When was your awakening? or are you still asleep?
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Originally Posted by Oneironaut
Scientific breakthroughs have happened when there vas something we observe that we just didn't know how to explain, and upon closer examination we were able to determine its origin. In every case in all of history, this origin has been something very real, some kind of matter and/or energy which has been shown to cause whatever physical phenomenon we were previously unable to explain. However, there isn't the slightest shred of evidence for things like leprechauns, unicorns, fairies, Santa Claus, souls or gods, and there just isn't anything that we can observe that would necessitate their existence. That is to say, there is no phenomenon in the universe which we can't explain but that we could if we postulated the existence of such creatures. Why believe in leprechauns, unicorns, souls or gods if there is no reason to?
You know very well that people don't always operate logically. Often people choose to believe in something because it is comforting to them, or because the idea has been drilled in their minds from birth, and they later come up with rationalizations for why they believe it even when there was no original logical reason for believing in it. The reason so many people have faith is pretty simple to see, when you consider why children almost always have the same religion as their parents or their culture. Most people just accept whatever beliefs their parents had or whatever their society believes, which explains, for example, why nearly all Iranians are Muslims but practically nobody in Hawaii is.
Youre using your brain to think of all that stuff. Good work. Wrong, but it looks nice. :thumbsup:
You should study Wicca. I believe you would have great success with this art. Give it a try. www.ladyoftheearth.com
Your Avatar is very similar to a wiccan symbol.
The pentacle, a pentagram within a circle, is the most recognizable symbol of Wicca. The pentacle represents the integration of body and spirit, and the spiritual mastery of the four elements. The pentacle is used in a number of Wiccan rituals, and as a Grade sign in Gardnerian and other traditions. The pentacle is often worn as a symbol of recognition amongst practitioners, especially those who practice a code of secrecy.
When was your awakening? or are you still asleep?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oneironaut
Scientific breakthroughs happen when there is something we observe that we just can't explain with our current body of knowledge, and upon closer examination we were able to determine its origin. In every case in all of history, this origin has been something very real, some kind of matter and/or energy which has been shown to cause whatever physical phenomenon we were previously unable to explain. However, there isn't the slightest shred of evidence for things like leprechauns, unicorns, fairies, Santa Claus, souls or gods, and there just isn't anything that we can observe that would necessitate their existence. That is to say, there is no phenomenon in the universe which we can't explain but that we could if we postulated the existence of such creatures.
You know very well that people don't always operate logically. Often people choose to believe in something because it is comforting to them, or because the idea has been drilled in their minds from birth, and they later come up with rationalizations for why they believe it even when there was no original logical reason for believing in it. The reason so many people have faith is pretty simple to see, when you consider why children almost always have the same religion as their parents or their culture. Most people just accept whatever beliefs their parents had or whatever their society believes, which explains, for example, why nearly all Iranians are Muslims but practically nobody in Hawaii is.
1. i think you probably copy and paste the same argument in different boards, but the difference between God or a higher power and faeries or santa is that people feel it in their souls. you don't believe in a spirit or soul, but i feel it. i don't see how you can't feel the energy of other people and then deny it because it's referred to as a soul which is connected to religion. i can feel a reaction with people, and a spiritual idea that is much more complex than a creature like a faerie. i'm just trying to figure out who or what exactly God is, but i feel a strong connection that wasn't always there, and you probably don't comprehend.
2. that's everyone's argument against religion. and that argument is good when people are saying their religion is the right one. no fucking shit people make their religious beliefs based on their culture and upbringing, so obviously people will all have different interperatations of spirituality. religion came around when language did, so it was a communication of ideas. but it's not about religion, because i think God or the higher power has ways of connecting us to positive energy which is benefitial to our lives.
When was your awakening? or are you still asleep?
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Originally Posted by Euphoric
Youre using your brain to think of all that stuff. Good work. Wrong, but it looks nice. :thumbsup:
You should study Wicca. I believe you would have great success with this art. Give it a try. www.ladyoftheearth.com
I can't just give a belief system a try. If I'm going to believe in something, I need a reason to. I need some sort of argument for why I should believe in that and nothing else. I couldn't just "give Republicanism a try" or "give Marxism a try" for the same reasons; my beliefs are not just random choices, or a collection of ideas that I would like to be true, but rather knowledge that I have deduced from my various experiences. I have not been able to deduce any reasons why gods or souls or leprechauns have to exist, so I do not believe in them. Wicca doesn't seem to do any better job than Christianity, Islam or Hinduism in proving the existence of its supernatural entities. Even if hypothetically I could get myself to believe in gods or souls without any evidence of them, what reason would there be for choosing Wicca over the other religions out there?
