Bay 12 Games Forum

Here's the problem though: any action on the universe which has a macroscopic effect is both detectable and as a result testable. If a magical being is causing a creation or destruction of energy within the neural cells of your brain, it becomes provable or disprovable. And if you can prove such a thing is happening, I promise to give you the money part of my Nobel Prize for inventing a perpetual motion machine with it. If any object has any effect on reality, it becomes testable, and therein lies the problem of theistic religion.

Isn't that damn near the antithesis of the uncertainty principle?

And beyond that, you can't say for certain whether or not particles are moving on their own, or being guided by a divine hand, until you have a *perfect* understanding of particle physics, free of random chance. Even then, you could say God was responsible for setting them in motion in the first place.

I'm not angry, it's just what I have to say on the matter.
There is several problem with telepathy, about how "it" should be able to locate current in your brain with an amazing precision to be able to "read" your prayer and such. "It" would also need to be able to make it from everywhere.

Um, God is omnipotent/omniscient? If I were arguing that aliens were responding to my prayers, the difficulty of doing such would be a reasonable argument, but... yeah, not sure where you're going with this.

The fact that believing something make your life easier doesn't say anything on the odd of it being actually true. Why would you choose to believe something false?

Still don't think it's false, here. I (again) think they're equally valid and internally consistent, but mine offers me more right now, at this point in my life.

But enough with this : There is a lot of reason why everything but atheism and the lightest Theist hypothesis make sense.

I think you missed a negative there. That or I'm confused.

From the diversity of religion and belief (I'm an atheist, you're an atheist, I just believe in one less religion than you) to the improbable physical properties of god (a being that is everywhere at the same time? That know everything? That set moral absolute flawlessly?)
Yes ,of course, the big bang could be the result of a conscious action. But everything else is exactly what it appear to be : a primitive attempt at explaining the world.

The diversity of religion makes perfect sense in my worldview; a lot of people have been influenced by this same force, but it's a tricky thing. Once you believe that there's an omniscient god who talks to you, it's easy to convince yourself your every thought is correct, thus leading to the less-pure aspects of religion. That or, again, truth is relative- what was wise and needed to a band in the desert hundreds of years ago may not be now. As for unlikely physical properties... again, the whole premise here is that we're talking about something outside of our understanding, so the fact that he can't be explained by currently known laws doesn't count against me.

I'll echo Robocorn here, I just don't see how you can't have a universe without gods. We simply don't have any evidence that says the universe cannot simply exist, just mysteries that will be solved with time.

There was some miscommunication, here. You *can* have a universe without gods, and it's quite a pretty one at that. No issues there. All I'm saying is, it has to have some things that you don't necessarily need if you have things from theism instead.

Example. Caveman believes that there's a god under the earth who's really greedy and constantly pulling everything down. That caveman no longer needs tachyons- for him, the greedy god is blue toothpicks, and tachyons (or whatever we're attributing gravity to these days) are red. My view is (I hope) rather more sophisticated, but it still have some blue toothpicks here and there, that need to be replaced by reds if the whole structure isn't going to collapse. Or fail to collapse due to a lack of gravity. Whichever.

So Freakycheeseman has converted from "strict atheism" From the beginning I don't have any idea what he believed. Atheism in itself doesn't form a tenable base of ones personal beliefs. If FCM based his entire personal philosophy on  sticking it to religious people then there is no wonder he changed his belief system. Atheism is not a belief system in the same way as a religion can be because it is only a component of one or many philosophies. Many Atheists are Naturalists or Humanists and largely none of the philosophies associated with nonreligion are mutually exclusive.

I'd disagree, a little. I used to have a more... aggressive belief, sticking it to religious people, as you said, but that went away years before I stopped being an atheist. There were things I believed in as an atheist, that I no longer believe in now- see my toothpicks analogy, above. (And while I'm at it, sorry for the double post). The value of utter independence, for example, or the belief that everything in the universe came about as the result of random chance (I liked that one a lot, so I'm still fuzzy on it.

Through some means, a book if I recall, FCM has decided to become a member of a religion because he learned of a nuanced viewpoint that claims that people of lower enlightenment will view those of higher enlightenment as less enlightened then themselves. This caused FCM to rethink his ideas ad perhaps imagine himself as unelightened mocking the enlightened and he sought to follow the ways of the book.

Again, not exactly. The four stages thing didn't change my mind that much, it was the bounded vs. centered sets, and the realization that I'd ceased to advance or learn through atheism.

My question is "So?" the large majority of religious folk are fine and the large majority of nonreligious folk are fine. Unless this epiphany has altered FCM's behavior in some way I see no reason for him to care at all about this change. As long as FCM is a amiable person there will be little change.

As for religion in general, I once read a book on gnomes, the book presented gnomes as though they were real, with their culture, history, physiology, language, and a number of stories about particularly famous gnomes. At the end of the book, the authors write an excerpt where a gnome addresses them and expouses his opinions on humanity (he doesn't like deforestation or pollution, and he wishes we appreciated our great minds [mozart in particular] more). I do not believe in gnomes, but I find that I agree with many of the things the gnome said. I think of many religions in the same contest as people who believe in gnomes . As long as their beliefs cause them to do good things and be more altruistic, I have no problems with them as people. I only have problems when their beliefs interfere with freedom, knowledge, or safety (which I assume FreakyCheese's do not)

And this I just plain agree with- I really started this more to get other people's perspectives than to try to challenge their beliefs, though (as I admitted) I was rather eager to see how mine stood up to challenge.

