Religion?

[cthulhu]

1195302301[/unixtime]]If you're missing anything, we're two.

Oh right, I've just figured out what you meant with the free will bit. Whoops.

[Crissa]

Religion

There's no reason to believe in a fated world if there is no god.

If life forms couldn't make decisions, life wouldn't have gone as far as it has.

-Crissa

[Cielingcat]

Holy shit, I created the universe?

[Koumei]

Yeah. I would have told you, but I thought you already knew. Seeing as:

A. lolcats Bible seems like the kind of thing you'd know of,

and B. You're the one who made the damn thing. Srsly.

[Captain_Bleach]

1195437059[/unixtime]]Holy shit, I created the universe?

Everything was fine until you invented humans, which was a half-assed effort at best.

[Koumei]

Yeah, seriously. The breathey tube is right next to (and at one point, the same as) the eatey tube. And that's just the first thing that springs to mind.

Intelligent design my arse...

Although one of the lolcats inventing everything does explain a lot.

[Cielingcat]

1195448671[/unixtime]]

1195437059[/unixtime]]Holy shit, I created the universe?

Everything was fine until you invented humans, which was a half-assed effort at best.

I think I had just invented liquor at that point.

[Draco_Argentum]

Tzeench always wins, all other gods must change things to reshape the world in their image and as such pay homage to him.

[Cielingcat]

The world reshapes itself in the image of Gork'n'Mork, or at least it would if the orks could ever agree which is which.

[cthulhu]

1195429689[/unixtime]]Religion

There's no reason to believe in a fated world if there is no god.

If life forms couldn't make decisions, life wouldn't have gone as far as it has.

-Crissa

It doesn't have to be fated or anything, it's just that your actions are dictated by the movement of the particles that compose your brain, and you reaching 'decisions' is just a construct of the particles in your brain shifting around, something which is predetermined/probalistic but influnced by the circumstances of your birth and your enviroment, things over which you exert no control except that which you where preconditioned to reach by your birth and enviroment.

It's like a computers outputs are determined from the inputs, and with no indication otherwise, your brain is just an (extremely) complex one.

Edit: Thats my take, and I have no particular reason to belive otherwise.

Edit: An omni potent but not a god with total knowledge of the future could just give you free will with a packet of weeties though, which is as far as I can see the only way to actually have free will.

[tzor]

Crissa's post, like Gaul, is divided into parts and each must be addressed seperately.

1195253947[/unixtime]]I don't 'know' there is no god, but I do 'know' there is no processes in our world by which it would exist.

I have two sides to me, one is scientific which has evolved through many years that started with the study of physics and astronomy, and the other is faith based. My physics side wants to say something at this point. There may be no known proceses, but there are many processes that are not known.

When you get to string theory, multiple interescting universes and all sorts of really advanced scientific theories, the universe is really stranger than we can ever imagine.

Consider the following: There was a time when there was no known process to prove the universe existed except for the fact that it cleary did. Before qantum mechanics we could "scientfically" prove that atoms could not exist, therefore we could not exist.

Proof: It was discovered that atoms consisted of nulcei of positively charged particles sourrounded by a cloud of negatively charged particles. It was assumed these particles had "orbits" around the nucelii. But any charged particle that accelerates emits energy in the form of radiation and a change in direction required for an orbit counts as acceleration so theory demanded that all atoms would decay and collapse.

It was only quantum mechanics when electrons really didn't "orbit" but were somehow sort of there in orbital probability paths. Since they werenot accelerating around the nucleus atoms never decayed ad died.

My point here is that science is based, first and foremost on observation. We observe, make theories, and test those out on more observations. What we cannot observe we cannot make theories on. In fact I bleieve there is a notion in quantum mechanics that some actions which simply cannot be observed (mostly because they fall under the radar of the uncertanty principle) do not have to follow all the laws of physics.

1195253947[/unixtime]]In a way, I do believe that there are things we haven't seen, interactions and spirits and animisms... But those are probably all in my head, and I'm fine with that. It means I talk to inanimate objects, but I fully expect them to not reply.

That reminds me of a parody I wrote a long time ago.

I talk to the trees
And they talk back to me
Oh what can I say?
I just run a way!
T'is strange but it's true
Yet what else can I do?
If trees talk to you
You must be cuckoo!

