools.

If there is no evidence, the "reality" of the event is moot. It might as well not have happened.

 

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Try standing on a street corner screaming at people not to touch your unicorn. My guess is that the community will perceive you as mentally ill.

 

i don't believe there is no God, although it is possible that my interpretation and ideas are incorrect, just that would imply that i believe there is a God wouldn't it, even if i did nothing about the level of belief I do have? EDIT - that is a position based on logic, not theology, but if i were to take the the theological position that i need to do something about my belief to be able to say i believe, that might be just as true, although i don't know.

There are multiple reasonings which show why a precise knowledge of God isn't necessary...
1 - I don't know what precisely static electricity is, and there is research being done which indicates there are probably multiple ways it works on different types of materials, and I don't know if current or past researchers are even barking up the right tree, but i believe in static 100%. It is that thing that makes my clothes stick together, and I don't believe in it more today than when i had NO idea what static was.
2 - if I described God as the source of all life and the sustainer of all life, it would be very hard to say from that who or what God is "precisely".
3 - if, someone, not me, in the manner (as far as i can gather) of the kabbalist, described God as Ein Sof, the currently unknowable "being" who cannot be described by words at all, and whom Yahweh is not, would you say I don't believe in a God? I personally have a bunch of VERY strong feelings about what God is not, so i could fit into that camp of belief if i could say nothing about God at all.

 

Theism is the belief in a personal god. Religion is the manifestation of that belief. It's the detail, the difference between a god that promises a savior and a god that has already provided one. In that sense, theism is really just a generic term for a believer in the oneness of God. And what religion of that kind doesn't offer an explanation for the origin of the world?

 

But in order for you to believe, then you must have seen or felt something that lead you to that belief. You don't know precisely what static electricity is, but you can verify its existence. And while the "reality" of a god might not be definable, there's also no reason to believe in it until there is some evidence for its existence. So again, why do you believe in God without these things?

 

Oh, I do think that a precise knowledge of God most certainly is necessary:

For one, because a belief to be of any actual relevance - ie. for a belief to translate into doable intentions and then actions based on those intentions - a measure of precision is necessary. Otherwise, belief is indistinguishable from lack of belief.

Granted, as long as health and wealth seem relatively stable, one can go by with vague metaphysical notions, but when aging, illness and death strike in their various forms, the need for precision and clarity is painfully felt (and the least likely to be obtained).

Why would that be hard?

Nevertheless, you make the claim about yourself that you (tend to) believe in God.

To me, this is enough to ... well, pique my interest, to put it mildly. I openly admit that I envy theists, I envy people who say about themselves that they "believe in God." No matter how much I have tried, I never could "believe in God." To me, "belief in God" is a trophy I was never able to win.

What do you have that I don't?
What is it that makes you so very special that you get to believe in God, while I can't?




P.S.
"Ein Sof," huh? In German, "ein Soff" would in roundabout mean 'a drunkenness'. - Ah, the games the mind of someone who speaks several languages plays on itself ...

 

Or not. Perhaps he always believed in God. Perhaps he "just knows" and "just believes."
Perhaps he is one of the chosen ones, in Protestant terms. Perhaps he has divine inspiration.

Given the usual definitions of "God," it doesn't seem that the usual processes of the development of belief, knowledge, faith would apply in the case of God; ie. belief in God seems to be unique, different from all other beliefs.

 

You know, you could be right. The religion of the parents is the largest factor in what a person's faith will be, so it's entirely possible that he "just is" a believer. However, I was speaking in the context of him being an educated, sensible person who has examined his own faith and that it has more substance than that. But again, you could very well be right.

If he believes himself to be divinely inspired, wouldn't that fall under the "feeling it" category?

I don't know how you mean that. Perhaps you can give an example?

 

Hi Jan,

I find your response interesting but I afraid not very convincing.

After reading the other posts I find Balerion's position and explantations are far more persuasive.
Again no offense is meant from my comments and questions, I guess if you really believe something and you find people questioning those beliefs it can be easy to take offense, even when none is meant, so please be mindful of this.

Ok, to the points you raised. I would like to say that I can fully respect that people have the right to believe in anything they want, I certainly wouldn't wish for this to be changed either. Now that said I still have concerns about how many people come to certain beliefs. I reject your assertion that it is only the minority that come to believing through indoctrination, the reason why I reject this is as I explained previously. At the time many claim to have come to 'believing' is a time at which I do not feel they are capable of fully understanding the idea of belief in a supreme being or the full implications that accompany such a momentous decision.

