Ah, and your post wasn't meant to be insulting. Pot, meet kettle! Have to say though, if nothing else it's ironic to be called an arrogant prick by someone being a prick arrogant enough to say they know what I think and oh the other one also, what I should think.
Sorry, missed it, cannot post a lot during the week. But feel to write this little question to Sig, which may help: - Hello, what puzzling me, if you can answer sincerely to yourself, not necessarily here: have you ever gave a chance to ask yourself - who you are, at a side of identifying yourself with an electrical engineer, which is just your profession, but real question, which will open your path to the happiness, not artificial but real one, which can not be stolen by any event or person, and will be with you forever? - You affirming to know the confine of the Universe and what is real.........during your studies in engineering you certainly have learned how many times, we, as ignorant humans, were filled with wrong beliefs, until the science and practise proved us wrong (the Earth is round, and it rotates around the sun; the electricity is real; the cars are not devil's vehicles; etc) And so, what makes you believe, that your perception of the Universe and it's wisdom is the only one right?
My beliefs in fact require that I acknowledge that those beliefs are potentially incomplete or even entirely incorrect. Pretty much every religion ever requires that you believe that religion is correct and infallible without question. That is why I left religion. Sounds like you too?
Nice to learn that your opinion is not categoric. Yes, I never was in a religious environment but always with the call for mysticism. There is big deference between blind religious fanatics with pretense to believe in what is sometimes obviously absurd (and each religion has its own number of absurdities) and a thirst for spirituality, for this knowledge - the experience of union with our eternal roots. The brain can help to not be tricked by first but in order to arrive to the second, one should learn to use heart and intuition.
I think you and I are just points on a continuum. Individuals trend more or less toward heart and intuition just as a matter of inborn personality if nothing else, neither direction is right or wrong and we're all probably better off for the diversity of ways of looking at the world.
Truth. Each of us has its own way, own weakness to transcend, own beauty. But there are common steps to transcend on this journey: the three conditionings - family, social, religious. It all starting with a knowledge -experience: that personality is only a dress for this lifetime, brain is a tool, body is a vehicle. We are not either of those three, we are one beyond, eternal observer, coming from Love, one day will be dissolved in Love, struggling hear only because refusing to remember it's own roots.
QUOTE: Tsing Tao "I never said I was content. I constantly seek truth. But because I don't do it in the way you understand or appreciate, doesn't make it wrong. But neither does it make it right. How you seek truth is your own business , whether it stands up to separate inquiry or outside scrutiny is a different thing altogether. QUOTE:Tsing Tao "But to say you know something to be true like "God doesn't exist" based on your small corner of reality is quite arrogant. But I wasn't going to point that out until you ridiculed my belief of stating that I realized I didn't know everything." After saying you constantly seek truth, do you really think you're doing that by accusing me of being arrogant based on something I didn't even say? Really? And I'll keep my small corner of reality to your smaller recess of imaginary concepts if you don't mind. But anyway, how exactly is pointing out the false comparison you made ridiculing your belief for goodness sake? QUOTE:Tsing Tao "It doesn't seem that the universe wastes anything. It is one giant closed circuit. So whether we go on in this form or another form, or whether our matter and energy are used for other things or whether we have a consciousness that transverses the corporeal act of death or not, the one thing we can take comfort in is that our atoms and energy go on. At least that much. Well said and very nicely put in my opinion. But then your tone suddenly became overly defensive and somewhat aggressive just because the word God came into things. All I wanted to query was, how was what you said not a false equivalence that doesn't work. QUOTE: Tsing Tao Your whole argument stems from the concept that God or a god-like being is imaginary. You're approaching the subject from the point that this is a given. It is imaginary and certainly should be a given. That's the point. God or a god-like being are only imaginary. They are known to be as they only manifest as such. Furthermore, it can only be nothing but imagined that they do, might or could exist. Which seals the imaginary description. That's not at all the case as far as the universe is concerned, so why use it in comparison was all I asked. It's reasonable to say enough of the universe is known to know there are things which are only imagined and nothing else -mythical things like God(s). They and the non-existent look very much the same.
A lifetime goes by faster than we think. Each of us will get a chance to know with absolute certainty soon enough. http://www.deathclock.com/
Many people refuse to believe because if there was life after death and a day of Judgement, then they would have to justify their behavior while they are in this life. A lot of people would be scared if they had to do that.........Hollywood celebrities buying admission into college for their children. Hollywood / Political icons engaged in sexual harassment and child trafficking. Sports stars sexually harassing women........ Perhaps they falsely believe that if they don't believe in an after-life that they won't be judged.
But maintaining a false belief would be known to their omniscient God or Gods wouldn't it? So that's never going to work - if there's a deity waiting at the end of life. Seems more likely they just don't believe in God.