DNB
Christian
I give up!
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Ever notice how atheists are virtually always on the opposite side from God on many issues?
- Thread starter Patrick66
- Start date
Secret Chief
Vetted Member
I'm hardly in a position to cant on you; I've tried 231 of them.I hate to admit this, but I have had some alcohol free beer and actually liked them. Please don't tell my friends!
muhammad_isa
Veteran Member
This is just a statement that suggests that you are more intelligent than most people,
and that most people cannot come to rational conclusions.
.."pride comes before a fall"
That's your only defence .. your belief or opinion, is that educated people believe in God
for cultural reasons, and not from rational thought.
..it seems that these intelligent, educated people must be schizoid, according to you.
Ummm .. isn't a "cabinet secretary" a politician?
This suggests that if a person is talented in woodworking, and works years developing skill at woodworking, and that it is prideful to create beautiful pieces of art, because to your mind it is prideful to use skill The reasoning @It Aint Necessarily So was referring to is a developed skill that follows reliable rules, so how is using this skill prideful? Just because it can't be used as a cognitive tool by religious believers?
I suggest it is prideful to believe in ideas that are not consistent with facts, and be exposed to this in open debate forums and ignore it.
It's an observation. No theist can explain how they came to believe a God exists via reason and following facts.
He didn't write that. Why is it your interpretation?..it seems that these intelligent, educated people must be schizoid, according to you.
muhammad_isa
Veteran Member
No, he did not write that.
..but the idea that somebody claims they have a strong faith in G-d, but that has
no basis on rational thought, but they are a consultant in a hospital makes little sense to me..
..unless they have a split personality.
No .. it is merely convenient to think that believers cannot use their intelligence,
in order to make conclusions about their faith in G-d, and it is purely cultural conditioning,
that makes them utter that they are believers.
We read your posts.
Well you aren't that interesting to me.
It ain't easy managing a big ego. But look on the bright side, you aren't facing four indictments, probably.
OK, you've never heard about compartmentalism.No, he did not write that.
..but the idea that somebody claims they have a strong faith in G-d, but that has
no basis on rational thought, but they are a consultant in a hospital makes little sense to me..
..unless they have a split personality.
You seem to be missing the point. A person can be a skilled thinker, but not apply this skill to ideas that have significant social and familial motives. Cultural norms are often adopted without much thought through social experiences, usually beginning in childhood. I remember the whole disinformation thing about Obama being a secret Muslim when he is in fact a Christian. He is very smart and I have wondered if he really believes in the ideas of Christianity, or if he is a casual believer who aligns to the religion for the sake of avoiding the stigma of being non-religious, especially as a politican. I have heard some very smart people claim to be devout believers, but I have never seen any explanation about why they believe.
That's a fun fact. Of course my prior quip was about how Zen Buddhism became a popular fad in the USA many decades ago, which I found a bit funny since it seemed many liked the label of being "Zen" and not very concerned with being Zen. When you see a porsche with a license plate that says ZEN..... Now that I think of it, Howard Hamilin's Jag..... He was getting his center back, sorta. He was making progress.
Arthur Brain
Member
Well, late to the 'party' here but I've encountered plenty an atheist/agnostic who value life, compassion, empathy etc and some who identify as Christian who would have all of society subjugated into a theonomy. I've encountered a (thankfully) few who consider that children as young as five should be held as accountable for their actions as fully grown adults and if their *crime* is considered capital then their punishment should be execution even to the literal point of their being stabbed to death.
On the flip side I've encountered the diametric opposite where some atheists/agnostics can be as obnoxious as all get out and people of faith exemplify the characteristics that love should bring about. There are always going to be people who declare that someone is on the opposite side of God on issues and that occurs with those who believe. There was a "heretic" thread on another forum I was on where it was routine.
On the flip side I've encountered the diametric opposite where some atheists/agnostics can be as obnoxious as all get out and people of faith exemplify the characteristics that love should bring about. There are always going to be people who declare that someone is on the opposite side of God on issues and that occurs with those who believe. There was a "heretic" thread on another forum I was on where it was routine.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
You have rather extreme beliefs. People can compartmentalize all of the time. They can separate rational beliefs from irrational ones.No, he did not write that.
..but the idea that somebody claims they have a strong faith in G-d, but that has
no basis on rational thought, but they are a consultant in a hospital makes little sense to me..
