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Yeah!! terry---that's exactly what I'm getting at. God is whatever you as a person believe in. I cannot tell you it is wrong because it is what you have chosen to believe. You may adhere to some religious doctrine or you may believe that your god speaks to you personally at the same time each day- that's your business.

The problem then is that on discovering my lack of belief in the supernatural religious people will often want to share their belief with me, tell me what I believe REALLY ( as Rev did) or demand I convert to their way of thinking or change my behaviour to accommodate their belief.

I do not ask this of them---why do they ask it of me?


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Revlgking wrote:

"Atheists may think of conscious existence as depressing, as being meaningless and absurd, and that non-existence is to be prefered."

What on earth did you mean by that? Can you name any athsists that think that way?

Redewenur wrote:

"because they aren't 'life enhancing principles'"

But surely what's life enhancing for the hawk is not so for the rabbit? Or does God only worry about humans? If the latter is so when during our evolution did God begin to confine his interest to us? In fact I'd like to hear Revlgking's answer to that one. Or anyone else who has an opinion on the matter.

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Originally Posted By: terrytnewzealand
Redewenur wrote:

"because they aren't 'life enhancing principles'"

But surely what's life enhancing for the hawk is not so for the rabbit? Or does God only worry about humans? If the latter is so when during our evolution did God begin to confine his interest to us? In fact I'd like to hear Revlgking's answer to that one. Or anyone else who has an opinion on the matter.

Terry, note that I never included God, or gods - that was your own auto-embellishment to my presentation of an atheistic viewpoint.

Maybe you'd like to read my posts again. There are only two. Come back to me if you think I wasn't clear about my meaning - it's been known to happen.


"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once" - John Wheeler
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Ellis wrote:
"that's exactly what I'm getting at. God is whatever you as a person believe in."

Well I certainly can't argue with that statement. But it is no different from saying "a hot day" is whatever you believe is a hot day no one can argue with you. It is the stuff of polite conversation not science.

Ellis wrote:
"I do not ask this of them---why do they ask it of me?"

For several reasons. The first is brainwashing. Some are threatened with damnation and hell if they don't. They act out of fear for what will happen to them not a genuine interest in helping anyone else.

The second is that they truly don't believe what they are selling. I find that those I have met who were most comfortable with their belief system felt no compulsion to sell it to someone else as a way of justifying their own thinking.

TNZ ... what revlgking wrote is words strung together in a grammatically correct sentence but lacking a coherent thought. This is no different from the rest of what he has been promoting.

Some people try to equate "unintelligible" with "deep."

TNZ wrote:
"Or does God only worry about humans?"

And not just any humans. Those humans who are believers in a specific interpretation of a specific doctrine as interpreted by a specific contemporary interpreter. Have you noticed that no one ever points out the inconsistency between contemporary interpretation and that 50, 100, or 500 years ago? Ask why!


DA Morgan
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Originally Posted By: Ellis
---that's exactly what I'm getting at. God is whatever you as a person believe in.


Absolutely True.

Unless God exists. Then God is what God is, whether people believe in God or not.

Belief is Useful even if you believe wrong things, as long as the fruit of that belief is good and it produces good actions. But I am not implying that anyone should persist in false belief, when better evidence leads to another belief (even if that new belief will produce wrong actions).

However, Belief is Correct only when it consistent with reality. If God exists as a small pixie in a bottle then only someone who believes in God as a small pixie in a bottle is right. All other belief about God is misleading and irrelevant and God is not '...whatever you as a person believe in'.

Originally Posted By: Ellis
I cannot tell you it is wrong because it is what you have chosen to believe.


True, on metaphysical issues you can only say what you believe and present some evidence why you believe it, but the belief is always subjective. Revlking believes in something without any evidence whatsoever - Christianity rests upon both historical evidence (however debatable - but at least open to rational examination) and the 'self informing' evidence of personal experience (not open to rational debate). Revlking's belief is purely based upon 'self informing' evidence and is not open to any kind of debate.

