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I honesty cannot conceive the validity of religion.

I just cannot fathom in any way how there is anything of a higher power or order.

It is actually distressing for me when people talk about religion because it is so fucking absurd.

I want to hear an argument that in some way validates religion.

i think that the key word here is validity

if you believe in religion, then it is validated

the end...no ?



but you also relate "higher power" to this
well a mystery is a mystery, the universe is infinite and part of it will always be a mystery, no ?
there will always be a part of mystery in our lives
some will see a god in there, or whatever they transpose in there
there is no wrong answer, cuz we cant know for sure
we are condoned to be free

images


but the fact that you dislike what people see in there is like disliking that lots of people can care about justin bieder
so yeah that can be "absurd"
so what ?
we are all different and who are you to judge ?

which leaves us to what started this question : distress
you are not comfortable with the situation and you are trying to adjust, thats why you came here
well im pretty sure a lot of us use to be distressed about a lot of religious related tinkering
but we did learn to accept the world we live in and moved on
its not that hard

goodluck
 
Science describes and explains the things around us but it didnt create them. And please dont say that everything came from nothing.

Well, there is a lot of evidence that everything did just come from nothing. Hawking thinks it was like a gaseous uprising like boiling water. Others, two Branes colliding, what we do know is there is a lot of nothing, without it, there would be nothing, as well as swelling up from nothing.

I just want to emphasis, we did come from nothing. This doesn't answer how, or 'who'. As I said, there will always be a gray area where an omnipotence can nestle in.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo
 
it's plausible that, as time goes by, we bad, stupid monkeys will, through research (science) figure it all out . a bunch a gods are not the answer but merely a backward social construct .
 
Seeing religion only as some belief system is quite ignorant in my humble opinion. But don't feel ashamed or insulted - that's not my intention. Everyone has been ignorant in their lives (yes, me too).
I'm only trying to encourage you to learn more.
 
I just cannot fathom in any way how there is anything of a higher power or order.

It is actually distressing for me when people talk about religion because it is so fucking absurd.

I want to hear an argument that in some way validates religion.
the universe is rather complex and mysterious. we don't know fully know what goes on on really really small scales (subatomic particles). we may be living in a spacetime structure (our atoms being components of this spacetime structure), and perceive 3 dimensions simply due to how we are arranged in this spacetime

we are looking at the universe from the inside. to look at the universe, we use our brains, which are simply patterns within this spacetime structure. our brains somehow create our entire internal world... since it has this ability, when it makes mistakes or simply follows its natural functions, we can get into magical thinking

magical thinking is one big factor for perpetuating religion, and it's a rather illogical one. if you want a good argument for religion, don't look at the sources of all of the silly myths and such (magical thinking) but instead look at what sort of amazing philosophy has come from religion, and how they came about (the ecstatic state, mentioned later)

does religion have any "validity" for us? well, religion has made progress. it has developed over the centuries along with our developing culture/economy/globe. there are large changes from time to time in any major religion, as a charismatic prophet-like figure comes along and challenges the hypocrisy that is present due to how the religion stabilized and solidified into a structured institution

(a new religion tends to start off as radical and ideal, based around one or a few "charismatic" figures... but in order to retain this religion and its practices, the religion solidifies into an unchanging structure that succumbs to human vices... like preachers sucking money out of their churchgoers and spending it on planes and sports cars (this is for real))

so, for example, jesus was one such prophetic charismatic figure that challenged what became of religion. he threw those tables like fuck all this shit! (hehe)

so, religion isn't all bad... it is an integral part of human culture and thinking. as a humanist, i do hope and expect that religion will die off within my lifetime as we develop enough emotionally and intellectually. but we can't deny its role in our social evolution

this is all about how religion could possibly be good, but it's all human stuff. perhaps you want a good argument for "the supernatural"

for that, look into the ecstatic experience. read trip reports, or read writings by religious people or philosophers that have had peak experiences. these events feel amazing, and sometimes it feels like all of the power of your mind is unleashed at once. every good pot high i get, i feel like my entire world is present in my head at once. you can feel like you are meeting an alien entity (very common in these states of mind) or god (my friend met jesus in my bathtub during a bad trip..)

the mistake that people make, is assuming that these things are real. we are basically playing with our own brains, unleashing the potential of our own brains. but people usually say "that can't possibly have come from me... i'm not that intelligent" or something like that. so they say the experience was supernatural in origin

well, again, since our brain creates our entire world... of course it can feel that way without any supernatural interference

since we have *no idea* how consciousness itself is produced, there is some room for religious ideology. but that has always been the case. before we knew what stars were, magical thinking led us to believe that they were gods with personalities (over a long period of time as ideas developed/evolved socially). right now we don't know what consciousness "really is"... but that doesn't mean we'll never find out. and when we do, religion will probably find another "gap" to exploit

p.s., i'm definitely going to take this post and turn it into a paper for my origins-of-religion class :)
 
Well, there is a lot of evidence that everything did just come from nothing. Hawking thinks it was like a gaseous uprising like boiling water. Others, two Branes colliding, what we do know is there is a lot of nothing, without it, there would be nothing, as well as swelling up from nothing.

I just want to emphasis, we did come from nothing. This doesn't answer how, or 'who'. As I said, there will always be a gray area where an omnipotence can nestle in.

