Do you still believe in God?
And may I know the reason behind your answer?
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I still believe in God… but not like the bible said, I still believe in God in my own way. Just wondering….
Sure. God’s been my friend since I was little. Bad things have happened since I first met God, but I don’t figure she can cover every base.
I’ve never been proven otherwise. I don’t belong to any organized religion, but I think there’s a force out there that wants me to make good choices. I could call it God, I guess.
Nope, the god myth just doesn’t make any sense to me.
In before >100 reply religion debate.
I’ve stopped believing in gods a good while ago.
First I found out religions have systematically been wrong about (nearly) everything they said that science has had a look at later, and I realised there was no evidence for or against the existence of gods, so then I became an agnostic. Then I learned about Ockham’s Razor and the burden of proof, and learned that it’s not feasible to grant credibility to an unsupported assertion just because there’s no proof against it (Russell’s Teapot), and turned into an agnostic atheist.
At some point along the road I also learned that certainty is a relative thing, and not all uncertain things are equally probable. I suppose that helped too.
I am an atheist. That is all I’m going to say.
This is a sensitive issue for many people on Fluther. I’m going to try to avoid the feeding frenzy that will inevitably ensue.
Well just in case, I need the insurance ya know.
Do you still believe in God?
Still? That is a device for turning water into something far more interesting. What did you think that it meant?
Luckily, believing in God has nothing to do with religion per se. Yes, God and I have a very good working relationship.
@davidbetterman God and I have a very good working relationship.
Which one of you submits the tax form?
When I was younger, I certainly believed in God and had no trouble doing so. Over the years I became more agnostic. There are times when I really lean toward believing in God and then there are times when His existence to me seems very unlikely.
It’s not easy for me to say “yes, I believe in him” or “no, I don’t.” Neither one accurately describes my beliefs. Ultimately I am agnostic. He might exist, but I don’t believe strongly in support of either “side”.
It’s just the way it happened to me over the years. I never assumed this would happen.
I should agree with you. I believe that there is something greater and I believe that “God” exist, but not like in the bible.
because it’s just so funny that different religions have different God. I live in Indonesia and there are 5 religions, and also different God.
My point is, if you believe in your religion, and you say that your religion is right, how about the other religions? It would be a big controversy if we keep on comparing our religion to others.
the best thing is to learn what the religions teach us. Don’t follow the God, follow what the examples they teach us to do, the good ones though..
whatever, we should have a GOD in our mind, whatever who is or who was.
:-)
@elhaha1001 Hi, BTW i’m from indonesia too “salam dari bandung” :D
I think God is love, if you have love, doesn’t matter what religion or your belief you’ll do good thing in your life, right? But sometimes people say it Humanism.
@leroycook then the GOD in my mind is LOVE
I don’t believe, but I do not know and will keep an open mind to the possibility, while in general ruling it out. God makes no sense to me. I don’t think god is anyway logical, and certainly not so as it is painted by major religions.
@Anon_Jihad _I do not know and will keep an open mind to the possibility, while in general ruling it out. _
You seem ideally suited to a career in politics.
It’s hard for me to believe god exists… when you stop and just look at how much suffering there is in the world.
I have to side with science, I can understand that at least. I have to try and be a realist. The day God approaches me and tells me I’ll die in hell for eternity, is the day I’ll go to church.
God to me is our Sun, all powerful, life giving, wears its crown of thorns (sun rays), The Light….and battles with darkness every day!
Yes, I Still believe. Why would my reasons matter? For those that are looking for empirical proof, there will be no satifactory answer. I believe because I choose to.
I also believe that some won’t seem to understand the Question posted was, “Do you still believe”.
Meaning at some point you had to believe.
Other wise the questions would’ve been do you believe or not.
Yes. Many reasons and one is: God makes more sense to me than a self-explanatory universe.
I believe in the tenants of most any religion for use as a moral compass through their bumpy lives but the God part just does not compute for me anymore. I believe in the shared energy life force that is the glue for everything we see, touch, feel and then some.
God is the all-powerful universe itself.
I wish I did!!... but as Locke said…you can’t pull the wool over your own eyes… or something like that
@mattbrowne
A universe that takes centuries of hard work by humanity’s greatest minds to even begin to understand is hardly “self-explanatory”.
I do and I will not explain my reasons.
@mattbrowne
You really think that ourintuition is good enough to use as a guide?
When I was younger and my family still attended church, I didn’t understand God. I just heard stories from the bible, didn’t understand the morals. It just went in one ear and out the other.
When I grew old enough to understand. . . I still didn’t understand, for a very long time.
I’ve done some research of my own, such as attending different churches and church events, reading over different views on God, and also having my own experience.
I have the answer I want, and I’m happy with it.
I do not believe in God, but I do believe in the faith that God gives people.
It’s pretty amazing, how it all works out.
Agnostic fence sitter. Ouch, pulls another splinter out of arse.
No, the idea that there is some cosmic nanny out there, be it god or gods, standing ready to spank you when you do something he/she/it doesn’t like sounds too absurd to me. There’s also the fact that there are so many religions out there that conflict with each other’s tenants and mythological foundations (not to mention how much they conflict between sects). Even if there is a god, everyday that I live tells me that it doesn’t matter whether I believe in him/her/it or not. I choose to not obsess about it and go w/“not.” I’d rather believe in humanity with whatever frailties we may have.
I believe in GOD and in the Bible.
Yes; my faith is pretty stable.
No, I broke free from the beliefs I once held some time back. It was the result of three distinct epiphanies, and about five years of intensive study and contemplation. I think the fact that in our modern, intellectually enlightened, educated society people still believe in gods is both sad and amusing. I wish all people were able to experience the sense of freedom and relief that I felt when I escaped my decadent Christian beliefs.
I have listed my reasons for being an atheist elsewhere on Fluther, so for the sake of brevity I will not repeat myself. Welcome to Fluther! Feel free to PM me if you can’t find my exact reasons elsewhere.
I’m a humanist, if I have to label myself. I don’t think it’s necessary to believe in a supernatural being to live an ethical, happy life.
I wasn’t brought to any knowledge of a god until I was 6/7. And it all sounded like fairy stories, the same as Santa and the Easter Bunny, to me. I tried to believe since the grownups around me did. But once I was 12, I had to admit to myself that I didn’t truly believe in an anthropomorphic deity or that Jesus existed. It didn’t add up at all. I went through the motions at church just to keep the adults off my back.
I was only open about my non-belief after leaving for college. My household until then was headed by a very fundy Pentecostal Christian who would have tanned my hide if I’d told her this, and then I probably would’ve been sent to her church to have “Satan cast out” of me for such blasphemy.
@Kismet I do not believe in God, but I do believe in the faith that God gives people
I’m not understanding that statement. Did you mean that you believe that the faith people have in a God, is something that is amazing? Correct me if I’m wrong. The second part of your statement would otherwise lead me to believe that you believe in a God.
Its just you worded it kind of weird. I’m not picking on you. I’m just confused by that sentence.
And I hate assuming.