..unless they have a split personality.
And yes, believers can use their intelligence. Only you are claiming that a person with irrational beliefs cannot use their intelligence. Now sometimes their beliefs are a huge handicap. For example you can see believers have problems with science quite frequently. And the evidence shows that beliefs are cultural. They are not the result of rational thought. If that were the case we could see one religion refuting others. But that never happens. The problem is that they are probably all wrong. That is why no one can show that they are the one true religion.
If they have no better evidence than any other gods, you are likely correct.
I didn't see any reference that states Theravada Buddhism includes deities.
Buddhist deities - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Most all religions, including Buddhism, were created because they will appeal to human psychology. Just like intelligence varies it is apparent that there are levels of sensitivity and introspective interest. From what I observe most any person will get out of an interest what they want, and much of this depends on how much time they invest.
It appears to be something you created? Is that correct? If so I notice you make a lot of claims that to my rational mind suspects it is not really describing reality as it is setting the stage for a "woo-woo" advocate to claim an understanding that isn't fact-based, nor confirmable via reason. It strikes me as a way to create beliefs that are presumably above reason ONLY because you say so. If that is the case how could you form this explanation? Where is your test in reality?
Where does he say that Theravada includes gods in its tradition? This was supposed to rebut my statement.
How can Christianity exist without dogma? The ideal form is non-theistic. I say this meaning an ideal form of any religion, or point of view, or theory in science, etc. would be only based on facts.
The ideal from a believer's persepctive is a Christianity with tens of thousands of sects, because that is the buffet Christians want, anything goes, take what looks tasty and self-satisfying to you as "truth", and leave the rest.
I haven't had time yet.
It was more of a joke as I noted in a prior post.I'm not sure of your assessment of Zen Buddhism here. It may be what you were familiar with from way back in the 1960's, but you should see what those in the West used to imagine what T'ai Chi was did with it as well!
This is an illustration of why my first priority in anything is authenticity. No one has to be perfect. Our self-judgment can get in the way of enjoying the process.I have a book someone gave me who thought I might like it as he knew I was a student and practitioner of T'ai Chi Chuan. It was from the '60s. There are these photos of this woman doing a number of the postures that I know from the forms, like White Crane Spreads its Wings, or Brush Knee. It was absolutely laughable!
She's barefoot in nylon stockings in the sand, doing what looked like modern interpretative dance poses, which looked nothing at all like the posture. And which violated every core principle of a proper structure. Her feet crossed over each other, with toes going in opposite directions, for one thing! You could blow on her and she'd fall over. Nonsense. Rubbish.
So, yeah, maybe what you were exposed to was garbage like that too. But that's not what Zen Buddhism is, any more than that dude with his hot girlfriend in her miniskirt and nylons in the sand he was taking photos of pretended to do Tai Chi in the hopes of him getting laid afterwards was authentic either. I call that nonsense Faux Chi or Húshuō Chuan.
Secret Chief
Vetted Member
Had to look him up. Sorry, haven't watched that.
Secret Chief
Vetted Member
Deities are a thing within Buddhism as a generalisation. It maybe comes down to the words used. They may be translated/termed devas or gods for instance. What is lacking is an eternal creator deity (in either tradition - Theravada or Mahayana).
"Buddhists do not believe in a creator deity. However, deities are an essential part of Buddhist teachings about cosmology, rebirth, and saṃsāra. Buddhist deities (such as devas and bodhisattvas) are believed to reside in a pleasant, heavenly realm within Buddhist cosmology"
- Deity - Wikipedia
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Secret Chief
Vetted Member
No, the cabinet secretary is a civil servant.
I know. You're probably hoping that will be understood as you being frustrated with obtuse students who reject your claims.
What I wrote was, "humanity comprises a spectrum of cognitive types with more or less skill processing information, with most relatively unskilled at critical thinking. Without that skill and the ability to distinguish sound from unsound arguments, the only path to belief is faith."
I don't see your words in mine, but I won't disagree with you. What's relevant is not my native intelligence, but having acquired skill at critical thought, a gift I prize highly. For example, I could tell that I needed to take the Covid vaccine because I could interpret morbidity and mortality data by vaccination status. There are lot of dead people who died because they couldn't do that, had to trust the opinions of others, and not recognizing that there are experts and that not all opinions are equal guessed who to trust and guessed wrong.
