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The GOD Thread~

iNtrovert

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It's raining, it's pouring, you're boring... perhaps you already answered this but if God is all knowing why did he make so many fucking mistakes and so far all you have shown in your own ignorance in the Bible esp. the NT (not the we have adopted the foundations but to the history of the foundations and how they came to be)

Go on...saying I’m ignorant doesn't make it true. I'm ready to hear you out. Before proceed If the mistakes are biblical I need verses. If the mistakes are assumed from your pov I need to know why.
 

Lark

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Go on...saying I’m ignorant doesn't make it true. I'm ready to hear you out. Before proceed If the mistakes are biblical I need verses. If the mistakes are assumed from your pov I need to know why.

I am guaranteeing you'll not get a response, because for the most part I think most athiests are inspired by apathy, its a matter of I cant be bothered which really inspires the initial objections of faith and its demands. Maybe there's other things like worrying about retribution for their actions or consequences or bad conscience or myriad things but ultimately I think its a matter of I cant be bothered.

Then again I dont invest so much importance in biblical authority so I wouldnt worry to much about solo scriptural rightness or wrongness.

The discovering of older or overwritten texts and "first" bibles in the middle east by protestant archeological "bible hunters" and the "higher criticism" of the bible may have rocked the religious faith and devotion of he solo scripture congregations but they arent the whole of it.
 

Nicodemus

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I am guaranteeing you'll not get a response, because for the most part I think most athiests are inspired by apathy, its a matter of I cant be bothered which really inspires the initial objections of faith and its demands. Maybe there's other things like worrying about retribution for their actions or consequences or bad conscience or myriad things but ultimately I think its a matter of I cant be bothered.
U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey | Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project
 

gromit

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I heard Charles Townes (the scientist/christian who invented the laser) on NPR today saying that religion is about understanding the meaning of the universe, and that science is about understanding how it works.

I liked that.
 

Mole

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I heard Charles Townes (the scientist/christian who invented the laser) on NPR today saying that religion is about understanding the meaning of the universe, and that science is about understanding how it works.

I liked that.

We are meaning creating animals. And just because we are meaning creating animals, does not mean the universe creates meaning.

And the principle is the same: just because a watch has a watch maker, does not mean the world has a world maker.

When we make this intellectual error, we are projecting our own ability to create meaning onto the universe. And there is no reason to do so.
 

Lark

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I heard Charles Townes (the scientist/christian who invented the laser) on NPR today saying that religion is about understanding the meaning of the universe, and that science is about understanding how it works.

I liked that.

I've heard it said a great many, many times, its the official position of the RCC on the topic, since a long, long time ago, probably, properly understood, from the days of the counter-enlightenment.
 

tinker683

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I'm rather late to this party and I will say right now I did not read all 87 pages of this thread, just the first few...

While not a believer in any particular deity, I do find wonder and majesty in the universe and what populates it. I do not know if there is a 'god' or even possibly multiple gods, and while I personally do not feel inclined to believe that there is one (and if there is, it's so unknowable that worshipping it would be a purely self-serving exercise), I do not begrudge those on their own journey and the paths they take. The mountaintop is still there, there is more than one path to it.
 

Lark

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I'm rather late to this party and I will say right now I did not read all 87 pages of this thread, just the first few...

While not a believer in any particular deity, I do find wonder and majesty in the universe and what populates it. I do not know if there is a 'god' or even possibly multiple gods, and while I personally do not feel inclined to believe that there is one (and if there is, it's so unknowable that worshipping it would be a purely self-serving exercise), I do not begrudge those on their own journey and the paths they take. The mountaintop is still there, there is more than one path to it.

I think that is a good point, I dont doubt the existence of God, although sometimes I have wondered about the existence of a personal God or a God that is aware of humankind and can be interacted with.

I read one quote once in which someone said we shouldnt worry that God doesnt exist but we should wonder that he tired of humanity and is away doing something else oblivious to humankind now.