I went through phases of religion. I started out a Methodist, then I went to a Baptist church for a while because I liked their youth group, but I never converted. Seemed silly to me get baptized when I already was. The Methodists were not biblical literalists, and I just kind of assumed no one was. Seeing some of the things my old youth group friends post on Facebook now (one wrote un-ironically of his visit to the Creation Museum and how they tell God’s truth) I’m beginning to think the Baptists were biblical literalists. But one day a young friend of mine, 16 at the time, who was Jewish and one of the best people I knew died of leukemia. I realized that Christian dogma makes pretty clear that he can’t get into heaven because he didn’t believe in Jesus. Literalist or not, there’s not much you can do to interpret that one differently. That didn’t sit well with me. I think I ceased to be a Christian during his memorial service. From there I started investigating other religions, I took classes and studied other religions, I started to really like Buddhism, but I kept finding there was always some amount of just blatantly silly superstition that made no sense to me. I basically became a religion of one, sort of a nature worshiper without the silliness of “official” pagan ritual and with a Buddhist world view. I was a believer in the oneness of all things, in a universal energy flowing through everything, but not in anything more. But one day even that started to seem silly to me, imputing some kind of consciousness to energy, implying communication with trees, or between distant people with no technological connection. I came to realize that it was all a desperate attempt to continue believing in God because of the fear of not doing so imparted to me by my religious upbringing. So I cast away all religion, faith, spirituality, superstition, and what have you. It took time to overcome my fears and truly reach a point at which I can honestly say I do not believe in any god, devil, spirit, or soul. I believe in human beings and what we are capable of as a species, but I believe that when we die, we die and our bodies rot. All we leave behind is worm food and whatever tangible impact we have had on the world around us. I am a humanist and an atheist. And I am not afraid.
Sheesh, I wrote a book. Well, you did say you wanted the reason.
Yes! When i view the wonders of this World, there must be a higher power!
I am not sure I ever really believed, but I was definitely an atheist by the age of 12.
My biggest argument against God is, What difference does it make whether God exists? Would I do anything differently knowing there was a God? No.
Does it mean anything to me to say this is the best of all possible worlds? No, because I don’t know what the measurement standard is. If it is known only to God then it is useless to me.
Do I believe in an afterlife? No evidence of it that I can see.
Nope, never saw the need to. My grandmother once said “we all have to have faith in something”, I chose myself.
well, it depends on how you are going to define the word god. but for the most part my answer will be no.
if you mean a omnipotent omniscient benevolent god that has a name and is depicted in scriptures then i will say no, so much so that i would say i know no such god exists. i know such god does not exist with the same degree of certainty that i know you do exist (we could all be in the matrix so not an absolute knowing)
if you mean a god that is quite powerful but does not have unlimited power, and this god has no name and is just more of a concept, then my answer is i dont believe in such a god, but i dont know that, i simply disbelieve through a lack of evidence.
if by god you mean some kind of very powerful and intelligent being that created everything (or at lest everything we know of) then ill remain agnostic and say maybe, such a thing could exist, but with the lack of evidence i lean to no.
if by god you mean whatever caused existence, then i would say such a thing obviously exists.
my reasons are basically due to a lack of evidence and proof, some observations and arguments that i have heard or come up with over the years.
I don’t believe in any gods described by any of the religious texts I’m familiar with. This includes, for the record, Zeus, Marduk, Yahweh, Allah, Vishnu and Shiva, and of course their various fellow pantheon dwellers, sons, angels and/or djinn.
I believe in the beauty and order of the natural world. I believe the universe has always existed, as Stephen Hawking described in A Brief History of Time, and all the physical world’s complexity is an emergent property.
Some people believe the same things I do, but insist on labeling the universe with the word “God.” I don’t really see the resemblance. Defining the word “God” so broadly so as to include a secular naturalistic impersonal universe seems a bit silly.
My Sister-in_Law says that she will believe in God when he appears on Oprah. (She adds more about he should do while he is there – but I will keep it polite.)
I also believe the Bible is perhaps the most morally despicable book I’ve ever read.
And that anyone who claims that it serves as a “useful moral compass” or whatever either hasn’t read it, is actively ignoring huge swaths of it, or is a sociopath.
@Fyrius, @roundsquare – I wasn’t talking about explanations how the universe works. We find more of these every day and they are utterly fascinating. I was referring to the ultimate why question and all answers do require an act of faith (and intuition), whatever the answer. Science is restricted to answer questions which are part of the realm of science using scientific method. The God question is not part of the scientific realm.
@Qingu – One-sided portrayal of the bible is despicable. Both ways.
@mattbrowne, It’s part of the scientific realm if, as in the case for every God put on the table by religious people, it makes positive claims about the universe we live in.
It’s only not part of the scientific realm if you define “God” so vaguely and broadly so as to be functionally meaningless, or analogous with “Math” or something.
And I don’t think my portrayal of the Bible is one-sided at all. Large chunks of it advocate or approvingly describe genocide. Whatever merits the rest of it has, that makes it despicable. Period. To say nothing of its bronze-age misogyny, approval of slavery, and cultish authority structure. I love you, man, but I’d definitely put you in Category #2. :)
Yes.
Because I have discovers I am God.
@Qingu – Large chunks of it also advocate love. The whole text of the Bible is ambiguous.
I’m sure there are parts of the Turner Diaries that advocate love as well.
I believe in God because it feels right for me to do so. I don’t believe in a lot of what the Bible has to say and I am not a huge fan of religion but I can’t help but feel that there is some kind of higher power. This is a personal belief based on how I feel and not what I have been taught (my parents and most of the people close to me remain open minded) to believe for the most part.
I no longer find it relevant. I have beliefs of some kind, but find exploring them to be a misuse of time.
The older I get, the more I believe.
@Judi -Getting closer to those pearly gates?
:-)
@Judi It’s the opposite for me. Or at the least, the older I get, the less I care.
@ChazMaz Oh I’m sure it’s nothing so self serving.
@Qingu I’m sure there are parts of the Turner Diaries that advocate love as well.
Not really.
I believe that there is a higher power.
Nope. Haven’t since I was 12.
Yes
Although I can’t find any particular… denomination or sect or religion I can fit in with completely. I am an outcast. Still believe in God though.
there something inexplainable out there, and since the very begining it intuitively became the reason of GOD or higher power.
@Snarp
Rarely is a GA so well deserved.
@mattbrowne
There’s one answer to the Big Why that requires no faith at all. That answer is “I don’t know”.
And I do believe that’s quite a more reasonable answer than “because god”, and even if it’s technically not an answer at all, I don’t think that makes it much less substantial either.
À propos, what exactly is your answer to the Big Why? Why does existence exist? You present your notion of a deist god as if it’s the most sensible explanation, but how does it actually explain anything?
@Pandora yes i didn’t ask “do you ever believe in god” cause I think sometime in our life, we have to believe there’s God.
@vraymondcs Do you mean there’s something we can’t explain at this time, or that there’s something we’ll never be able to explain?
@ChazMaz, not quite yet. It’s just the more I trust God the more he proves himself to me.
No.
I was raised Christian, but started rejecting it at about 13. Then I went through a pagan phase. I became very interested in learning about different religions, but as I read I discovered that they are all fundamentally the same. None of them held any truth or satisfaction, for me.
I cannot say 100% that there is no sentient, omnipotent being, but I seriously doubt it.
@tinyfairy Your path and mine have a lot in common, although I didn’t go through a pagan phase. I have read more of the Bible (and many other theologies) as an agnostic/atheist than I ever did when I professed to be a Christian. :)
i am a muslim and i know what it means when you say i have not a god or i do not beleive in god.allah yeghfar lkoum it is all that i can say for you
@Judi lurvesssssssssssssssssssssssss…...................................................................................................
