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Re: Questions about religion
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by
on 2006-10-27 14:18:06 |
Ok, say no more. Probably for the best.    |
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Re: Questions about religion
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by BUBsterella
on 2006-10-27 14:46:57
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NekoMimi: "And the fact is, cruel maybe, that religions wont last for forever" I dissagree. (humbly, of course.) Religions were formed to answer the same universal questions, "why are we here? What is the meaning of life? What happens to us when we die?" As long as these questions continue to be asked, religion will never die, becuause they offer answers to the masses that are comforting, and oftentimes exactly what is desired to be heard. Like, for instance, that there is justice in the afterlife. That there is an eternal resting place for your soul. That there is a greater force guiding life to a distinct point in the imperceivable future. We are here to carry out 'God's will.' People like these answers. They feel comforted, and feel insecure when their stability is threatened. People don't like to feel alone, or insignificant. People can't handle that truth, and don't want to try. So religion will always be there. ~~ About the whole, "there couldn't be balance because then the oppositness would cause a reaction who's outcome would be the destruction of everything" thing. Couldn't it be argued that the empty or negative space between atoms is their counterpart? What is the emptiness of outer space if not the balance to all of the matter that exists within it? For every something, there is a nothing. There has to be a balance, because if there weren't the world would turn to chaos and eventually collapse on itself. For things to 'be' alive, inanimate, what have you, there has to be the right amount of this and that. Without water humans would die. Too much heat and humans will die. Too much cold and humas will die. The whole earth is a balance of life and death, of particles and nothingness. Everything exists to sustain everything else. Too much of one or the other could cause utter destruction.  |
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Re: Questions about religion
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by
on 2006-10-27 15:06:12 (edited 2006-10-27 15:09:06)
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Bubsterella, while i hold the same point of view as you do, i am a bit more optimistic, perhaps. I will use two distinct words: religion and spirituality. I define religion as the belief in the supernatural. Examples of religion are the belief in a god being, heaven & hell, the soul, ghosts, etc. I define spirituality as the pleasurable experience (often had through religion, but not exclusively) that one understands the world and their own place in it. Examples of spirituality include the state of heightened consciousness achieved through meditation, the feeling of humility achieved by prayer and offering, as well as the enlightenment that comes with a deep scientific understanding of reality. Religion is not required to answer "why are we here? What is the meaning of life? What happens to us when we die?" for an individual. Religion is not required to experience spirituality individually. In a group, there are always be people who will be spiritual using religion instead of the healthy alternatives. Those people will tend to cause trouble. Of course, this is only the historical trend, which could change in the future, but it does not appear likely. 
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Re: Questions about religion
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I believe the saying goes; "Religion is vile and immoral, an affliction of the mind that keeps our species from achieving our potential" Christianity is one big contradiction. Its gone so far as to there being different "versions" of christians. Its rediculous.
Two and twenty years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign.
- 2 Kings 8:26
Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign. - 2 Chronicles 22:2 |
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Re: Questions about religion
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We done all this wonderful discussing of religion without someone going psycho rant on us. Please Lubu I for one would like to hear what you have to say. Even though religion is a very volatile subject I'm sure it's not as volatile as adding Francium to water. I've personally only seen up to a Rubidium and water reaction but I hear from my professor that the Francium or Cesium reaction is quite a sight. Sorry I got the honor of tossing Potassium into a bucket of water today and I'm still wiggin' out about it. Alkali metals rule. I remember growing up when God was everything to me. He's who I prayed to at night and in hte morning and when I felt scared. But anymore I don't identify with the religious community that kept me so safe in my early life. I have to agree with you Gendou that people who follow the holy books without exception seem a bit foolish. Though you say so because you don't believe in the things that go bump in the night(I've gathered). For me it's because those books are riddled with fabrications, half-truths, and blind ideology. I just can't discount that something kick-started this universe. I mean s*** I love Big Bangs but that theory just doesn't do it for me. That doesn't mean I think GOd is some big dude in a toga sitting in some ethereal place. Damn I don't even care if there was an afterlife. I like to believe God is what Socrates would call The Good. When I play sports I pray for strength from that Good. I can't pray to science to give me the strength to win the race or shutdown the offense. I can't really say anything more without retyping a lot of crap I've alreay written. It's just all so very tricky isn't it? Judging from your previous post I guess you could mark me down under the spiritual people. Nekomimi, if you read over Genesis in the Old Testament you will realize they goof on that part. It goes on to say that God created man in the 6 days story and then goes over the story of the Garden where he creates Adam, the first man. My take on the subject is that Adam is the first of God's people. Even after Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden it says that there are other people on the planet. It's a common misconception. It seems that Man was just another animal until God created his "Holy People" and made Adam ruler over all he saw. |
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Re: Questions about religion
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"Alkali metals rule" Yep. Just two days ago I had the opertunity to throw some Lithium into water.
