The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Originally Posted by business_kid There's tens of thousands of religions, and I would agree that nearly all of them are quite false and poisonous.

Not surprising, as most of them are basically the same religion.

We can explain a forest (seeds drop, ecosystems are born, yada-yada) so what's the big deal on solar systems!?. Always was, always will be: seeds &c!

On the other hand if I whisper a lie, secret, dream or fairy tale in your ear then tell you the pass it on... and, that's usually only with a small group of people, genius!

It's not too complex just because you don't understand it. E.g: an eyeball doesn't work nearly as well as some of the top cameras!

Originally Posted by business_kid There's tens of thousands of religions, and I would agree that nearly all of them are quite false and poisonous. But I would lump Scientific Atheism in among them in as a mystery religion because you are believing in things nobody can properly explain. So it's a question of perspectives. You're entitled and quite attached to yours, and I'm entitled and quite attached to mine.

It's hard to decide whether to guffaw or be angry when theists say misguided concepts as Science as Religion when they are fundamentally polar opposites. That feeling is ameliorated and such statements can be forgiven since the confusion is so commonplace, much like "the Sun rising" or "getting burned by dry ice". The Sun doesn't "rise", the Earth spins round and tissue damage from cold is quite different than damage from elevated temperatures... it's just that both cause painful inflammation contributing to the common conflating.

The single most common element to ALL religion is Blind Faith literally because it began as trying to explain events with zero evidence because such events were beyond current knowledge or the means to gather any evidence. Ask yourself what tools did Early Man have to comprehend what they could see in the skies or why creatures are born and then die? Now add to that The Big One, The Afterlife, a concept that can never be explored because there not only is but never can be any communication with the Dead or any other means to comprehend what it means to a consciousness to die when the closest we come is deep sleep where even there we experience Nothing consciously. Despite that fundamental obstacle religions claim Absolute, Unquestionable Truth as Fact.

Science, embraces simple, small, measured steps instead of Leaps of Faith, and is NEVER a final, unquestionable Answer. It is instead merely methodology, proven to give objectively confirmed reliable results.

Consider Perception. We cannot possibly ever know, for example, if you and I see the color Red exactly the same. However we can view 10,000 color swabs and after we find that we agree completely on say 100 swabs that those are clearly Red, we have a consensus, a locus, of commonality that makes language work - A Rose by any other name would still smell as sweet... right? It isn't Absolute. It's just a starting point and that's why Science and Religion, though attempting to answer often similar questions of metaphysics, are fundamentally different and actually diametrically opposed.

If you assume or imagine otherwise, you don't understand the definitions. On some Universal Level, it can be rightly said that All = One, but nothing can be done with that. Intelligence requires breaking it down and separating with borders and those borders are explicit in definition, just like Light, or Color, or Red.

Originally Posted by business_kid These virgins have as their doubtful recommendation that through diabolical looks, negative personality, lack of libido, unnatural cravings, sheer insanity or a combination of the above, they gave to worms what they refused to men (Their virginity). The supposed ‘reward’ for croaking it in a Jihad also vastly overestimates the population of females, and dead heaven-worthy virgins or spinsters ready to marry the next dead fighter in particular.

You ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of women over the course of history have lost their virginity through rape or forced marriages arranged by their parents. Even today, these (and social pressure) are probably the commonest roads to female sexual experience.

If all women had a completely free choice with no pressures of any kind, female virginity might be commoner than you would expect.

@ hazel: I stand corrected. I am aware of and upset by mistreatment of women. I was trying to say that the Islamic promise of every fighter killed in a Jihad going to heaven with 7 virgins was more than a little tenuous.

@ enorbet: You like to think of religion & science as polar opposites, but when it comes to origins your faith is blind, as we kind of exposed over 30-40 posts, and I'm not going there again. Your remarks against religion (Unquestioning blind faith, etc) missed my faith, so I have nothing to take issue with. I'm not going to be intimidated by someone whose views are set in cement, as yours appear to be.

I do understand, business_kid, that it can get tiresome having to repeat oneself and especially if there is little confidence the other will get it, but I can't entirely rule out that I am somehow just blindly responding in a pattern to my own education. So I will try.

Let me see if I understand your POV. The bulk of what each of us thinks we know as truth came to us through books, right? The book you most revere and learn from, at least on The Big Questions, is the Christian Bible which from your POV comes on authority of the actual Creator of All Things, am I right so far?

In this book, The Creator revealed to some human intermediaries (roughly 2000 years ago) that He was the sole creator, all other gods are false, He should be worshipped on fear of Eternal Hellfire torture on one hand or for the reward of Eternal Grace, living in Heaven with Him, forever. You likely would not have chosen those exact words but does that get the essentials?

To me, that is blind. It is proving the book by the book, a cosmic con job, with no objective means to put it to the test... any test. The books I have learned from start with 1 + 1 = 2. Because that statement is a construct and a consensus (we agree that One is something, anything, we can view as being singular from some set of definitions as it can be anything as long as we agree that it is singular for the purposes of exercise as it is an Abstract concept) and by any means we like if we add in another single thing we agree that is a duality. We take a one-some and another one-some and now we have a two-some. With me?