I know God exists, not because it was proved to me, or I had a vision, or anything like that. I decided that the word must mean something, since so much art and literature centers on it. The greatest minds in the world prior to the modern age (and many since) made God their most important subject, so I figured they must be talking about something. I made that decision when I was in my twenties, and I became a real seeker for a while, reading the Bible, Qu’ran, Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, Bullfinch’s Mythology, Joseph Campbell’s books, a lot of stuff on the Cabala, a lot of New Age stuff, including a lot of crap. It is true that there are a lot of conflicting ideas about God, but there are a lot of commonalities as well. Some stuff I read is clearly the product of people trying to manipulate each other. But there are a lot of writers who were sincere. I decided my own personal experience had to be the final arbitor of truth. I don’t accept anything just because I read it somewhere. I know what I know about God because what I read or heard was corroborated by my direct experience. I know God exists, and I know I am a more capable person because of my knowledge of God.
@Snarp You mention your Jewish friend not getting into heaven because he didn’t believe in Jesus. I am guessing the passage you are thinking of is John 14:6 “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” I am with the Mormons on that one. They believe that it was not necessarily the historical, human self that Jesus was talking about, but the Eternal Christ that calls everyone to the Father. That one verse has been abuse by so many people to exclude others that I bet Jesus wishes he had never said it.
@aziza What does that translate to in English
muslims say allah not god .allah yaghfar lkoum means it is a sin to say that allah does not exist.allah will punish us for these word after the death.
@aziza
You know, for some people, telling them that only makes blasphemy more fun, in a childish way.
I’m afraid I’m one of them.
@aziza If I’ve got it coming anyway, I might as well just kill people I don’t like.
i respect your ideas and you.as i am a muslim i learnt the koran so i know what it means to say i do not beleive in god.
I do not believe in God. I do not believe in God.
If I say it twice, does that remove the curse or something…?
I believed in God when I was little. However, the way that my mind interpreted and comprehended it was so different than what a belief in God usually entails.
When you’re a child you don’t think the same way that you do as an adult, so my ’‘belief’’ was rather loose and innocent I guess, but it had absolutely no trace of darkness, fear or bloodthirst that, today, God seems to be associated with, at least to me.
Or rather, the belief of God, rather than whatever deity there might be, or not be.
When I grew up I lost that belief quickly, because I guess that what I observed was a behaviour exhibited by some people, rather than an actual belief, when it came to what belief was supposed to be, By the very same people who contradicted themselves. and how mine was really just my imagination.
That said, while this post pretty much bashes general Christian claims at believing in anything beyond the need to be right and piss people off with one’s ego and how it raped my childhood, I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks I do.
@aziza I respect your beliefs, and that you feel you must believe or suffer, however it is not one that I share.
I think most people disregard the whole idea of God until they’re about to pass away. Then it’s like a last minute ‘just in case’ thing.
But, I don’t.
@aziza
“so i know what it means to say i do not beleive in god.”
“what it means to say i do not beleive in god.”
“to say i do not beleive in god.”
“i do not beleive in god.”
Oh crap, you just said the forbidden phrase.
Does it help if you say “just kidding” immediately afterwards?
Very large footnote:
I’m sorry, does theological teasing count as being disrespectful? I don’t mean to be offensive. I’m just being silly.
I’ll be honest, though – I don’t respect your beliefs, or those of anyone else. I don’t even respect my own beliefs. I think it’s silly to respect beliefs of any sort.
More importantly, I do respect you. So if you think I’m being a jerk, do tell me, and then I’ll try not to be such a jerk.
I like how this thread is already at 89 replies without the usual endless bickering – no thanks to me, I know, mea culpa – so by all means, let’s keep it up. :)
“Do you still believe in God?”
Define God and give two examples please.
We falsely assume we are all speaking of the same thing when we say “God”. If I say yes, or no, it probably wouldn’t be the same God as you are speaking of.
I will say, I don’t believe in Religion. I do believe in Truth. But, for me to claim that Truth is a sentient entity would require it to be brought down to the human level. Truth is beyond sentient. Truth is beyond human capacity to fully label.
I believe in God.
I see miracles every day. So do most people, though they don’t recognize them as miracles.
@aziza Why should we believe what the Qu’ran says about Allah, or about unbelievers? Surely Allah would not punish people who do not believe just because there is no evidence to suggest that it is true. If he did, then he would be evil and I would rather not be forgiven for my ‘sins’.
“i know what it means to say i do not beleive [sic] in god.”
What exactly does it mean? Isn’t it a matter of perspective? To me, someone who does not believe in gods is free from one of the greatest traps of life, and better able to live their life without having to constantly wonder if they are transgressing some ridiculous ancient rules. However it seems you regard atheists as sinners who are bound for judgement by Allah (whoever gave him the right to judge us).
@Fyrius Ditto the lack of ‘endless bickering’. I’ve just been following this out of interest, and it’s so refreshing to see a good old fashioned discussion in bloom.
@MarcoNJ That’s what I hear from IC nurses.
@filmfann, what miracles have you seen?
I’d also like to know if I’m one of these people who also sees miracles, and how I might recognize them.
@MarcoNJ, which god out of the several thousand or so believed to exist by humans are you not discounting?
@Qingu Everything is a miracle! For example, Ice.
Almost every other compound becomes smaller when it freezes. Ice enlarges.
If ice behaved like everything else, there would be no life at the bottom of the oceans. There would be no polar caps.
Vision is a miracle. You can see another object billions of miles away!
Life itself is a miracle. How do you make the jump from non-life (rock) to life (say, plant life) and sustain it without dying? Incredible.
There is a formula for computing gases on other planets. When that formula is computed with a number, it is possible to tell if that number is prime. They have proven this works on all prime numbers, and have tested it on those with thousands of digits. How the fuck did that happen? It’s like a babelfish!
So you are defining “miracle” as “natural law working naturally over time” ... I see.
That’s like the exact opposite of the word’s dictionary definition.
Like the dictionary is a place to look for the definition of a miracle…LOL…
@filmfann I have a new respect for you!
So, I could say I just witnessed my cat doing calculus. And define “doing calculus” as “being fluffy.” Because far be it for anyone to look in the dictionary for a definition of what calculus means?
@Qingu Not only does that not make sense, but the one has nothing to do with the other.
Your cat performing calculus would be surely a miracle. But needing to define calculus because your cat is doing calculus…what?!?!
A “miracle” is defined as something which breaks the natural order: “an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.”
The “miracles” filmfann cited were the exact opposite. They were examples of things behaving naturally. The only way they would count as “miracles” is if you define the word to mean the opposite of what it means.
What filmfann cited are miracles because we have no idea why water freezing behaves exactly opposite of every other substance..
We have no idea how to make life or how and why it happened, and yet here we are…
LOL I love discussing this with people so vehemently opposed to miracles and/or a belief in a creator being…There is simply no getting through…
@filmfann You are basically defining a miracle as a simple natural phenomenon that you do not yet understand. Your ice example is one of the first things you learn in high school chemistry, the vision example is a favourite of evolutionary biologists, who have understood how we came to see for many years now. The jump from non-life to life is also quite well explained by scientists studying abiogenesis. All of these are natural processes.
That is not unlike how I would define a miracle though, since natural law cannot be violated, and according to Clarke’s laws, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” A miracle is only perceived as such by those who do not yet understand the natural laws that lead to the phenomenon. However, that only demonstrates a lack of understanding, and has no relevance to the existence or non-existence of gods.
@filmfann I see miracles every day. So do most people, though they don’t recognize them as miracles.
Yes, I agree. It the little masks, sunglasses, and hoodies that they wear that makes them hard to recognise.
(I have seen miracles, but I have do not for one second believe that any form of deity had anything to do with them. )
@Fyrius – I’m glad your answer works for you.
We had miracle discussions before. In casual usage miracle may also refer to any statistically unlikely but beneficial event, such as the survival of a natural disaster or even which regarded as wonderful regardless of its likelihood, such as birth. Other miracles might be: survival of a terminal illness, escaping a life threatening situation or ‘beating the odds.’