Two and twenty years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign.
- 2 Kings 8:26
Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign. - 2 Chronicles 22:2 |
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Re: Questions about religion
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by
on 2006-10-27 23:53:07 |
control is all. opiate of the masses! opiate of the masses!!!   |
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Re: Questions about religion
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by
on 2006-10-28 10:22:36 |
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Bubsterella, While I tend to agreee with the statement that "religion was created to answer this that and the other thing" it doesn't do so much of that anymore. Religion now-a-days is used more for social control than explination. There is no better way to control a large group of people than through fear. That's all religions are, an instilled fear of socialy un-productive actions (i.e. sloth, killing, stealing, enving). The only reasn people actually follow this is because when they are part of larger group they feel much more powerful than when they stand alone. Basic human psychology that. That doesn't mean that religion will alwats be present. That means there will always be exclusive groups that look at other groups with contempt. Religion just happens to be the poster-child of it this past few millenia. As for world ballance, the "space" that surrounds the "stuff" in atoms far exceeds the ammount of "stuff." There is many more time nothing than something in this world. Much like light and dark, however, they are defined by the abscence of the other. What we should really be pondering is what happens when we remove both things from the problem. If both something and nothing were to be removed what is left? The world would then be equal. However, the world is not a ballance, it cares not whether things are equal or justified. The world could be decribed as the base of a ballance, and we humans as the arms and platforms for weighing. We stand upon the world and tell it what we think should and should not be equal. The world cares little for what we humans think or belive, because no matter what we weigh and equate the world is still the same as it was before. We place to much power in our selves. Even if what they say is true about how plastic will never decompose, maybe we were created to create plastic. If you think about it 99% of all the species of life that have ever exsisted are now extinct, and we humans have the gall to say that by killing a dodo we have changed the world forever and irrepably doomed it. Even if global warming is real, the world will fix itself. We will all die, the world will heal, and it will be the world plus plastic. Maybe the world gets lonely and so it needed plastic to keep it company, then made us to make plastic? It's just as likely, probabilty is not affected by perceptions. Gendou, I add a third word to that, faith. That being defined as the belief in what one percives as the truth. While religion may be the action of practicing one's faith, and spirituality the physical manifestation and emossional repercussions of faith. Like your last statement there, faith is seperate from religion in that I may have one but not the other. Wolf, You bring up one of my favorite examples of why the bible should not be taken litteraly. Imagine for a moment that you have a 2-dimensional friend. Now you may see an apple as a sphere like red thing, but your friend only sees the crss-section of the apple. They would only be able to see that particular cross-section at only that point and never see that exact view again. Now imagine trying to explain to that person that what they see is only a small fraction of what is percivable to you. They would have no concept of depth and thusly may try to understand it by peicing particular cross sections of the apple together that may be farther or closer than they apper to you. Their view of the apple may be greatly different than yours. They may view it as just a few cross-sections pasted together leaving out many details (i.e they view a stepped apple, while you view it very smooth). Now imagine a being that lived in a "higher" dimension than we do, to them the information of the universe would seem much different than it would to us. Also the perception of time would invaribly change, to us time is a cross-section to them maybe a long line infinitely divisible. Who's to say that what they consider to be a day is what we consider a day. It may be possible that a day to them would be 750 million of our years. So we would only get a snap-shot view of what the universe was at that moment. Hence 6 days, and increments are proper it actulally could line up to what the earth was like. That's an example of how I'm able to be "fully rational in my thinking