I believe what I do because I have faith. I talk with God, and I've felt his presence. Because I know certain things have not happened by coincidence, like creation or knowledge of what is right and what is wrong.This might sound rude, but what would you do if I provide you with better answers or explanations. but before I do so, what do you consider a good answer? what does a good answer contain or provide to you? what makes a good answer? is the appeal to emotions or tradition part of it?
I believe what I do because when I started to question what my faith and God was, I was lead to a great mentor who gave me a lot of great information about Him.
This might sound rude, but what would you do if I provide you with better answers or explanations. but before I do so, what do you consider a good answer? what does a good answer contain or provide to you? what makes a good answer? is the appeal to emotions or tradition part of it?
I don't have anything against religious people. I don't care what religion people are, as long as they support the basic principles of humanity. Some evangelical religious people will give you the clothes off of their backs and some atheists are total assholes about everything. That is life. That is my biggest beef with religion is that every group is painted with too wide of a paintbrush. That is why I hate discussing anything religion on the internet.
Lost my wallet. Prayed. Got my wallet back again. Thank you Lord!
it is not a huge cognitive leap from the little faiths that move us through our day to the big ones of religion.
faith itself is not a fallacious concept -- we are not omniscient creatures. putting one foot in front of the other every day are little acts of faith: faith that the ground is there as our eyes perceive it, faith that there are no hazards or pitfalls that could kill us. faith is a necessary transactional element of consciousness and our exceedingly finite capacity to know and experience our world as our limited senses permit.
One thing that I can't say that I've ever understood, when it comes to religion talks, are atheists that try so hard to disprove people of other beliefs.
One thing that I can't say that I've ever understood, when it comes to religion talks, are atheists that try so hard to disprove people of other beliefs. It's like they just find it unacceptable that anyone believe in a god because they don't, and they're easily offended when somebody responds to something they say that is contrary to what they think.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's admirable that some of them put so much time in to researching why they don't believe in a god. That doesn't mean the rest of us have to log as many hours as they do about why we DO believe in a god. Faith in a god is what it is. Beliefs can be changed or modified as the believer chooses to educate themselves. The same thing applies for atheists. Faith in nothing (nothing meaning no god) is what it is.
We all know that organized religion is a sham. It has been from day one. Too many people together trying to make a god out of what they believe is right will never work, and inevitably somebody will be put into that system and allowed to make changes with other motives (money, sex, power) than what is in the best interest of that religious system.
At the end of the day, the one thing that I have to ask is this: If I'm wrong and the atheists are right; when I die what does it matter? If I'm wrong, I will die and that will be the end of it one day. I still live a good moral life, I don't break any major laws, and nobody gets hurt because of me.
tl;dr version: Why so serious?
One thing that I can't say that I've ever understood, when it comes to religion talks, are atheists that try so hard to disprove people of other beliefs. It's like they just find it unacceptable that anyone believe in a god because they don't, and they're easily offended when somebody responds to something they say that is contrary to what they think.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's admirable that some of them put so much time in to researching why they don't believe in a god. That doesn't mean the rest of us have to log as many hours as they do about why we DO believe in a god. Faith in a god is what it is. Beliefs can be changed or modified as the believer chooses to educate themselves. The same thing applies for atheists. Faith in nothing (nothing meaning no god) is what it is.
We all know that organized religion is a sham. It has been from day one. Too many people together trying to make a god out of what they believe is right will never work, and inevitably somebody will be put into that system and allowed to make changes with other motives (money, sex, power) than what is in the best interest of that religious system.
At the end of the day, the one thing that I have to ask is this: If I'm wrong and the atheists are right; when I die what does it matter? If I'm wrong, I will die and that will be the end of it one day. I still live a good moral life, I don't break any major laws, and nobody gets hurt because of me.
tl;dr version: Why so serious?
Also what on earth does 'infantesimally' mean?
Before you jump too far ahead of yourself, I'll tell you two things:
(1st) I believe that science supports God, and vice versa. I work in the medical field, and I see this evidence supported every day.
(2nd) Some of my best friends are athiests and agnostics. I've sat and had a lot of discussions with them about faith and God. You probably won't have a whole lot to say that will shock and awe me.
Now, I am curious as to what answers or explanations you want to give me? If you are talking about something like creation, for instance, then I should tell you that any person can clearly see that the story of Adam and Eve is not the end-all-be-all for how it all started.
Now, I am curious as to what answers or explanations you want to give me? If you are talking about something like creation, for instance, then I should tell you that any person can clearly see that the story of Adam and Eve is not the end-all-be-all for how it all started.
QuoteNow, I am curious as to what answers or explanations you want to give me? If you are talking about something like creation, for instance, then I should tell you that any person can clearly see that the story of Adam and Eve is not the end-all-be-all for how it all started.