Actually, in this sense both the Earth and human beings can be seen as a miracle, especially from the blind, pitiless, indifferent naturalist perspective beating the odds. Most planets in the universe are probably very lifeless. Just look at the solar system or all the exoplanets we’ve found. Rare Earth and everything on it seems like a treasure. A wonder. A miracle.
@Symbeline I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks I do.
I wish I could give you a bucket of lurve for quoting The Wizard of Oz in your post. Bravo :)
@davidbetterman
“What filmfann cited are miracles because we have no idea why water freezing behaves exactly opposite of every other substance..
We have no idea how to make life or how and why it happened, and yet here we are…”
Are you done insulting science now?
“The density of ice is 0.9167 g/cm³ at 0°C, whereas water has a density of 0.9998 g/cm³ at the same temperature. Liquid water is densest, essentially 1.00 g/cm³, at 4°C and becomes less dense as the water molecules begin to form the hexagonal crystals[3] of ice as the freezing point is reached. This is due to hydrogen bonding dominating the intermolecular forces, which results in a packing of molecules less compact in the solid.” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice#Characteristics
Expanding ice: perfectly explained.
“In the natural sciences, abiogenesis (pronounced /eɪˌbaɪ.ɵˈdʒɛnɨsɪs/, ay-BYE-oh-JEN-ə-siss) or biopoesis is the theory of how life on Earth could have arisen from inanimate matter. (...) Most amino acids, often called “the building blocks of life”, can form via natural chemical reactions unrelated to life, as demonstrated in the Miller–Urey experiment and similar experiments, which involved simulating the conditions of the early Earth, in a scientific laboratory. In all living things, these amino acids are organized into proteins, and the construction of these proteins is mediated by nucleic acids. Which of these organic molecules first arose and how they formed the first life is the focus of abiogenesis.” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
Origins of life: work in progress, but we definitely have an idea of how it happened.
Please don’t confuse inexplicable mysteries to all mankind with things you just happen not to know.
so wait, is there correlation between miracles and god?
I agree miracles happens in our daily life, though sometimes you don’t see it that way.
But if you believe in god through miracles, i don’t see that you find the true god I think
@Fyrius Very nicely done…However, I didn’t say we don’t know how water freezes or how it is that it expands rather than contracts when it does so.
I said, ”What filmfann cited are miracles because we have no idea why water freezing behaves exactly opposite of every other substance.”
You ave explained the how, but you like all the other scientists in creation, have no idea why. And the why is the miracle.
We do not know why life exists either…and we are only guessing at how it came about, as it came about long before we were born, and there are no directions telling us how to do it ourselves.
Sorry, but once again you only show that you are struggling as hard as possible to disassociate yourself from any creator being. Which is understandable. You and everyone else living in denial are simply afraid.
I feel for you and your fear. I truly do. I don’t understand why you are so afraid, but that is not my problem. It is yours.
@davidbetterman
“You ave explained the how, but you like all the other scientists in creation, have no idea why. And the why is the miracle.”
Sigh.
All right. So what exactly does it even mean to ask why in this case? Would you really expect water to expand for a specific purpose?
It’s a natural phenomenon. There is no why. “Why” is a question you ask of decisions; it asks what were the motives for the responsible person to make things the way they are.
Unless we assume ice is the way it is because a sentient life form decided it should be so – which would be an astronomically far-fetched thing to just assume – that question makes no sense. It’s a natural phenomenon. There is no why.
No, you can’t move the goalposts there.
This has been my last reply to you as if you’re a sane adult. I hereby promise you that henceforth, whenever you reply to me with something insanely stupid, I will only reply with “your mom” jokes.
On that note: You MOM is afraid.
This sounds like the God Of The Gaps. Whatever we don’t know yet is attributed to God. As we learn more and more, the God Of The Gaps keeps shrinking.
Having said that, I do think we should maintain and a sense of wonder and awe as we look around us. It is all extraordinary, whether there is an explanation or not.
@Fyrius
See. you can’t explain why. you can only revert to stupidity and mom jokes.
”Unless we assume ice is the way it is because a sentient life form decided it should be so – which would be an astronomically far-fetched thing to just assume ”
This is where you and peopple like you are lost.
@davidbetterman
Your family reverted to stupidity when your mom gave birth to you.
I’m done explaining things to you, David. I might try again if through some miracle (in the conventional sense) I regain hope that there’s some part of you that might be prepared to listen.
LOL..@Fyrius You are too funny.
@Qingu I didn’t realize there ‘thousands’ of Gods still being worshiped by man. Far be it for me to act like a religious expert and speak ignorantly on the subject.
In terms of people who believe in/worship God, in a Christian sense,....of course there are the devout followers. I don’t question their faith. But on a mainstream level, it seems that lots of people only seem to turn toward God when they are facing severe crisis in their life or when they know they’re about to ‘check out’. Am I making a far-fetched statement with that?
I too have a problem with the definition of “why” you are using, @davidbetterman. I think that @Fyrius’ explanation is perfectly sound. When my child asks why the sky is blue I will tell him that it is because of Rayleigh scattering. You can always keep pushing the “why” upstream, but then I get to ask why did God make it blue instead of puce? Why is there a God? Who made God? Why did they make God? Why is there a God maker, who made her? Why should God have always existed when nothing else seems to have always existed? Why does everything else change except God? Ultimately, God is a far less satisfactory explanation than the scientific one, because God takes us no where. Scientific explanations enable us to make predictions, evaluate claims, make things work that no one ever thought of before, and to ask more fundamental questions that might also enable these things. Another example @filmfann gives of a miracle, that we can see things billions of miles away, is an interesting one, because we see these things so poorly. But asking questions that science can answer has enabled us to build devices to see those things much better, to understand their behavior, to measure the billions of miles to an astonishing degree of accuracy, and to better understand how our universe actually works. If the answer to why we can see stars is that it is a miracle and God did it, then we gain nothing. There is no telescope, there is no measurement, no analysis of the contents and age of the stars, no advancement, and we can all go back to gathering nuts in the woods and wearing loincloths and dying of starvation by 35 because our teeth all rotted out because the answer to why teeth decay must also be that it is God’s miracle.
Miracles are lousy answers to why, they’re a cop out. And pushing the why back upstream just to avoid the material explanation is even less satisfactory and more of a cop out.
Why does my computer come on when I push the button? Is it a miracle, or is it because electrons flow to ground in a circuit and silicon’s conductivity can be turned on and off enable the creation of circuits smaller than the eye can see (thanks to science, God gave us lousy eyes).
@Snarp
Indeed.
If I may adjoin some further reading: this article elaborates a bit on the point you just made. Responding to a mystery with an “explanation” that’s not less mysterious accomplishes nothing when it comes to actually understanding it.
@Fyrius “Responding to a mystery with an “explanation” that’s not less mysterious accomplishes nothing when it comes to actually understanding it.” If I could have thought of putting it so succinctly I wouldn’t have typed all that. Must work on my brevity.
Lol, you do sometimes seem a bit on the verbose side. But that’s okay, it’s not the kind of verbosity that gets in the way. And I think you made good additional points that weren’t included in that one phrase and that such brevity wouldn’t do justice to if they were.
@davidbetterman, we do know why water freezes the way it does. And we’re getting pretty close to a thorough understanding of how life emerged on earth from non-life. We certainly know how many steps in the process work. For example, lipids—the molecule that every living thing uses to make cell walls—spontaneously forms “bubbles” when mixed in water. This isn’t a miracle; it has to do with the electric charges of the lipid molecules; it’s no more miraculous than two magnets repelling each other. Likewise, RNA-like molecules “copying” themselves is not miraculous; it’s a well-understood phenomenon. Nor is the combination of these two phenomena—lipid bubbles and RNA-like molecules copying—miraculous.