In fact it is so woolly that it matters not whether anyone believes in it or not. In my experience (where such profound matters are concerned) there is always a consequence of believing something that is true - so Rev's beliefs are irrelevant.

Blacknad.

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Originally Posted By: Blacknad
Belief is Correct only when it consistent with reality.

There's a significant flaw there; there's still room for doubt.

Here's an alternative: Belief cannot be proven incorrect unless it's proven to be inconsistent with reality.



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No but a belief system can be harmful even when it does correspond with reality. I offer up the Middle East as one example among many.

The Israelis have lots of historical evidence to support their belief system about their plight. The Palestinians, similarly, can point to very valid reasons supporting their belief system.

After how many generations, one might ask, will they discover that their belief systems are harmful to everyone.


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Certainly. The simple fact that a particular belief system cannot be proven false doesn't endow it with virtuousity. That's not a logical consequence, and is entirely another matter.


"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once" - John Wheeler
Warren #20742 04/22/07 09:51 PM
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Originally Posted By: Warren
I prefer to use the term divine over God and believe while it's not synonymous with the universe, the universe is permeated with the divine....
Warren, you and I are, obviously, on the same page and playing in the same key. And, as I understand it, neither of us is interested in imposing what we believe on others. I wonder why some posters want to believe that we do?

ABOUT BISHOP SPONG
By the way, neither is the author, the retired bishop (New Jersey) of the Episcopalian church, USA, and theologian John Shelby Spong--with whom I have chatted more than once. In a recent article, in the Toronto Star (Saturday, April 21), he is quoted as saying that the time has come for each of us to "rethink the meaning of being 'divine'.

JESUS WAS TRULY A HUMAN BEING. SO WE CAN ALL BE
Spong believes that Jesus was a real human being, like all of us are, or can be. Any human being who is willing to live without hate, prejudice or malice can be divine, Spong says.

Driving the point home, Spong said, "The way you become divine is to become wholly human." I couldn't agree more. What do you say, Warren?

I hope that all of us can be gracious enough to be fully human and live by the Golden Rule--common to all the great religions.


Last edited by Revlgking; 04/22/07 10:03 PM.

G~O~D--Now & ForeverIS:Nature, Nurture & PNEUMA-ture, Thanks to Warren Farr&ME AT www.unitheist.org
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Dan wrote:

"The Israelis have lots of historical evidence to support their belief system about their plight. The Palestinians, similarly, can point to very valid reasons supporting their belief system."

They don't actually. Unless you consider their myths of genocide as they occupied Canaan record actual historical events. That is precisely the point of some of my comments on various threads. I suppose I could claim God has given me the southern half of Ireland as my rightful home and then go and take it over(if I could get powerful allies to support me). My ancestors left there much more recently than did the ancestors of many people who claim a right to live in ancient Canaan. However my claim would be no more justified than any other belief system based solely on myth. The Palestinians presumably descend at least partly from the Sea people, but so do the Israelites anyway. They are the same people separated by their myths.

I suggest the sooner we can wean the population of the region off these myths the better for all humanity.

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I agree. There is no population alive today that hasn't been both perpetrator and victim at one time or another. Nor suprisingly, however, they always portray themselves as the victim and never acknowledge their role as perpetrator.

Perhaps we should establish something in international law equivalent to a statue of limitations. If it happened more than 150 years ago ... shut up and move on.

Well it wouldn't solve all of the problems in the Middle East. But it would be a start.


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While I agree with the arguments made above, about limitations, I presume you agree that you are off topic? Which, BTW, because I believe in artistic creativity, is okay by me.

Talking about victim and victor: Take a look at the May edition of the National Geographic, about Jamestown, Virginia.


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DA said, "Nor suprisingly, however, they always portray themselves as the victim and never acknowledge their role as perpetrator."
Wow, something that we both agree on, good job. But agreeing with Revlgking this discussion is going off-topic.
let me ask you all this: who are you? who am I? what is our purpose? what are we here for? what can science do for our plight or great conditions?
again, i think: Am I merely an ant in this cosmic vastness, destined for the grave whence I came? Or a being, endowed with unalienable rights? Am I a pawn of the gods, in a hideous far-reaching scheme? Am I nothing, just merely an economic name, and nothing beyond the physical realm? Do I serve some higher purpose?

