Religious faithw v

Zaehet Strife

Zaehet Strife

Well-Known Member
Heisenberg said:
I had this exact attitude for a long time. I used to think that if I had an experience that convinced me of God, I would still have to question it. Since I couldn't be sure, I wouldn't be able to say it was proof, even to me. But then I figured if the experience left me with doubt, it wouldn't truly be a divine experience. So maybe without having one, I could not judge.

But are there any true divine experiences? Unless something happens that is beyond doubt, it isn't divine, and I have never heard of such an experience. Unless the experience can not possibly have a natural explanation, then it must be subject to Occams razor. We need extraordinary reasons to make extraordinary assumptions. If people make the assumption that god is behind the experience, it is a result of their own irresponsibility. Even if someone did have an experience that went beyond all natural explanations like tumor, hallucinations, ect, jumping to god would still be less responsible than say, assuming the matrix or aliens implanting memories as a practical joke or a computer glitch in a reality simulation.. all these things break fewer logical barriers than God.

Of course without having an experience myself, I can not say for sure, but I am confident enough to now say that I do not accept personal experience as rationale for certainty, even for that one person.
Click to expand...
i was just talking to my brother about this. once it was just him and i sitting up in his room just talking about who knows what (probably just cool ideas) when at some point i guess we just stopped talking and we were just staring at eachother. a crazy feeling came over me i had only ever felt in a dream before. everything in my peripheral vision was swaying, going in and out of focus... my eyes started watering like i was crying, but i wasnt crying. then i said, man... i feel like im in a dream, like this is all just one big dream, he just nodded and said yes. as soon as i had a thought and spoke, the feeling started to slowly subside and my senses started to come back. my hands were shaking... and even to this day we still do not claim to know what happened that day, nor do we understand... and it hasnt happened since.

now, this brings me to my point. at any time after that i could have given myself an explanation for what had happened... and i did try to at the start, but the more i thought about it, the more i realized what i was doing. this (what many people would describe as enlightening) experience we both had at the same time, nothing i could do...nothing i could say or think could make sense of it. as much as i wanted this experience to be what i wanted it to be... no matter how hard i tried, i still could not convince myself that it was anything but an experience that could not be explained nor understood.

when we experience something, as soon as we put thought behind that experience... we start to change the experience into something we want it to be, something we can understand or know. as soon as we put thought behind that experience... it isnt the experience any more at all. its what we want to to be, based on our ideas of it. instead of letting the experience be just what it is... something unexplainable, we decide its better to pretend to know what it was rather than leave it as it is.

as soon as we try to put thought behind a divine intervention or enlightenment or awakening (whatever term you like to use best) experience... we automatically change its form into something we want it to be, or we want to understand it as...

...instead of leaving it at the truth, that my brother and i really don't understand what the fuck it was that just happened... and no matter how hard we try to tell ourselves we know what it was, we cant, not only do we refuse to lie to each other... but most importantly, we refuse to lie to ourselves.
 
PbHash

PbHash

Active Member
Zaehet Strife said:
how could you ever find truth if you just make it up as you go.... ?

the only truth ive ever experienced, or enlightenment ive ever had... is the sudden realization of how much i do not know, with the sudden realization of just what lengths i had gone through to tell myself otherwise. waking up from my own dream in a sense, or waking up from my own self created reality.
Click to expand...
So well put. I now call myself a skeptic, I use science and critical thinking to guide my views. I think the typical thought process of a skeptic goes a little like this, "neutrinos going faster than the speed of light?!? Hmm nothing in my knowledge of the great laws (did i make that term up haha )of physics agrees with that, but I know most of these laws are very accurate. Let me see if I can find another explanation for this" One of the hardest things to do is to be arguing about a debate, have the rebuttal "prove" (prove sounds like it has an agenda huh?) you wrong, but honestly not take it personally and understand you were wrong.
 
J

Jar Man

Active Member
Heisenberg said:
Neither Darwinism or the anthropological principal cite randomness as an explanation. The describe specific filters which helped shape and allow for our existence, the opposite of haphazard chance. Furthermore, we never accept an explanation purely for the reason that it's the only way things make sense. I think increased awareness and education, improved practice of science and the embracement of free inquiry go along way to explaining recent development.
Click to expand...
Depending on how one thinks of the terms, randomness regarding biological function is indeed part of what's assumed. And where did we suppose an increased awareness relatively suddenly came from? "Filters"? Be specific. All these things you speak about don't really conflict with what i've been saying anyway. Finally, your last sentence doesn't really explain sufficiently anything.
 