That’s the thing about evolution, too. It’s not a miracle. It’s simply a vast churning of a huge combination of chemical processes, extended over time. There is no magician working behind the scenes to guide the flow of genetic drift; it just works. It’s amazing, but it’s not a miracle, anymore than a car moving when you push the gas pedal is a miracle.
Well that was pointless. Thanks for pre-empting my answer, fellow God-hating atheists. :)
Also: “Marduk/Zeus/Yahweh did it” is in no way an answer to any “Why” question. It’s also not true, since these people are clearly fictional characters and therefore didn’t do anything.
@mattbrowne, I disagree that the emergence of life on Earth is “miraculous” since it appears highly likely that life would emerge somewhere in our galaxy of billions of stars, let alone in the entire universe.
There may well be life on exoplanets that we’ve seen. There may even be life on moons in our own solar system. I’ve said before, if you define “life” broadly enough, life exists on Jupiter. Are “storms” alive? They have “metabolism,” they react to their environments, they exhibit many qualities of cellular-based life. And Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has been “living” for at least 300 years.
Life, as we know it, is a specific example of a complex emergent phenomena. The universe appears to be structured to allow a huge numbers of complex systems to emerge naturally. So I disagree that it’s miraculous, or even “lucky,” that one such form of system emerged on this planet.
@BoBo1946 God is certainly not good, unless you share his definition of good – blood-lust, intolerance and egotism.
This started out like a nice respectful discussion. I’m sad that it turned into an argument. Why can’t people just accept that there are different belief systems and different ways of approaching the world without constantly trying to prove each other wrong?
Our strength is in our diversity. Embrace it.
The good thing about diversity is that it fosters discussion and yes, even criticism of dearly held beliefs. If we don’t discuss and criticize our most deeply held beliefs, how can we be sure they’re worth believing?
I also haven’t seen anyone be all that disrespectful (certainly not compared to the “disprespect” you can find in the religious texts under discussion, which for example say I am a fool who deserves to be stoned to death and eat the flesh of my own children)
@Judi So far it’s going much better than most such discussions.
The degeneration of questions referencing god are natural. The absoluteness of the thing makes middle ground impossible to find, and thus…
@Qingu
“a specific example of a complex emergent phenomena.”
Minor nitpickery: “phenomena” is plural. The singular form is “phenomenon”.
@Judi
It was inevitable.
And I’m still ambivalent about this whole accepting-other-people’s-beliefs deal.
Cultural diversity and acceptance are all dandy and fine, and as a Dutch person I’ll be the last one to deny that tolerance is important for societal development in this age. But beliefs are actually either true or false, which makes being judgemental about them truly a whole different story.
If people neglect the steps they could take to minimise the possibility that their understanding of the fundamental nature of the universe is wrong, confronting them with that is not intolerance. It’s fair epistemic criticism which, in fact, would be in their own best interest to heed.
At the risk of sounding haughty: there do exist formally correct and incorrect ways of determining what to believe; these are what the craft of rationalism is about. If for example your beliefs are not somehow dependent on the actual state of affairs – if you would believe them whether they’re true or not – then you’re doing something wrong. Just like hitting a dissonant chord on a piano means you’re doing something wrong. And if we as fellow pianists always tell ourselves that someone’s hitting the wrong chord is just part of their unique style that we’re not allowed to criticise, then most pianists will always suck.
I don’t agree with your closing phrase either, not in this context. There is no strength in being divided among dozens of mutually exclusive arbitrary world views.
But the fact that scientific investigations around the world will independently come to the same conclusions, and the many things science has given us, teach us two things, respectively: truth unites, and there is definitely strength in unison by truth.
the hilarious thing is that I am an editor by trade
I am sorry I derailed this question so much, but I would like to mention that NO ONE has even addressed the prime number/gas measurement miracle.
Since prime numbers don’t come in regular intervals, that is simply amazing.
@filmfann Would you be able to provide us with a link? I am not familiar with the phenomenon, which is why I didn’t comment on it, but I am confident that there is a naturalistic explanation.
The religious concept of a miracle says that they occur for the glory of God. For example, the “Miracle of the Sun” had the proposed purpose of showing people that God is real, and Mary has real supernatural power. The fact that it was not a miracle, but due to stratospheric ice crystals is beside the point. Calculations of gasses giving prime numbers does not in any way draw people closer to a belief in gods. In fact none of your supposed miracles do.
@Qingu – In linguistics, prescription can refer both to the codification and the enforcement of rules governing how a language should be used. Atheists seem eager to apply this approach when it comes to words like wonder or miracle (do they work for Webster’s?).
My explanation relied on descriptive linguistics (objectively analyzing and describing how language is spoken) and I pointed out that in casual usage miracle also refers to any statistically unlikely event, such as complex life in the universe. An extinction-level asteroid impact on Earth is a statistically unlikely event as well, but this doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Just wait a few dozen million years and it will. The same goes for complex life in the universe. But this doesn’t change the fact how people use the word miracle.
@FireMadeFlesh – Religions do evolve. Your example seems to suggests that theologians will always remain stuck in the 5th century. A reality check might be in order.
@All: Just curious: Why do God questions get some many responses?
@filmfann I didn’t see anything miraculous in your description of the prime number/ gas measurement. I’d need a lot more detail to even determine what the big deal is.
@mattbrowne
“Just curious: Why do God questions get some many responses?”
Same reason as for abortion, homosexuality and skub. It’s a controversial subject that almost everyone has a strong opinion about.
If you ask me, which I wouldn’t recommend but I’m going to pretend you do anyway, this ancient religion controversy is the manifestation of a clash between two very strong forces of the mind – faith and reason. Reason tells the rational that the religions are irrational, faith tells the faithful not to listen to the godless heathen infidel blasphemers, there you go. And neither allows for middle ground.
If you ask me, I think the real problem is that religions are very deeply rooted self-sustaining memeplexes that people want to protect from questioning. I also think they’re irrational and it would be better for everyone if humanity would stop succumbing to them. With that said the issue starts to look like determined doctors fighting a stubborn epidemic.
But of course for many people it’s just a case of us versus them psychology. People will bicker over anything.
I think most enlightened theists and theologians welcome a reasonable debate with atheists. And vice versa. Good examples are Alister McGrath and Daniel Dennett. The majority of well-educated theists are actually very friendly as you can for example see in David G. Myers “A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists: Musings on Why God Is Good and Faith Isn’t Evil” (a great read).
Be honest with me, how many theists have called you a godless heathen infidel blasphemers?
Well, quite a few, though admittedly mostly in the sort of place where everybody calls everybody names for anything.
More pertinently, from the historical perspective I was taking, religious people have been rude to the irreligious for millennia before I was born. It’s terribly bad manners to burn people at the stake, even if you disagree with them.
Yes, more recently, the religious are starting to become a bit more tolerant wherever they’re not the ones in charge, and that’s good.
On that subject, I wouldn’t say there hasn’t been a lot of improvement in the religious condition. Many religious people now disregard scriptural literalism in favour of (essentially secular) common sense, many people still believe in god but no longer in the religions. Slowly but surely the strangling hold of dogmatism is weakening. The general public is becoming more reasonable.
And so I can agree that most religious people these days are not jerks.
But this all has the position of a side note to the things I said.