Tim #20786 04/24/07 02:12 AM
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Revlgking wrote:

"I presume you agree that you are off topic?"

And Tim wrote:

"But agreeing with Revlgking this discussion is going off-topic."

I disagree with you both. My comments are completely on topic. Definitions of God given here seem to be based largely on the God of the Old Testament. Therefore we must be able to use the OT, by definition, in any discussion on "Evidence for God". Or does everyone agree that the God of the Old Testament simply didn't exist, was completely a figment of somebody's imagination.

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Tim wrote:
"But agreeing with Revlgking this discussion is going off-topic."

revlgking wouldn't know "on-topic" if he fell off a ladder onto it.

The master of contrivance has not once even made even the slightest effort with respect to science. When he makes a contribution to the forum I will consider his opinion accordingly. And in this case, as TNZ says ... our comments are on-topic.

If one ignores the contrivance of substituting "Ø" or "o" which I would presume either a deity or a sentient human could manage to see through the only definition of the word, of any value to a discussion is the one from the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition.

Lets have a modicum of integrity here. The concept of a monotheistic deity identified as "god" has been around for thousands of years. Anyone in 2007 who wishes to stand up and claim that everyone else in all of history misunderstood and wishes to redefine the term is going into the dustbin of history just like so many thousands before them: An empty hat.


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Even a brief reading ot the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller, A History of God--The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, by Karen Armstrong, one of Britain's foremost commentators on religious affairs will convince anyone that the idea and conception of god, gods, and God, has been shaped and altered over the centuries. For example, most Jews do not take the conception of God, as depicted in much of what we call the Old Testament, literally.


BTW, I will gladly start a thread: There is no rational evidence for gods or God. But GØD is....

In her book, KA points out that, "the human idea of God has a history." God, in an important sense is, "a product of the human imagination."


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ABOUT KAREN ARMSTRONG--theologian, teacher, writer, communicator
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_armstrong.html

BILL MOYERS: If you were God, would you do away with religion?

ARMSTRONG: Well, there are some forms of religion that must make God weep. There are some forms of religion that are bad, just as there's bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too. Religion that has concentrated on egotism, that's concentrated on belligerence rather than compassion.

MOYERS: And so much of religion has been the experience of atrocity.

ARMSTRONG: But then you have to remember that this is what human beings do. Secularism has shown that it can be just as murderous, just as lethal, uh, as religion. Now I think one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to curb this murderous bent that we have as human beings.

MOYERS: You get September 11th ... you get the Crusades, you get ... do you remember the young Orthodox Jew who assassinated Itzhak Rabin? I can see him right now, looking into the camera, and he says, everything I did, I did for ...

ARMSTRONG: For God.

MOYERS: ... for the glory of God.

ARMSTRONG: Yes. Yes. Well, this is ... this is bad religion. Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine-qua-non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people? And sometimes we use religion just to back up these unworthy hatreds, because we're frightened too.
[Read the whole interview]

http://www.powells.com/authors/armstrong.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Armstrong


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This probably isn't an original thought, but I ain't gonna read thru 58 pages. Sorry....

Seems to me that God is not the problem, but that Religion can (easily) be the problem. ...and this makes sense re: the above if you read "MOYERS: ... for the glory of God," to mean religion (with emphasis on the 'glory' part).

I guess glory is in the eyes of the beholder too.

~SA


Pyrolysis creates reduced carbon! ...Time for the next step in our evolutionary symbiosis with fire.
samwik #20806 04/24/07 08:10 AM
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Ah. Gimme that ol' time religion. But wait. It seems God has evolved.

Last edited by terrytnewzealand; 04/24/07 08:12 AM.
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Revlgking wrote:

"For example, most Jews do not take the conception of God, as depicted in much of what we call the Old Testament, literally."

Hang on. I thought most of the ones in Israel used that same God to justify their right to live in the region. Are you going to tell them they are mistaken?

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