Does God Exist?

And then they say christians live in the past

 

Not living in but mindful of.
It involves thinking, try it out sometime.

 

Oh, you're too sharp for your own good.

 

I studied history and still love it

Anyway, if you have a problem or find it disgusting that a certain group/collective has no use for non-believers why does it seem reasonable to you to hold the same conviction (namely that you seem to have no use for any believer since they are all dangerous nutcases), except from the other side of the coin?

 

Yeah, I am always curious about folks like relaxxx;
Why the big axe to grind against religion?
You don't accept it, move on.
Why interject yourself into such debates continuously?
I know you will claim it is to "wake people up" or some silliness, but that is predicated upon your erroneous assumption that people with religious convictions are in need of "waking up".
Big error on your part from the outset.


So again, why such a big stick up your butt concerning religion?
Doesn't it ultimately just amount to a waste of your time and energy?

 

It reminds me of something thedope said: as long as you expect the world or all your fellow people to be something they are not you will be at odds with the world and offended by reality.
Now, I'm not saying we should accept everything in the world as it is without trying to improve it but it seems relaxxx is not trying to be constructive in that regard in any way. He simply agitates against people which mindset he cannot accept and it seems he would prefer them to not exist.
In this way he resembles some of the christian and muslim extremists (a minority in both religions, as we are speaking about the present day and it seems stupid to ignore the chances in the general mindsets of their followers) who are at odds with reality as well and wish they could change the mindsets of the infidels with force... hence relaxxxx is actually proving with such posts that this kind of evil and stupidity is not limited to theists at all and he himself is guilty of the same line of thinking.

 

:iagree:

 

Pretty much.

But I guess I don't have nearly as much time to waste as you, comparing our post counts.

 

Yeah, but the majority of my posts consist of informed and intelligent responses or considerations of the topic in question, not just mindless ranting and venting which constitutes the vast majority of content you have contributed over the years.

and most people like what I have to say as evidenced by my rep

 

Very good that you acknowledge that, relaxxx :2thumbsup:

 

There are many definite things we can say about god from an experiential standpoint.
As with all things we communicate to each other, god is an idea. God is an idea which we invoke, an idea of good, of rightness, or authority. We are all hard wired to this invocation of good, devoted to it by nature and willing to defend it premises. This invocation to good is beyond our capacity to revoke but not beyond our capacity to recognize. It is our inheritance of and in creation and what gives us the capacity to create. I for one am grateful for this gift.

 

The ranting and venting quality of the posts is striking. That recent one about zombies is classic, and he posted it twice--possibly by mistake. Despite his talk about logic and evidence, there is, as you say, little of either in most of the posts. The intensity of the language suggests anger bordering on rage. In my experience, that kind of emotion is usually associated with personal trauma--losing a loved one who was religious, being raised by abusive religious parents, being spurned by a religious lover, being molested by a clergyman, etc. So your question about the stick up his butt seems appropriate.

Of course we are all susceptible to emotional needs and wants. And I do agree with Relaxx that some popular expressions of religion are worse than annoying--even dangerous. The only policy measures our Oklahoma Legislature seems able to come up with are novel ideas about posting the Ten Commandments on public property. I think it's useful to speak out against these things, and for critical thought, but I don't think Relaxx is effective in pursuing his ostensible objectives.

 

He must be angry, he's disrupting our collective bonding.

The truth is seldom popular.

5 against one now, will there be a sixth?
I hope the stick up my ass is not in the way of your torches and pitchforks.

 

It's not that God is beyond human comprehension, it is that we lack the needed language and means of conveying that comprehension.
Being that such comprehension is outside the realm of our usual five senses, it forces us to adopt metaphor and allegorical references in order to try and convey that which is ultimately ineffable.

Concerning equating "goodness" to God, again we are hobbled by our own perceptions and subsequent quantification of "good" and "bad", yet nature has no such delineation of "good" or "evil", things simply are.

As I have gotten older and field more ideas, I have started to firmly believe that most "moral conundrums" are merely the result of the filtering of very basic and primal instincts of survival and reproduction through our highly developed emotional and a cognitive brains.

But that understanding of the biological origins for these dilemmas doesn't in any way detract from the ineffable qualities and experiences afforded to the individual from spiritual practices and endeavors.

I guess the more and more we unravel nature, the less division and issues I see concerning the concept of a God.

 

I for one was not against you, dude. See how typical you perceive things?

Maybe it seems like 5 against one to you because you are against anybody who dares to disagree with your simplified anti-religious stance?

We are simply sharing thoughts by reacting to eachothers posts. It really seems you are against consideration and open thought in regards to religion and then proclaiming it to be the other way around.

 

Well if you don't want people to make assumptions concerning your views, why not just answer my question?

Sounds simple enough.

 

No one's against you man, sit down, have some kool aid...

 

Is that how you react when you feel you got stuck? Maybe it is a bit frightening to see your own logic working against you?

 

I don't think we lack language. What we lack is agreement of terms however we can learn each others language. It is the sense to make sense of the senses that is outside what you call the usual realm of the five senses. The mind is naturally abstract. An individuals mind arises from conception, a vision in common. I did not conceive myself but am the inheritor of conception.

The impulse to invoke good has no opposite. If we understood this about each other we could immediately agree. If you are inclined to believe that some things are good and some things are bad then there is no end to the sorting out. You can use your mind like that if you choose but if such preoccupies you you will never recognize that we cherish being above all and will ultimately fail to find the good that satisfies as our attention is distracted by endless debate.

Being we are creature there are things that contribute to the well being of creature and things that do not. Things that contribute to the desired aim of well being we call helpful and things that don't are not helpful. Helpful is a matter of timing. A most timely help to freeing the mind to apprehend things simply as they are is not to make moralistic judgments as they set the mind to contending with it's own accusations and recriminations instead of the honest accounting of what is. To determine what is helpful first ask the question what is it for.

 

I assume you are using the term "you" generally and not specifically addressing me because I think that we are more or less saying the same thing, or at the very least the same overall intention.