1195253947[/unixtime]]I have no need for a God when I can see the beauty in the movements of the earth, moon, and stars. The beautiful arcs inscribed upon the sky of the dance which is larger than us.

Why people need sky fairies to help them when there are other people right here, bewilders me. And it aggravates me to no end when they demand their imaginary friend be given a seat at society's table.

But I think we have reached the crux of the matter. I just sang in Haydn's "The Creation" which basically suggests that the whole world was created so that man and woman could sing this duet (for like the whole third part of this oritorio) basically singing about what a great guy God is. (Although they tend to be more in love with other ... but they've only been around for a few days by the time of the end of the oritorio.)

Yes it is easy to stare at the sky, we really don't need anyone to tell us how to do that. To stare at each other, to see the same beauty in each one of us, and to help those other people ... aye, there's the rub. To sacrifice the needs of self to help others, in spite of the notion of frutility so expressed by the words of Shakespere which he gave to Anthony, "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones."

St. Francis once gave his brothers the command, "Preach the good news. Use words only when necessary." Religion that talks about "love" without putting that love directly into practice is hollow.

So it might be true that love, beauty and all that are ineed "all in my head." It might be that there is no logical reason why everything we do doesn't have their moral underpinnings simply collapse through nihilism just as the physicists feared their theory demanded of atoms their total collapse.

"Show me your faith without works! But I will show you my faith by means of works."

It's not that I want to bring my "sky fairy" to the table but if you want to bring beauty to the table, can I invite love to come as well? Honestly they won't cause any trouble, they will both sit on the corner an behave like the good little ideas that they are. Meanwhile instead of asking who is going to sit, let's start asking who waiting on those tables!

[Crissa]

Love, altruism, beauty are human constructs as well. They're poorly defined, but they are what makes society. Without them, we're just a bunch of individual beasts.

I don't care if you need a sky fairy to sleep at night. I have a cat and a teddy bear. But don't go basing reasoning or laws on what the sky fairy told you.

Right?

-Crissa

[Koumei]

1195486351[/unixtime]]

I talk to the trees
And they talk back to me
Oh what can I say?
I just run a way!
T'is strange but it's true
Yet what else can I do?
If trees talk to you
You must be cuckoo!

I don't know what the original is, but the parody I heard was:


I talk to the trees
And they locked me away


Anyhow, wonders never cease but I agree with Crissa on this matter:

I don't expect my pet dog to influence laws*. I don't expect my stuffed bunny or polar bear to influence laws. They are what help me sleep at night and get through the day. In the case of the dog, he even helps me do the right thing by dint of me being responsible for his happiness.

So it doesn't really matter what a person uses to get through the day, to sleep at night, and to help them do what they feel is right. It doesn't need to influence laws.

*Be glad. Otherwise the constitution would seriously say "Walkies every morning. Gief food nao pleez."

[tzor]

This looks like a tasty idea, so I’ll bite.

So what should “influence” the design and implementation of law? Are you exposing the imaginary Vulcan model of ascetic pure logical thought and reasoning? Somehow I doubt that. Therefore it seems highly logical that you would not want to exclude moral and or emotional influences in the design and implementation of law.

Yes there are people who insist on things because someone else told them to. Frankly, I don’t care if that someone else is “God” or the “Fox News Network,” I would rather have people think for themselves in any case. On the other hand if someone is inspired from a sacred text, the harmony of science or an essay they heard on NPR and through that inspiration come to their own conclusion I have neither objections nor problems.

The current system of government and its laws is heavily influenced by a great plethora of faiths, so many we’ve forgotten most of them in the process. They range from the Greek pantheon to the general beliefs of the Iroquois who had a strong influence on the founding fathers and in some elements of the eventual US Constitution. (Except for the part about allowing women to vote … that took a whole lot of decades for those colonists to accept.)