@mattbrowne I recognise that religions evolve, but I fail to see the point of a miracle if it is not of direct religious significance. The given examples were all purely naturalistic, and therefore do not qualify as miracles.
I am aware of progressive ideas such as Frank Tipler’s definition of a miracle, by which they do not violate natural law, but he still retains the idea that a miracle must have religious significance.
@mattbrowne, re: semantics, I actually agree with you, but not in this specific case. Because the way filmflamm was using “miracle” was specifically in the supernatural/theological sense, i.e. as evidence for the existence of a supernatural deity.
I don’t care if someone says an unlikely event is a “miracle” in the colloquial sense… that is, until they start saying, “Therefore, God…” :) Then I think it’s worth delving into what they mean by the word.
@filmfann , I did a Google search on prime number and gas and did not find what you are talking about. I would also appreciate a link.
I was up half the night trying to find the site that showed this. I read several books that referenced it as well, so I know it’s out there. This may take time.
@Fyrius – More recently some of the new atheism movement have also become more tolerant and less missionary zeal, and that’s good too. Intolerance is always a bad idea. The only thing we should not tolerate is harming others and intolerance itself.
@FireMadeFlesh, @Qingu – My examples do qualify as miracles in casual usage of the word. And yes, others don’t. If we accept God as the reason for the universe and the way it works (an act of faith) instead of a self-explanatory universe (also an act of faith) many statements about God are a rationally true (”... therefore…”). For example
“God made two great lights, the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night.”
A -> B and B -> C means A -> C
In my example B stands for the 4 elementary forces and they are the reasons for stars to form and shine. A made B and B made C, therefore A made C.
@filmfann – Are you referring to ultrasonic transducer systems? I found a claim that states the following:
A fluid measurement system comprising a single channel measurement device having transmission means for producing a transmission signal to activate an acoustic transducer to propagate signal energy and also having a single channel signal reception means for processing electrical signals from a transducer that receives the signal energy, means defining a fluid region containing a fluid to be measured by propagation of said signal energy, and means mounting a plurality of transducers for acoustic interrogation of fluid energy in said region, said means mounting at least two of said plurality of transducers as receiving transducers in receiving paths such that they receive such signal energy at separate and noninterfering time intervals when said measurement device produces a single transmission signal, so that the single channel reception means processes the signal energy received by said receiving transducers means to perform fluid measurement.
A fluid measurement system according to the claim above, wherein signal transit times along said paths are approximately proportional to a sequence of prime numbers, which may be consecutive prime numbers.
http://www.sumobrain.com/patents/wipo/Ultrasonic-transducer-system-with-temporal/WO1995019559.html
@mattbrowne I was referring to @filmfann‘s examples when I said that naturalistic processes do not qualify as miracles. I agree that science is limited in its explanatory ability, despite its limitless descriptive ability. However I cannot accept the supernatural as an explanation any more than any other baseless, unsupported theory. I am prepared to accept that it is an unknown, and is probably something we can never know thanks to our inability to perceive portions of our distant past.
@mattbrowne, wow, you couldn’t stretch the Bible’s text more than that if you had access to the large hadron collider manipulating the strong nuclear force.
It is absolutely absurd to interpret the Bible’s geocentric vision of the universe to mean the strong, weak, electromag and gravity forces. I’m sorry, but I just think that’s a very intellectually dishonest way to interpret an ancient text. It would be like claiming that Aristotle was talking about the four states of matter when he talked about the four elements.
@Qingu – The ancients distinguished between mythos and logos. We’ve had this debate. The literal interpretation of the Bible is a relatively modern phenomenon. Both creation stories are mythos, not logos. A lot in the Proverbs is logos for example. My point was that a modern interpretation of “God made the stars” is actually consistent with modern first order logic if we accept the premise “God made the natural laws”. We don’t know whether God made the laws or the laws made themselves. Whatever the explanation, it requires an act of faith as I mentioned earlier.
I feel pretty confident in the conclusion of that debate, that it’s not a “modern phenomenon,” that mythos and logos (as you are defining them) are typically wrapped up with each other, and the ancients who first wrote and understood the BIble would have certainly understood that passage as literally.
Also, in the case of Genesis, both the logos and the mythos would be incorrect.
It also has nothing to do with first order logic, since the mythos is similar to any other ANE creation myth, with the God “creating” by molding already-existent reality into shape.
It is also sort of hilarious to see you castigate an interpretation as a “modern phenomenon” whilst claiming that Genesis 1 is talking about the weak and strong forces.
@mattbrowne
“Intolerance is always a bad idea. The only thing we should not tolerate is harming others and intolerance itself.”
A wonderful contradiction. The second sentence in this quote shows why the first one is wrong.
Intolerance is often a splendid idea. Some forms of intolerance are an indispensable part of our social contract. The state does not tolerate things like theft, torture, rape, arson, murder and jaywalking.
I for one furthermore generally do not tolerate people being jerks to me, or intellectual dishonesty, or pseudoscience, or people taking advantage of more defenceless people, or various other things I think are unequivocally wrong. I won’t put anyone in front of a firing squad for it, but I’m not going to look the other way either.
My intolerance of animal abuse and slavery leads me to pick the free range eggs and the fair trade chocolate in the supermarket. Is that a bad idea?
For that matter, my intolerance of the cold makes me put on a coat.
Intolerance is a good idea if the thing not tolerated is unequivocally wrong by either objective or universally agreed upon subjective standards.
It’s unfounded intolerance that’s always a bad idea.
@mattbrowne
“We don’t know whether God made the laws or the laws made themselves. Whatever the explanation, it requires an act of faith as I mentioned earlier.”
And as I mentioned earlier, there’s also the third option of just saying “I don’t know where the natural laws came from.” Not assuming anything. That doesn’t take an act of faith at all.
This is the only scientific answer in the present situation, and many atheists go that way, including yours truly.
And there’s also a fourth option that the natural laws were created by a committee of gods. Surely there are still plenty of polytheists left in the world.
Please stop advocating this false dichotomy.
@Qingu – I ask you to stop posting insulting innuendo. I never claimed that Genesis 1 is talking about the weak and strong forces. I repeatedly said it was a creation myth. Then I said that a modern literal understanding of the text (unlike the one the authors of the text probably had in mind) is actually true when we apply modern first order logic and assume that God made the natural laws. Do you get it now, my friend??
@Fyrius – Of course it’s unfounded intolerance. How can you think I would think otherwise? I’ve got enough of this debate. I don’t like the style and I’m really pissed. It’s probably best if all the atheists on Fluther encourage and reaffirm each about their wonderfully superior thinking. And for good measure ridicule a few new friendly theists because it’s such fun. Oh, how hilarious! But you’ve got to look for new victims.
@mattbrowne
I’m sorry if we tested your patience too much this time.
Please understand that as usual, I was replying just to what you literally said. I’m sure that on some level you already understood and agreed with the fairly obvious correction I made. But since you still say things like “intolerance is always a bad idea”, which is obviously false if tolerance is only bad under the condition that it’s unfounded, I wanted to make that thought explicit for you.
Incidentally, if it would be reaffirmation of our intellectual superiority that we are after, I know plenty of better places to do that. Fluther is diverse enough to make that sort of like-minded shoulder patting hard to get away with.
@mattbrowne, frankly, no, I don’t get it. What you said really doesn’t make any sense to me, nor do I see it in the text.
I also think it’s simply incorrect to say Gen 1’s authors didn’t intend a literal interpretation. The text’s authors clearly believed the sky was a solid dome, for example.
All texts are open to interpretation, but not infinite interpretation. There is a point at which you really should just be willing to say, “okay, this ancient text is incorrect in its cosmology.”