and, at the same time, maintain that some conscious entity created the universe." What is consciousness anyway? How is it defined? Is it the ability to ask how was I made? If it is that then how do we know that a dolphin doesn't ask this? A singular concious entity creating the entire univers is a bit odd. Think of it this way, you can create thing is this world by combing differing things from thsi world. If you were to say, exsist in the 6th or 7th dimension what's to stop you from gathing various aspects of space-time and making a universe, or less profoundly from taking basic amino-chemicals and combining them to form the basis for DNA and life. Now unless you consider yourself a non-conscious entity then how do explain the creation of new elements such as 118. In a sense we are conscious creators of new microcosoms, not gods but creators. What is God defined as other than a creator. |
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Re: Questions about religion
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by
on 2006-10-28 12:14:00 (edited 2006-10-28 12:14:54)
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I like your idea of "The Good", it seems like a great form of inner strength. Although, that idea is so far removed from what the bible says God is (dude in a toga), that I would call it more of an world-view than a religious belief. What is it about Big Bang theory that you have trouble accepting? (careful gendou, off topic! :P) Damn, D-Ninja! gendou attacks wall of text, and critically misses to lose next turn! wall of text mauls gendou (99 HP).
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Re: Questions about religion
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by
on 2006-11-02 11:29:37 |
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I've read all of your thoughts and feelings towards this topic, and I thank you for your explainations. As for me, I am not a firm believer. Humans have brought destruction upon themselves. They've foresaken God, Yet God still loves humans. What is so unique about us that allows us to be loved by a God who was forsaken by his creations? From my own point of view, Every religion, and forgive me for using Chrisitanity as my base,((Though it IS the Majority Religion in the United States so I hoped it would bring interests)) has a God, But if that is so, The definition of God or Godly is a being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions. If that is true, then feelings should have no place in a God for that would make him weak, and if a God has a Weakness he is not perfect. So if he shows love for us, he shows weakness towards his enemies. Now this is my own thoughts, mind you and I could hardly give a S*** if you thought otherwise, But from this, I am sure a god would have some plans with us. Some of you put physics into it, and I am quite envious. At the moment, I am wondering something. Scientifically, how would ANY scientist believe in the Big Bang theory if all they have is just numbers and mind jogging hypothesis?? I personally hate any form of science since I never understood why bother with such nonsense as universe. Though I envy those that love it, I just am not one of those people. As far as I am concerned, God is as much a human as the God of Gendou. We as humans believe in religion, but that is blind faith we hold. All we can do is wait. But when the inevitable comes, and God saves those that believe, what becomes of the rest??? Would he truly dump the rest as trash? Why believe if that is so? And why does he show no emotion only when it is the End of the World? ((another reminder...only my thoughts here...))  |
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Re: Questions about religion
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Hmm.. Another deep thinker. So deep, I can't quite understand what you're trying to say. (Gomen ne!) As for me, I don't even know who I should believe. The Bible, written by the disciples "inspired" by the Holy Spirit(Holy Ghost) or the modern scientists/physicists who research every single minute of their lives and have come to unbelievable conclusions. I ask all of you, who will you believe? Some of you say that God has some plans for us all. If so, are we only objects of experimentation to "Him"? In my understanding of the word 'plans', it means to have something in store for a specific object. So if I read the line: "God has plans for us all", then for me, it means that He may bring out a deadly epidemic just to see how we react. Or cause a storm which may kill not just thousands but possibly all of us. Or simply destroy a country thru a Nuclear War. What would be the possible reason for this if it ever happens? Yosho, I would just like to tell you what I think of what you have written here. ""God saves those that believe, what becomes of the rest??? Would he truly dump the rest as trash?"" -- What becomes of the others? Possibly, thrown into Hell.(Where I may possibly end up) It's that simple. Gendou-sama, I think that the problem with the Big-Bang Theory is in fact, it's just a theory.(for now) It hasn't been proven yet. This is what I think... In conclusion, Religion ruins lives. But at the same time, builds it. Simply put, it's a stone which we can lean on when all hope seems impossible. The only thing we can count on when we lose our path. Again, this is what I think.. Please don't flame me for this. |