Heisenberg

Heisenberg

Well-Known Member
PbHash said:
Haha I know! I will as another thread. I'll call it, Have you exercised your brain today? I want to see if all the mathematicians come crawling out of the dark.
Click to expand...
I have not seen that argument in these forums yet, but once it starts, it never goes away! Mathematicians take that shit seriously. Babies get eaten, innocent animals get sacrificed, and Satan himself shutters.
 
J

Jar Man

Active Member
PbHash said:
Wow! My next debate was going to be about mathematics. Topic is: are 1 and 0.999999999999999(9 for infinity) the same?
Click to expand...
Nope! Or else the number wouldn't be 0.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999... add infinitum.
 
J

Jar Man

Active Member
It's almost like the seeming trick thinking around 1X0=0. One would have to have the 0.99999... along with another value factor in some simple or complex equation to actually be a brain teaser that req'd a latter day Einstein to figure out.
 
eye exaggerate

eye exaggerate

Well-Known Member
sso said:
..its called blind faith (lol blessed are those that believe without seeing (or as a famous showman put it "there is one born, every minute" (though possibly 2))

kinda reminds me of "there is nothing up my sleeve, just look"

when priests asks one to take something on "faith" (And their income depends on this..)

if anyone else asks that look to "there is one born every minute"
Click to expand...

...interesting that you 'blindly' point to the world navel. Sucker :)
 
smok3y1

smok3y1

Active Member
Zaehet Strife said:
smok3y, tell us... how you know god exists? if you be true to yourself... im sure you will be facing an inner paradox. you will ask yourself...hmmm, how do i really know god exists? and then your inner being of truth will tell you, sir... you dont really know, you only think you know. then your mind will be like... wait! f that! i dont just think i know i really know! then your inner being will say hmmmm, tell me just how you know.

the only thing any theologian has to defend their point from other peoples questions..(even their own) is faith.

without faith, there is only truth. that beliefs are nothing more than thoughts, merely ideas emanating from our imaginations.

but people are scared, so scared in fact they would rather make up their own truth... or more accurately, accept to someone else's. no one wants to live life in uncertainty. much easier to pretend things are the way you want them to be, much easier to listen to someone else.

faith- pretending to know something that you dont, because you are either too scared to be truthful with yourself (hiding from the fear of not knowing)... too scared to go against everything that your parents taught you as you were growing up (feelings of betrayal to your parents or culture) or too scared of getting looked down upon by your fellow believers of faith as to be labeled an outcast (feelings of abandonment from your people in your culture, everyone wants to be accepted)

"uncertainty in the presence of vivid hopes, dreams and fears can be extremely painful, but must be endured if you wish to live your life without the support of comforting fairytales."

Pbhash, without faith there would be no religion lol. just logical intelligent rational thinkers.
Click to expand...
Like I said its not faith for me, for me its knowing and there is a major difference. This is pretty much based strictly on MY experiences and not what my parents taught me (my parents are not really religious) and not my friends (Neither are they). I don't expect anyone other than myself to be convinced of the existence of God.
And I never seem to understand why some Atheist assume that not believing in God automatically makes them logical, intelligent and rational thinkers.
 
Beefbisquit

Beefbisquit

Well-Known Member
sso said:
which basically means that every number is infinite
Click to expand...
No, it just means we can list an infinite amount of numbers. The same way we can make an infinite amount of fractions... e.g. half of a half of a half, ad infinitum...
 
Zaehet Strife

Zaehet Strife

Well-Known Member
smok3y1 said:
Like I said its not faith for me, for me its knowing and there is a major difference. This is pretty much based strictly on MY experiences and not what my parents taught me (my parents are not really religious) and not my friends (Neither are they). I don't expect anyone other than myself to be convinced of the existence of God.
And I never seem to understand why some Atheist assume that not believing in God automatically makes them logical, intelligent and rational thinkers.
Click to expand...
how do you know? what happened to convince you of such certainty that god exists?
 
mindphuk

mindphuk

Well-Known Member
smok3y1 said:
And I never seem to understand why some Atheist assume that not believing in God automatically makes them logical, intelligent and rational thinkers.
Click to expand...
You honestly believe that people assess and rate their own qualities such as intelligence by using something that they don't believe?
 
PbHash

PbHash

Active Member
smok3y1 said:
Like I said its not faith for me, for me its knowing and there is a major difference. This is pretty much based strictly on MY experiences and not what my parents taught me (my parents are not really religious) and not my friends (Neither are they). I don't expect anyone other than myself to be convinced of the existence of God.
And I never seem to understand why some Atheist assume that not believing in God automatically makes them logical, intelligent and rational thinkers.
Click to expand...

Probably the same reason doctors think they are more intouch with reality than the paranoid schitzo in front of them who is trying to explain the sexual preferences of gay and lesbian corn. That shit just don't make no sense!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top