Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Lagayascienza]

I understand the need people have for community and how belief acts as a salve for existential angst. And I don't really care if people want to believe in a god. As long as it harms no one else. I don't even completely discount the possibility that there is some intelligence behind the cosmos. It's the institution of religion I hate. The institution that protects paedophile priests and refuses to teach science to kids in religious schools. The power religions have over people and they way they are propped up by the state with my tax money. And, in Islamic countries, the way women and sexual minorities are treated. Then there is the exclusivity of religions and the way they divide people and causes them to make war and kill each other. Suicide bombers. I hate all that. People could still believe without all that primitive and nasty stuff.

[Belinda]

Insofar as I do believe there is a deity, I believe he exists because I have met good people who trusted their deity. As for religion, the last sect I attended meetings of was a Unitarian church . I understand that Unitarian church asks only that you use your reason , respect others' right to trust in a deity if they so desire, and I suppose try not to be a criminal.

That's a turnabout for you to believe there is deity. Have you abandoned Spinoza?

Also, are you saying that the only good people, or the best people, you have encountered believed in a deity? Do you think there are no good atheists?

I am glad you asked. Spinoza's deity is nature itself and is arrived at via pure reason. My unreasoning attraction to a deity who is a Person is adjuncted to the people I loved and admired and who included Presbyterians, Catholics, one ex-Jew, one main influencer who was definitely Spinozist, and 'atheists.' Briefly, when I emotionally react in fear or anxiety I am a believer in a personal deity but when I reflect I think like a pantheist who distrusts miracles.
The people I believed and trusted mostly happened to be 'religious' after their liberal fashions. At least two if them were what you may call atheists as they were confirmed ex-religionists.
There is no one size fits all and the term 'religion' should be defined ad hoc.

As for church -going, people attend services for a variety of reasons. I was an attending Humanist who did not feel averse to church congregations or buildings, although sermons and order of service sometimes irritated me.
To return to the original question : such deity as I believe in at any one time is part of an experience: subjective experiences are the only things that exist.

[Belinda]

I understand the need people have for community and how belief acts as a salve for existential angst. And I don't really care if people want to believe in a god. As long as it harms no one else. I don't even completely discount the possibility that there is some intelligence behind the cosmos. It's the institution of religion I hate. The institution that protects paedophile priests and refuses to teach science to kids in religious schools. The power religions have over people and they way they are propped up by the state with my tax money. And, in Islamic countries, the way women and sexual minorities are treated. Then there is the exclusivity of religions and the way they divide people and causes them to make war and kill each other. Suicide bombers. I hate all that. People could still believe without all that primitive and nasty stuff.

I am right with you there. When the institution has more value than individuals that's when the institution is bad. That's the dissecting knife.

[Belinda]

Thanks Sy Borg for forwarding the explanation of preaching with which i agree. I had insufficient patience to untangle the language in the post in question so as to identify it as preaching. Thanks to you and LaGaya for your patience.

[Sy Borg]

Insofar as I do believe there is a deity, I believe he exists because I have met good people who trusted their deity. As for religion, the last sect I attended meetings of was a Unitarian church . I understand that Unitarian church asks only that you use your reason , respect others' right to trust in a deity if they so desire, and I suppose try not to be a criminal.

That's a turnabout for you to believe there is deity. Have you abandoned Spinoza?

Also, are you saying that the only good people, or the best people, you have encountered believed in a deity? Do you think there are no good atheists?

I am glad you asked. Spinoza's deity is nature itself and is arrived at via pure reason. My unreasoning attraction to a deity who is a Person is adjuncted to the people I loved and admired and who included Presbyterians, Catholics, one ex-Jew, one main influencer who was definitely Spinozist, and 'atheists.' Briefly, when I emotionally react in fear or anxiety I am a believer in a personal deity but when I reflect I think like a pantheist who distrusts miracles.
The people I believed and trusted mostly happened to be 'religious' after their liberal fashions. At least two if them were what you may call atheists as they were confirmed ex-religionists.
There is no one size fits all and the term 'religion' should be defined ad hoc.

As for church -going, people attend services for a variety of reasons. I was an attending Humanist who did not feel averse to church congregations or buildings, although sermons and order of service sometimes irritated me.
To return to the original question : such deity as I believe in at any one time is part of an experience: subjective experiences are the only things that exist.

I don't think there's a difference between good theists and good atheists. Kind-hearted people are found in both camps.