We can take any human ever and provide the definitions that as long as we are viewing a thing as a lone entity, and we add another lone entity, now they are no longer alone, we have duality. With that definition we can test fingers, people, apples and oranges. It doesn't matter what the thing is, only that we each see them as One when alone, and Two when together. Nobody can falsify that no matter how many times anyone whjo ever existed or will exist tries. It is an Absolute Truth exactly because of the extremely strict and Universal definitions. Mathematics was designed and constructed to be fundamental and perfect in the Abstract.

Example: There can be no discussion or argument on how far Dublin is from London. It is not moot, not subject to opinion. It is measurable and as long as any two "contestants" agree on the exact starting and ending point, the results will agree. They will verify each other with zero room for error within the accuracy of each measuring tool. This is NOT Faith. This is confidence based on verifiable/falsifiable evidence. It requires no Authority. Anyone, born high or low with just enough education to handle tools WILL come to the same inescapable conclusion because anyone can test it. That distance is there to be measured.

Follow such verifiable logic far enough and one of the things we arrive at, that is also measured and we actually have a "photograph" of, is The Big Bang. I don't have Faith in Big Bang. I am confidant it is highly likely given the measurements anyone with the tools can take. Hundreds if not thousands of people have taken those measurements and millions have tried to falsify them and so far nobody has succeeded in poking a hole in that balloon, AND the perfection of Mathematics shows it all fits. It works. It is of extremely high probability.

Now even if by some incredible circumstance one day Big Bang is found "off the mark" STILL, using your POV, The Creator preceded this Universe He created so I don't even have to ask how can that EVER be measured. I only have to ask how do you measure that? What evidence do you possess that someone else can test? Do you hear or somehow sense God? Does He speak to you? I am not trying to be facetious. I have no sense of God. I have never heard a Word. I cannot by any means even imagine how I could verify what you claim. How can you?

:enorbet:

Originally Posted by enorbet I only have to ask how do you measure that? What evidence do you possess that someone else can test? Do you hear or somehow sense God? Does He speak to you? I am not trying to be facetious. I have no sense of God. I have never heard a Word. I cannot by any means even imagine how I could verify what you claim. How can you?

The funny thing is that practically every religious person (and there are more religious people in this world than irreligious ones like you) has had precisely such experiences! I know I have. Whatever people believe about holy books has to be compatible at some level of interpretation, with their own experience of God. That's why I have come to regard the Bible as the word of God (when correctly interpreted, but that's another can of worms) but have much less respect for the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita.

Maybe you have never had such experiences because you have not looked for them. You do not want to have them, because they would require you to change your entire philosophy of life. That's a big ask. I started out as an atheist too, or at least I called myself one, though looking back on those days, I think I was more of an agnostic because I wasn't emotionally committed to atheism in the way that the so-called New Atheists are. I was young then and willing to learn. I read widely (but not the Bible at that stage) and I decided that the theistic interpretation of life, the universe and everything else made more sense than the atheistic one. And eventually my studies and internal arguments led me to become a Christian. My scientific education came later, but I never felt that there was any incompatibility between the picture of the universe that science painted and the frame that my faith required me to put that picture into.

As for hell, that's just the reverse side of human freedom. If people are to be really free, then they must be free to make disastrous choices. To say that you want freedom but to still expect some sort of divine nanny to come along behind you and clear up all your messes is just childish.

Originally Posted by hazel That's why I have come to regard the Bible as the word of God (when correctly interpreted, but that's another can of worms) but have much less respect for the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita.

But, as Jesus considered himself to be the son of the Jewish God, why don't you regard the Tanakh as the word of God instead?

I do! The Tanakh is simply the first two thirds of the Christian Bible. Christians usually call it the Old Testament. And surprisingly it's that two thirds that atheists seem to have most problems with.

LOL

Do you understand the words coming out of my mouth! No?
Do you understand the words coming out of myyyyy mouth! No?

The way of the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rl9Cxc7uZA

Things have not been the same since Babel fell.

This thread is thinking!

The Tanakh is very late to take seriously; Masoretes were active primarily in the 7th & 8th centuries AD. The Greek Septuagint was 270BC. Moses wrote Genesis - Deuteronomy & Job either side of 1500BC. Many pre-Christian Manuscripts survive, some very old. The older the text, the less copying mistakes. Modern Bibles are translations of the oldest texts.

Lol, but every time people mention Religion, they mention wrong dogmas (e.g. the heaven/hell split) which collapse on examination. To put it bluntly, Hell is the Grave. There was much butchering of the Christian faith when the Romans married in Sun-worship to it 350-360 AD. That marriage (including heaven/hell for all) is responsible for so much falsehood in religions today.

