XstrangerdangerX wrote:
Unless you were Lutheran. Or a seventh day adventist. Your view of God's acceptance is puerile and according to many branches of religion, catastrophically incorrect.
Yup.....Man has managed to muck things up on occasion. But the central tenets are still in place in virtually all religions.....Love for God and love (respect) your neighbors as yourself. Lutherans and seventh day adventists do agree on that, but they are not the only religions who would agree.
Anyway people, I think your belief makes you weak.
For some.....yes, but it really depends on what you do with your faith. Your notion is overall too generalistic and "weakness" is relatively different from person to person. What you may see is weak, others may see it as a strength, or maybe somewhere in between. But thanks for your anecdotal observation anyways.
God is a crutch, a relic from our savage past. We fear death, we fear being alone, worst of all we are frightened to our core that our lives, our actions, our very existence is meaningless.
To the contrary....we've evolved enough to have the genes necessary for the capacity of faith, not de-evolved into animalistic instinctual behavior. It's funny how a person of "reason" such as yourself ignored the first few billion years of life on this planet when there were not enough brain cells of any previous and current species that showed a capacity for faith, until humans first appeared who were the first to question their own existence.
So what did we do when we were cavemen and we started to wonder why the world was, who we are, what is our purpose? We created a creator.
Probably the most important thing next to discovering and controlling fire.
Complex thoughts being beyond us we build a God into a burning bush and from there every facet of our life is tainted by this prejudiced notion of a higher being, a higher order to things. Our lives are linear, they go from start to finish, so even by medieval times the notion that things simply are was anathema to our perspective. We cannot picture a story without a beginning, and just as much we cannot picture something being made without an intelligence behind it.
Ah, the god-of-the-gaps argument. Like learning how to read and write, it takes time to refine our skills and use both reason and faith correctly when it comes to broadening our knowledge in the cosmos. We're still evolving, correct?
You are meaningless, your existence has no purpose. 'Humanity is a successful virus clinging to the face of a speck of brown mud, suspended in infinite nothingness'. And that's not at all a bad thing.
Heh, my wife tends to disagree with you on that first sentence. A virus? Heh, who knew?
Cast off this superstition, take some responsibility for your actions. Take some responsibility for your fucking life!
I am more responsible than most people I know, religious or non-religious. There is no correlation between them (religion and responsibility). As for the superstition comment, have you ever wondered that we (humans) may be evolving a sixth sense (faith)? Time will only tell.
Think of this; a child is born into a religious family, it is taught from birth that God exists (by whatever name) and that eternal peace waits if it just toes the line/tithes its salary/ goes to church. Now take that same child at birth and put him into a family that is not religious. Is he going to live the same life? Isn't the concept of a God and the idea of religion simply something inculcated into our children, and never giving them any other option that to believe? I know of no concept more pervasive, more absolute in its requirements of your faith than that of religion. Take away that training, take away that influence and you have an individual who through rational thought can make decisions. Too many people arguing for the existence of God are coming from a standpoint that can honestly and without malice be described as brainwashing. You may think you have excercised your free will, but your very decisions have in a way been pre-determined by your upbringing and you cannot surely deny that?
Again, you are overgeneralizing. Not all religious people do this. You may have experienced this personally yourself, which is anecdotal at best.
So give me your watchmaker arguments, enlighten me with your philosophies. Tell me how you believe the absence of a God means there is no right or wrong, preach to me your absolutes. I have never yet seen an argument over God end in a satisfactory resolution.
Neither have I. Proof of God ain't gonna drop on your lap anytime soon. That's why it's called
faith. As for faith trying to disprove scientific facts to prove that there is God.....same thing. It's unnecessary and disingenuous.
You are arguing from a standpoint of faith, I from reason.
I argue on behalf of both.......and most religious people fall into this category. Brainwashing can occur not only in religious settings, but also in non-religious settings, such as political affiliation, nationalism, tribalism, etc.
Shed your chains, live your life without fear of this threatening parental figure. Take a deep breath and caste aside the wager that maybe there is a God and therefore you should play it safe. Innovate, fuck (guys girls who cares), live!
Hey, that's what Geoffry Dahmer, Charles Manson and a few other contemporaries did too......oh, wait a minute, they did end up being chained by another parental figure for their "living of life".....the government.
Last edited by Yeticus Rex (2006-04-19 14:24:29)