Religion. Thread

The Flying Spaghetti Monster bible was pretty amusing, I must admit. It's also become one of the biggest meta-jokes ever.

Pascal's Wager is unspecific, and therefore worthless, and false. On the assumptions of Pascal alone, any faith is equally supported yet many are damning without singular acceptance and a significant majority are directly contradictory. One cannot be a Catholic, Protestant, and Mormon, much less a Jew, Christian, and Muslim, and those are merely the standard Abrahamic religions. Worst, Pascal's Wager does not consider faiths where actions and motivations alter standing in later lives, such as those of Hinduism. Further, one must agree with Pascal that you lose nothing by altering your world view to those of a faith, by attending church and prostrating oneself, by giving tithes, by accepting certain dogmas, and similar; however, considering I just wrote what is lost (personal world view, time and efforts, money, certain actions, etc.), the premise would be false.

I am frequently surprised by people who feel the argument should be convincing, and I am further surprised by the people who know the formal name of the argument who feel the argument should be convincing. What a meager faith you possess.

What you have done, and this is considering your assumptions regarding the Big Bang to be 100% valid (which I'll be upon in a moment), is drawn a tie between all potentially supernatural sources for an absolute beginning of the cosmos. Natural causes are still significantly favored as not one phenomenon of the cosmos requires the invocation of any supernatural source to explain, whereas natural causes are sufficient to explain a plethora of phenomenon and appear sufficient to explain phenomenon we are currently understanding.

Now, the reason natural causes are favored is because supernatural sources require arbitrary elements. The more arbitrary elements invoked*, the less likely the explanation is to be correct.

*Elements which are more influencing are more heavily weighted, for instance, benevolence and name are both arbitrary, but the name is staggeringly unimportant whereas benevolence has significant complications.

The first assumption, but not most important, regarding the Big Bang presumes a "thing", whereas no "thing" is required; the beginning of the Big Bang may merely be a natural consequence (natural as in the "nature of X" not as in scientific naturalism) of what exists beyond our cosmos.

The second assumption, and far more important, is the Big Bang is an absolute beginning, which is where you draw your conclusion of requiring a "beginner" from. The obvious question comes, "what began this beginner?" Well, you merely need to dismiss the notion with special pleading, or ignore the notion of absolute beginnings. I believe Robert Jordan inadvertently explains this best, "The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning."

The Big Bang is the beginning of the current state of our universe, and nothing further. I will matter-of-factly state we possess no knowledge of beyond our cosmos or if a beyond our cosmos exists at all, thus this is irrelevant beyond clarity that a "thing" is not necessary. We may be one of many innumerable fluxuations of the singularity, we may be the first, we may be the last, or we may be the only, and we may be one of many innumerable singularities. Nothing may be known as much as we were the singularity.

Of course, those men made scientific strives in spite of the dogmatism preached which greatly delayed or attempted to destroy the gathering of knowledge while turning the populations away from understanding our world. Imagine philanthropists giving grants to scientists, and imagine an organization such as the Vatican patronizing scientists, rather than both commissioning religious works. Today, scientists are predominantly non-theistic, and we make strives in theory and application which those listed couldn't conceive of at a rate those listed couldn't hope for.

Nothing within religion cannot be accomplished without, but we could shirk an engine of divisiveness and misinformation.

Ravi Zacharias is an uninformed, presumptive panderer.

Pascal's Wager is not an argument posed on logic, nor does this matter since I am not arguing on the logic of the argument. Further, I explain exactly what I state immediately thereafter.

But, natural causes do not inherently require them, and we possess fewer assumptions in our natural causes, which is exactly what I explained immediately thereafter.

The supernatural is what is inherently not demonstrable. If it manifests in physical reality, it is demonstrable, and is therefore natural.

In "Leading Scientists Still Reject God," in vol 394 of Nature, 72.2% of scientists who responded disbelieved in a person deity whereas 20.8% were doubtful. 93% are considered non-theistic (notice, nonreligious and non-theist are different terms, please don't conflate the two.

Except, quite obviously by the way I used the term, I'm not speaking of epistemology or similar; I am speaking of demonstrable knowledge.

Developments of theory are of little interest to the population, but this is why I listed application and why I noted those listed, aka the scientists previously noted as faithful.

Youtube.com
^Zeitgeist^greastest story ever told... I thought i'd throw that in there for reference and a breath of life in this thread.

Edited by: Skull-Wart

The only true disbelief is ignorance to the question at hand.

KaboomMaster: Cast resurrection
System: Target?
KaboomMaster: This post
System: This post is now revived with half health and 30% mana.

Edited by: KaboomMaster

It is in-fact the other way around. If one believes only in a certain religion, they are not open-minded. They are only preoccupied with the illusion that their religion is the only way to go, while in reality their ignorance shows prominently.

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~Toyoka's Gaming Channel~

If oyu accept a religion, and yousay that you are a Christian, or Budhist, or a Muslim, then you accept thatreligion and nothing else. I am communist but I like capitalism.Something like that?

