Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: MaxTheFox on June 17, 2023, 08:39:02 pm

Quote from: Strongpoint on June 17, 2023, 02:40:46 am

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Science and religion should be kept as separate as possible

Science is merely a method to understand how things work. Separating it from something is willful ignorance.

Yes because legitimizing people's bias caused by religion is how you get good science. That's how it works!

This is why a honest scientist should apply science to their religion, see that it isn't supported by evidence, and stop being religious. Instead, religious scientists do separate science from their religion.

My interpretation of my religion doesn't really contradict science and the field I am going into (material science) doesn't really have a shot at disproving anything (if it even was possible to disprove it). Lol

A world where everyone only held "rational" beliefs would be a quite boring world, honestly. I'm happy to be fighting the fight to make sure that world doesn't come to pass.

Quote from: Strongpoint on June 15, 2023, 11:29:27 pm

I understand that there are many atheists who are quite comfortable with mortality and I envy them. I am not one of those. I do want to continue existing. What is more important, I don't want to lose my loved ones forever...

But yeah, ceasing to exist is very much preferable to eternal slavery to the evil tyrant described in the Bible. Especially if I'll know that billions of people are suffering in hell (not that I, a blasphemer, have a chance to avoid hell )

To me non-existence sounds rather peaceful. The complete cessation of all sensation and myself. There's a lot I'd like to experience in my life, but it's not like I'm going to regret what I missed out on when I'm dead, and the end of my internal monologue* sounds pretty good tbh, even if I won't be around to enjoy the peace and quiet. No anxiety, no depression, no anger, no sadness, no hunger or pain. Just nothing, not even a me to experience the nothing.

*I have one of those internal monologues that never stops. I find it hard to imagine anything else, but I am told that's not the case for everyone.

idk this sounds terrifying to me. I am just scared of things ending.

Quote from: Strongpoint on June 16, 2023, 12:19:32 pm

If an omnibenevolent God created a system in which existing without his involvement is an eternal torture, then I question his omnibenevolence. Especially if the best way to get that eternal torture is merely not believing something.

The omnibenevolence is a lie invented by believers (or, probably more specifically, proselytizers) in direct contravention to stated (and, assuming it exists in any sense even remotely similar in capability to what's attributed to it, observed) behavior, yes. This is true especially for the various abrahamic/monotheistic gods, but more generally as well. Existent reality just does not cohere to a tri-omni god in particular, nor a benevolent one less specifically unless it's remarkably powerless or ignorant.

Staggeringly little about the state of reality or attributed behavior in various religious traditions makes a single goddamn lick of sense if the divine was actually omnibenevolent, and it stretches things real hard just to be benevolent at all. The only way theologians have been able to even a little square that circle is by pissing all over the meaning of the word benevolent(/good)... which can be fun to watch if you're in the right mindset, but in most cases is just varying levels of infuriating. Religious language is interesting right up until it tells you god was being benevolent, actually, when it had your child die screaming in a fire, bleh.

Things make more sense if you acknowledge the divine are exactly as spiteful, petty, and murderous as they're described. It's a miserable sort of sense if you think they actually exist, mind, because it means everything is a spate of suffering wound up and manipulated by a omnipotent egotistical hatebeast that could at any time just slaughter pretty much your entire species on a whim, and is probably taking time to figure out how to torture (sorry, "test") you for its amusement, but it's at least coherent.

If there's a wise statement I've seen come out of religious belief, it's that if you meet God on the road, you should cut the miserable thing down.

Cope. Seethe. Mald. Dilate.

On a serious note, @McTraveller I think it's a fool's errand to try and provide any kind of real evidence for spiritual beliefs. That way lies crackpottery of all kinds. Science and religion should be kept as separate as possible or you get things like YECs. Or bullshit new-age con artists.

Yeah, but it's unlikely that human beliefs have anything to do with the real afterlife, if there is one. So it's not like anyone is getting out of hell.

I lose nothing from sticking to one faith really. "What if you're wrong" is like... well no shit. Then I am wrong. I am taking the chances with what feels right to me.

Probably a 4 or so. I have little faith in a Singularity happening any time within my lifetime, or my (future) children's lifetimes.

Sapient AI is overrated anyways, robot servants that are not self-aware enough to complain about working 24/7, or suffer from it, but are sophisticated enough to follow orders, are better. Not even slaves-- how do you enslave something that has no desire for "freedom" and no ability to feel pain?

Yeah also I don't want to destroy radical atheism.

Literalism is completely untenable and results in logically inconsistent ideas like YEC. Essentially no actual theologians or even well-educated Christians are literalists-- guess why?

In the various interpretations and translations in the thousands of years since these books were written, do you think all the translators and teachers held to that?

What others think is irrelevant to my beliefs.

Well they can't really be saved online, and yes I am not advocating going up to random Nazis IRL. Family members and close friends can deconvert them (did it with my cousin just a week ago which is why I'm talking about it). The alternative is them simply roaming free online and honestly I'm willing to throw away freedom of expression, that never existed in the first place, to not talk to them. If they only end up talking to other Nazis online, sure. I don't care what happens to them.

OK yeah I either confused you with someone else or misremembered. You're center-left then. And I'm not really a communist either, I'd prefer it over unrestricted, Rand-style pure capitalism but my ideal system isn't quite communist.