I liked "when I emotionally react in fear or anxiety I am a believer in a personal deity but when I reflect I think like a pantheist who distrusts miracles". Since God (or whatever) is a subjective potential in all of our brains - inherited from many generation of superstitious ancestors - we can access this when under duress. Being a subjective entity, God is a inherently emotional phenomenon. The idea of an anthropomorphic God existing in objective reality is, of course, so speculative that it cannot be intellectually accepted without a ton of provisos, eg. The Great Programmer, pre-existing ultra-ancient entities from prior universes.

[Belinda]

Insofar as I do believe there is a deity, I believe he exists because I have met good people who trusted their deity. As for religion, the last sect I attended meetings of was a Unitarian church . I understand that Unitarian church asks only that you use your reason , respect others' right to trust in a deity if they so desire, and I suppose try not to be a criminal.

That's a turnabout for you to believe there is deity. Have you abandoned Spinoza?

Also, are you saying that the only good people, or the best people, you have encountered believed in a deity? Do you think there are no good atheists?

I am glad you asked. Spinoza's deity is nature itself and is arrived at via pure reason. My unreasoning attraction to a deity who is a Person is adjuncted to the people I loved and admired and who included Presbyterians, Catholics, one ex-Jew, one main influencer who was definitely Spinozist, and 'atheists.' Briefly, when I emotionally react in fear or anxiety I am a believer in a personal deity but when I reflect I think like a pantheist who distrusts miracles.
The people I believed and trusted mostly happened to be 'religious' after their liberal fashions. At least two if them were what you may call atheists as they were confirmed ex-religionists.
There is no one size fits all and the term 'religion' should be defined ad hoc.

As for church -going, people attend services for a variety of reasons. I was an attending Humanist who did not feel averse to church congregations or buildings, although sermons and order of service sometimes irritated me.
To return to the original question : such deity as I believe in at any one time is part of an experience: subjective experiences are the only things that exist.

I don't think there's a difference between good theists and good atheists. Kind-hearted people are found in both camps.

I liked "when I emotionally react in fear or anxiety I am a believer in a personal deity but when I reflect I think like a pantheist who distrusts miracles". Since God (or whatever) is a subjective potential in all of our brains - inherited from many generation of superstitious ancestors - we can access this when under duress. Being a subjective entity, God is a inherently emotional phenomenon. The idea of an anthropomorphic God existing in objective reality is, of course, so speculative that it cannot be intellectually accepted without a ton of provisos, eg. The Great Programmer, pre-existing ultra-ancient entities from prior universes.

The Great Programmer is what Darwin ejected with natural selection . Stick in the mud religionists were afraid of natural selection. Natural selection made The Great Programmer redundant . There was no final cause, and religionists had to fall back on mystery.

[Pattern-chaser]

I hear what you all are saying, and I've had these kinds of experiences with churches and their followers as well. But should we cut ourselves off from something because we don't like the people who are involved? Should we argue for the elimination of government because some politicians are corrupt? Or stop listening to music because we had a bad music teacher? It doesn't make for good philosophy, does it - it's akin to the ad populum fallacy to form our own beliefs based on how others believe or act.

In my youth I was subjective to pressure to convert to certain beliefs and the experience turned me off of religion for many years, so I completely understand that. And I was similarly turned off of literature because of an abusive English teacher in high school and avoided reading whenever I could manage it. In retrospect, I only hurt myself by doing this. Many years later I realized how much I'd missed in both of these because I allowed my own distaste of the individuals involved to close my mind to the topic itself. Today I love reading the great books more than almost anything and I regret have lost so many years that I could have spent exploring the world of literature. And similarly with religion, I now derive great value from the serious study and practice of religion, and I don't mean that it just provides some kind of transient 'psychological benefit' that helps me through my daily life. Rather, I've found that in conjunction with philosophy it really does provide a different way to look at and understand our reality and existence. I don't expect that anyone will necessarily adopt or share my religion by any means, but I do get discouraged when it seems that many philosophers refuse give it a serious look and simply dismiss belief in God as a delusion or a purely subjective phenomenon. But I guess we all have to choose our battles.

At the most general level, this echoes my own experiences, and my own responses to them. Thank you.

[Alter2Ego]

Hey everyone,

I welcome people of all faiths and religions to share their points of view. I'm a non-resistant agnostic. If God and/or his principles of afterlife exist, then these are indeed the most important pursuits that every person should focus on and dedicate their lives to.

....

