Heartland

nick the stripper wrote:Hhhm I'm not sure, I think I'm to young to make my mind up about religion yet.

Good plan. I've been thinking about religion on and off for about 20 years (my mother became Born Again when I was about 14) and I'm still not 100% sure

I certainly do believe in god.

He wears a big white "seven" on his back....

God does answer prayers but He goes about it in an indirect way. If you petition your subconscious, it will come up with answers but, like dreams, you've got to recognize and interpet the indirect way in which things are done.

Black Biscuit wrote:God does answer prayers but He goes about it in an indirect way. If you petition your subconscious, it will come up with answers but, like dreams, you've got to recognize and interpet the indirect way in which things are done.

Kind of reminds me of someone else...

...replace "subconscious" with "Reptile House"...

Black Biscuit wrote:God does answer prayers but...

Sometimes the answer is "No".

markfiend wrote:

Black Biscuit wrote:God does answer prayers but...

Sometimes the answer is "No".

Or... "Would you stop f**king ASKING me that??!!"

I don't like to talk about my faith. For some odd reason, even the nicest, most reasonable people see it as an open invitation to tell me exactly why they KNOW for a FACT that I'm wrong (as cut-and-pasted from the interweb, because the 'net wouldn't lie would it? So no need to inconviniance yourself checking the facts for yourself.)
I don't like to debate religion - It's a bit like calling your boss a fuckwit knowing he's in the next room... maybe he can hear you, maybe he can't... is it worth the risk?
My faith has never f**ked me up or held me back, my mind is open to the possibility that i could be wrong, but all i have is a feeling like slow thunder in the back of my neck that tells me I'm onto something.
I can't show you a photo of what I believe in, but it's something that i can feel all the time. And it's terrifying - I love it. There is something that's with me and sometimes the feeling you can get from it is beyond this world.

No, D00my, if you dig on it, then that's your groove, man!

If there is a God, then he's royally screwing me over at the moment.

markfiend wrote:

Malaclypse the Younger: Everything is true.
Greater Poop: Even false things?
Malaclypse the Younger: Even false things are true.
Greater Poop: How can that be?
Malaclypse the Younger: I don't know man, I didn't do it.

fnord

23

Paul

Do I believe in God?

No, but there is always the lingering, nagging doubt in the back of my mind that I may just be wrong, so I reserve the right to change my mind. I imagine this will is mostly likely to happen in the moments immediately before my demise.


Alternatively

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. Q.E.D."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

ruffers wrote:there is always the lingering, nagging doubt in the back of my mind that I may just be wrong, so I reserve the right to change my mind. I imagine this will is mostly likely to happen in the moments immediately before my demise.

That's like "Pascal's Wager": a kind of "game-theory" approach:

paraphrase wrote:If I do not believe in God:

If God does not exist, then there are no consequences.
If God does exist, then I go to Hell.

If I do believe in God:

If God does not exist, then there are no consequences.
If God does exist, then I go to Heaven.

Therefore it is better to believe in God.

However, this argument falls down in that:
1) God will know that you are choosing to believe in Him merely to avoid Hell, and may send you there anyway for being a cynical b*st*rd.
2) There generally are consequences to believing, such as spending a few hours at church/temple/mosque/whatever once (or more) a week, financial support to one's church, and so forth.
3) How is it possible to choose to believe? If I look at the evidence and decide that I can't in all honesty believe in God, how can I then say "well, I'll believe anyway just in case..."?
4) How do you know you're believing in the right God? If religion A demands that you accept certain dogmas to go to Heaven, and religion B demands that you accept dogmas contradicting those of religion A, which do you accept?
5) The whole thing is a veiled threat: "believe or else."

"I'll go for the life of sin, followed by a presto-changeo deathbed repentance"....

markfiend wrote:

ruffers wrote:there is always the lingering, nagging doubt in the back of my mind that I may just be wrong, so I reserve the right to change my mind. I imagine this will is mostly likely to happen in the moments immediately before my demise.

That's like "Pascal's Wager": a kind of "game-theory" approach:

Blimey, I didn't think I was that clever!

"We find in it the extraordinary confluence of several important strands of thought: the justification of theism; probability theory and decision theory, used here for almost the first time in history; pragmatism; voluntarism (the thesis that belief is a matter of the will); and the use of the concept of infinity. "

Copied and pasted, clearly. Although I am now interested enough to have a proper read!

boudicca wrote:"I'll go for the life of sin, followed by a presto-changeo deathbed repentance"....

----

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness" - The Dalai Lama:

Black Alice wrote:"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness" - The Dalai Lama:

*Puts out wacky backy ciggy

Obviousman wrote:

Delilah wrote:That's probably why Marx said that "it is the opium of the people"...

