Phanerothyme Posted January 24, 2012 Share Posted January 24, 2012 No.4 seems to be incomplete? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris_Sleeps Posted January 24, 2012 Share Posted January 24, 2012 No.4 seems to be incomplete? No.4 is the eightfold path. I didn't want to make it more complex. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phanerothyme Posted January 24, 2012 Share Posted January 24, 2012 I don't reckon that's a truth, so much as a plan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RootsBooster Posted January 24, 2012 Share Posted January 24, 2012 Buddhists don't believe in an afterlife? I thought that Buddhists believed in reincarnation, I've just looked it up and it looks like that's just a poor translation of their belief in "rebirth" which, when looking into the definition, seems to vary between individual Buddhists Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RootsBooster Posted January 24, 2012 Share Posted January 24, 2012 Anyone noticed we're having a debate about religions and non-religions without any arguments or insults yet? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phanerothyme Posted January 24, 2012 Share Posted January 24, 2012 You missed out igtheist from your sig, RootsBooster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danot Posted January 24, 2012 Author Share Posted January 24, 2012 Quite a few theists claim to know a watchful god exists and they still break the law and harm others. Some do these things because they believe they are doing their god's will. Believing a watchful god exists doesn't guarantee that the believer would obey the law or behave in a manner that most of us would consider decent or good. Your analogy doesn't quite work for me. You're absolutely right about that. But do you really believe that those people have a genuine faith in God, or truly believe that what they are doing is God's will? Or is it more likely that they have their own agenda and are just committing such atrocities under the pretext that it is God's will because they know all to well that they won't be the ones carrying the burden of blame since people generally blame religion for all that is wrong in the world. But if there was no doubt to God's existence, if the unwavering belief that God exists despite there being no reason to believe so no longer signified the strength of someone's faith due to everyone knowing that God does exist, then how many of those people would commit such atrocities under the pretext that it is God's will? How many of those people would grow to genuinely fear God's wrath when they committed such atrocities? How many many would develop a true genuine of love or fear for God ("love" or "fear", not faith, since faith only applies to those who believe in God when they have no reason to believe that God exists) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danot Posted January 24, 2012 Author Share Posted January 24, 2012 Because logic is not science, there is no law that logic can only apply to things that can currently be understood scientifically.Likewise, there is no law that logic can only apply to things that don't involve creationism, therefore, science should stop saying that there is no reason to invoke something that can't be understood scientifically,when logically, the universe having always existed without cause is no more likely or comprehensible than God having always existed without cause. Posted by flammingjimmy Your 3 examples are all either strawmen or not actually hypocrisy. Tell me why that is jimmy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phanerothyme Posted January 24, 2012 Share Posted January 24, 2012 But if there was no doubt to God's existence, if the unwavering belief that God exists despite there being no reason to believe so no longer signified the strength of someone's faith due to everyone knowing that God does exist, then how many of those people would commit such atrocities under the pretext that it is God's will? How many of those people would grow to genuinely fear God's wrath when they committed such atrocities? There was a time when there was no doubt as to the existence of gods - in the pre-homeric era. At this stage, humans did not have an ego - we did not have the "ultra-consciousness" we have today. The directing influence, the homunculus at the controls, were simple 'divine' instructions in language we could understand. These messages, and every animal has them on some level, governed our daily life. Good messages, ones that promoted survival, promoted social cohesion and thus survival etc, were propagated. Destructive ones were not, and so a memetic evolution occurred. These messages, in the minds of linguistically talented apes, became "gods" - the inexplicable inner voices that told you to do things, and you did them. They might appear to us somewhat zombie like to us today. But of course there was a natural variation in the degree to which these "command hallucinations" would be consistent, and the degree to which people would or could obey them. Some few individuals would be almost immune to the effects of this self-organising phenomenon, and the place of the "Voice Of God" would be filled by a new voice, that of the ego, the part of you that introspects, wonders, directs. These individuals would of course be able to outhink almost everyone, and thus would be more likely to "do well" in an evolutionary sense. So "God" died around 3000BC. Every theistic religion since has simply been aping a consciousness that disappeared five thousand years ago. The power structures have persisted, layer upon layer of symbolism and meaning have been pasted to the idea, but the idea is redundant. That's all there is to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSmith Posted January 24, 2012 Share Posted January 24, 2012 Likewise, there is no law that logic can only apply to things that don't involve creationism, therefore, science should stop saying that there is no reason to invoke something that can't be understood scientifically,when logically, the universe having always existed without cause is no more likely or comprehensible than God having always existed without cause. Tell me why that is jimmy. It is significantly more likely that the universe as always existed rather than an intelligent all powerful entity that no one as ever seen as always existed. We only know that one definatly exists so it’s more likely that is the one that as always existed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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