Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
As dark as Satan himself. Mmm...
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No faith?
- Thread starter suzy smith
- Start date
As dark as Satan himself. Mmm...
Just to clear something up, Satan chocolate exists...
Source : Satan, Neuhaus praline made of hazelnuts and Belgian chocolate - Neuhaus
Perhaps the hypothesis is that the OP ate a bucketload of Satan chocolate, and has therefore condemned herself to hell?
My major issue with this is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of health warning on the packaging.
Something like : Warning - Eating this chocolate will imperil your eternal soul would be handy, imho.
Source : Satan, Neuhaus praline made of hazelnuts and Belgian chocolate - Neuhaus
Perhaps the hypothesis is that the OP ate a bucketload of Satan chocolate, and has therefore condemned herself to hell?
My major issue with this is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of health warning on the packaging.
Something like : Warning - Eating this chocolate will imperil your eternal soul would be handy, imho.
"No, no, no... You've got it all wrong. I don't have faith in God, God has faith in me!"
I will take a wild guess and say it is because you don't believe in organized religion or whatever organized religion tries to promote. This doesn't make you an atheist. It just means you do not agree with religion in any fashion.
Sha'irullah
رسول الآلهة
Perhaps you are an anti-theist and proving the stereotype that atheists have no morals........just sayin' 
Aside from baiting for answers, what is the point of a question like this?
suzy smith
Life is for having fun
I think the question pops up in my mind sometimes because there are some very intelligent people out there, far more intelligent than I am that are religious. They have this thing called faith. My intelligence leads me away from having any faith in god.
I was not baiting for answers, it is a serious question that I ask myself sometimes.
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sandandfoam
Veteran Member
I am not a theist because of intellectual enquiry - I don't imagine many people are.
I am a theist because having a relationship with God is the mode of being that 'fits' me. I look at the world and God is what I see.
I wouldn't over analyse it if I were you. If atheism fits' then it 'fits'. I think that contentment our own skin is what many of us desire. For some theism facilitates comfort and for others it does not.
sandandfoam
Veteran Member
How could you confuse chocolate and beer?!
There's a question that one can address. Intelligence is not the only measure of what makes a person human. You also have emotional intelligence. You have spiritual intelligence. And so forth. Though they are separate lines of intelligences, they do inform and have an effect on the other lines in the whole person, which is what makes us human.
But if you wish to look at intelligence alone, it can be argued that there are those who are not so intelligent that are given to black and white, superstitious and mythic-literal thinking that seize upon various "answers" through mythic beliefs. But then there are those who are so intelligent, they go right beyond a pure rationalistic view of reality into the realization of some fabric of existence that goes beyond science and reason, what you could in some fashion call "God", though it is anything but resembling the prerational superstitious deity forms. Here's a great example of some of the collection of writings from the worlds most brilliant physicists that speak of the mystical from their personal thoughts, which can hardly be said it's because they lacked knowledge: Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists: Ken Wilber: 9781570627682: Amazon.com: Books
But to make it simple for your average higher intelligent person to see beyond mere appearance of reality that the reasoning mind can apprehend, just step outside reasoning and analyzing and simply breathe. Experience your simple being as it is before and beyond thoughts and ideas. And in that knowledge, a whole other sense of truth emerges, or comes into awareness. How deep and how far that knowledge goes, begins to speak to the question of the existence of God, or not. Whereas a reasoned argument is not in the playing field at all, actually.
So there's my thoughts to this for now. I'll be interested in your thoughts in response.
suzy smith
Life is for having fun
An excellent reply, thank you for this Windwalker. And you will not mind [I hope] if I totally disagree with you on your hypothesis here. [may I call it that?]
If I look ‘outside’ of reason, of scientific evidence, of pure logic I still see nothing that would get me to believe in God.
For example some people will listen to bird song and say how wonderful, truly the work of God. I hear a bird sing and although I enjoy it my brain is telling me that all the bird is saying to other birds is “come into my territory and I will attack you’
Intelligence as you say is not the only measure of what makes a person human. But emotion and intelligence are not only two very different parts of the human make up but can and sometimes do interfere with each other. One man sees a sunset and believes in God, I see a sunset and think of that star over there shinning through all that atmosphere sure makes the sky look nice.
To quote you, ‘But to make it simple for your average higher intelligent person to see beyond mere appearance of reality that the reasoning mind can apprehend’
My reply to that, to go beyond reality and the reasoning mind is to go into unreality and the unreasoning. Then we can believe in anything we choose to believe in?
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Which god? The Abrahamic one? Yeah, I lost my faith in that one. There's many other concepts of deity, though.
It's not really a hypothesis, as it is more an expression of my experience and understanding. It's a way to describe this from experience. It's not a mental speculation for me. The challenge of course it to be able to communicate that in ways that lead to understanding, rather than confusion.
