It’s a nice friendly question and attitude you possess. I truly admire that.
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It’s a nice friendly question and attitude you possess. I truly admire that.
Thanks. Thought at least one thinks otherwise
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
Could there be a force or entity out there that would fit the descriptor? My belief is "maybe".
Could any of the cartoon perceptions and portrayals thereof by any of the world's countless religions be accurate? A strong "lol nope".
Could any of the cartoon perceptions and portrayals thereof by any of the world's countless religions be accurate? A strong "lol nope".
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
By that logic, the existence of comic books prove superheroes are real.
How so? Please help me to understand the correlation between personal experiences and comic books.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
Unless I misunderstood, you seemed to suggest that a form of media about X proves X exists.
You misunderstood. Behavior resulting from the experience of X is evidence of X.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
It proves that X exists within the context Y, where Y is the medium in which X is observed.
***MOVED TO RELIGIOUS DEBATES***
Thanks Christine.
I do not know God. But I believe there is signs of God reflected in His Manifestations. Their Lives and Teachings to me are what convinced me. In all recorded history They have no peer or equal. From the moment They proclaimed Their Mission, They suffered relentless persecution from torture to banishment and crucifixion yet Their Cause was victorious winning the hearts and minds of people all over the world. To this day billions model their lives on Their counsels and laws.
They claimed Their mission was to call men back to God, to godliness and a praiseworthy character. To me, only through a power born of God could Their Cause have overcome all adversities and thrived.
How are these Great Beings explained?
Not particularly religious, no. Not currently a member of any organized religion, and can't see myself joining any in the foreseeable future.
Experience. I have experiences, have had experiences. I don't discount them. I mean, I might be deluded about the meaning of my experiences, or even of what I remember as my experiences. But I don't think so. However, what I do discount are interpretations that attempt to classify/categorize my experiences.
Like when a friend related an experience of seeing an entity in his room one evening, which he interpreted as an angel. There was the experience of the entity on the one hand, and the interpretation as an angel on the other...I understand his reasons for his interpretation, but I personally do not accept that interpretation except on a provisional basis...
Thus, at the current time, I don't do deities. How would I even be able to tell if I was experiencing something that by its very nature must be beyond my ability to conceive, if not perceive?
What I have is experiences--which I choose to NOT discount as 'mere' misperceptions, illusions, etc.--that some might classify as encounters with spirit or deity, but I choose not to explain them as such; those are possible explanations, but I recognize other possible explanations, too.
I grew up like most all people being exposed to religion as a child. While my sister and cousins all bought into the claims I had serious doubts. I kept asking why we are in church, and what do these ideas mean, and what is God, and who is jesus, etc. I got very unsatisfactory answers. I was 8-9-10 when I first noticed my Catholic aunt's family did not get along with my Southern Baptist aunt's family. All were Christians and had the same core beliefs, but huge disagreement. I couldn't help but notice something very wrong here. The ideals of their religions were not working. It all rubbed me the wrong way. I could not get into any religious belief due to the serious discrepancies.
It wasn't until my 30's that I started studying religion and philosophy that my intuition was correct, that religions offer a conditional and subjective truth that tends tyo not conform to fatcs or what we can know is true about reality. That lead me to studying the psychology of religion. This area of human behavior is actually pretty well explained, and understanding how the human brain evolved to believe, and how belief in tribal norms allowed humans to survive through difficult periods of history, can inform us about why we believe today, and why belief is so important to those people and not others.
As we debate the beliefs of religious people we skeptics are ofetn asked whethere we believe in their version of God. The dilemma is that these Gods are poorly defined, and what makes a Muslim not a Christian is the rules they follow, not how their God is defined. They supposedly follow the same God. Having debated since 1996 I have seena trend where theists are less willing to define what they think their God is, and have a very vague notion of God. God tends to be an ambiguous idea, so as a debate claim it is very difficult to render judgment. Theists may offer what they believe is evidence but it is more accurately to call it more claims. Rejecting this weak evidence leads to being accused of not being open minded, or not getting it, or something else. Oddly believers can't explain what they "see" or if they have special abilities to see evidence for God. So what gives?
