Trying to hard to believe

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by jayleew, Jan 31, 2013.

  1. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    actually a quick glance shows that practically all of the conflicts of all of the time of the world are about resource allocation.

    Pining for secondary issues (such as race, creed, religion etc) is simply the business of people who want to push forward their cause of bigotry (regardless whether they are atheist or theist) for their own self centred, egotistical reasons .
     
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  3. Balerion Banned Banned

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    That's completely inaccurate. But then, you did say you only gave it a quick glance, so... :shrug:

    Race and religion are hardly secondary issues in some conflicts.
     
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  5. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    There is a more contextual point to be made here, and that is that religion, as long as it is practiced by people who try to live from the work of their hands, has to provide some explanation and justification for the competition among people.

    Like I said in the other thread, as long as resources (water, fuel, food, land etc.) are scarce, there will be a struggle for survival, there will be competition amond living beings and conflict of interests that will occasionally go from mental or verbal hostility to physical hostility.
    And as things stand, resources have been scarce, are scarce, and will continue to be so.

    So people (whether they consider themselves theists or not, whether they consider themselves religious or not) who start off from the premise that life on earth can be peaceful and harmonius, from now on forever, are simply operating out of a mistaken notion.

    The only people who are at least theoretically able to afford total non-violence, total non-aggresion, may be mendicant monastics. Everyone else is in the meat grinder that is material existence and is going around with it, facing the predicament of having to eat or be eaten.


    This is an unpalatable point, and typically, people in positions of authority don't like to acknowledge it; and when they do, and spell it out, it sounds like Nazism or religious fundamentalism.
     
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  7. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    And without religion, everything would be fine? There would be infinite resources that everyone could obtain easily, so there would be no competition, no conflict?
     
  8. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Fraggle Rocker,

    I agree, he should have some idea of what he's talking about before discussing with an adult. Good call Frag!

    You really believe this shit, don't you?

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    I'm not human, I'm a saturian.

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    In other words Balerion, I'm toying with you like a fat cat toys with a mouse.

    Nonsense. Theism is belief in God, nothing more nothing less, that's what I've always used, and that's what I'm using now.

    Oh! So dictionary.com doesn't always win? At least when it comes to you guys.
    I'm afraid there's nothing one can say to another who shifts goalposts as if it's alright for him to do so. But I will leave you with an explanation, and you can do with it what you like.

    Do you remember my definition of ''gods''?
    G(g)ods are classified as material beings. ''God'' isn't.
    Existence pertains to matter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence

    ''Can't understand'' with regard to God, theism, spirituality, and even religion, is quite right, but still you act as though you have it sown up.
    I would rather take my chances with irreligious organisations than two of the worlds most famous atheists who demonstrated the art of cold-blooded, mass murder on an unprecedented scale in a such a short space of time. I reckon they shifted a goalpost or two, don't you?

    Yes. We can't even smoke a cigarette because of religious wars that occur daily on our very doorstep.
    Hang on! There's some Amish terrorists planting a bomb under my car.....

    Please do.
    Can you let me know what you decide.

    You're right, it's shite example.
    Here, you grapple with the reasoning, I've absolutely no interest in it.

    jan.
     
  9. jayleew Who Cares Valued Senior Member

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    As impossible as it sounds, imagine if at some point you questioned your belief in God. It's kind of like having the rug pulled from under you. You think to yourself that what you thought was real may not be. You question not only the existence, but also if you believed to begin with. These are cracks that life experience can cause.

    At that point you can pick up the pieces and stand on faith/belief, or you can change/realize your true belief, however you want to look at it.

    If some people aren't meant to believe in God, then it is even more cruel than I realized. Because it is written "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." John 3:18.

    How cruel to expect belief from people that cannot.
     
  10. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    jayleew,

    This is the point I've been making to you from the begining - Did you really believe in God?


    It works in the opposite way also.

    Realising your ''true belief'' (not one of choice) is the operative phrase here. A theist's position is different in that ''belief'' is a part of one's expression and perception, and grows (stagnates even dwindle) according to them.

    You can become a theist, or a theist can become an atheist but it involves very real things which become integrated into perception and expression which are the things that can and do change our mindset.

    If an actor does a bang up job of portraying a theist, through communicating with theists, and watching them, picking up certain ways, it doesn't mean they themselves are theists even though we can believe them to be. Everything is real.


    It's all to do with the desire of the person (living entity to be more precise). God gives us what we want, but what we want isn't always what we need, or what is good for our essential selves (spirit-soul).

    Those of us who live fairly oppulent lives have the ability to use as much electricity as we wish until we can't afford to pay the bills, then all of a sudden things take a turn for the worse. As living entities, some of us take full advantage of this material nature, trying to enjoy it as much as we can, but we don't realise that there is a cost for everything we do, say, and think. We basically incur debt which we are required to pay back (natures way), and as such we bind ourselves to this nature incurring more debt (through ignorance of our position), meaning we become locked in a cycle of repeated birth and death (as you sow, so shall you reap).

