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Robert Shepherd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 March 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 1268
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| Posted: 28 July 2014 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | 1
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Personally I find it much more easier to believe our universe is one giant computer simulation than I do as a creation of an almighty god.
I wonder at the fact that we as humans have invented everything we have imagined....given enough time. Makes me wonder, are we discovering science or manifesting it? Thats not about religion but came off the cuff.
I am always amazed that the religious right believe what they say so passionately especially when all the evidence of the world points to them believing incorrectly or at the very least believing in partial and incomplete information.
I am always amazed that the religious right still chose to believe that the bible is a divine artifact when history shows us it has been a manipulation of man for thousands of years.
I can't stand the "god made me this way" crutch and taking no personal accountability for who you are.
I can't stand the hypocrisy that is the church.
The only good I see coming from the church is the building of community. But they were the first and greatest marketeers when they figured out a way to monetize good will.
I can't stand when anyone defends the bible as a modern explanation of the world around us when it is clearly filled with dated information and perspectives from the mortals who wrote it and the time they lived.
And yet...
Edited by Robert Shepherd on 28 July 2014 at 3:23pm
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Carmen Bernardo
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 August 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 3666
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| Posted: 28 July 2014 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | 2
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I can tell you about this friend who went from being an alchoholic atheist with an anger management issue to being a born-again Christian who wants to raise his son to become a missionary. He actually believes in stuff like the Creationism Museum tells people to believe, along with some other whacky stuff. I pity him.
I'm convinced that he was never really all there to begin with. Family issues as a kid made him a hothead who turned to booze as an escape. Now he's unbalanced in the other way, though otherwise cleaned up.
I'm happier as an agnostic (not an atheist, but not dogmatically spiritual either). I know what I do might not pass the muster that most people find in the Bible or other scriptures, but I know that I do it by my choice. There are no puppet strings attached.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132347
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| Posted: 28 July 2014 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | 3
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I'd be happy to live a Biblical life, but I don't have any daughters to sell into slavery. Maybe I could just kill some homosexuals and wicca?
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Jeremy Simington
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 April 2011
Location: United States
Posts: 687
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| Posted: 28 July 2014 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | 4
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ROBERT SHEPHERD: Personally I find it much more easier to believe our universe is one giant computer simulation...
Related topic: Roko's Basilisk, "The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time."
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Eric White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 October 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 1066
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| Posted: 28 July 2014 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | 5
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But in thousands upon thousands of years of searching, no one, no culture, no religion, no science, has ever been able to show even a glimmer of a hope that WE don't end when we die.
++++++
Except Lazarus. He said life after death is awful! lol
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132347
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| Posted: 28 July 2014 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | 6
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Oh, yeah. And there were all those people Dr. Frankenstein stitched together. They came back from the dead. Or parts of them did.
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Eric White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 October 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 1066
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| Posted: 28 July 2014 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | 7
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I agree with you. We die and that's that. And deep down almost everyone knows that. Otherwise we would all be jumping off of tall buildings in anticipation of hanging out for eternity in Heaven with no worries.
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Armindo Macieira
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 October 2006
Location: Portugal
Posts: 955
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| Posted: 29 July 2014 at 4:23am | IP Logged | 8
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I believe the Bible prevented that by saying that if you suicide you don't go to Heaven. They have (almost) everything figured out.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132347
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| Posted: 29 July 2014 at 5:37am | IP Logged | 9
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The Bible strictly rules against suicide. Of course, it strictly rules against murder, too, which doesn't seem to slow down a lot of people.
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Brian Hague
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 November 2006
Posts: 8515
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| Posted: 29 July 2014 at 5:42am | IP Logged | 10
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I recently got into a small bit of trouble with a friend who was raised in the faith and attended Catholic schools. She was angry with all of the stereotyping and lack of understanding she sees in people who didn't attend her school and live the life she's lived.
She felt everyone perceived her experiences as narrow and filled with evil grown-ups filling her young, unquestioning mind with utter rubbish, when in fact her instructors encouraged her to question her faith and the faiths of others. They held long discussions on the topics of comparative religion and why this culture believes this while that one believes that. And they were good people! They taught her tolerance and to appreciate the beauty of her surroundings. To treasure not only her life but the lives of others. Really, those of us who condemn such things have no idea what we're talking about, she assured me. She had come believe that you had to have been raised in it to truly see the good in it. Those who hadn't been were more or less doomed to condemn it out of ignorance.
I pointed out that I didn't fully understand what it would be like to get that call over the loudspeakers, wait in line, and drink that cup of Flavor-Aid either, but I could nevertheless come to some sort of conclusion regarding the situation nevertheless. And that those within the situation perhaps could not. I hadn't been down-at-heel in pre-WW II Germany and seen the beauty and promise offered by the National Socialist Party, but those who were almost certainly saw what was happening all around them as something bold, exciting, and filled with hope for tomorrow. Unless, y'know, they were the ones being targeted by, what was then, simply propaganda... Just talk.
And there I was, confirming for her that those who judge those raised with belief will always judge them and never be able to see them for who they truly are...
Believers, I said. People who do not operate outside the concept of Belief; who cast everything is questions of Faith and Godliness. What Would Jesus Do. Is this policy in keeping with what I've been taught or is it wrong because it is not? All of what she was taught, the tolerance, the curiosity, the appreciation for the world around her, all was taught under the umbrella of Faith and Belief in the Almighty. Even her examinations of other religions were variations of How Does This Reflect What Is Actually True?
No, it wasn't like that, she said. Math and Science were still Math and Science. There was no talk of God in those classes.
But there were in the others? So, for hours each day, school was still all about that? Still couched in the basic, fundamental questions of religion. And for those of us who work at not seeing things in those terms, we'd rather not have our laws and lives determined for us by those that do.
I'm fairly certain she now feels that I'm lumping her in with all of the unreasoning Fundamentalists and Creationists, just as she feels everyone else does, unable to think for herself when clearly she can, and I hope that's not the case. Still, I hope I was able to make some kind of point about how pervasive the question of Faith can be to those who hold to it and how it can compromise objectivity even when one views oneself as being staunchly vigilant against such influences.
It was a bit funny how each of us took the side of being the objective one in the discussion.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132347
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| Posted: 29 July 2014 at 5:49am | IP Logged | 11
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I had a long relationship with a woman who considered herself a devout Catholic. I told her she was really a [her name]olic, as she had built her own version of Catholocism out of her experiences with a few good nuns and priests growing up. But what she believed had little to do with the actual history of the Faith.We eventually broke up when it became undeniably apparent that I was not going to wake up one morning with a burning desire to father Catholic babies.
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 12448
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| Posted: 29 July 2014 at 6:09am | IP Logged | 12
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Yesterday I watched a bit of Sam Harris debating Reza Aslan, and while Aslan insisted that a modern, moderate person of faith can rationally read his own religious text approving of, say, the Golden Rule, but disapproving of, say, killing infidels, Harris countered that such a cherry-picking reader is then the only guarantor of the morality he finds in the religious text, and as such the text is superfluous.
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