God we can understand
This topic contains 57 replies, has 10 voices, and was last updated by 
PopeBeanie 1 week, 6 days ago.
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August 29, 2019 at 4:21 pm #28092
The unspoken implication is that religious people are stupid for believing things without evidence. But this isn’t necessarily a true description of affairs.
Evidence is in abundance for many religious people anyway.
August 29, 2019 at 5:10 pm #28093The unspoken implication is that religious people are stupid for believing things without evidence.But this isn’t necessarily a true description of affairs.
People who believe that religious people are stupid for believing things without evidence do not understand what religious belief is. Faith has nothing to do with I.Q. or any other measurement of intelligence. Critical Thinking is a human skill that needs to be developed from an early age but such instruction is never at the forefront of any education system controlled by a Church.
Evidence is in abundance for many religious people anyway.
We have evolved a cognitive bias to seek confirmation of our views and beliefs. Understanding this helps to lessen it. I make a point of listening to viewpoints I disagree with and read news commentary from opposing sources.
August 29, 2019 at 5:32 pm #28094Certainty, clearly, is subject to qualification without devolving into nonsense. Not so with faith. It’s the nature of faith that it is 100%, a total commitment. Certainty can recognize facts and qualifications, faith cannot because “kind of faithful” isn’t real faith.
I 100% disagree with your statement there… Without doubt there is no faith, there is just belief….and any person that doesn’t doubt doesn’t think. Faith and doubt are two sides of the same coin.
You don’t get me, Ivy. To rephrase your statement, “Without SHRUGGING OFF doubts, there is no faith…” I would add that to be faithful, you cannot put your faith on the line. Not really. If you do, you are acting in bad faith. In a sense, you are denying the lord. “You shall have no other god but me” means you can’t really consider worshipping evidence and logic. True faith is very demanding. The faith I’m describing is better than your faith.
August 29, 2019 at 5:35 pm #28095A god we can understand? Is this the creator god of most religions? The cosmic magician who creates universes through an act of magic?
August 29, 2019 at 5:43 pm #28096Say whaaaat? I don’t get an instant of that.
August 29, 2019 at 6:17 pm #28097Say whaaaat? I don’t get an instant of that.
If you are talking to me, I don’t understand what you didn’t get.
August 29, 2019 at 6:24 pm #28100None of it.
August 29, 2019 at 11:59 pm #28102Ivy, you have faith exactly wrong. Doubt and faith are antithetical as a mutha.
I always think atheists are missing the mark in their various formulations of faith as belief without evidence. It is true. It is also weak.
Faith requires the faithful to hit the kill switch on the ordinary smarts they use to navigate day to day issues. And it is true that a believer can be intelligent. Eventually we will detect the workings of the brain that enable a believer to be dumb as smoke off shit when it comes to their delusion but otherwise intelligent.
However i have noticed that apostates from rigid faith-intensive, fire brand belief are way above average in intelligence. Thus, breaking away from the indoctrination may require high intelligence. Of course i know what i am reporting is anecdotal. Perhaps some believers become apostates for emotional reasons. IDK
What Kierkegaard said about faith is true. Here is a corollary. The greater the faith of the believer, the greater the power and authority of the inculcating influence. And when it comes to any expression of doubt the power will require the doubter to STFU or pay the consequences. If the duped begins to doubt or causes others to doubt there goes the power and authority. FAITH IS ABOUT POWER. When a person surrenders her ordinary smarts she surrenders her life. She perpetuates a power structure that is almost invariably contrary to anything that a sane person will describe as ethical.
Another observation about faith and how insane it is to have it. well fuck it…i said enuff
August 30, 2019 at 4:12 am #28106None of it.
You do understand that to create a universe as an act of will is magic, don’t you? Not the deceptive kind of those folks who ply their trade on Las Vegas stages or in TV specials,, bur actual magic. If yo don’t get that, you’re hopeless.
August 30, 2019 at 7:19 am #28108to create a universe as an act of will is magic
“Magic is a technology we don’t understand”.
August 30, 2019 at 7:33 am #28109More anti-knowledge post-modernism. You have a real hangup on the difference between evidence and rationally based claims vs. intuitively based ones. As though there is no difference
Actually those words are not mine. I was listening to a minimalist podcast and they happened to be interviewing this guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_McManus
I had never heard of him before prior to the other day….I thought his words were….interesting.
August 30, 2019 at 11:29 am #28114religious faith in God is a lot more than just trusting or having confidence in Him. Otherwise, it would be no different than one’s feelings toward a favored politician or doctor.
But this aspect of faith (I imagine) is similar to that, except that a politician or doctor didn’t “create the universe”.
It seems strange to personify this Creator as a being. It could just as easily (assuming it exists) be a force or set of forces, including a form of karma.
If we imagine that all of the four dimensions of the universe exist “already” – we are navigating through an existing 4-D landscape – then karma becomes more powerful, as it could operate backwards and forwards through time.
September 1, 2019 at 4:12 am #28137I see belief scales, with middle grounds avoided, except maybe right before closing time at the bar.
|———-|———|———|———-|
Doubt________________Faith
noGod________________God
Science_______________Woo
Exciting______________Boring
September 1, 2019 at 9:33 am #28140But @ivy maintains that doubt and faith go together. I agree that the others are mutually exclusive.
I think I can see her point: we all need to use our brains when deciding what to believe in. People differ in the conclusions they come to.
There was a very interesting article in last week’s Sunday School about evolutionary psychology, which talks about inputs > information processing > outputs in human beings. The point is that the information processing doesn’t vary, while different inputs produce different outputs, and really, faith can be a rational process, in that it requires a lot of thinking.
Seven key misconceptions about Evolutionary Psychology
I have to qualify this. Some people are more rational about it than others. Some are defiantly irrational. But they don’t need to be. It’s not irrational to believe in God, per se, since the world has elements that behave as if God exists. It’s always going to be a mystery in my opinion. But I choose the non-God option.
September 1, 2019 at 3:48 pm #28144to create a universe as an act of will is magic
“Magic is a technology we don’t understand”.
OR real magic (as opposed to stage “magic”) is something we only imagine exists. I’ll wait for any sort of proof of your posited superior technology.
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