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God, the afterlife, ghosts, poltergeists, faerie, UFOs, telekinesis, oh my!!

Lark

Active member
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Jun 21, 2009
Messages
29,569
I was wondering for the people who disbelieve in God and/or an afterlife in particular but everyone in general what do you think about other phenomenon? Do you connect you belief/disebelief in something like theism to your belief/disbelief in other phenomenon?
 

ragashree

Reason vs Being
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I think I know where you're coming from with this:

"When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing - they believe in anything."

-G.K. Chesterton

(sorry Tater, I beat ya to it! :devil:)
 
G

Ginkgo

Guest
There are actually a surprising number of people who believe in extraterrestrials, ghosts, and other paranormal phenomena and yet do not believe in God. Even still, there are also a great deal of people who believe in the afterlife, in spirits, and yet do not believe in God. This is, no doubt, a cherry picking of intuitive beliefs.

The fact is that the mind does not form purely original thoughts. It only synthesizes and forms relationships between perceptions.

So, while the Santa Clause who we know and love from his conception as a marketing scheme by Coka Cola isn't real, he was still synthesized from the real Saint Nick.

And while U.F.O.s may not exist within the folklore of little green men, they were still synthesized from the more vague sightings, or at least a common Tupperware saucer.

Centuries ago, when Europeans first discovered the Americas, the natives were so astounded by the ships and sales because it was such a potent synthesis being perceived all at once. So potent, in fact, that the natives literally had trouble seeing the new technology, and that they dubbed the newcomers as gods.

Now, the old pantheons of Greek, Roman, and Gaelic gods, followed by the more animistic spirits of totemic cultures, certainly seem to be synthesized as well, either as anthropomorphized and human-like or as spirit animals. But the newer, more metaphysical notion of God is so vague and featureless that it's lacking in synthesis. In fact, you might call it the foundation of synthesis.

Everything came from somewhere, just know that.
 

Lark

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Jun 21, 2009
Messages
29,569
Well, there are some Christians who rant about the replacement of God with Odd but I wasnt making that point really, I'd been interested in some stuff I'd heard from AC Grayling recently comparing theism and belief in superstition/supernatural phenomenon. Then again the writers on X Files did make comparisons between Mulder the athiest but UFO believer and Scully the Christian but non-believer (well to begin with) in UFOs.

I do think that the public is perhaps less credulous and A LOT of these things are treated as for entertainment purposes only, I was just interested in correlations between theism/atheism and other belief in other unexplained phenomenon, and as always with typology too.
 

Queen Kat

The Duchess of Oddity
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Apr 3, 2009
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I think time goes round and round like some spinning wheel. Everything happens again and again and again. When we die we wait a few billion years and when time restarts everything happens all over again. That's everything I believe and the rest I just don't know and don't even care about. Does God exist? Okay then. Is God completely non-existent? So what? This life is your afterlife and all of your precious livfes. MAkes sense to me.
 
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