I’m sorry this is frustrating for you, and that you were insulted by my post—that was not my intention. Biblical interpretation is something I feel pretty strongly about and that I’ve studied a lot, however, so it’s not about “feeling superior” for me.
@Fyrius – I was shocked because you and I know each other now for many months. Have I ever been tolerant of anything that deserves well-founded intolerance such as racism or fascism or religious extremism? Have I ever been intolerant of something that is protected by the UN Declaration of Human Rights for example? Above I wrote that we cannot tolerate intolerance and harming others. You are knowledgeable in linguistics. Context gives meaning. And in my case this means I was talking about unfounded intolerance. I’m really disappointed in not taking this leap of faith here, like
‘You probable mean unfounded intolerance, right, Matt?’
In one of the other threads @Qingu rightly pointed out that some of us think respectfully working with others to make the world a better place. I couldn’t agree more. When we debate we should walk the talk. Adopting a hostile confrontational style as well as using ridicule is undermining this effort. Tolerant atheists and tolerant theists should be role models for others. We should be setting a good example the way we handle our disagreements. Style matters. If we can’t do this how should we ever expect extremism to disappear.
@Qingu – Okay, let’s simplify this and assume that the Gen 1’s authors intended a literal interpretation and leave the mythos/logos issue out of this. Let’s assume our fellow Flutherite @filmfann for example proclaims God made the stars. My point is that was he says is actually true when we apply modern first order logic and assume that God made the natural laws (an act of faith). When we read in Gen 1 that God made two great lights, the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night this is also true in the same sense (even though the authors thought God was forming clay and the Earth was flat).
Matt, I am not sure what your point is. It does not say anything in the Bible about natural laws, let alone claim that God was responsible for them. The whole idea of natural law was simply not around at the time. The concept of formal proof did not exist until the ancient Greeks and the idea of first principles from which other things follow was the glorious contribution of Euclid. You could argue that these things took place in mathematics, not science, but to the ancient Greeks math was a part of science. As far as the ancient Jews were concerned, any regularity in the universe was due to the constant interference of God.
The Bible is not the place to look for scientific accuracy. The Bible gives the value of pi as 3, a rather poor approximation even compared to that of the Sumerians.
@mattbrowne, the Bible’s mythology has about as much to do with filmfann’s assumption that God made natural law as the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth.
This is my problem with what you are saying. To the extent that the Bible reflects some sort of “truth,” it doesn’t do so any more than any other religion’s creation myth. I’d argue it actually does so less than some other creation myths. So… what’s the point?
Forget the Bible for a moment. Suppose it was never written. Now someone today tells you God made the stars. Is this nonsense or not? That was my point.
I would say it’s nonsense. Gravity made the stars.
Unless you’re defining God so broadly so as to include impersonal, abstract natural forces. But then I would say this kind of God has absolutely nothing to do with religion and is just a semantic trick to make secular science sound mystical.
How would you distinguish between God making the stars and God not making the stars? If you can’t distinguish, then by Occam’s Razor, we don’t need God. It is therefore nonsense.
@mattbrowne
You still seem to have the impression that I actually thought you would condone those horrible things. I told you, that’s not it. Please calm the heck down.
I wrote what I wrote to bring a semantic distinction to your attention that seemed to elude you altogether, at least on the level of awareness that guides your writing. A consciousness-raiser to an easily missed fact.
Another reason why I didn’t just add it as a side note is that intolerance is a subject on which we disagree in some senses – not whether unfounded intolerance is ever okay or whether well-founded intolerance should ever be disregarded, but what sort of intolerance is well-founded. This is what makes this an important subject in our disagreements, which means this semantic distinction deserves full attention in my opinion. It changes the nature of a long-term debate we have.
You believe one should tolerate it when people believe the sort of things I would consider baloney. I believe one should not tolerate that.
It makes a heckload of difference whether that disagreement is a disagreement about all tolerance being bad or not, or a disagreement about this particular instance of intolerance being well-founded or not.
Tl;dr: You said something foolishly simplistic, be it by late night mistake or by actual ignorance of the complications; I pointed out that which your post overlooked.
I agree with you on the various benefits of not being jerks to each other, and on walking the talk and all that jazz. The fact of that particular matter is that when posting what I posted I was at the end of a somewhat rough day and a bit on the cranky side. Some of that crankiness made its way into my two posts. Mea culpa.
I must not post in religion threads when in a bad mood, I must not post in religion threads when in a bad mood, I must not post in religion threads when in a bad mood, I must not post in religion threads when in a bad mood.
@Fyrius, I think we should tolerate baloney beliefs. I also believe the word “tolerate” actually implies that you don’t respect or condone said beliefs.
For example, I “tolerate” my local Ku Klux Klan, or the right of neo nazis to march through Skokie.
@mattbrowne
“Forget the Bible for a moment. Suppose it was never written. Now someone today tells you God made the stars. Is this nonsense or not? That was my point.”
But this is an interesting point. I often use the very same logic for my own, contradicting position.
If I had never in my life heard about gods, and then suddenly the notion of a cosmic intelligent being being responsible for everything in the universe were introduced to me, I would put it up there with astrology, alien abduction stories, tinfoil hats and the Flat Earth Society. Another weird fringe theory with no scientific merits whatsoever.
I’d say: “Do you expect me to just take your word for it? By all standards what you just told me is a random guess, and a bad one. Anthropomorphism has long since stopped being a respectable approach when explaining nature.”
@Qingu
Well, they shouldn’t be outlawed, that would be bad. But I can still discourage them. If I meet someone who holds a baloney belief and I have five counterarguments up my sleeve the moment I hear it, I’m not going to bend over backwards to avoid bringing those up for the sake of tolerance, as some people believe I should do.
If I come across racist people who believe their genes give them the right to be dicks to people with slightly different genes, I’ll do what I can to make them think about that again, too. I’d grant them that some genomes are indeed better than others in certain ways, like the genes of an endomorph person are better for athletic development than those of an ectomorph person, but winning the gene lottery is no achievement and definitely no more grounds for being full of yourself.
This will be the manifestation of my intolerance.
I guess I just understand the word “tolerance” to mean a threshold of respect significantly lower than how you and I suppose matt are using the word.
Like, arguing with people that their beliefs are stupid wouldn’t be “intolerant” for me. At most it would be “disrespectful.” But you can argue with someone that they’re stupid and still “tolerate” them.
I think that on Fluther we should act respectfully toward one another. Whether you actually respect the person is another matter. As far as Matt is concerned, this does not present me with any difficulties, because I do respect what he has to say even though I may disagree with him.
I think we should meet in real life and enjoy a cup of coffee (I’ll bring the cake) and continue our chat. Online forums do increase the potential for misunderstandings.
@Qingu
I suppose you’re right. Fair enough.
Overhere in the Netherlands, the bar on what we would call “tolerance” might be quite a bit higher than elsewhere. I do suppose we’ve come to use the word somewhat differently for it.
@mattbrowne, I would love to have coffee with you, but don’t you live in Germany? :) But yeah, it’s difficult sometimes to “assume good faith” on the Internet but I think it’s important. Especially when dealing with someone like me, who tends to write aggressively (i.e. like an asshole) I really do like the cut of your jib, believe it or not!
@Qingu – Yes, I do. Right now the Frankfurt airport got closed down completely because of the Icelandic volcano, can you believe it? And so are all the other ones in northern Europe.
Thanks for your nice comment!
Yea I do. Because I feel I have someone who is there 24/7. He may not help me in everything but he helps me when I needed him the most. When I was very sick and when my mother was very sick. I thought I will not go thru it. But I pray and he helped me.