Nothing in my life comes from nothing so why should i believe the complex universe came from nothing. Did my house just appear one day or did intelligent ppl build it? Did i just appear from nothing or were my parents involved.
 
That doesn't mean you make up the answer. You go and find out and come back with some evidence.
 
Samael said:
That doesn't mean you make up the answer. You go and find out and come back with some evidence.
Actually people do very often. Even small mysteries get generate narratives that try to fill in the blanks. Really well done Senior pranks are going to have multiple stories of who did them and how they were pulled off. Unsolved anonymous acts of kindness, crimes, and anything bizarre or routine breaking can often start up some myth making.
Stories that we tell about self, other, institutions,and mysteries, aren't going back and finding out and getting evidence. Made up stories are a way of passing the time, having fun, and exploring meaning.
A high school faculty member who is scary or unusual, or a drill sergeant, is going to have stories told about them that are precisely about making up the answer. Even though most of us won't completely lose the distinction between facts and stories this process is consistent with the existentialist proposition that meaning is generated by us.

I was at an aetheist/skeptics meeting once where some members were talking about how society needs to do away with children's stories and movies with supernatural themes because such things were damaging children's critical faculties and creating a life long craving for fantasy. My thinking is that kids need fantasy then later on critical thinking.

I understand that within a profession or a class everyone can need to be of the same mentality attained by a knowledge base tested for verifiability. I don't see it as useful or important that we all have the same metaphysical outlook formed by verifiability or any other process.
 
there has to be something more than just what we see... not necessarily god but a 'higher power,' what ever you want it to be.

why does there ''have to be''. what we see (perceive) just IS ! explanations are not necessary but science will dig them out because that is what it does .
 
Actually people do very often. Even small mysteries get generate narratives that try to fill in the blanks. Really well done Senior pranks are going to have multiple stories of who did them and how they were pulled off. Unsolved anonymous acts of kindness, crimes, and anything bizarre or routine breaking can often start up some myth making.
Stories that we tell about self, other, institutions,and mysteries, aren't going back and finding out and getting evidence. Made up stories are a way of passing the time, having fun, and exploring meaning.
A high school faculty member who is scary or unusual, or a drill sergeant, is going to have stories told about them that are precisely about making up the answer. Even though most of us won't completely lose the distinction between facts and stories this process is consistent with the existentialist proposition that meaning is generated by us.

I was at an aetheist/skeptics meeting once where some members were talking about how society needs to do away with children's stories and movies with supernatural themes because such things were damaging children's critical faculties and creating a life long craving for fantasy. My thinking is that kids need fantasy then later on critical thinking.

I understand that within a profession or a class everyone can need to be of the same mentality attained by a knowledge base tested for verifiability. I don't see it as useful or important that we all have the same metaphysical outlook formed by verifiability or any other process.

Well-said. However, there is a certain point where one makes up stories and they become legend, then falsified fact, to gospel. At the gospel point is where I start to fear, because I've noticed all the way from early history to the offices of a drug treatment center is where unquestionable myth causes real harm.
 
Nothing in my life comes from nothing so why should i believe the complex universe came from nothing. Did my house just appear one day or did intelligent ppl build it? Did i just appear from nothing or were my parents involved.

He's talking about how the universe came into being by the method of quantum fluctuations and probabilities, or, perhaps using M-theory, how our spacetime bubble formed from the random collision between two older spacetime bubbles. The great big mish-mash of everything in existence is theorized to be an infinitely big 10, 11, or 26 dimensional area (depending on whose math you believe) containing an infinite amount of universes.
Actually if that's the case then we didn't come from nothing at all, but our three dimensional space was totally nonexistent and then it sprung into existence.
I believe in a high power though, don't get me wrong. I just don't believe the higher power is anything even remotely supernatural.
 
I was at an aetheist/skeptics meeting once where some members were talking about how society needs to do away with children's stories and movies with supernatural themes because such things were damaging children's critical faculties and creating a life long craving for fantasy.

God forbid a childs imagination contain a supernatural theme.
 
One would assume that based on evidence. How far back the trail goes depends on our technological and/or conceptual capabilities.
 
I just cannot fathom in any way how there is anything of a higher power or order.

It is actually distressing for me when people talk about religion because it is so fucking absurd.

I want to hear an argument that in some way validates religion.

You have to never have the depressing analytical powers of opiate with drawl to believe in organized religion imo.
 
So there was always something?
maybe.

"The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary also has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe. With the success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have come to believe that God allows the universe to evolve according to a set of laws and does not intervene in the universe to break these laws. However, the laws do not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started - it would still be up to God to wind up the clockwood and choose how to start it off. So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundaries or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?"
(steven hawking)

alasdair
 
So universe has a beginning = god exists and universe has no beginning = no god?
 
^If I posit a complex theory of God's origin will it make her more real then if she is simply posited as being eternal? Is eternity real even if it is not a being? Or does eternity have to have a start/stop point as well. A different mode entirely could be God, useful or not useful, existence or non--existence, true/not true-- entirely aside for the moment.

I had more but I think sleeps caught me :)
 
Well, I suppose it would depend if only a being such as what we call God could create the universe. Just because the universe may have been created doesn't necessarily provide irrefutable proof of the "God concept". It just means that someone or something made it. Who or what that was or is would still remain a mystery.
 
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