"Make no mistake when religion becomes ingrained in the mind as an absolute truth the believer feels aloof from all others, even superior. I have never seen any good come of it." yes... A BIG AAAAAAA-MEN TO THAT MIKE!!!
OK...let me try and clarify. I said I was offended. Wrong choice of wording. I did say it made me laugh. I guess I was a bit ashamed of myself for the reaction because I didn't feel it necessary to fan the flames. You knew the reaction from some here would be one of anger. So your intent seemed, in afterthought, a bit meanspirited. I mean obviously this had to be construed as an insult to those who believe in the bible. (not to me however, because I too, while appreciating the bible as literature, don't believe a word of it.....apart from respecting and trying to adhere to the 10 commandments....whoever wrote them). You say "why would it matter to me what I say about it"...The answer is it wouldn't. But you wrote it not to express your feelings to yourself. But hell yes, it was funny! Appropriate? Well maybe I feel it was less inappropriate now than earlier today when I mentioned it....only because now I see that my comments did not seem to diffuse much of the tension created here. Or maybe they did...who's going for a beer with who? And yeah, the Northern Ireland/Israel point is well taken. I thought it was my point in the first place. These are issues that only serve to inflame. What is the point?
"I have never seen any good come of it." WOW you are so right! Add up all that that has been done in the name of 'god' for the 'good', then add up all that for the 'bad'. i mean ALL OF IT! from the BEGINNING, from its INCEPTION! i'd say it is quite clear that the scales are tilted to the extreme to the "bad"! i don't see how anyone could refute this claim. ((not even our esteemed DARK would dare attempt it!) :-/
This says it all. It really is and has been my point all along. Arguing about "god" ...it escalates. Was a war ever fought that did not start with religious issues?
Gekko: How can you say you aren't questioning my intelligence and then say you think I am dumb two sentences later? You are basically suggesting that my beliefs are nothing but Sunday school baggage. But guess what, I didn't go to Sunday school as a kid. My dad was basically an intellectual hippie more interested in holistic medicine, conspiracy theories and recreational drugs than organized religion. I didn't go to church, I went to rainbow gatherings. I wasn't told 'Jesus loves me' as a child, I was told that Reagan is a bastard and Che Guevara is a hero. My early influences were stoners, not bible bangers. And apart from me, what about those who come to faith after violently opposing it most of their lives? What about those who set out to investigate Christianity in a willful attempt to discredit it, and end up believing it instead? The 'Freudian baggage' theory just doesn't hold water. I didn't have a meaningful faith in God until midway through college, and I put those seeds of belief through some serious trials. Remember the samsonite commercials where the gorilla beats the daylights out of a suitcase? That's what I did. I sought out the biggest guns possible and aimed them directly at my fledgling beliefs, in their early and vulnerable stage. I ended up making them stronger. Faster: Where you finish often depends on where you begin. I didn't start with faith, I started with doubt. Doubt in everything. No assumptions means NO assumptions, not even assuming that thought has intrinsic value. People question my faith in the supernatural. I started by questioning the average person's faith in the here and now. Do we really exist? Does reason have true validity, or are we simply making nonsense sounds at each other? How do I know that what I think I see and hear are not illusions of the mind? What is mind? Does matter carry more weight than energy? Is an object more real than an idea? Is the finite more real than the eternal? What is time? What is distance? Are they anything more than fabrications? Is there such thing as the past other than personal representation? If two people have different perspectives of a past event, which is correct? Is there such thing as future if it never arrives? What is the present? Where is it? Is it everywhere equally? Am I there? Where am I going? Can I trust anyone or anything? Does trust even have weight as a concept? My point is that I have come to conclusions that seem radical to others because I did not start with a full dance card of 'normal' conclusions to weigh them against. 'Radical' is a relative term. From my perspective, mathematics, science and the value of everyday life all require 'leaps of faith' as large and daring as my leap of faith towards God. The holy grail of physics is to find a 'grand unification theory,' a simple theorem that can fit on a t-shirt and essentially explain the root cause of everything. I sought to find my own grand unification theory for reality itself. I did not start with the basic assumptions that most people make to carry on with life, because I felt assumptions like that had to be justified. Before I decided I would believe in meaning, I had to find it. Many people say 'I'm here and I'm happy and that's good enough.' And that's good enough for plenty of folks, I'm not casting aspersion on that approach. But it wasn't good enough for me. I had to go deeper and try to really understand what makes things tick. I was allergic to ignorance and BS (still am). I got down to the nitty gritty and found myself questioning everything. Every single thing. I quickly discovered that I had to put blind faith in at least one thing: my ability to reason and grasp logical connections, to put two and two together and make four. Without assuming the validity of logic as a first principle, we are lost at sea and may as well throw up our hands. From there I moved forward, building my approach to reality from the ground up, trying as hard as I could to be equally cognizant of that which I know and that which I do NOT know. In an effort not to reinvent the wheel, I sought out as many alternative belief systems as I could and weighed them against my observations, measured them with my logic stick. Almost all came up wanting. Some were incomplete, some were contradictory, some were both, some were not full belief systems at all, only partial observations of reality. Except one. Placing God at the center of my conceptual framework allowed all other pieces to support each other and function correctly. God was (is) the foundation that allows the structure to stand. Remove him from the equation and the structure falls apart. So I can say that I have 'absolute certainty' because I have developed a panoramic perception of reality in which all truths stand together. Just as you cannot truly isolate a single factor in a multiple variable cause or effect, you cannot truly isolate a belief about something as complex and all encompassing as reality. Everything has ramifications. If the foundation is weak or improperly set, the right frequency of feedback can set off vibrations that destroy the structure. If the foundation is correct, then reality supports the structure and strengthens it, making it stronger over time. This has been my experience and the end result of my journey. This also illustrates why I cannot fully convey the basis of my confidence on a message board. Recreating a massive structure in the span of a few posts would be amazing indeed, but I am no magician. I cannot detail all the connections I have made or adequately convey the connections. I wish there were a single book that could pull it off but I'm afraid there isn't. Not a copout but a recogniton of the time and space limitations we face. p.s. understanding is ultimately only bestowed by God anyway, He can only be found if He first draws you to himself. Another conclusion I am sure you guys will love to hateâ¦.
"So I can say that I have 'absolute certainty' because I have developed a panoramic perception of reality in which all truths stand together. Just as you cannot truly isolate a single factor in a multiple variable cause or effect, you cannot truly isolate a belief about something as complex and all encompassing as reality" Dark, seriously man you just don't get it ... imo, its not a panoramic perception of reality you have , it's a paranoid one....which is so self important at the same time.That is a seriously dilusional state of mind. I and plenty of others I am sure, have done all you list in 'your search for the answer' , most people though have the good grace not to assert that they can be absolutely certain of the answers they found.
"Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the mehanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison." ~Albert Einstein~