Like I said, it's a spectrum. Almost everybody is rational at the level of opening umbrellas in the rain and wanting the best deal on a new car, but few will reject gods for lack of sufficient evidence to support belief - the more abstract and esoteric end of the spectrum of thought.
You're arguing that the large number of theists suggests that their god belief is reasoned. It's not, even if a majority of the world still believes in gods.
It's my opinion that the people who I call theistic humanists are very rational and trained critical thinkers who share my humanist values, but still like the association with Christianity because it brings some comfort, some sense of connection to family or with a happy childhood.
Cabinet secretaries are appointed by politicians, but the point is irrelevant. The comment from Watt was made as a Christian, maybe even in a church. The relevance of his job is that it amplifies the danger of his beliefs.
You don't know what a split personality is. People can learn to draw blood or shoot an X-ray even with a zealous god belief, and pray while doing it. It wouldn't matter as long as they're paying attention. People who give advice or make clinical decisions need to compartmentalize any magical thinking they do when on the job, which is common enough. But none of that makes their god belief justified.
That's not what I said. What I said is that a god belief is never justified empirically and can only be held on faith, but some people seem so unaffected by that belief that I wouldn't know they held it if they didn't announce it. Say macroevolution and I know that you are probably a creationist. Call atheists evil and you don't need to tell me that you're a zealous, irrational theist, probably Abrahamic. Use the words abortionist or evolutionist, and I assume the same, and have never been wrong there. Theistic humanists don't do any of those.
The theistic humanists don't do that. They're not "religious." If they go to church, it's a social event. They feel comfortable there, and praying is not off-putting to them. They're not listening to the scripture cited except as familiar and comforting poetry - not for advice or information. Maybe they like listening to the choir or singing hymns. Then lunch with the family at a local restaurant.
Last edited:
Then you agree that truth is relative to the believer, no? Because each uses the same logic and reasoning processes to reach conclusions that fit within their system of reality.
Think of it this way. Is a person playing checkers using logic in playing the game on a board of black and white squares? The answer is obviously yes. Is a person playing chess on that same board using logic with those game pieces. Again, the answer is yes. The only real difference, and this is my point, is the game pieces that logic and reason and critical thinking are being applied to. The checkers player is not an idiot, and being illogical. They are simply not playing the game of chess with chess pieces is all. Are you trying to say checkers players are making unjustifiable moves?
Where they would be wrong is if they are trying to play checkers using chess pieces. And that is what I believe you assume they are trying to do. Now, grant it, I think they themselves are bit confused by the different pieces on the table, but that is a more involved discussion. I think they think they are supposed to be in the chess players room, but playing a game of checkers instead and confusing everyone.
My point is, their evidence is you saying "it's not science", and you would be right. But where you are wrong is that you claim it needs to be in order for it to be valid. That is, as I have pointed out, purely a religious choice, or a matter of faith. Perfectly fine for one's own faith choices. We all make those. But saying, "I'm right and they're wrong" assumes they are playing by the rules of chess when they are in fact playing by the rules of checkers. "Only chess is a real game", on the other hand is purely religious and a completely irrational claim.
I believe in God, and I can fully support why I do with empirical evidence. However, it is not what you define God as in terms of a cosmic person outside of creation. But I don't conclude "therefore God" in my justifications. I simply say it is a matter of perception of what is at all times. One either sees it or we don't. It is realized as the nature of existence itself, or not.
Do you then claim that tribal person is an idiot and engaging in "unjustifiable beliefs", given his frameworks of understanding reality? I would argue his view it is a supernatural device of magic, is completely justifiable, given his understanding of reality. How can you debate that?
You have defined it poorly, and I have pointed this out to repeatedly and consistently, offering scholarly looks into the complex subject of what faith actually is and how it functions and looks like. But you continue to ignore all of this and just repeat yourself that it is nothing more than essentially "bad beliefs", or mistaken ideas, or bad reasoning, or the like. What more can someone say to this? I do respect you of course, but this comes off as the same sort of thing that one who believes God created the earth in 6 days continues to ignore the evidence and data that experts and specialists show that that idea taken as literally and scientifically valid is incorrect.