+1 on the Koran - Muhammet taught the earth was flat . And apart from the Koran, there's also 'hadith' = the sayings of 'the prophet' to his family or friends, and what he acquiesced to, perhaps unwillingly. I read the Bhagavad Gita too. It's one long rambling poem. I didn't become a Hindu, to put it at it's mildest. I even read the Book of Mormon, and will reserve frank comment because I don't want to insult everybody on the religious side of this thread. I think I've already managed that on the atheist side .

Hello again hazel. I hope you are doing well. I think you have proven to be an interesting and healthy addition both to LQN and Slackware and often look forward to your thoughts. You didn't disappoint this time either

Originally Posted by hazel The funny thing is that practically every religious person (and there are more religious people in this world than irreligious ones like you) has had precisely such experiences! I know I have. Whatever people believe about holy books has to be compatible at some level of interpretation, with their own experience of God. That's why I have come to regard the Bible as the word of God (when correctly interpreted, but that's another can of worms) but have much less respect for the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita.

My take on the numbers is that with at the very least tens of thousands of years of religious thought which includes pressures, much like systemic racism including lynching and worse but far more importantly, all manner of "shunning" this effectively made it much harder for the non-religious to survive, "get ahead" and bear successful offspring. Homo Sapiens has been groomed and culled to favor Organized Religion. I don't see the numbers as evidence of "rightness", just an example of selective breeding similar to domestication of ancient wolves into modern dogs. It's easier and very beneficial to be a dog rather than a wolf.

Aside from the negative forces applied there are also important positive forces. Religions tend to be Tribal in nature and the wherewithal of a potent tribe, favors it's own. LDS Mormons are not the only ones who provide money and influence so their constituents prosper and multiply. I don't love nor hate this. It just is. It's how we got here. So be it.

Originally Posted by hazel Maybe you have never had such experiences because you have not looked for them. You do not want to have them, because they would require you to change your entire philosophy of life. That's a big ask.

I already mentioned that I am aware that I have my own biases and could simply be acting out something like a program, blind to some of the forces that have shaped me and what that may imply, so I think I do hear you. However I am also painfully aware that from a Christian (and other religious) perspective by being this way I am damned for Eternity in the Hereafter and also some suffer distrust and prejudice in the Here and Now all my Earthly life, at least wherever religion comes up.

In addition to those practical concerns, I come from an moderately large (by US standards anyway - 1 brother and 3 sisters) and loving family. I chose to live with and care for my Father, whose late life dementia drove my Mother away, for 4 years until the day he died with ALL of his family at his bedside. I would LOVE to have some clear sign of some Heavenly Father and know there was some Master Plan to all of this. I would LOVE to be able to believe some part of me will still exist after death. Most importantly I don't see at all how that would alter my life in any negative way.

I think I have "looked for them" and would be quite happy to experience something, anything solid I can stand on that would make me A Believer. I rented space at my Antique Art and Woodworking shop to a tailor who was also a retired Navy Chaplain who prefesses to be Born Again. He posited the same thoughts, that I had not looked. So I walked over to the large open garage door of the shop, extended my arms and out loud said, "Please, God. If you are really here show me a sign and give me the means to see it for what it is. I want to know the truth". I hope that didn't harm my friend the Tailor, because he just hung his head and couldn't look me in the eye as he knew I was being sincere and got Nothing in response.

This is not to say that I am in fear nor unhappy in my life. I feel almost unimaginably grateful to be alive, however short it may be. I am not sad that I am confidant that when I die I will disappear never to exist ever again. It seems to me it beats being a rock or a cloud of gas, even if that cloud is a star shining brightly. Nothingness punctuated by a brief flare of Somethingness is grand and beautiful in my estimation. "The play's the thing!"

Originally Posted by hazel As for hell, that's just the reverse side of human freedom. If people are to be really free, then they must be free to make disastrous choices. To say that you want freedom but to still expect some sort of divine nanny to come along behind you and clear up all your messes is just childish.

Where did that come from? Have I expressed anything about cleaning up after me? My Grandfather was a devout Catholic but he fell deeply in love with and married a Jewish girl. They loved each other until Death they did part. She once said to me she didn't believe in Hell "because she couldn't believe God could be so cruel". This from a 95 pound woman who carried her Son who suffered from Cerebral Palsy around though he weighed at least as much as she, fed him 3 times a day, changed his diapers many times a day, bothered to roll him over so he wouldn't suffer bed sores and so much more until he died at age 24.

I wasn't brought up on Hellfire and Brimstone but I was brought up with a very strict sense of Justice, including Punishment, but also Mercy.

Originally Posted by business_kid +1 on the Koran - Muhammet taught the earth was flat .

Surely that sort of thing can be excused on the grounds that verses which seem imply a flat earth are just speaking metaphorically, were taken out of context, the Koran is not a science textbook, etc?

In other words, all the same things we've seen in this thread about any supposed scientific inaccuracies in the bible.

We made up the word false for a reason... don't opinionat about it.

If you're lucky you may choose a religion for your opinion!

My favorite is magic roundabout...