    God gives us the opportunity to relinquish our debts through various means, but ultimately it is up to us to take up His offer, because our essential selves are a part and parcel of Him, and as such the freedom to choose is ours, as it is His.

    jan.
     
  11. Balerion Banned Banned

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    That's actually a pretty apt simile. Your wit, like the obese feline, is slow and easily exhausted.
     
  12. jayleew Who Cares Valued Senior Member

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    FYI - I'm no longer trying to believe. I don't want to believe in the boogey man, which God clearly is. I don't know why I dismissed God's murderous actions before. I only saw the righteousness of the faithful in the face of God's ways. If God shows itself and says that the Bible is mistaken I will listen. Otherwise, it is the most palatable decision to make that God does not exist and not worth believing in anyway.
     
  13. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    For my information?

    Jan.
     
  14. jayleew Who Cares Valued Senior Member

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    Yours and everyone's. I started the thread with the issue. Just updating everyone to say my issue is solved.
     
  15. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Good for you.

    jan.
     
  16. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Fat, obese, I guess you choose not to see differences, as and when it suits you. Eh!

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    Jan.
     
  17. Balerion Banned Banned

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    You got burned. Deal with it.
     
  18. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    It's been asserted that the defining issue in the post-Perestroika world is the demand for self-determination of the one fourth of the world's population who are Muslims. Islam certainly had its glory years, but since the Industrial Revolution the Muslim world has been on the defensive against Christian Europe and now a relatively irreligious (by Islamic standards) hegemony of Europe, China, Japan, the Western Hemisphere and the Antipodes.

    If we do nothing but make jokes about each other's positions, this discussion will become pointless. Jung studied the same human behavior that your prophets studied. The difference was that he used science and came up with a paradigm that doesn't require an adult to remain in the same state of mind that allowed him to believe in Santa Claus.

    But you keep waffling about what "belief in God" means.

    The dictionary also has a more expansive definition of "believe." I'm not going to scroll to that website and quote it verbatim, but essentially in addition to believing in the existence of something/someone, one can also "believe" in its ability, honor, etc. So belief in God could also mean belief in God's intention to treat humans kindly (at least the ones who follow his religions), or belief in his ability to perform the feats necessary for that treatment, etc. But all of these subsidiary "beliefs" hinge on belief in his existence. If God does not exist, he can hardly perform miracles or reward us for being kind to our neighbors.

    When I say "I believe in Jerry Brown" (sorry, that's a totally lame example but it seems that all the people I really believed in are dead) of course I mean that I believe in his ability to help California recover (and I'm not sure I do but this is just for the sake of the example) and his honorable intention to do so. But there is no controversy over his existence. No one is going to ask me why I believe he exists. This is not true of God.

    So I still don't understand how the phrase "belief in God" could possibly not automatically include belief in his existence. And you still have not answered that question.

    Wikipedia is not the best authority when you delve into the arcana of a discipline. We're talking about the nature of the universe here, not the contents of your garage. Energy also exists, duh? So do religions and schools of thought and alliances and progress.

    Hitler could not have prevailed without the support of European Christendom, which for a millennium included antisemitism as one of its defining characteristics. The word "holocaust" was coined long before Hitler, because Christians were destroying Jewish villages long before they had gas chambers and machine guns to make the cleansing more efficient.

    As for Stalin, I'll forgive you for not knowing that communism is an offshoot of Christianity. Despite a surname that is most common among Jewish families in the USA, Karl Marx was a Christian. His slogan, "To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities," is an elaboration of a line from the Book of Acts. I mean come on now, how many self-respecting Hindus or Confucians would take an economic system seriously in which what a man takes from civilization does not have to correlate with what he gives back? The result would be an implosion of the national economy, once they dissipated the leftover surplus from the preceeding government and the surplus they appropriated by annexing their neighbors. Oh wait a minute, that's what actually happened!

    I'm not sure what you're referring to. But our need for constant vigilance to avoid reversals of progress regarding gay rights and abortion is entirely due to the still-strong influence of the phallocratic Abrahamic religions in American politics.
     
  19. Balerion Banned Banned

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    I see it as a self-inflicted wound. Islam was at one point roughly a thousand years ago the scientific and cultural center of the world. I mean, look at the names of the stars. They're all Arabic! Even our numerals are Arabic. We owe so much to Islam during its golden age, but al-Ghazali came in ruined it all by making education the work of Satan, a mentality that is still relevant in many Islamic cultures. In a way, he's like Islam's version of Jesus. His influence completely changed the religion, and the effects are still apparent today. If there's any difference, it's that al-Ghazali's views are perhaps more closely held by Muslims than Jesus' are by Christians. (Did today's election of the Pope resemble Jesus' philosophy at all?)
     
  20. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    yet for some funny reason, "islamic turmoil" is relegated to or catalyzed by those countries that have had extensive foreign fiddling done within their borders on account of their geographic proximity to natural resources ....
     
  21. Balerion Banned Banned

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    That must explain all the Islamic turmoil in Europe.
     
  22. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    it certainly does
     
  23. Balerion Banned Banned

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    Really? So the turmoil in the UK is because of foreign fiddling done with its borders on account of their geographic proximity to natural resources?
     

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