Believing something because it's convenient is a pure nonsense.
What are you doing? Trying to alter your perception of reality to make it bearable? That's even worse than the video game you're trying to avoid : at least you were honest with yourself.
Are you honestly calling that mysticism? There is no one out there to hear you payers. You know it as well as me.
You know as well as me that there is billion of poeple that pray to several dozen different god. You know as well as me that the diversity of the answer that they find in prayer make it impossible that prayer work. How shall you cope with that? Are you going to try to believe as much as possible until you've completely fooled yourself?

Gosh you're angry.

So, first off, I don't feel like I shifted to a less valid perception. Thing of the bounded vs. centered sets again- both are reasonable, internally consistent ways to divide people. Both are valid, despite being different. I switched from one to another.

Life was bearable before. It was pretty good. Now it's better. If doing this makes me exercise more, get out into the world, and be nicer and more patient with people, then what, exactly, is your problem with it?

And yes, I do know that someone hears and even responds to my prayers. I don't know if that being is god or myself, but if it's myself, then I have better advice when I approach it that way.

As to the variety of answer to prayers... I have a few answers to that. One is that some people are deceiving themselves into believing their own voice is the voice of god- much as you think I'm doing. Another is that truth really IS subjective- what's true and wise to one may not be to another. I know that in my interactions with the thing I call God, he's been careful to deal with me as I need to be dealt with, given my personality and biases.

Finally, since you went so far as to make assumptions about my motivations and beliefs, I'll extend the same courtesy to you. Right now, you seem to be rather upset because someone you've never met believes something that disagrees with you... so I ask, are your own views and philosophies *really* serving you that well?

Quote from: FreakyCheeseMan on July 18, 2010, 04:34:19 pm

So... correct me if I'm reading this wrong (I'm nervous making statements about other peoples beliefs), but it sounds like as you got older, the answers that satisfied you as a child lost meaning, and you became unable to accept specific parts of the scripture you had been handed?

Not so much as when I got older, that all happened about a year ago. The scripture as a whole was taken as infallible though, so I could argue that the entirety of it falls if so much as one part falls.

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Way back in the first few posts brought up the whole "Four Stages" thing- sounds like yours was a stage 2 to stage 3 deal?

Not too sure about that. Wasn't paying attention there, since it didn't seem very important.

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Oh, just out of curiosity, and excuse me if this is too personal, but... back when you did pray, what did it do for you?

There was a thrill in it, I guess. Don't remember too well, I tend to feel dizzy. Afterward it just felt like a lie.

Thanks. I'm not a fan of organized religions in general, but I do admit to having a softer spot for Islam than for most... good to hear more about it. Anyway, good luck to you.

I'll stick to meta.

Basically, your worldview DOES have an extra layer than mind - a supernatural being who can listen to and answer your prayers.  We do not have evidence for such a being.

Perhaps some people can say to themselves that this being exists even without evidence, but I cannot.

Except it's not exactly that; my view of the universe is not equal to "Yours, plus god". It's a matter of... organization? The nature of the universe? The god I believe in is less of a sentient being that exists outside the universe, and more a property *of* the universe. If the world is not structured as I believe it to be, it must be structured some other way- thus, not everything that you believe I believe, and vice versa.

I want "Disturbing" engravings- ones that are good, but upset dwarves who see them. Like the ones from the old circus. Maybe have crazy engraves start carving them everywhere.

It's a bit complicated, and a bit of a blur, but pretty much every proof offered to me, I used to believe wholeheartedly, until someone challenged me to question my beliefs a bit. At that point, things started falling apart, and arguments for god's existence lost their flare, and turned out to have no substance when that was gone. Praying started becoming a pain. It really all fell apart with a specific ayah in the Qur'an, but I'm not going to go ahead and post it, since I'm not exactly a certified translator, but it seemed to me that god was imperfect. Then you start to see other signs of imperfection, like one of the "proofs" of god's existence was that the stars don't colide, and only a god can do that (when it's just the planet spinning, and I'm sure that some stars collide).

Obviously that's not the whole picture, but that should cover the question adequately, I think.

So... correct me if I'm reading this wrong (I'm nervous making statements about other peoples beliefs), but it sounds like as you got older, the answers that satisfied you as a child lost meaning, and you became unable to accept specific parts of the scripture you had been handed?

Way back in the first few posts brought up the whole "Four Stages" thing- sounds like yours was a stage 2 to stage 3 deal?

Oh, just out of curiosity, and excuse me if this is too personal, but... back when you did pray, what did it do for you?

No, it dosen't render what you say invalid. I know what you mean about people talking about faith and prayer, but I mostly get nervous and frustrated, rather than nervous and embarrassed. I wonder what causes the differance in our reactions?

For me it's a case of... "Ok, this is clearly important to you, but it just seems *so* silly to me, and I *think* you know I don't believe that what you're doing has any point or value to it, but...

At least, that's what it was; I now see the value, but the bias and emotions are still there. It's one of the reasons I'm now incredibly private about prayer- which is difficult, as the way I go about it limits my ability to do it inside.