How then can you justify perpetrating this? Any faith which doesn't renounce these primitive creation myths in the face of evidence for the age of the universe etc is literally retarding society, in my opinion. Regardless of whether educated / intelligent folks can see through it or not - religion is inflicted upon the least educated and able among us by the castes that make it their living.
I could spend an indefinite amount of time making up fairy tale monsters with weird qualifications for why they can't be observed directly. If anyone questions whether they exist I could just as easily say they can't be proven to be made up fairy tale monsters that are always invisible. It's a faulty line of reasoning. We don't prove/test negatives.At this point the hypothesis is not testable. There is no point in continuing to study it, the question might however divert into why it is necessary to accept it or what good can come from accepting it, does practicing this belief do any good that can't be achieved without it? does it add anything needed to expand our models of understanding reality? some people can find the case to be so while others don't and I think thats where the majority of us differ when it comes to those kind of questions.
faith itself is not a fallacious concept -- we are not omniscient creatures. putting one foot in front of the other every day are little acts of faith: faith that the ground is there as our eyes perceive it, faith that there are no hazards or pitfalls that could kill us. faith is a necessary transactional element of consciousness and our exceedingly finite capacity to know and experience our world as our limited senses permit. it is not a huge cognitive leap from the little faiths that move us through our day to the big ones of religion.I am not ruling out the existence of faith in our day to day lives but I think you are magnifying it a bit too much.
At the end of the day, the one thing that I have to ask is this: If I'm wrong and the atheists are right; when I die what does it matter? If I'm wrong, I will die and that will be the end of it one day. I still live a good moral life, I don't break any major laws, and nobody gets hurt because of me.
faith itself is not a fallacious concept -- we are not omniscient creatures. putting one foot in front of the other every day are little acts of faith: faith that the ground is there as our eyes perceive it, faith that there are no hazards or pitfalls that could kill us. faith is a necessary transactional element of consciousness and our exceedingly finite capacity to know and experience our world as our limited senses permit. it is not a huge cognitive leap from the little faiths that move us through our day to the big ones of religion.I am not ruling out the existence of faith in our day to day lives but I think you are magnifying it a bit too much.
What you are talking about is also called inductive and deductive reasoning. for example:
Premise: The sun has risen in the east every morning up until now.
Conclusion: The sun will also rise in the east tomorrow.
The same can be said about taking footsteps, you are not being blind folded and pushed down a step of stairs, your decisions are educated and come from previous observations and trials, you have learned to do this through observations, cause and effect reasoning and comparative reasoning among other kinds of reasoning.
You see others do it when you are a kid, you attempt practicing it when your legs are strong enough to hold your weight, and most importantly you see the evidence and the results, something that you don't do when it comes to faith in a God.
Faith might sound a little bit more poetic but its not faith that makes us walk and put one foot in front of the other, its our reasoning abilities combined with the necessity and the reward of doing so.
you can never know that your next step will not be your last -- that the ground will NOT dissolve underfoot. you can be assured of it, of course, but that is faith: assurance, not perfect certainty.
faith is reasoning based on faulty or imperfect data, interpreted to impart a sense of security around the immediately unknowable. what we experience -- the data we accumulate through living -- will always be imperfect and flawed, because it is derived through our limited senses and perceptions, as well as our limited ability to interpret our own past through recall. (after all, it is very hard to scientifically test and verify for what has already occurred, and upon those precepts we attempt to move forward in our lives.)
faith is not a foolish thing when properly applied. it is an acknowledgment of the unknowable and of our own limitations, but that we must move forward nonetheless, assuming where we cannot verify. it is not foolish when it is used in a practical capacity -- to impel us forward believing that the sun will rise, we are still employed at our jobs, our family is still there, and the world has not dramatically changed from the previous day. if we lived every day under the assumption that the future *is* immediately unknowable -- which is actually is -- we would be paralyzed. faith becomes foolish when it does not examine the sum of one's senses and experience, or when it does not examine alternatives, and operates on an irrational base, such as "i am told by many people that the christian god is real, and i feel very strongly that he must be because of a specific moment in my life," which demonstrates a faith predicated not on observable patterns and/or self-knowledge (the function that corrects and averages the sum of our experience) but on social memetics and (often willful) self-ignorance.
that said, the wisdom of the atheist or the agnostic comes NOT from the reverence of the dogma that is the scientific method (despite its overall worthiness as a strategy), but from the acknowledgment that we are fundamentally limited in our senses and recall, and that our realities are tapestries fabricated by these limitations (to put a lame poetic twist on it) AND that we must be forever doubting, questioning, and exploring if we are to maximize our lives. then, knowing that we operate on faith, and understanding its role in our lives, and struggling to understand it, we can also eject it when it fails to provide a practical answer -- and the practical answer to "why do i do anything if it's all unknowable to me" is not "LOL GOD!" but "because i am what i am, and i must move forward," and to have faith in your own essential nature as not just a human being, but in your own self and the product of your eminently fallible senses and recall -- and that you continue to test and observe and doubt and question in order to COMPENSATE for the nature of faith itself and its necessity in your existence.