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Re: Questions about religion
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by
on 2006-11-03 15:32:50 |
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I have read almost all of this thread....interesting.... To Yosho.... I dont think if God shows HIS mercy or love means it's a weaknesses. Think about Love, we can do almost anything for our beloving one, something that unimaginable before. It'r true people believe in many kind of religion. But think positive man. Every religion in this world (i believe) teach about peace and love. I also a believer of God, but i'm not a kind of people who have 'blind faith'. I'm a Biologist, and i have seen many incredible events in living organism. Think. We constructed from millions (maybe billions) of cells. Every single cell have it's own function and role in our body and all of them work coordinatively....i have seen cells work with microscope and i astonished....they show complex activity. I didn't believe that such complex activity appears out of nowhere. I believe someone with unlimited knowledge have created them. Such a complex structure must have created with a perfect planning, i molecule goes wrong in a cell can cause cell's death....well... People said science and religion is different one and another. I guess not. In science we can prove GOD's almighty power stated in Holy Book (whatever it is, Bible, Al-Qur'an, or else) by analyazing natural event. As in Religion, we prove GOD's almighty power using science.   |
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Re: Questions about religion
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What happened before the big bang? Dont give me a god answer. |
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Re: Questions about religion
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by
on 2006-11-05 02:23:09 (edited 2006-11-05 02:50:49)
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@red_rackham: if you believe in intelligent design, you are not a biologist. if you don't believe that beauty (often perceived as "order" but that is a mear personification) can arise from chaos, you might want to download some of my screen saver programs. I wrote a program that simulates biological creatures evolving in a 2-d world. I also produced "biological" patterns from pure random numbers. Any cryptographer knows that the for sure method of solving any problem is brute force. Billions of years is plenty of time for genetics to have created all the varieties of life we see by simple brute force. If you don't believe me, consider the mathematics: 2 billion years, thats 6*10^16th seconds. The genome of some bacterium is on the order 6*10^5 base pairs. They can replicate at rates of about one generation every 20 minutes (2*6*10^2 seconds). It is safe to say that a lineage of bacterium living 2 billion years under ideal conditions could be 5*10^13. at an extremely low rate of mutation, say, 6*10^-5, we would expect to see at least one mutation per generation. assuming most are not of benefit to the organism, let us suppose that only 1*10^6 are passed on. we are left with 1*10^7 mutations, far more mutations than base pairs in the organism! surely this allows for quite a bit of variation without any "parental planning" from some cosmic botanist. Ph33r my orders of magnitude! God's mighty power my buttons, biological diversity (as i have just demonstrated mathematically) is just a demonstration vast reaches of time acting on polarized particles! Now, if you see the fundamental laws of nature themselves as being evidence for God the creator, you are back to the same old problem that the existence of your God being can neither be verified or denied. @jeongso1: Here is a short list of some ideas that simply make no scientific sense, and must never be used:
(looking way back to Yosho's post) Don't get me started on the big bang theory. Anyone who has seen lightning knows electricity is real. Anyone who has seen the sun or moon rise, or a shooting star streak across the sky knows that gravity is real, and that space is vast. Similarly, everyone who has seen the cosmic background radiation KNOWS the big bang happened. Seeing is believing, right? Last time I saw god, he was in a tortilla and told me not to eat him, but i didn't listen.