Of course, the problem is people's ideas of what God is or means as a word. If God means the image of God portrayed in mythic literature, taking that literally rather than metaphorically, then I would certainly agree with you and could be called an atheist myself. I do not believe in a literal anthropomorphic sky daddy wholly external to myself manipulating people's lives for some grand design to prove himself to us. That's an interpretation of God, not God. And it's an interpretation I have little use for. So like you, I agree there's no evidence for this. That God doesn't exist in my reality.
Does poetry speak to you, or do you hear a mass of irrational, confused words? So I ask when you say you enjoy the bird, isn't that in itself enough without analyzing it critically? And what is that pleasure? Is it always just some emotional "happy", or can it at times go much deeper than emotions? Deeper in such ways as it expands your conscious awareness to the world, to self, to existence, to being, that goes beyond mental thoughts in the form of words and categories and definitions, such as engaging in the thought that the bird marking its territory?
When people use the word God, it can mean the "big guy in the sky", or it can mean the vastness of awareness that touches everything and connects everything to each other, that all is One. The bird, can evoke an awareness of that connection, if we allow it. And we allow it, by not trying to "figure crap out" all the time and simply let it be what it is, and let ourselves be what we are as well, beyond the tool of critical thought. Being human, knowing that, requires letting go sometimes. Right?
And the goal of emotional development is to balance the mind and emotions into a healthy working relationship, rather than either repressing emotions or repressing the intellect. The exact same thing is true with spiritual development, balancing body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Spirituality can become out of balance too as it tries to dominate the show, rejecting and suppressing reason. The healthy individual is developed in all these areas of their lives, not just a thinking calculator who at the end of the day is out of touch with their nature.
Emotions are non-rational, and not necessarily irrational which means they deny and violate reason, instead of simply being not of the same nature as rationality. The same thing is true of spirituality. It is non-rational in nature, but not irrational in nature, unless it is an out of balance spirituality, just like an out of balance emotionality.
It's the same experience of transcendence, whatever symbol someone which to hang it on whether that be God, the Universe, Nature, or whatnot. But the key difference is it is an experience different from analyzing it in terms of definitions and scientific dissections. It is the difference between reading about the ocean, and actually falling into it and experiencing it beyond words about it. It's really simple, actually. But not so simple to do when we cling to trying to understanding everything with the mind.
Nope. Not at all. Balance. It is not reason that alone informs, but all aspects, all perceptions, all knowing from all areas of our lives. They inform the whole, rather than being dictated to from outside ourselves to tell us what to "believe", be that religion or science in that role of external authority. The self must be engaged, discovered, and known. That is an inner work, through introspection, through meditation, through direct experience. You don't think about the sunset, you enter into it.
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Mycroft
Ministry of Serendipity
You don't need to be a theist, or religious at all to have faith.
I am strictly Atheist and I have faith. Faith in science, and humans to eventually overcome all problems and obstacles that lie in our way.
psychoslice
Veteran Member
yes but at least your faith as much to back it up, where religion really has nothing.
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Pegg
Jehovah our God is One
before you can have faith in God, you must first be convinced that he exists.
If you are not convinced of his existence, then there is no way to put faith in him for faith is a firm confidence and reliance on him.
suzy smith
Life is for having fun
No, its facts, proof, using our brain to filter out the unreasonable
And emotion and intuition can be a very poor road to reality if we are not careful.
But as we've covered already, what you assume to be facts and proofs and how they are translated by the mind into "truth" is a very unsure pathway. You assume the mind can be free from influence, while at the same time evaluating itself by itself and the reliable evaluator of reality. The truth of the world to a child of six is not the same truth of the world to an adult of 60, even though they are looking at the same "facts".
I was just reading this written by Evelyn Underhill which oddly underscores what I have been getting at (this is my first reading of her),
"It is immediately apparent, however, that this sense-world, this seemingly real external universe—though it may be useful and valid in other respects—cannot be the external world, but only the Self’s projected picture of it. It is a work of art, not a scientific fact; and, whilst it may well possess the profound significance proper to great works of art, is dangerous if treated as a subject of analysis. Very slight investigation shows that it is a picture whose relation to reality is at best symbolic and approximate, and which would have no meaning for selves whose senses, or channels of communication, happened to be arranged upon a different plan. The evidence of the senses, then, cannot be accepted as evidence of the nature of ultimate reality: useful servants, they are dangerous guides. Nor can their testimony disconcert those seekers whose reports they appear to contradict."
It appears to me that the surety of what you or I think and reason, is itself an illusion of reality. And when we are able to perceive reality outside that single apparatus of cognitive thoughts, we see those themselves for what they are. Until then, they are the only set of eyes we look through, and therefore are unable to see those eyes as eyes. To argue for their supremacy without any other perspective but their own, is like arguing the Bible is the word of God, because the Bible says so. It's self-referential.
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