you can never know that your next step will not be your last -- that the ground will NOT dissolve underfoot. you can be assured of it, of course, but that is faith: assurance, not perfect certainty.
faith is reasoning based on faulty or imperfect data, interpreted to impart a sense of security around the immediately unknowable. what we experience -- the data we accumulate through living -- will always be imperfect and flawed, because it is derived through our limited senses and perceptions, as well as our limited ability to interpret our own past through recall. (after all, it is very hard to scientifically test and verify for what has already occurred, and upon those precepts we attempt to move forward in our lives.)
faith is not a foolish thing when properly applied. it is an acknowledgment of the unknowable and of our own limitations, but that we must move forward nonetheless, assuming where we cannot verify. it is not foolish when it is used in a practical capacity -- to impel us forward believing that the sun will rise, we are still employed at our jobs, our family is still there, and the world has not dramatically changed from the previous day. if we lived every day under the assumption that the future *is* immediately unknowable -- which is actually is -- we would be paralyzed. faith becomes foolish when it does not examine the sum of one's senses and experience, or when it does not examine alternatives, and operates on an irrational base, such as "i am told by many people that the christian god is real, and i feel very strongly that he must be because of a specific moment in my life," which demonstrates a faith predicated not on observable patterns and/or self-knowledge (the function that corrects and averages the sum of our experience) but on social memetics and (often willful) self-ignorance.
that said, the wisdom of the atheist or the agnostic comes NOT from the reverence of the dogma that is the scientific method (despite its overall worthiness as a strategy), but from the acknowledgment that we are fundamentally limited in our senses and recall, and that our realities are tapestries fabricated by these limitations (to put a lame poetic twist on it) AND that we must be forever doubting, questioning, and exploring if we are to maximize our lives. then, knowing that we operate on faith, and understanding its role in our lives, and struggling to understand it, we can also eject it when it fails to provide a practical answer -- and the practical answer to "why do i do anything if it's all unknowable to me" is not "LOL GOD!" but "because i am what i am, and i must move forward," and to have faith in your own essential nature as not just a human being, but in your own self and the product of your eminently fallible senses and recall -- and that you continue to test and observe and doubt and question in order to COMPENSATE for the nature of faith itself and its necessity in your existence.
I am not really sure about this but I hope you realize that a decent amount of our knowledge comes from deductive reasoning. In Chemistry, every time we mix chemical A with chemical B we get chemical C, and every time we do so we get the same result. although we don't know what the future holds for us this allows us to accept that A+B=C. What assures us that the next time we mix A with B and get C is the past experiences and not faith.
Proof of that is if we have done this experiment a billion times we would be better assured and more certain and confident than when we have done it only twice.
Right, and we can see it happening with every other public figure of high morals and a high Q rating, like Gandhi or MLK. People of lesser worth try to hitch a ride and start using that mindshare for their own ends. Ultimately to me it doesn't matter whether a religion actually seriously pushes their creation myth or just allows it to stay out there and doesn't really expect people to take it seriously. As long they are not saying, fuck it, we don't know, let's get to work on FINDING OUT, they're part of the problem in my book.
(not that everyone has to be investigating the mysteries of quantum physics or I will hunt them down, far from it. You just have to not actively stand in the way of intellectual and social advancement of our whole species)
faith itself is not a fallacious concept -- we are not omniscient creatures. putting one foot in front of the other every day are little acts of faith: faith that the ground is there as our eyes perceive it, faith that there are no hazards or pitfalls that could kill us. faith is a necessary transactional element of consciousness and our exceedingly finite capacity to know and experience our world as our limited senses permit. it is not a huge cognitive leap from the little faiths that move us through our day to the big ones of religion.I am not ruling out the existence of faith in our day to day lives but I think you are magnifying it a bit too much.
What you are talking about is also called inductive and deductive reasoning. for example:
Premise: The sun has risen in the east every morning up until now.
Conclusion: The sun will also rise in the east tomorrow.
The same can be said about taking footsteps, you are not being blind folded and pushed down a step of stairs, your decisions are educated and come from previous observations and trials, you have learned to do this through observations, cause and effect reasoning and comparative reasoning among other kinds of reasoning.
You see others do it when you are a kid, you attempt practicing it when your legs are strong enough to hold your weight, and most importantly you see the evidence and the results, something that you don't do when it comes to faith in a God.