Take the research of James Fowler for instance, which I have spoken about many times. Great work I'd highly recommend anyone who wants to understand the depths of what faith is in human experience should look into. I draw heavily from this understanding in my Integral perspective, which I explained in that recent post you marked as Informative.
Just take a look at what Faith is discussed as on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy alone, and you will see how and why I reject your view of faith as frankly cynical and dismissive, and not well-researched or supported at all. But when you just keep repeated it, and ignoring every evidence to the contrary, yes, we are at an impasse.
Faith (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
I have done this repeatedly, and am again one more time above. It's not a dialog when you ignore what I see as more than substantive knowledge and information about this subject, of which I am rather well-versed in, and just repeat that faith = unjustified belief. Faith is not the same thing as magical thinking, or unsupported or unjustified wishful thinking or beliefs. That is a highly cynical, myopic, and limited understanding of the nature of faith in human experience. To claim it is nothing more than that, is rationally unjustifiable and unworthy of serious discussion.
Last edited:
Oh, lots of people can come to "rational" conclusions. The problem is, if the premises are incorrect, then the reasoned conclusion is far more likely to be wrong than right.
@It Aint Necessarily So just happens to be one of those people who can't accept magical, untestable and unevidenced premises as the right place to start. So, while he may or may not be more intelligent than most people, he is in fact more likely to be correct in his conclusions.
I agree that people use the word to mean different things. For me, truth is the quality that facts possess, facts being linguistic strings (sentences, paragraphs) that accurately map some aspect of observable reality. So, it I say that I live five blocks north of the pier, and walking five blocks south from my door gets me there, the claim is a fact and contains truth. It is useful for predicting outcomes to help control experience.
Using that definition, truth isn't relative. But for those for whom truth is any belief that they cherish or admire, such as those who speak of spiritual truths, truth is whatever they declare it to be.
Disagree. There is only one set of rules of inference accepted in academic circles. If followed correctly, one generates sound conclusions from evidence. If one uses private or idiosyncratic rules, his conclusions will be unsound. It's analogous to arithmetic, an exercise in pure reason. There is only one set of rules for adding a column of numbers. When combining 6 with 7, you must always call that combination 13. If you vary from that, your sum will not be correct.
Most are just following the rules.
I play Wordle every day, and have a friend with whom I share results each morning. We both follow the same rules imposed on us by the software, but our reasoning is different, so we get different results.
No.
Do you think that experts are using conflicting logical schemes to play these two games? I don't.
I'm not sure what that means, but validity in the technical sense means conforming to the laws of inference without logical fallacy.
Not an apt analogy if you don't mean using the rules and strategy of one game to play the other. If your game is determining what is true about the world, you need to use the critically thinking empiricist's rules or you just come up with ideas that are probably either wrong or unfalsifiable ("not even wrong"). If your game is the game of faith, where one generates such ideas and is satisfied with them, then you don't need to use the empiricist's rules, but you won't come up with anything of value to him.
I don't exactly what you believe, but if you are making claims of fact about gods, they're going to be faith-based as I have defined the word.
No regarding idiot, just relatively ignorant of modern knowledge, yes regarding his beliefs being unjustified if they aren't supported by evidence properly interpreted.
Justifiable? Understandable, but not justified in the technical sense.
My definition works for me. Broadly speaking, all belief is justified or not. Only the former can be called knowledge as I use the word. What don't you like about that? I still don't know.
What do you think I am ignoring from you? I find my definition of faith useful, but not other definitions. And I consider myself well-versed in this topic as well.
And yes, "faith = unjustified belief." I can't see a reason to redefine it. You likely see faith as a virtue, and tend to exalt it as a way of knowing. I see nothing virtuous about holding unjustified beliefs and strive to hold none.
Ostronomos
Well-Known Member
What you call "facts" are in actuality "factual illusions". For facts you should refer to Quantum Mechanics and its sister theories on Metaphysics, thus freeing your pitiful soul from delusion.
Perhaps that was a bit harsh. But it is what you get when you show nothing but ignorance and disgrace.
Once again, the Ontological Paradox of existence is all you need consider.
Consider that reality contains all and only that which exists. A refinement on the tautology that reality contains all and only that which is real. The initial tautology.
Now, what is the relevance of perception as an isolated process in all this?
Notice that as of this morning my intelligence has elevated from mere gifted to genius and counting.
I know there is a God.
Do you?