Right lets get back to the idea of belief, I really don't understand what it is that gives cause to reject things like evolution. How can seemingly intelligent people reject centuries of scientific progress just because they believe in a deity. Also this idea of belief is very hard to understand from the perspective that different believers seem to belive different things. There seems no sort uniformity to it, I mean how can someone learn what it is if everyone you ask gives you a different answer?
But the point is people who arn't believers are constantly being expected to accept that because people have this belief it's perfectly reasonable of them to then reject perfectly reasonable things that have been born out time and again through observation and repetition. The only other group in society that behave this way are lunatics.

Children arn't taught prayers to their parents clothes, they arn't taken to listen to such sermons. The whole idea that you can compare children not wanting to dress like their parents with children adopting their parents religious beliefs is to me frankly pretty ridiculous, sorry.

Ok now we come to filtering, I'm not going to argue with you over this point because to be honest I have not come across the term before. However whilst not arguing over whether I was in engaging in this or not I would like to point out that it is perfectly possible to accept the validity of some of the things a person has said without necessarily accepting everything as correct. As a point in case how many of us have seen a political manifesto and thought sure there are some good things we agree with but not everything.

I can only imagine the spectacles comment was meant to be metaphorical, but as for actual words actual words for what?

Yes the references I gave were christian, however the confusion came in that you thought I was trying to imply I'd given examples of other religious practices, when clearly I made no such assertion.

Programming? What programming?

I don't see any logical reason for the rejection of Darwinian Evolution.

Sorry didn't understand a word of the last paragraph.

But your final comment I wholeheartedly agree with even if our methodology is somewhat different.

 

eh?
monothiesm?
polytheism?

 

quoting someone elses contra to this line of arguement...
"Say we have a large forest that is called God.... you are walking in this forest and all you see is a tree. Is the tree evidence of the forest called God?
God is the entire forrest and not just the trees. Untill you look at the whole you will only see your own egoistic reflection , merely a reduction placed upon the whole."

 

It is the nature of the ego to believe in itself. If you believe in yourself, your own existance and potential, you believe in God... for it is the nature of the existential ego to believe in itself...

what dis t'is t'ing called you?
are you merely a name given to you by your parents?

all you know is that you can only refer to yourself as the first person "I".

has it not occured to you that every one else is also called "I"?

why is that do you think?

hello "I", my name is "I". Why is your name the same as my name? .........."I"

What is the self?

Why do you spend your entire existance looking for your self and to become one with your self?

"I want to be one with "I"

"I need to find "I"

Who are you looking for.... again?

what is this aguement about, really, other than defining "I"

If you believe in "I" you believe in God...


"I" Believe in "I"
and the only time you actually become one with "I" is when you die... and the existential "I" exist no more....

so you are dying to meet yourself... literally... and "the tree becomes yet again one with the forest."


aka The God complex...and it's inherent "evolution" is unavoidable..

[video=youtube;4z2DtNW79sQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z2DtNW79sQ[/video]

 

whether belief consists of actions or intellectual ideas or synapse conditioning or whatever is a long discussion in itself. I would say assent to a principle is the most widely accepted understanding of "believing", not taking a particular action, but that is a semantic point, not a theological one. So i don't understand your proposition.

I feel exactly the opposite is true. I tend to feel involved when i have responsibility - when something just happens, far beyond my control, where is the urgency in any of that? When one is young and can study, or live a life, or make decisions based on your belief, at THAT time knowing what you believe is most urgent. Many of the complications of religion drop away later on anyway. There are a lot of actions good and bad you just can't take if you are too old to do so. You are talking about people that are trying to find something in their old age they didn't have time for before, or if you are just talking about assuaging the fear of the unknown, I sympathize with those people, because all of us have to live with things everyday that we just aren't going to "know" and make decisions about the future based on what we think makes sense. When you are really old you have a lot fewer decisions to make about the future.

i was assuming that definition i gave as an example would be too general to be called "precise", but if you think that it is precise enough to call God "ground of being" or whatever, then i would say most people probably need at least that much precision (which, in my opinion, is very very imprecise). And you didn't address the fact that many people say God is beyond their understanding and can't be described, not just the kabbalists. I would say you are confused if you are insisting that none of those people believe in a God.

Are you actually asking that question, or are you just providing a tired old atheist straw man about alleged superiority complex of all theists? if you are actually asking i will take some time to think about it. Either way something to think about is whether intelligence is a trophy or a curse? Is responsibility a trophy or a curse? Or maybe better, at what point do these things begin to have diminishing return and carry more trouble than they are worth pragmatically?

