Atheism & Religious Beliefs

[RootsBooster]

A bloke who's thought of a way to prolong a senseless argument to fulfill his need to be a smartarse?

 

Very good, I would never have foreseen such an answer coming.

However, could you give an answer relevant to the subject at hand please?

[mjw47]

Do you even know what the word knowledge means? Maybe you should try reading the whole of my post for comprehension.

 

jb

 

Yes it's main accepted definition is 'the sum of what is known'. Which would not include the 'unknowable.' that is what the average person would agree on.

 

Now for the love of God barleycorn, do not go searching through ancient Greek manuscripts & Arabic scrolls in order to come up with some obscure text written by a man who was entombed with the pharaohs in order to provide another version.

I'm really not interested ok? The first purpose of any language is to provide clear & concise communication between it's speakers. To continue to use obscure & virtually unused definitions in your efforts to continue the argument is both transparent & becoming somewhat tiresome.

[fairyworld14]

Oh for the love of the Goddess , I am now living up to my user name because Iv lost the plot completely .This thread has got me so confused ,but in hysterics as well . It has cheered me up before going back on nights

[PaliRichard]

Barleycorn, I've just spent an hour replying to your earlier post but got kicked out of works system before posting it.

 

I'm not going to sit through it all again so I'll give you the short version, Ignosticism is the view that a definition of God must be presented before the question of Gods existence is asked, so here we go, from thefreedictionary.com

 

1. God

a. A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions.

b. The force, effect, or a manifestation or aspect of this being.

2. A being of supernatural powers or attributes, believed in and worshiped by a people, especially a male deity thought to control some part of nature or reality.

3. An image of a supernatural being; an idol.

4. One that is worshiped, idealized, or followed: Money was their god.

5. A very handsome man.

6. A powerful ruler or despot.

 

from oxforddictionaries.com

 

1(in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being. 2 (god) (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshipped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity:

a moon god

 

Plenty of definitions there for you to go at.

 

...and before you say 'It means a unified definition agreed on by all', I will ask you not to make me trawl the countless dictionaries and present you with the thousands of words that do not have unified meanings.

 

The Quran is cited as being perfect and to contain perfect knowledge and thus not being able to be replicated.

 

We can look at its formation, evolution and contents and test them against yardstic criteria to see if this is the case. As Muslims claim its perfection is evidence of Gods existence we can use our reason to assess whether the evidence is enough for us to decide either 'Yes, God exists according to this evidence' or 'No he doesn't'.

[mjw47]

Oh for the love of the Goddess , I am now living up to my user name because Iv lost the plot completely .This thread has got me so confused ,but in hysterics as well . It has cheered me up before going back on nights

 

Glad we've amused you fairyworld. I've certainly enjoyed it, but have to confess I'm getting a bit fed up now, it's been going on too long.

The lengths some people will go to to prolong an entirely pointless debate is amazing.

And yes, I know I'm just as bad, although old enough to know better.

 

Have a good night & don't work too hard.

[PaliRichard]

Waldo

 

I don't know what you personally think Richard, or what Buddism has to say on the matter; but to my mind, spirituality starts when we stop engaging with the conceptualising process of the mind. Letting go of concepts like 'god'...[/Quote]

 

Many people don't use the conceptualising part of the mind, it doesn't necessarily mean they are spiritual. Babies, People with mental difficulties, people who have been in accidents and damaged their brains, are they by default 'spiritual'? Doesn't 'spirituality' have to be something that motive is applied to? Does merely seeing the world 'as it is' without cognition or without mental effort make it spiritual?

 

All open, and genuine questions.

 

In this way, I think a lot of religious practice is actually the opposite of spirituality, because it encourages clinging to concepts[/Quote]

 

I think alot of religious 'ritual' practice yes, and I would suggest the bigger (and more commercial) the religion the more this would occur but I think much of religious practice is to promote letting go of concepts (whether or not those who identify as religious recognise this or not is another question), but I have seen Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Muslims who throw themselves into earnest practice develop what would be called a spiritual presence and leave behind clinging and suffering and self (and I'm sure many non religious people have too). The question is perhaps is spirituality a genuine article or a pyschological attribute - that I can't anwser.

 

Just edited to say as well, in my experience those religious folk with the most clinging are those who think they are beyond clinging. I had alot to do with Taoists and spent the first three and a half years of Buddhist study with intense Zen training and the amount of people (including myself at one point) who thought they'd 'let it all go' in these systems when they had done no such thing, basically those who were attached to non attachment, was far larger than I've encountered in other forms of religion.

[RootsBooster]

Mjw47, would you mind giving a serious answer to the question in post#104 ?

[PaliRichard]

Glad we've amused you fairyworld. I've certainly enjoyed it, but have to confess I'm getting a bit fed up now, it's been going on too long.

The lengths some people will go to to prolong an entirely pointless debate is amazing.

And yes, I know I'm just as bad, although old enough to know better.

 

Have a good night & don't work too hard.

 

By the way did you ever get back to me regarding how you were born agnostic?

 

Or any of the other multitude of things I pointed out to you (like your poor use of definitions that you insisted were correct before miraculously ignoring after my post correcting you using the, erm dictionary and the fact you claimed the religious had to believe in God before doing a U-turn on it).

 

---------- Post added 19-04-2013 at 18:16 ----------

 

Btw, sorry if I've missed anyones postes addressed to me the thread has gotten quite big and I confess to only skimming the last bit so if I've missed anything feel free to point it out to me.

[MrSmith]

 

Ignosticism is flawed because it assumes that as there are is no unified definition of god, speculation is pointless.

The problem with that is that every god which is believed in, has a definition. The definitions vary greatly between each believer, but each believer has their own definition of their god.

I've found that most people who play the ignosticism card are just agnostic atheists who don't want to be labelled as such and like to think they are above the subject. Much like mjw47.

 

I'm actually surprised he didn't latch on to your suggestion and fly the ignosticism flag, instead attacking you for it

 

Your argument is flawed, if I’m having a discussion with several people about God they will rarely define God and they will rarely agree on its definition, they will usually just assume that my definition is the same as their definition, which makes discussion very confusing if not impossible.

 

It would be like discussing tables with several people and each person defining table differently. One person thinking it’s something you drive, one thinks it’s something you wear, one thinking it something you can’t see, and one thinking it’s something you eat.

Without knowing each person’s definition conversation would be very confusing if not impossible, and even when you new everyone’s definition, how would you discus it when everyone thinks it’s something different.

[PaliRichard]

Please explain exactly how I am out of my depth? I made a perfectly acceptable remark that I am an agnostic & have no idea whether or not God exists.

Instead of taking that statement -which was not intended to antagonize or cause argument - at face value, it was responded to by posters rushing in to explain how I wasn't actually what I thought I was, I apparently was what they thought I was

 

Actually that's incorrect, it started because you used the incorrect definition of Atheist, it was nothing to do with what you consider yourself.

 

But as you've wormed your way around several issues since the start of this thread I'm sure we can forgive you for getting confused.