You are right in saying that it is my brain which came up with all of that stuff. My brain is a kind of analog computer. It takes in input in the form of experiences, and computes output based on what I know from past experiences, what emotions I am feeling, and the structure of my brain (which, in turn, is based on my genes). That output is whatever I choose to do. How does it make more sense to say that I take in this input to my brain, then my brain sends that to a "soul" in a parallel universe which does all the real computation of the most logical choice to make, and then sends it back to my brain which moves my muscles in accordance with the decision? That's two steps more than necessary, and it needs a whole parallel universe of "soul stuff" that nobody can detect to back it up. If there really was such a parallel universe, and it was interacting with physical reality as much as people claim, it would be easily detectable. We would see things happening which the laws of physics just don't predict.
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Your Avatar is very similar to a
wiccan symbol.
The pentacle, a pentagram within a circle, is the most recognizable symbol of Wicca. The pentacle represents the integration of body and spirit, and the spiritual mastery of the four elements. The pentacle is used in a number of Wiccan rituals, and as a Grade sign in Gardnerian and other traditions. The pentacle is often worn as a symbol of recognition amongst practitioners, especially those who practice a code of secrecy.
My avatar has nothing to do with that religion. It is just a circle with the anarchist black star in it. Like the red star of communism, the five points represent the five inhabited continents of the world, a symbol of humanity. The black is the color of the black flag, which symbolizes the absence of government and borders, as well as being the opposite of the white flag of surrender. The circle-A represents anarchism, and its red color represents socialism. The words in the circle are German for "No God - No State - No Master - No Slave".
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Originally Posted by MyAntiDrugIsAmy
1. i think you probably copy and paste the same argument in different boards,
No, I do not just copy and paste things. I am really writing all of this stuff myself. I do express the same ideas in different boards, but I can hardly see what's wrong with expressing the same ideas consistently.
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but the difference between God or a higher power and faeries or santa is that people feel it in their souls. you don't believe in a spirit or soul, but i feel it.
Please provide me with evidence of this God or these souls. Do you really expect me to believe something based on the subjective feelings of other people? If the universe is really run by this totalitarian dictator called God, I want some proof of it. Real proof. If this thing is really interacting with things in the physical world, there ought to be some evidence besides your inkling that it is. I certainly don't feel this thing, whatever it is, and cannot see why a God who really loves humanity so much would do such a thorough job of making sure there's no proof of his existence. Couldn't he just come out and say it? It sure would end a lot of the murder and strife on this planet if people didn't have any more religious issues to quabble over. Muslim people "feel" in their "souls" the existence of one deity, but their Hindu neighbors "feel" in their "souls" the existence of many deities, and they're killing each other over this disagreement. If both parties are wrong and your God is the real one, and if he has even the slightest respect for humanity, why doesn't he just come out and stop it all?
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i don't see how you can't feel the energy of other people and then deny it because it's referred to as a soul which is connected to religion. i can feel a reaction with people, and a spiritual idea that is much more complex than a creature like a faerie. i'm just trying to figure out who or what exactly God is, but i feel a strong connection that wasn't always there, and you probably don't comprehend.
No, I don't comprehend. If there really is a God, and he's hiding his existence from me, he must not think very highly of me. If he's not just a fantasy, then he must not want me to believe in him since he hasn't given me any of these "feelings" you have that supposedly prove his existence beyond a shadow of a doubt, and he hasn't come out and shown his existence to me through, say, a booming voice from the sky.
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2. that's everyone's argument against religion. and that argument is good when people are saying their religion is the right one. no fucking shit people make their religious beliefs based on their culture and upbringing, so obviously people will all have different interperatations of spirituality.
Hey, you're the one who asked me why somebody would believe in a faith if it's illogical. I just gave you the straightforward answer. People have faiths because they're taught to. And since these different faiths cannot possibly all be true, most people must logically be following the wrong faith. It's not just "different interpretations" of the same set of data; these are completely mutually incompatible sets of data. Your God and the Hindu gods cannot co-inhabit the same universe. Most Hindus believe in many gods because they are brought up to believe in many gods, and you probably believe in one God because you were brought up to believe in one God. But all gods do have at least one thing in common: for some reason they are very intent on hiding themselves from humanity, on erasing every tiny shred of evidence that could be used to prove that they exist.
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religion came around when language did, so it was a communication of ideas. but it's not about religion, because i think God or the higher power has ways of connecting us to positive energy which is benefitial to our lives.
If there really is such energy out there, why can't all our energy-detecting scientific equipment detect it? If it is not the kind of energy that energy-detecting scientific equipment detects, then how can you call it energy? What the hell IS this stuff? You might be interested in knowing what the word "energy" really means:
http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/15/7/2
When was your awakening? or are you still asleep?
Why do you keep bringing up santa claus and the easter bunny in all your posts? reductio absurdum arguments are for people who can't understand the premises. Grow up a bit. Don't pretend you know it all and you just might find yourself open to different possibilities. I'm sure you believe at this point that you will die an old man anarchist... I don't see it happening, because hopefully you're not done learning.
See, you don't HAVE to extend into the unknown, you merely acknowledge its existence outside the borders of human knowledge. If you want to say it will all be understandable by science SOME DAY... fine. I think that's a little naive, but cool. Regardless, people have been attempting to understand the universe since the beginning of mankind, so believe it or not, they've figured out some alternate paths already. Does this really sound so bad to you?