@balerion - i would say that in my case God has refrained from coming down with a blinding light and making me believe, and the belief i have is often more a choice I make than an intellectual understanding of the principles. My faith in the COMPLETENESS of the intellectual process itself is pretty low though, since i believe there are many holes in what we know, how we know, or if we know a large part of what we deal with every day. Most of what we know is just inference based on previous experience. I did just see a video about hallucinogens and i feel i understand your view somewhat when you say, "where is the proof dammit?" These people on a drug have these experiences with things they can barely explain, and they actually sound silly trying to render some wild visual into a narrative about being in another dimension, or about seeing beings from different universes. It is easy for me to say that is just a hallucination and it isn't REAL, because the experience was caused by a drug, but to these people their experiences were real and the drug was just a key to getting them past their limits. I am not willing to say they have seen objectively existent beings, but I am withholding judgement for now - perhaps those experiences are just various renditions of internal psychological forces, I certainly do not "know". If it (God)is just internal factions being externalized (as some claim for belief in God), I will have to make adjustments to what I think God is, but we are far from getting that deep into consciousness with science, since we are really just getting into that recently.

EDIT - i think you would have a better time thinking of various religious ideas (even if you maintain they are all wrong) as a type of map (topo map, street map, water bodies map, etc.), or a language, as opposed to thinking of it as something that we are all supposed to agree on one version of, so you can attack it more easily. And i agree with you on this issue about fundies rejecting, without even doubt in their minds, certain vastly probable ideas. It is totally unreasonable to say, for example, evolution absolutely did not happen. A lot of religious people would agree with needing to avoid ideas that directly conflict with specific scientific principles.

 

One issue I have with this line of thinking, and continuing your analogy...
First, the forest is infinite... we can not escape from inside the forest to observe the entire forest. We only ever see trees.
Secondly, for as far as we look we only see trees. We know there are a lot of them. We call the collection of trees the "forest". What does calling it "God" add to our understanding of the trees or of our place within the forest?

Further, if you are within a closed system then the only way you can learn about the "whole" rather than just the parts you observe is to move outside of the system... but it is a closed system... so you can't.
If the universe is a closed system, as all our science suggests it to be (it is a fundamental assumption of science that all observations have since supported), then there is zero chance of us knowing about anything that is outside.
And just labelling the universe "God" adds nothing.

 

If a belief that a person supposedly has, makes no difference in how a person acts (actions being mental, verbal, and bodily), then the person might as well not have that belief.

If a belief is to be considered as having no different ontological and ethical status than, say, a small mole between your toes (so that it is rarely, if ever, seen), then what point is there in talking about having said belief?

What do you think that the people who are in prisons, hospitals, homeless, or as hostages, worry about the most?
Sure, food, clothing, shelter may be on their minds a lot. But then there are also questions like "Why does God let this happen? Does God exist at all?" Yet at that point, people generally do not have the peace of mind to think about these things clearly, so they are just stuck in suffering.

What keeps you up at night, sleepless - or do you not experience this?

In some ways, sure, but in other ways, approaching death can sharpen one's metaphysical doubts.

Some traditional Buddhist mediation teachers think that diseases like dementia are actually a consequence of not having trained one's mind; or at least that those degenerative diseases have a more debilitating impact on those who have no trained their minds.

I was just inquiring.

I never suggested those people don't believe in God. But I certainly do not understand how they can believe in God if they have no verbal understanding of "God."

A "wordless, non-conceptual" understanding of God may sound good to a New Ager, but how on earth does it translate into action, other than in some kind of zoning out?

Yes, I am seriously asking that question.

I have asked LG that question several times, but he ignored it.

What's your point?

 

I understand where I may have confused the issue I think. Try this rewrite of some one else contra offered, and see if it is clearer.

"Say we have a large multiplistic Ego that is called God.... you are walking with in this multiplistic ego and all you see is a single ego. Is the single ego evidence of the multiplistic ego called God?
God is the entire multiplicity and not just the individual ego. Untill you look at the whole you will only see your own egoistic reflection , which is, due to your conditioning, merely a reduction placed upon the whole."

It is not really that important what you call it...except that it may be a multiplistic personna..often referred to as God.
Possibly my response to "wynn" post #261 may help even more..

 

This sort of cunundrum is sometimes known as Advaita Vedanta monism.
Of course, those monists see no cunundrum ... yet they can't explain whence the illusion of separate identity.

 

I heard a joke about two impersonalist (monist) yogis once -

Tectonic plates shift. After millions of years, they collide. Thus, two monist yogis, who were meditating for thousands of years each on his own tectonic plate, are now face to face with eachother. Angered by the existence of an other, they start fighting, pulling on their lice- and flea-ridden hair and beards, scratching eachother with millenial nails, they yell at eachother "I am the only monist!"