I would appreciate discussing other arguments such as the Kalam, Ontological, Watchmaker, Fine-Tuning and any other arguments that support the existence of God. I'm so far unconvinced by all of them because the versions I've encountered are all logically flawed, so please share the strongest versions of the arguments with me. I'm open to change my view.

Philosophy_of_Guitar:

I believe in the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible because of our fine-tuned universe and the visible creations around us, as well as the accurate fulfillment of Bible prophecy. There are some 2,000 accurately fulfilled prophecies in the Bible.

Alter2Ego

[LuckyR]

Hey everyone,

I welcome people of all faiths and religions to share their points of view. I'm a non-resistant agnostic. If God and/or his principles of afterlife exist, then these are indeed the most important pursuits that every person should focus on and dedicate their lives to.

....

I would appreciate discussing other arguments such as the Kalam, Ontological, Watchmaker, Fine-Tuning and any other arguments that support the existence of God. I'm so far unconvinced by all of them because the versions I've encountered are all logically flawed, so please share the strongest versions of the arguments with me. I'm open to change my view.

Philosophy_of_Guitar:

I believe in the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible because of our fine-tuned universe and the visible creations around us, as well as the accurate fulfillment of Bible prophecy. There are some 2,000 accurately fulfilled prophecies in the Bible.

Alter2Ego

Would you believe half as much if there were only 1000?

[Pattern-chaser]

There are some 2,000 accurately fulfilled prophecies in the Bible.

Would you believe half as much if there were only 1000?

...or twice as much, if there were 4000?



I.e. "What makes you believe that the God of your religion exists?" Is it only "accurately fulfilled prophecies"? Or is there more to it, for you, than that?

[Belinda]

Some of what passes for 'religious belief' or 'religious faith' is aspirational, as in "God I would believe in good, beauty, and truth so help thou my unbelief."

[Alter2Ego]

Hey everyone,

I welcome people of all faiths and religions to share their points of view. I'm a non-resistant agnostic. If God and/or his principles of afterlife exist, then these are indeed the most important pursuits that every person should focus on and dedicate their lives to.

....

I would appreciate discussing other arguments such as the Kalam, Ontological, Watchmaker, Fine-Tuning and any other arguments that support the existence of God. I'm so far unconvinced by all of them because the versions I've encountered are all logically flawed, so please share the strongest versions of the arguments with me. I'm open to change my view.

Philosophy_of_Guitar:

I believe in the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible because of our fine-tuned universe and the visible creations around us, as well as the accurate fulfillment of Bible prophecy. There are some 2,000 accurately fulfilled prophecies in the Bible.

Alter2Ego

Would you believe half as much if there were only 1000?

LuckyR:

I believe that the God of my religion exists because of our fine-tuned universe and because of the accurate fulfillment of prophecy in the Judeo-Christian Bible. Every single prophecy in the Bible has been accurately fulfilled. That's the point you apparently have chosen to ignore. It just so happens there are about 2,000 of them. If there were only 1,000 and all of them were accurately fulfilled, that would again assure me that the Bible is inspired of Almighty God Jehovah.

Alter2Ego

[Alter2Ego]

There are some 2,000 accurately fulfilled prophecies in the Bible.

Would you believe half as much if there were only 1000?

...or twice as much, if there were 4000?



I.e. "What makes you believe that the God of your religion exists?" Is it only "accurately fulfilled prophecies"? Or is there more to it, for you, than that?

Pattern-chaser:

As I just informed LuckyR, I believe that the God of my religion exists because of our fine-tuned universe and because of the accurate fulfillment of prophecy in the Judeo-Christian Bible. Every single prophecy in the Bible has been accurately fulfilled. Since you want to ignore that point and instead make an issue of how many were accurately fulfilled, my answer is the same as what I told LuckyR, namely: It just so happens there are about 2,000 accurately fulfilled prophecies in the Bible. If there were 4,000 and all of them were accurately fulfilled, that would likewise assure me that the Bible is inspired of Almighty God.

The accurate fulfillment of Bible prophecy distinguishes the Judeo-Christian Bible from the bibles of all other religions.

Alter2Ego

[Sy Borg]

Alter2Ego, please do not spread misinformation on the forum. You have made a blatantly wrong statement - and even highlighted the wrongful claim in red.