Honestly? I don’t know. I have turned from a sort of ‘extreme’ Christian (if you will) to an atheist, to an agnostic, and now a bit sided to a sort of “free thinker”.
But one thing I do know is that we are still very limited,
and that we mere humans who are limited with five senses, and also by this “three-dimension” physical universe (length, width, depth), and plus we’re still VERY young existence on million years of planet Earth, let alone our Universe(!),
therefore to state that we already KNOW everything there is in my opinion as ignorant and naive as the most extremist & radical followers of religions.
I think it’s best & wisest to simply remain Open-minded, and not to rule out any possibility, even if it appears ‘irrational’ as first (eg: story & anecdotes of NDEs, spirits/ghosts, astral plane, other ‘unseen’ dimension other than our Physical dimension, and even the existence of “God”).
Not all things can be measured under the lab’s microscope.
@niki
Obligatory side note on that last sentence:
Everything that exists leaves traces of its existence in the real world.¹ Those traces can be studied. That’s really all that science is about.
Scientists know there exist things that can’t be directly observed. Things like that include black holes, or the inside of the sun, or verb-second movement. Such things are studied instead by looking at the influence they exert on things that can be observed. We can see gas clouds swirling into black holes, we can deduce the sun’s internal chemical composition from the wavelengths of its light, we can see verbs ending up in unusual positions in certain languages.
In other words, if the poltergeists are invisible, count the number of objects they stack up, note what’s the heaviest thing they’ve been known to lift, map their activities and look for geographical patterns.
Scientists are imaginative enough to come up with ways to study anything… provided that it actually exists.
_____
¹ By any meaningful definition of “exist”, anyway. Something that never influences anything else would escape this generalisation, but it would also be completely irrelevant to anything.
I will ask this for those of you who believe in God: does prayer work? or it’s more of a placebo/suggestion effect? thanks.
@niki This question hasn’t been visited for two months, so to get more answers maybe you should post that as a question of your own. Its an interesting topic though!
Yes I do. The following is from an answer I gave in another question.
…“Prayer is effective, there is wisdom that comes to me that both circumvents time and is understanding that is outside what is available to me. I knew my wife’s name two days before I met her or knew she existed and on and on and on, consistently as you say. There is a congruity to my life when I walk what I believe. If I were to describe it, it is like the love of a perfect parent.
It is not as evident as the reaction of any simple science experiment but there is enough for me to acknowledge. There is enough for me to know it’s not foolishness.
None of this is said to try to convince you but maybe to help you respect that I am not grabbing a feather floating in the air and calling it an ostrich.
Question:Why would a good God only give enough to have to accept him through faith? My answer:Why are there some lessons children must learn on their own rather than just be given the answer?
Brings me back to your qualities of God question, the ones you say are more suspect than evident. I won’t answer this for you, but I will tell you when you are closest to the answer. What we learn in our hearts is not learned by simple words alone. The lessons of the heart are learned through stories and experiences. When you are holding your first child and are blown away by the love you feel, then you will be close. I don’t think I can argue the absolute completeness of Gods knowing or perfection of his benevolence, or completeness of his capabilities, but as you raise your children you will see the parallels of relative hierarchies of wisdom, hierarchies of love without condition, hierarchies of forgiveness that seems endless and willingness to lay down your life for your children.
These matters of the heart are as real as the breath we breathe and all else we experience from the objective to the subjective.”
@Season_of_Fall
“Why would a good God only give enough to have to accept him through faith? My answer:Why are there some lessons children must learn on their own rather than just be given the answer?”
So you are saying that:
God:Adult::Parent:Child (loosely anyway).
But that doesn’t make sense. Even assuming there is a god, its god that designed us. God designed our psychology and biology and the world around us which leads to our culture and society. Now, its true, the psychologically, there are some things we need to learn through experience. However (and still assuming there is a god) that is because god built us this way. Why couldn’t god build us so that we would just know god existed? Why couldn’t god build us so that we don’t need to experience certain things to learn them. Etc…
The problem with any attempt to analogize god’s relationships with us to a regular, earthly, relationship is that, in almost all religions, god sets all the rules. All of them. This gives god the power to determine the exact nature of the relationship.
@roundsquare believe what you want, but thats my opinion. Got it. Can you respect that or do you have the corner on truth that you must beat over my head?
@Season_of_Fall Must you take offence at every attempt to have a discussion about beliefs, or are your beliefs unable to stand up to scrutiny?
no, no insecurity at all about my beliefs, it gets difficult to take the level of disrespect that gets thrown at me sometimes. Really, listen, I’m not trying some counter punch here, there is just such a wide range of between respectful responses to disrespectful responses. To be honest, not even sure if I can articulate what the difference is. I know I’m on a site where I am opening up to the floor to be challenged and need to figure out a more dignified way to, well, not dignify some of the responses or challenges that come at me.
Are my beliefs able to stand up to scrutiny? Whose scrutiny? We are all biased parties on opposite sides, where is an independent judge to scrutinize what’s ultimately real. Not available!!!. Only death is the test of who is right here, and those crossing that point can’t report to us, whether in nothingness or an afterlife.
Nothing will be resolved or figured out here. “Anyone who says they know, knows nothing”
@Season_of_Fall Can you let me know what in my response was disrespectful? No disrespect was meant, so it must be in the way I phrased my point. If you can help me lean how to do this better, I’ll gladly change the way I communicate.
@Season_of_Fall I’m not quite sure what you see as disrespectful in this context. Many of us on Fluther enjoy debating this sort of thing in depth, but posing a question or presenting a challenge is by no means showing disrespect to the person. I suppose it is reasonable if you are uncomfortable with this, but I am certain no disrespect is intended.
By scrutiny, I mean questions by the community here. Absolute knowledge is not a requirement to test a hypothesis. Lets take a totally ridiculous hypothesis here – that there is an alien spaceship hiding over the dark side of the moon. Now if we look at evidence, such as the rockets that circled the moon and the probes we have sent to the outer solar system, it becomes increasingly unlikely that this is the case.
If we had a discussion about our beliefs here, you may pick up some things about what I believe that don’t quite fit with observation. If your argument is compelling and I am open minded, maybe I will modify my beliefs to fit this problem, and they will be more complete for it. Taking offence and stifling discussion, at least in my experience, don’t generally lead to progress. But if you are worried about other people having criticisms about your beliefs, then I suppose there’s not much else you can do.
Wow, thanks for setting me straight on that. Everyone is lucky to have you here.
I’m not worried one bit about other people having criticisms and expressing them. You probably think I might be worried about that because you think my position is flawed and easily shaken, oh, wait, you do think that. My faith teaches me to worry about what God thinks and not worry about what men think. I have experienced God, in many ways and in many miracles in my own life which your position can not explain. I guess I can understand your perspective not having experienced these things and drawn conclusions based on that void.
I do agree that I need to alter my approach when I want to express my opinion to the one asking the question but not interested in entertaining responses to critics.
@Season_of_Fall Why do you assume that everyone who disagrees with you is doing so from self-perceived moral high ground? I’m not ‘setting you straight’, I am making a point with the intent to understand from your response why you believe what you do. Of course I may not agree with it, but understanding alternate points of view is important in developing an open mind.
I don’t understand why you are “not interested in entertaining responses to critics”. Personally, I like it when my beliefs/ideas are challenged – it gives me a chance to reassess if they really are appropriate. Since no one is ever completely correct, challenges are the mechanism by which we develop a more robust set of beliefs.
So why do you not want to share the reasons behind your beliefs? The worst I can do is disagree – and even then, what have you lost?
Answer this question 