Faith might sound a little bit more poetic but its not faith that makes us walk and put one foot in front of the other, its our reasoning abilities combined with the necessity and the reward of doing so.
you can never know that your next step will not be your last -- that the ground will NOT dissolve underfoot. you can be assured of it, of course, but that is faith: assurance, not perfect certainty.
faith is reasoning based on faulty or imperfect data, interpreted to impart a sense of security around the immediately unknowable. what we experience -- the data we accumulate through living -- will always be imperfect and flawed, because it is derived through our limited senses and perceptions, as well as our limited ability to interpret our own past through recall. (after all, it is very hard to scientifically test and verify for what has already occurred, and upon those precepts we attempt to move forward in our lives.)
faith is not a foolish thing when properly applied. it is an acknowledgment of the unknowable and of our own limitations, but that we must move forward nonetheless, assuming where we cannot verify. it is not foolish when it is used in a practical capacity -- to impel us forward believing that the sun will rise, we are still employed at our jobs, our family is still there, and the world has not dramatically changed from the previous day. if we lived every day under the assumption that the future *is* immediately unknowable -- which is actually is -- we would be paralyzed. faith becomes foolish when it does not examine the sum of one's senses and experience, or when it does not examine alternatives, and operates on an irrational base, such as "i am told by many people that the christian god is real, and i feel very strongly that he must be because of a specific moment in my life," which demonstrates a faith predicated not on observable patterns and/or self-knowledge (the function that corrects and averages the sum of our experience) but on social memetics and (often willful) self-ignorance.
that said, the wisdom of the atheist or the agnostic comes NOT from the reverence of the dogma that is the scientific method (despite its overall worthiness as a strategy), but from the acknowledgment that we are fundamentally limited in our senses and recall, and that our realities are tapestries fabricated by these limitations (to put a lame poetic twist on it) AND that we must be forever doubting, questioning, and exploring if we are to maximize our lives. then, knowing that we operate on faith, and understanding its role in our lives, and struggling to understand it, we can also eject it when it fails to provide a practical answer -- and the practical answer to "why do i do anything if it's all unknowable to me" is not "LOL GOD!" but "because i am what i am, and i must move forward," and to have faith in your own essential nature as not just a human being, but in your own self and the product of your eminently fallible senses and recall -- and that you continue to test and observe and doubt and question in order to COMPENSATE for the nature of faith itself and its necessity in your existence.
I believe what I do because I have faith. I talk with God, and I've felt his presence. Because I know certain things have not happened by coincidence, like creation or knowledge of what is right and what is wrong.
I believe what I do because when I started to question what my faith and God was, I was lead to a great mentor who gave me a lot of great information about Him.
Right, and we can see it happening with every other public figure of high morals and a high Q rating, like Gandhi or MLK. People of lesser worth try to hitch a ride and start using that mindshare for their own ends. Ultimately to me it doesn't matter whether a religion actually seriously pushes their creation myth or just allows it to stay out there and doesn't really expect people to take it seriously. As long they are not saying, fuck it, we don't know, let's get to work on FINDING OUT, they're part of the problem in my book.
(not that everyone has to be investigating the mysteries of quantum physics or I will hunt them down, far from it. You just have to not actively stand in the way of intellectual and social advancement of our whole species)
Can I take a wee guess about you Cormac? Were you raised in Northern Ireland, under a typical Catholic family, went to typical Catholic school where the priest would come in and the teacher would act as he was the second coming of Christ. There was a general consensus if something felt good it was bad, and a general consensus in the community that alien things like drugs were the worst thing in the world, more so even than protestants.
Its just a guess, I could be way off the mark.
if we lived every day under the assumption that the future *is* immediately unknowable -- which is actually is -- we would be paralyzed.
Right, and we can see it happening with every other public figure of high morals and a high Q rating, like Gandhi or MLK. People of lesser worth try to hitch a ride and start using that mindshare for their own ends. Ultimately to me it doesn't matter whether a religion actually seriously pushes their creation myth or just allows it to stay out there and doesn't really expect people to take it seriously. As long they are not saying, fuck it, we don't know, let's get to work on FINDING OUT, they're part of the problem in my book.
(not that everyone has to be investigating the mysteries of quantum physics or I will hunt them down, far from it. You just have to not actively stand in the way of intellectual and social advancement of our whole species)
Can I take a wee guess about you Cormac? Were you raised in Northern Ireland, under a typical Catholic family, went to typical Catholic school where the priest would come in and the teacher would act as he was the second coming of Christ. There was a general consensus if something felt good it was bad, and a general consensus in the community that alien things like drugs were the worst thing in the world, more so even than protestants.
Its just a guess, I could be way off the mark.
I've gone over my background many times in similar threads so no prizes for guessing, Sherlock. Obviously it informs my views to an extent but since I've lived half of my life in Japan away from the influence of the clergy, my distaste for it is almost purely abstract at this point.