Coincidence?

i understood your point completely. my point was that faith isn't always a bad thing. fundamentally faith is a good thing, it's people that are bad.

faith can essentially be used like a gun -- or atleast in your example. if a person shoots someone with a gun, what was the real cause of the killing? the gun, or the person? i'd say that it is the person.

hence why logic must also be used in addition to faith. they may seem like quite contradictory terms, but they can still be used in complement to eachother.

like i stated earlier, faith's existence -- or possibility -- follows logically from the premise of statistical truth.

we must remember that the rationalistic attitute of the west is not the only possible one and is not all-embracing, but is in many ways a prejudice and a bias that ought perhaps to be corrected. It has acquired importance only in the course of the last two centuries, thanks to the levelling influence of the statistical method on the one hand and the unparalleled success of the natural sciences on the other, which brought the metaphysical view of the world into disrepute.

limitation was not originally grounded in the meaning of life. originally words had no fixed meanings. differences only arose through looking at things subjectively.

open your mind :biggrinjester:

each generation thinks that they know more than their predecessors, and that those who came before them were wrong. we are even more grounded in this today, due to our narrow minded way of thinking and self-assurance through the natural sciences. we may have cracked things open a little bit more -- but so does every generation. to assume that we have found absolute truth is ludicrous.

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i'm not saying that everyone has faith. like i sated earlier: there are those who are tuned into that part of reality in which faith is 'beleivable', and there are those who are tuned out of that part of reality. we are all different. but just because you are not tuned into that, does not mean that it does not exist, or that it is not credible.

 

We've reached a point where it's essentially one worldview vs another, but let me just point out that in that post you have used both the terms "logic" and "tune into" to describe how to ascertain beliefs. Which one is it? Do I use logic to decide whether or not karma exists? OR do I say "i am not tuned into karma and so have no opinion about its existence"? And what exactly does it entail to be "tuned into" something? Am I tuned into walking? Am I tuned into Kantism? Am I tuned into string theory?

I think you're starting to pull very nebulous and sloppy terms out of the air in order to mysticize the situation. I know you're not doing it on purpose, this is how you actually think, but you need to understand that once you introduce a concept like "tune into" in order to ascertain beliefs like "karma", well my friend, you are going to believe whatever you like

Do you not confidently state that Santa Claus does not exist and choose rather to humbly conclude that you are not simply "tuned into that reality"? I think even you can see the trap of such a weak foundation for deciding truth-statements. With your system, everything is true, even if it is obviously not. With your system, you cannot conclude that karma is real and that moon cheese is not. Your system provides a truth-value of "yes" for all inquiries, because all inquiries are treated as seperate systems unto themselves, seperate from the rest of the universe.

Does the easter bunny exist? Sure, I'm just not "tuned into him".

 

i'm saying that you don't necessarily need empirical data to prove one's religious beleifs, but at the same time they should also be guided to a certain extent by reason.

faith and reason should be complementary to eachother to prevent such events as 9/11, and to prove that santa claus is not real. faith is essentially the architect of a person's reality -- because i assure you that to some people santa claus is quite real -- and reason is the guide, shaping and molding that which is created by faith into a more realistic reality.

to surrender one's reality entirely to either faith or reason is foolish. they are complements of eachother, and together form a much more astute reality.

 

Interesting. You see faith and reason as two ends of the same stick, and advocate a middle path . . . interesting. I am a fan of middle paths . . . nothing strikes me as inherently incorrect here . . . I shall digest your strange and wondrous message

 

haha

makes me think of the scene in the second matrix where they go and visit the merovingian. infact, this entire thread reminds me of that scene. watch that scene with this thread in mind, it's really quite entertaining.

here you come to me without why, without power...

 

faith and reason are not a dichotomy. we all resort to faith in something... we use reason to work out everything else.

 

yes, but what if you could only use faith, or only use reason? wouldn't work very well would it.

 

no.. but that is like saying 'what if you could only use your brain or your body'? it doesnt make sense because no one actually does that. every single human uses faith and reason, people just use different faiths and have different abilities to reason

 

you guys are awesome... = )

 

I am not a religious man, nor do I believe in an all powerful God waiting to judge us for our sins.

I believe that we live within a universe bound by natural laws. We have no choice but to experience karma and we have free will to choose how we will experience karma in our own unique way.

Having faith is nothing more than having a comfortable understanding of how karma and laws of the universe work.

If our perception is an illusion then illusion is as real as it gets. I understand the idea that this reality is only a dream within a dream but even if that is the case this dream or illusion is as real as it gets and is obviously bound by karma and natural law. I guess what I'm trying to say is that even if reality is an illusion, this is no excuse to live life as a joke or without meaning because the consequences of how you live your life are as real as you will ever experience.

We create our reality collectively and anyone who believes that their life is not affected by the beliefs of others is living in a fantasy world.

 

law of attraction, nothing in this world is meaningless, weather u believe it or not communication is more than just letters and spoken language, our brains connect on a higher level as well, the world connects to us on a higher level too, theres some sort of like "magnetic force" or something/ in combination with everyones brain that brings on life+ coincidences, thats whaat i believe

i would try to learn from coincidences, and go with the flow. rock with the boat, don't let it sink, help it float.

 

the way i see it reality is in the strictest sense an illusion. but that doesn't discount that we are still experiencing it, or that what we experience leaves a very real impression on us. it's merely a medium by which our experiences are conveyed. our perception of our experiences is very real.