It is one thing to force a belief on another, and I remain strongly opposed to such a thing. It is another to be inspired by one’s own faith, or even the faith of another. I will end by citing a famous statement actually penned by an agnostic. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

I talk to the trees
But they don't listen to me
I talk to the stars
But they never hear me

The breeze hasn't time
To stop, and hear what I say
I talk to them all
In vain

But suddenly, my words
Reach someone elses ear
At someone elses heart
Strings too

I tell you my dreams
And while you're listening to me
I suddenly see them
Come true

I can see us some April night
Looking out across a rollin' farm
Having supper in the candlelight
Walking later, arm in arm

Then I'll tell you
How I pass the day
Thinking mainly how
The night would be

Then I'll try to find
The words to say
All the things you
Mean to me

I tell you my dreams
And while you're
Listening to me
I suddenly see them
Come true

[Crissa]

That's a Diest, and not a paper that any laws of this land were made with.

If someone wants a law, they're going to have to think up a better reason than 'the sky fairy told me' before I'll consider them non-bigoted.

-Crissa

[tzor]

1195591627[/unixtime]]If someone wants a law, they're going to have to think up a better reason than 'the sky fairy told me' before I'll consider them non-bigoted.

Can I quote you on that the next time someone wants to implement a law from the holy words of the nobel prize winning Saint Gore?

Jefferson was a professed deist, but I think he was weak on even this belief. His rewritten New Testament has all the flavor of cardboard.

[Captain_Bleach]

1179291486[/unixtime]]
Excuse me? What the heck is the problem? An underage girl decides that she doesn't want to carry a fetus to term because if she does so the father of the child will go to jail and won't be much of a father anyway and her parents are extremely non-understanding. So she asks for an abortion and then the doctor gives it to her.


-Username17

Wouldn't the boyfriend still go to jail for being with a minor, despite the results of the abortion?

[JonSetanta]

Only if the sky fairy says so.

[Captain_Bleach]

1196566332[/unixtime]]Only if the sky fairy says so.

No, seriously.

[PhoneLobster]

Can I quote you on that the next time someone wants to implement a law from the holy words of the nobel prize winning Saint Gore?

You know that statement REALLY troubles me.

I mean on the one hand you seem to be suggesting that Al Gore's existence cannot be proved.

And thus suggesting your blind faith in the third hand simon says game handed down, honest, from the great invisible beard in the sky is THE SAME as merely agreeing with some actual person suggesting a course of action based on reason and provable fact.

On the other you seem to be suggesting that the political movement Al Gore is most famous for advocating is in actual fact founded in nothing more substantive and genuine than the faithfuls claims that the devil made them do it.

On so many levels that single sentence is full of such massive disconnection with objective reality that I'm amazed you could even type it without your brain taking a 500 meter restraining order out against your fingers.

Edit: And suddenly another level of wrong stikes me! You actually responded to a suggestion that religion should stay out of politics...

With a suggestion that in that case a POLITICIAN should stay out of politics, because ITS EXACTLY THE SAME!

[Catharz]

Apparently the Pope (aka Antichrist) has said that atheists are responsible for the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice". He apparently also said that "We must do all we can to overcome suffering, but to banish it from the world is not in our power. Only God is able to do this." Do you see the contradiction?


Apparently God not only created Hell, but is also able to banish all suffering from the world. And chooses not to do it. And Atheists are probably to blame.

[Koumei]

Politicians should totally stay out of politics. At least here in Australia we arrest them as soon as we elect them, to save time.

[JonSetanta]

Ah, see... here in the States of A, there never was a separation between church in state.
Pedophiles lurk in the churches, anti-gay Republicans sneak for male prostitutes, and Democrats hoard money from special interest groups.
I'm even wary of fellow pagans and wiccans, since even then you never know which is a repressed murderer in disguise until it's too late.

At least in the outback, your natural predators wear bright colors or exoskeletons. Here they wear three piece suits and toupees.

[tzor]

1196562741[/unixtime]]Wouldn't the boyfriend still go to jail for being with a minor, despite the results of the abortion?

No, because the great and sacred "right to privacy" grants unto abortions (and only abortions oddly enough) the supreme and ultimate power of secrecy and thus for the sake of the patient the doctor does not have to ever reveal that the underage child ever had an abortion.

[tzor]

Two points:

1) It's separation of CHURCH and STATE, not religion and government. Simply put it means the Pope can't write our laws and the President can't tell you what to believe. People often confuse it with the absurd notion that politicians can't have a religious thought and religious people can't have an opinion on government.

2) The Constitution was designed to be a federal document, there are many reasons why the federal government wasn't allowed to do things. Separation of church and state took decades to get into state constitutions.