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Re: Questions about religion
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Huh? I thought they were getting closer to a theory of everything? Never mind. And I don't think morality is a science. Also there shouldn't be too much emphasis on the speed of light being the speed limit of the universe. If you look at the actual equations relating to it, it still makes sense for something to be 'faster' than c. The problem is it is not a 'real' velocity, but you'd know that. After all, engineering requires the use of complex numbers. (Sorry for being nit-picky I'll get back on topic.) I'm not sure where I would stand concerning religion. At the moment I'm probably closer to being agnostic. Religion has caused a lot of trouble, and I think we can take that as given just looking back upon history. Religion has done a lot of good too. Those who are religious tend to be better people, and of course there are the xceptions. What I can't stand is certain people calling themselves Christians when they don't believe in God. You...what?!? It's a contradiction in itself, but I know someone who claims that. As for God, well... where do we even start. I think we have a confused conception of God. I've forgotten who mentioned this (sorry) about what God is. You know, omnipotent, benevolent, etc. If we were to take a Christian view on it though, it seems he falls short of those expectations. The perfect God we suppose is more like a philosophers' God. I think that distinction needs to be made for any debate concerning God, because the Christian God, certainly in the Old Testament, is a long way from perfect. He admits to jealousy in the Ten Commandments for crying out loud. As for the science and religion divide I personally no longer see a problem. Again, the explanation is on different levels. Science answers the how, whereas religion claims to answer the why. Follow? Eg. why is it that my PC is on? Various combinations of electronics and stuff allows it to be. But why though? I wanted to check the forums. I think it's a subtle distinction that gets overlooked when people discuss such matters. (Whether the answer of God is good enough is another matter.) Oh, we are not descended from monkeys. A common misconception. I didn't understand that when I was younger but I do now. I agree that religions teach peace and love, it's just that they have different ways of practicing it. I'm sure I had a point to make but I can't remember it. Oh yeah, the one factor that turned me away from Christianity in my youth. As someone posted about the apocalypse that God will save all Christians and leave non-believers to die and languish in hell. That was what my then teacher told me too. I never really got over that. That suggests that God does not care about a person's moral worth, just whether they believe in him or not. I found that completely unsatisfactory. Even the problem of evil doesn't cause as much problems in my mind. Still, religion has helped people so it's not bad as such. Only those who practice it can be bad. Hmm...still don't have a point. I guess I'm living up to my name.
Wait a minute, are you sure about that?
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Re: Questions about religion
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by
on 2006-11-05 08:34:35 (edited 2006-11-05 08:44:59)
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If you mean B.S. (as in Bachelor of Science) yes. The sad thing is there are people trying to find examples of those. Even I'm not idealist enough to say there's such things as an "objective moral value." That's just contradictory to it's own definition. Morals are personal, that's how they should be, and they should keep their grubby little fingers out of the cookie jar of foriegn policy and science. Over 99% of all the species that exsist today are extinct, why, because nature is a self-enhancing self-healing process. Species begin to overspecialize when the earth stays the same for a few million years, when that happens the earth changes. This gets rid of the overspecialized and leaves the adaptable ones there. The only reason humans are even arround is because we change our enviroment rather than ourselves to better adapt, not because of some galatic idegestion-causing hispanic food. Humans aren't that great either. We are not the eptome of evolutionary achivement, that's reserved for bacteria. We die, they clone themselves thousands of times. We have disease, they are diease. We see a gentic mutation every few thousand years, they see it by the minute. We have to have a very specific enviroment to be able to live, they can exsits in tempratures ranging from -100C to over 200C and in areas where there is no light, air, or water. We pride ourselves in asking questions like "where do we come from," in all of history how has that helped us propogate our species. Conciveably the only thing that could be considered a weakness is something we both share, viuses. The only thing that we have over bacteria is a brain, and that's debatable in some cases. Problem solving is our only stength, quite the problem. If bacteri could do that they'd own the world (considering in just a matter of weeks, provided sufficent resources, bacteria could actually divide to the point that they would out-mass the Earth). obakasama, I personally beive that a form of the rapture (or whatever you want to call it) already happend. It's described in the bible as "two neighbors working in the sam feild, one falls and the other stays." That and other descriptions line up almost perfectly with how the black plauge spread across Europe. There's been numerous things of this type, such as AIDS and various other pathological diseases. Using reason to imterpret the bible: one could say that the world is in constant rapture, seemingly random illness and natural events cause a percentage to die. I'm not saying that AIDS was put on earth by god, but I am saying that kid will use a magnifying glass to kill random ants. |
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Re: Questions about religion
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by
on 2006-11-05 15:03:26 (edited 2006-11-05 15:03:45)
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as always, d-ninja, a pleasure reading your post. i have always been a bacteria-supremasist, myself. humans, as a species, are pretty wussy. we don't even manufacture our own folic acid!!!