I am a Greek Orthodox Christian. Can I be a Muslim as well? No. But I respect the believes of other people.

I'm not saying that you are ignorant by saying you have a religion. I'm saying that since religion is based on faith which is your belief in something regardless of definitive repeatable proof that what you believe in exists than believing in anything from nothing to worshiping the Banana God you are still part of a religion based on your belief. My point was that the only way to escape the whirlpool of religion is to be ignorant of the answer when someone asks you "What are your beliefs?"

Language is a practical construct. While those restricted to philosophy 101 suggest we possess faith, this is inaccurate linguistically and neurologically. We simply do not call this faith because such a term is meaningless; no matter how knowledgeable, experienced, and otherwise assured a person is, the person would still be said to possess faith. However, the term is inaccurate since faith is extraordinary trust, that is, beyond what we reasonably trust which is informed by previous experience. Further, our knowledge and experiences subconsciously do not consider faith, and this is especially true when one considers reactions or gesturing. Faith is a conscious effort as our brain does not place faith in the interpretation of our experiences. To our brain, the chair supports us; no faith about this.

Notice, for yourself, the personal experiences you possess which you interpret as signs of a deity are not necessarily based on faith for you; they may be as experiential as the sensory data for my keyboard. I would say those experiences are an inaccurate representation of reality, but those experiences are not faithful except when broadly using, therefore consciously, the term faith.

Consciously, we still do not generally operate on faith. We are usually assured whatever information received is accurate. When we make a choice, we make this based on knowledge of our information pitted against the unknown and potential alternate outcomes. Faith does not play until we hope our choice was accurate or until we hope our choice works.

Qualify this statement as this is a gross mischaracterization when suggesting atheists place faith in themselves whereas theists place faith in a deity. I do not place faith in myself (replace faith with trust, but I digress) in any way different from how a theist places faith in themselves or in others.

No one told me deities do not exist. I certainly was not told the Judeo-Christian deity in particular did not exist. Whereas others told you God does exist, lack of existence of a deity is simply not an asserted statement. We begin with no recognition of deities, most of us, especially most of us speaking on this message board (read: industrialized or industrializing nations) will be told a deity exists, and those who are atheist will reason out arguments against such an existence. Whether this is with the arguments of others or not, I have never heard of anyone who lacks belief in a deity who was told the deity did not exist.

I assume you mean trusting in the arguments of others, rather than strictly being told, but those involved in organized religions often project towards atheists and nontheists because, frankly, a lack of a doctrine and a lack of a belief are foreign concepts, and I thought to correct this.

Atheism is a lack of belief in a deity. Lacking a belief in a unicorn does not necessitate a belief in the nothing which occupies the space unicorns once held in fantasy. Otherwise, we would need innumerable beliefs in an indescribably vast amount of nothings which renders the term belief useless and passive. By the logic you used, a theist would need to lack belief in the nothing of atheism, since obviously separate nothings must exist for a lack of belief in a deity and a lack of belief in unicorns, in order to believe in a deity but not the belief you thrust upon atheism, which is a whirlwind of nonsense quickly with repetitious infinite beliefs.

In reality, a lack of belief is merely short hand for, in generic terms, belief of other claims which occupy the identical space. I, as an atheist, do not believe in a deity, but this is because I accept the demonstrability of natural laws and scientific theory for all which has been trumpeted as supernatural.

Agnosticism is only the position the answer to a question is inherently unknowable, often applied to deities, but says nothing about belief. Theism is the broad belief in a willful deity who interacts within this universe, but this does often necessitate the acceptance of a religion even if not organized or stemming from within. Pantheism is the belief in a supernatural force which exists outside of this universe which is the creative power. Deism is the belief of a willful deity who does not interact within this universe, merely began this universe either directly or indirectly. Panantheism is the belief the universe itself is a supernatural power which began itself.

Most religions are contradictory, thus you cannot accept all religions. One can say any religion may be accurate, but this means you accept none.

I've been a constant atheist through my life until one morning where I woke up from a dream where I was brought to the presence of an oceanic god in the form of a colossal whale's silhouette, in a secret ocean found through this watery portal inside of a cloud, who wished to know if I had questions, it didn't specify what subjects to ask about. It was a bit of a daunting experience so I asked nothing and that's where I awoke. My dreams are usually disorderly and are very difficult to remember so this is seriously under my consideration. Have any of you met with a seemingly god-like form in the sky, sea, or on the land because I think there could be more of these entities in other places?

I am no stranger to the sub-conscious affect on dreams but this felt different from the others. I've had no traumatizing nor stimulating events before or beyond that time when I had the dream. Perhaps you're right that it could be symbolism of my conscious life but this had weight to it. Another thing is that this dream happened twice, and none of my dreams ever happen more than once, so I'll still be waiting for that god and I will ask it as many questions as I can when that time comes. Thanks for the insight.