I defer back to what the psychology of religion outlines, and that religious belief is learned behavior, and ideas are accepted and adopted from others in their social experience. These cultural concepts are learned mush the same way language is learned, it is not a dliberate and conscious action, it is a function of how our social brains work. We learn words, meanings, concepts, and then use these in how we relate to others. Conformity to group norms is a crucial impulse for most humans, and we behave this way without realizing it. How many people in your city of region root for local sports teams and not teams far away from you? I live in Kansas City and our football team is playing in the Superbowl next week. You don't see any Eagles fans in town UNLESS they have an affiliation to philadelphia. That's tribalism at work.
Theists who insist their God exists, yet can't offer extraordinary evidence it does, are often frustrated with skeptics asking for more evidnce and a coherent explanation of the evidence. They typically admit in the end that it is faith, not reason and facts, that they used to decide a God exists. That is not good enough for critical thinkers.
I often point out these natural phenomenon that should not exist with a moral God that is a creator. Believers tend to ignore these. These examples obviously is a conumdrum for them, and certainly a fly in their belief in a moral God. Some have blamed the Devil for these problems, but that only begs the question of why God created the Devil if it knew the trouble he would cause. The buck stops at God, the Creator.
Exaltist Ethan
Bridging the Gap Between Believers and Skeptics
God has always existed as The Omniverse, humanity's role in it is to raise the divinity of it. And every religion raises the divinity of God. That's why ultimately I believe that God is change, because without change, entropy and extropy couldn't exist, and The Omniverse wouldn't and couldn't develop in the ways it has now.
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"Spiritual but not religious" -
First, a short ditty I wrote in 2009 the :
God is a word many define
as a creature made of straw
or perhaps as reverse canine
who from clouds gives down law.
So many claim "God is mine"
or create theological slaw,
I would like to draw a line
and on bad definitions gnaw.
So my use of "God" could be replaced by "Divine Beloved", "That", "Light" or other words with hopefully less emotional baggage.as a creature made of straw
or perhaps as reverse canine
who from clouds gives down law.
So many claim "God is mine"
or create theological slaw,
I would like to draw a line
and on bad definitions gnaw.
The Divine Beloved came into my life back in the end of the 1960's in a way that dramatically changed my path in life. Over the years I've had experiences so meaningful that they are clear and sharp in my being even today. "The Divine Beloved is always with you, in you and around you. Know you are not separate from Him."
I've found others much more advanced whose works cause me to say "Yes, that's the experience and that's the message" from all the major religions as well as Native American sources. These being include Judaism's Baal Shem Tov, Islamic Sufism's Rumi, Hafiz, (female) Rabia of Basra, Hinduism's Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna Paramhamsa and the Chinese Buddhist woman Guanyin.
If I take the religious "overcoat" off their words, the message is the same though the words be different: Be kind, be loving, be helpful. Live in joy, live in peace, live in harmony, live in beauty.
But our views of reality are all imagined and supposed. What makes it seem real is that others share in that same framework of suppositions. In other words, you participate in a collective imagination. But is that really real reality? Or is it just a shared illusion of reality, or a collective mind's idea of what reality is?
There is a great saying I heard that says this well. "The God you don't believe in, doesn't exist". What you believe is real, that is what is reality and what exists to you. If you don't believe in it, you don't see it and it doesn't exist to you. All our experiences of reality, are a mediated reality, not what reality actually is.
The Kilted Heathen
Crow FreyjasmaðR
Am I religious? Eh. Spiritual and a Theist, certainly, but I don't belong to a particular group anymore.
As isn't hidden, I'm a Heathen, or a Norse Pagan. Worship of the gods isn't so much a big thing in Heathenry as many would think; first and foremost our duty is to our family, our ancestors (keeping honorable the family/clan name), and our community as a whole. Then we honor the land we live on. Then we honor the gods in their due time. I recognize and honor Thor in the thunderstorm, Freyja and Freyr in the wilds and the fields for harvest. Skadi in the winter storms, Ran and Njord in the seas, Odin in the skies. Their existence is, to me, undeniable and crucial to our world, but ultimately not something to overly dwell on. Our holidays and feast days are built around the seasons and the turning of the wheel, serving function to bring the community together. As well we feast and gather to remember our forebearers, and to honor their memory.
How is the universe an omniverse?
And do we rather insigificant humans create this divinity? If so, how, and why is it relevant?
Assuming any of the many versions of God exists, which seems to be up to the average mortal.
So to whittle down your lingo, the universe is change. Words like omniverse and God are confusing alternative words that can be misleading.