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Re: Questions about religion
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I lost my religion ages ago after my parents used it as a tool to oppress me and nailed me. I had the fear of an oppressive god hammered into me to keep me from attempting independant thought. When I finally lost all belief in god, I was relieved because I was free to think for myself without the fear of divine retribution and that led me to a new level of thought. I was able to shed the reign of homophobia that my relatives and the catholic church bored into me.
Please visit my message board, I only have 3 members now and I would appreciate it. It is at s10.invisionfree.com/the_world_2.
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Re: Questions about religion
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When you put it that way, er...wait...the thought that religion can oppressive has crossed my mind, I think Napoleon understood that it could be used to control society. In a way religion organizes people. That in itself is perhaps not a bad thing. The problem arises when we have different religions clashing over the finer details of how to organize people's lives. They all want it to be 'good', but as most people would point out, 'good' is a subjective value. Interestingly I find it is perhaps the west that has managed to achieve a break between politics and religion. That means that our lives in the west has been split into a public and private sphere. Some religions have yet to achieve, if it is an achievement, that split. I'm thinking of Islam mainly, because the religion permeates all aspects of their lives. Should people choose to believe in a god, good for them, and hopefully they become a better person because of it because the world is bad enough as it is. D-Ninja: I personally think of the apocalypse as something more catastrophic. Not that the things you mentioned aren't, just something more fundamentally terrible. But then, The Bible can be interpretated in various ways. As for life forms and evolution would bacteria count as a life-form? I'm a bit ignorant on that side though I don't disagree with what you said there. But one life-form that I would put forward are cockroaches. Now those things are hard under normal standards. Come to think of it, if bacteria were to have a brain, then they might screw up as badly as the human race. I'm out.
Wait a minute, are you sure about that?
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Re: Questions about religion
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by zparticus27
on 2006-11-11 01:07:01
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hmmmm what s the problem with religion?i for one am a man of god... im a knight of the altar...hehehe well i dont have problems with people with different beliefs...believe in what you want to believe....i believe in god and you dont...fine its ok...were still pals right...well my problem is not with religion is it how people run religion itself...first of all religion in general has done a lot of good things....it has it is points...heck the philippines itself wont be in its place today if not for religion....but thats the problem... the philippines was invaded by spain with the use of religion....they spread christianity in the land and thus also spreading the spanish rule...and i have to thank them for that...if not for them i would not have found my faith...but then again the human factor comes into play...what happened was corrupt priest monopolize and manipulated the minds of the commoners using the words of god...istead of teaching the ways of the cross these priests placed themselves next to god...they used the peoples faith and manipulated it..trning salvation into fear....it even came to a point when a commoner was more afraid from the priest rather than the governor....so what im saying is...its the people running the religious organization are the ones that are doubtful... the terrerist even uses religion to brainwash muslim followers into going to a holy war... i also dont like the fact that most religion will use their power to influence other factors outside their faith, how they oppose everything that is not in within thier beliefs and how them force each of their beliefs to others like here in my country...the law says that the church must be seperate from the state yet one can clearly see the influences the church brings into the political and social activities of the country...in a rural area one can see a huge church being renovated...with millions of donations being spent on the "beautification" of the church yet in a few kilometers one can see the common man living in poverty...wont GOD appreciate it more if the donations used to renovate the church be used instead to help the people? i believe in god but i am slowly losing faith on my religion....its not a question of my faith...iknow in my heart that i believe in HIM 100 percent...its just that religion today is becoming nothing more than a mere organization....an organization where power and politics reign supreme...its not religion that is the problem it the people behind it that makes it problem... |