... because of which started his own religion

Don't know whether that was meant as a joke, but I've got to take issue with it. Some people on this thread are defending Jesus v Saint Paul - fair enough, one was a hippy, the other was a autocratic fuckwit. Blaming Marx for Stalin is the same boat - Marx never said 'build great death camps for your enslaved workers'. It's liike blaming Eldritch for the fact that the m*****n were s**t. Only with about 30 million more dead.

Back to French philosophers, I think it was Voltaire who was asked on his death-bed 'Do you reject Satan and all his works?' and replied 'Now is no time to be making new enemies'.

Isn't it odd that this forum censors 's**t' but not 'fuckwit'? He sure does move in mysterious ways.

Red Orc wrote:

Obviousman wrote:

Delilah wrote:That's probably why Marx said that "it is the opium of the people"...

... because of which started his own religion

Don't know whether that was meant as a joke, but I've got to take issue with it. Some people on this thread are defending Jesus v Saint Paul - fair enough, one was a hippy, the other was a autocratic fuckwit. Blaming Marx for Stalin is the same boat - Marx never said 'build great death camps for your enslaved workers'. It's liike blaming Eldritch for the fact that the m*****n were s**t. Only with about 30 million more dead.

Yes, it was a joke indeed, and only a few seconds after I've pressed the post button, what you say came to my mind too... Marx had a theory, and a fairly good one, the only problem is that it was a practically inimplimentable theory, because which some folks (Stalin, Mao, e.a.) saw the ultimate possibility to get themselves to the top... Or at least when they were there, they weren't able to say no anymore... Power is a very dangerous thing indeed

I certainly agree that power is the problem. Not sure that 'Marx's theory is impossible to implement...' as I'm not sure which bit you have a problem with. As I understand Marx, he said 'the liberation of the working class is the task of the working class' which seems fair enough to me - after all, if you're 'liberated' by an insane gunman and his bandit mates (Mao, Che, pick your own 'revolutionary hero') or a twit of a bureaucrat (Stalin or whoever) then things are gonna be really bad...

THere's a politics thread somewhere... much more interesting than religion... I seem to remember reading recently that the church had decided in the middle ages that there was no possible way of solving the 'problem of god' by rational discourse - which somewhat proves the atheists' point, I feel.

Jesus was a hippy?
Matthew 10:34
Luke 14:26

I stand by 'Jesus was a hippy'.

Anything written about him 100 years later doesn't exactly qualify as reliable historical evidence. So how do I know he was hippy? I don't. It's just prejudice. But I stand by it anyway.

Not that we should get hung up on hippies being peace-loving tree-huggers necessarily - 'it's 1969 OK, got a war across the USA' anyone?

Well, the impossibility lies with the people mostly, I think, because no way every single individu will accept he's perfectly equal to all of the others...

And I think this is not solely human but it lies in the nature of all living animals, there are no (or at least none that I know of, feel free to correct me) species that live in groups and at the same time don't have a leader figure. Thus, there'll always be someone standing up to lead you. Marx was the inventor of this theory, and therefore, he will never be equal to anyone else, doesn't he?

About the 'problem of god', how about Thomas of Aquino and all them, they were filosofers, and thought mainly about proofs of god, right?

Jesus was not a hippy indeed, he told his men to keep arms with them all of the time, and IIRC there's some passage in the bible of him fighting someone too...

And finally:

Bertrand Russel wrote:It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age, but if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion�

Red Orc wrote:I stand by 'Jesus was a hippy'.

Anything written about him 100 years later doesn't exactly qualify as reliable historical evidence. So how do I know he was hippy? I don't. It's just prejudice. But I stand by it anyway.

Well, I think, if it's written so many years after, and they wanted him to be portrayed as a nice and kind man, they'd have had that part out of the bible wouldn't they?

Red Orc wrote:I stand by 'Jesus was a hippy'.

Anything written about him 100 years later doesn't exactly qualify as reliable historical evidence. So how do I know he was hippy? I don't. It's just prejudice. But I stand by it anyway.

Well fair enough. But Paul was closer in time to Jesus than Matt or Luke... if there even was a historical Jesus. Clicky.

(Incidentally, Luke's gospel was probably based on Matthew's, which in turn was probably based on Mark's)

markfiend wrote: if there even was a historical Jesus. Clicky.

(Incidentally, Luke's gospel was probably based on Matthew's, which in turn was probably based on Mark's)

Well, it's a mixture of all kind of religions of course, and especially so since the romans adapted it as their favorite religion to keep the folks quiet