Let's see ... Ezekiel, Chapter 26

“Son of man, because Tyre has said of Jerusalem, ‘Aha! The gate to the nations is broken, and its doors have swung open to me; now that she lies in ruins I will prosper,’ 3 therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against you, Tyre, and I will bring many nations against you, like the sea casting up its waves. 4 They will destroy the walls of Tyre and pull down her towers; I will scrape away her rubble and make her a bare rock. 5 Out in the sea she will become a place to spread fishnets, for I have spoken, declares the Sovereign Lord. She will become plunder for the nations, 6 and her settlements on the mainland will be ravaged by the sword. Then they will know that I am the Lord.

7 “For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: From the north I am going to bring against Tyre Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, king of kings, with horses and chariots, with horsemen and a great army. 8 He will ravage your settlements on the mainland with the sword; he will set up siege works against you, build a ramp up to your walls and raise his shields against you. 9 He will direct the blows of his battering rams against your walls and demolish your towers with his weapons. 10 His horses will be so many that they will cover you with dust. Your walls will tremble at the noise of the warhorses, wagons and chariots when he enters your gates as men enter a city whose walls have been broken through. 11 The hooves of his horses will trample all your streets; he will kill your people with the sword, and your strong pillars will fall to the ground. 12 They will plunder your wealth and loot your merchandise; they will break down your walls and demolish your fine houses and throw your stones, timber and rubble into the sea. 13 I will put an end to your noisy songs, and the music of your harps will be heard no more. 14 I will make you a bare rock, and you will become a place to spread fishnets. You will never be rebuilt, for I the Lord have spoken, declares the Sovereign Lord.

The claim was that Tyre would be destroyed and never be rebuilt. Yet, Tyre not only still exists, but it is Lebanon's fourth biggest city.

Thus, your claim "Every single prophecy in the Bible has been accurately fulfilled" is demonstrably false. Philosophy is not about making grand false claims in the hope of fooling the gullible into following your ideas. It is ideally aiming for maximal accuracy an truthfulness.

[Alter2Ego]

Alter2Ego, please do not spread misinformation on the forum. You have made a blatantly wrong statement - and even highlighted the wrongful claim in red.

Let's see ... Ezekiel, Chapter 26

“Son of man, because Tyre has said of Jerusalem, ‘Aha! The gate to the nations is broken, and its doors have swung open to me; now that she lies in ruins I will prosper,’ 3 therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against you, Tyre, and I will bring many nations against you, like the sea casting up its waves. 4 They will destroy the walls of Tyre and pull down her towers; I will scrape away her rubble and make her a bare rock. 5 Out in the sea she will become a place to spread fishnets, for I have spoken, declares the Sovereign Lord. She will become plunder for the nations, 6 and her settlements on the mainland will be ravaged by the sword. Then they will know that I am the Lord.

7 “For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: From the north I am going to bring against Tyre Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, king of kings, with horses and chariots, with horsemen and a great army. 8 He will ravage your settlements on the mainland with the sword; he will set up siege works against you, build a ramp up to your walls and raise his shields against you. 9 He will direct the blows of his battering rams against your walls and demolish your towers with his weapons. 10 His horses will be so many that they will cover you with dust. Your walls will tremble at the noise of the warhorses, wagons and chariots when he enters your gates as men enter a city whose walls have been broken through. 11 The hooves of his horses will trample all your streets; he will kill your people with the sword, and your strong pillars will fall to the ground. 12 They will plunder your wealth and loot your merchandise; they will break down your walls and demolish your fine houses and throw your stones, timber and rubble into the sea. 13 I will put an end to your noisy songs, and the music of your harps will be heard no more. 14 I will make you a bare rock, and you will become a place to spread fishnets. You will never be rebuilt, for I the Lord have spoken, declares the Sovereign Lord.

The claim was that Tyre would be destroyed and never be rebuilt. Yet, Tyre not only still exists, but it is Lebanon's fourth biggest city.

Thus, your claim "Every single prophecy in the Bible has been accurately fulfilled" is demonstrably false. Philosophy is not about making grand false claims in the hope of fooling the gullible into following your ideas. It is ideally aiming for maximal accuracy an truthfulness.

Sy Borg:

By your own admission Tyre was destroyed (in fulfillment of Bible prophecy). And by your own admission it is now a city in Lebanon, not a city called Tyre. In other words, Tyre was never rebuilt, just as the Bible stated.

I find it interesting that you have made no attempt to micromanage the false statements being made by LuckyR and Lagayscienza who claim, without evidence, that humans have existed 250,000 years. Why are you singling me out? If you want me gone from your website, I can do that.

Feel free to ban me.

Alter2Ego