The ego of true believers in God has vanished and been replaced by the humbleness of a blade of grass.
excellent. then, instead of ridiculing, why not concede that a non-believer may indeed disbelieve (without claiming certainty) for pragmatic reasons?
It is the smugness of the non-believers who I take issue with, and ridicule. Non-believers includes those who say they believe in God, but in fact really don't. Just as foolish as someone who says they love their wife but has a mistress on the side. Someone who truly believes, is much different than someone who only professes they believe but do not actually practice their belief systems. What is pragmatic, is what works. To say that one method works, and another method doesn't work for anyone else but oneself is the point, and is equally true of those preaching their own brand of faith, or their own brand of agnosticism/atheism. People in this forum make all kinds of assumptions when the term faith is or higher power is used. They immediately fall into their own reactions to their own past, typically Judeo-Christian backgrounds, in which they were subjected to forced faith, and have since rejected the real concept and notions of practicing a personal faith and personal belief in a higher power. Those who have practiced their own faith sincerely, have established recovery via a higher power, will tell you without any doubt that their way is very pragmatic for them, and they are willing to share that with others who have an interest. It is when anyone, whether a believer in God or a disbeliever in God claims that their perspective is the "right" perspective, that is when they become insufferable and egotistical. Most of the so called agnostics here, have issues unresolved with their childhoods and formalized religion of their youth, and have immediate reactions to terminology. Gordon's state of mind is that of an existentialist right now. He will remain in that state forever, or move out of it with faith in something different, his choice. -- Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism. (JP Sartre) That was Sarte's point of view, and Gordon's point of view as well. If it works for him, it is pragmatic. If belief in a higher power works for someone else, it is pragmatic for them. Whatever works.
sure. i do. i don't deny that circumstantial factors play a role, but i think you are over-emphasising their importance. but whatever disadvantage it might be, i simply cannot bring myself to see it as insurmountable. hell, i find it a real stretch to see it as a disadvantage full stop! i think it's fair to describe some types of chance events as 'pure luck' (good or bad). being hit with flying debris from a near by implosion-gone-wrong would certainly be a case of 'pure bad luck'. classic wrong place at the wrong time kind of stuff. the circumstances into which you were born are a prime (THE prime) example of this kind of luck. absolutely nothing at all to do with you. pure chance. (unless you subscribe to some intentional-creation-by-higher-being philosophy) but if you are going to think like this, maybe you could also look at the other side of the coin. at all the times you had blind 'good luck'. in the end, i really fail to see the value of trying to categorise the events in your life as being cases of 'good' or 'bad' luck (or varying degrees of such). even if you succeed in labeling everything that's happened in your life this way, and, in the final analysis, you determine that you've had an inordinate share of 'bad' luck, then what? is the world going to stop spinning? is everyone supposed to give you a minute of silence in recognition of the 'bad' luck you've had? at the end of the day, you're still going to be where you are and still have the rest of your life to live. worrying about whether something was 'good' or 'bad' luck won't do a damn thing to change that. my view is that we all, at every moment of our lives, have a choice of what to focus on. if we focus on how bad things are, on how much things 'suck', on how 'unlucky' we were, on "why am i such a loser", on why "some people have all the luck", on "why is this happening to me", it's a safe bet, i think, that we're going to continue to have more of the same. if, instead, we focus on what we can do about our circumstances, on the possibilities for bettering our lives, on how we can turn things around, on how we can make improvements, on the good things we do have (instead of crying for the moon about what we don't), that alone -- those kinds of thoughts, that kind of focus -- goes a long, long way to making our experience on earth a positive (happy, fulfilling, etc) one.
I think an argument can be made that persistence will override a lot of seeming "chaos". If you persist in some intelligent way towards a goal you will almost have to attain some measure of success eventually. The goal has to be clearly defined in the first place. Just having a goal is a large part of the battle, if you make .1% progress towards your goal everyday, it compounds out to 28% over 250 trading days. Without a goal you just dissapate energies in random directions, with a goal you focus your energies all the time in the direction you chose. I set a lot of lofty goals about 10 years ago. I made a pyramid shape on paper, put the end point goals in the top third, the interim goals in the middle and the bottom third is just a daily task list. As long as I keep working on that pyramid I'm focusing a lot of my energies in the direction I want to go. I am surprised at the progress so far. I think of life as quasi-random, I surely will never understand everything so it appears somewhat random to me. I believe in God and prayer seems to override chaos and randomness. My trading partner and I both consider God to be our Senior Partner in the business and basically we find that we are steered in good directions when trying to learn about the markets and figure out what we are going to do. Nothing happens as fast as I would like but the persistence surely pays off better with good direction. Max