When was your awakening? or are you still asleep?
When was your awakening? or are you still asleep?
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Originally Posted by Polymirize
Why do you keep bringing up santa claus and the easter bunny in all your posts? reductio absurdum arguments are for people who can't understand the premises. Grow up a bit. Don't pretend you know it all and you just might find yourself open to different possibilities. I'm sure you believe at this point that you will die an old man anarchist... I don't see it happening, because hopefully you're not done learning.
See, you don't HAVE to extend into the unknown, you merely acknowledge its existence outside the borders of human knowledge. If you want to say it will all be understandable by science SOME DAY... fine. I think that's a little naive, but cool. Regardless, people have been attempting to understand the universe since the beginning of mankind, so believe it or not, they've figured out some alternate paths already. Does this really sound so bad to you?
fuckin awesome post. :thumbsup:
When was your awakening? or are you still asleep?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Polymirize
Why do you keep bringing up santa claus and the easter bunny in all your posts? reductio absurdum arguments are for people who can't understand the premises. Grow up a bit. Don't pretend you know it all and you just might find yourself open to different possibilities. I'm sure you believe at this point that you will die an old man anarchist... I don't see it happening, because hopefully you're not done learning.
I never claimed I know it all. I'm just saying that I will only believe in things I know to be true, not things which I don't have any evidence for. I only believe in those things which my experience gives me reason to believe.
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See, you don't HAVE to extend into the unknown, you merely acknowledge its existence outside the borders of human knowledge. If you want to say it will all be understandable by science SOME DAY... fine. I think that's a little naive, but cool. Regardless, people have been attempting to understand the universe since the beginning of mankind, so believe it or not, they've figured out some alternate paths already. Does this really sound so bad to you?
I'm not saying humanity will ever understand everything. But if I'm going to believe something, I want a reason to believe in it. Is that really such an absurd position to take?
When was your awakening? or are you still asleep?
Okay, I have no idea what a soul is. Live your life as you see fit. I can talk about the soul but it will have no meaning unless I use it in a song. Therefore, I want it to have meaning, so you must believe in a sould, otherwise I can't rhyme, but then I remember that I'm not really into writing songs, so I say there is an energy that fuels us, and we each have our own energy "field".
When was your awakening? or are you still asleep?
Once you understand metaphysics from a spiritual perspective you can learn to manipulate it. ;)
Reprogramming the matrix, so to speak. Isnt that reason enough? Mwahah
When was your awakening? or are you still asleep?
I realize I probably lack the language to explain this in a post, if the language for it even exists at all.
At some point when we want to understand others, we have to actually examine ourselves. Somehow we have the impression that there is some shared human experience. Some sense of being alive that is possessed by all living things (though the argument need not stop there). People express this in all sorts of ways. You brought up 1 deity or 3. You can believe whatever you want. I don't think it really changes anything in the long run. But if you choose not to interpret everything literally don't you see how most mythologies and religions are just like science in that they are explanatory systems. Ways to understand the experience we all find ourself in. We all have this, you can see it being expressed all sorts of ways by different people, but at the same time if you want to understand it, you have look internally.
Maybe someday science will be able to explain all of human experience, but so far human experience seems to go beyond what it's capable of describing, at least in terms of what we've defined as the physical terms. I'm not saying that materialism (physicalism if you wish) is false, but I am affirming that the current Material formulation of the world has left something out. I just think you can get the most out of life by using both sides of your brain, the rational and the imaginative. There are plenty of ways to extend human knowledge beyond the current limits of science. where do you think inspiration comes from? consciousness? "the soul"? The other side?
Don't you realise that science rests on beliefs just as shaky as any other? What's underneath it? What is it trying to explain that everything else is trying to explain as well, whether through socialogical, technological or religious terms?
What explains the commonality between what I see in the world and what I can find inside myself? On any scale from the size of atoms and smaller to the universal scale and beyond? physics or divine? chaos theory or sacred geometry? How you define it doesn't matter. They're all just explanatory systems we employ to make sense of human existence. To create a "reality" in which we exist. But no explainatory system covers all of it. it can't. We all have and are shaped by individual experience, just like every atom in the universe. all outlooks are different but all experiences have a common element...
Now, maybe you've been looking in a different direction and haven't been in on some of the cool stuff thats been going on outside the scientific world. But can science really explain everything for you? Do you think it's giving you capital letter Truth?
Limitations on interpretations only serve as limitations on your understanding. Like any fundamentalist religious interpretation, considering truth to be an absolute and in the possession of one particular outlook or group.
Science advances because people create hypothesi from imagination/inspiration and show how they map to the physical. Are you aware of how funky string theory and quantum mechanics are getting these days? It appears the universe violates all sorts of what we consider to be fundamental laws. So obviously science doesn't explain it all. yet. not that I even think it's possible...