Then there's is the book by PKD called our friends on frolix 8, itself a wonderful odd book with a lot of tangents from the real story, one of them being the discovery of "God" floating in space deceased, a massive alien corpse, definitely the God of religious scriptures and creation but long since dead and just floating in space.
 

sprinkles

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I've just come to the realization that my Rubik's cubes are basically god to me. I'm not kidding. I effectively worship them. I have a whole collection of them and I practice with a cube practically all day every day, or at least for several hours a day. When I'm not doing something else I have a cube in my hands basically. It is true, I always have one within reach and take at least one with me whenever I go out.

I'm fascinated by the way they work, their cube shape, their colors, the patterns they can make. I'm often poring over them in an attempt to unlock various mysteries. I contemplate on them and meditate by solving over and over, becoming familiar with its nature and even some times testing myself by solving it without using memorized patterns, or putting it into an arbitrary state or pattern which is different from the standard solution. I also dream about them and solve them in my sleep, at times going so far as to actually have one with me when I sleep.
 

gromit

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We are meaning creating animals. And just because we are meaning creating animals, does not mean the universe creates meaning.

And the principle is the same: just because a watch has a watch maker, does not mean the world has a world maker.

When we make this intellectual error, we are projecting our own ability to create meaning onto the universe. And there is no reason to do so.

I agree, we humans are meaning-seeking, and that is amazing and remarkable. You are right, that just because we seek/create meaning doesn't mean it exists or that the universe creates it. However, just because we seek meaning and create meaning does not mean that there is NOT meaning in the universe either.

Religion is simply an attempt of humans to find and create meaning. I don't really see an intellectual error.
 

Lark

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I agree, we humans are meaning-seeking, and that is amazing and remarkable. You are right, that just because we seek/create meaning doesn't mean it exists or that the universe creates it. However, just because we seek meaning and create meaning does not mean that there is NOT meaning in the universe either.

Religion is simply an attempt of humans to find and create meaning. I don't really see an intellectual error.

Well you either believe that there is a cosmic order, which exists independent of mankinds knowledge or apprehension or comprehension of it or there is no cosmic order what so ever and the very concept is merely a social construction or fable agreed upon.

That's one of those dichotomies unfortunately.

I personally think that there is a cosmic order, independent of man's knowledge of it but I also think that the knowledge of it is necessarily and always will be imperfect, although I dont think that should lead to the sorts of errors I think are at the heart of social constructionism, post-modernism and cultural relativism.

A lot of this I think stems from Descartes and "radical doubt" provoked by recognising the senses are not dependable, arising from discoveries like refraction, he put mankind at the middle and built outwards, "I think therefore I am" being the beginning and branching out from there to replace doubt with certainty.

As a result I think its easy to make a lot of mistakes believing that man and man's thinking make for order and everything outside of man, although the converse is actually what is true.
 

gromit

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I dunno. I kind of go back and forth on it.

Is meaning my own construction or is meaning external to me? I have no idea, honestly, and I'm not even sure that it matters to how I live my life, because I'm still going to make decisions in accordance with the meaning that I have found via my experiences and reflections.

So maybe if you're a totally rational human being, and/or a robot, then you must pick one or the other. But I don't think it's a requirement.

- - - Updated - - -

I guess that's the "intellectual error part". Oh well. I can live with intellectual errors apparently.
 

Mole

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I dunno. I kind of go back and forth on it.

Is meaning my own construction or is meaning external to me? I have no idea, honestly, and I'm not even sure that it matters to how I live my life, because I'm still going to make decisions in accordance with the meaning that I have found via my experiences and reflections.

So maybe if you're a totally rational human being, and/or a robot, then you must pick one or the other. But I don't think it's a requirement.

- - - Updated - - -

I guess that's the "intellectual error part". Oh well. I can live with intellectual errors apparently.

Meaning is somewhat mysterious. So mysterious we have been asking the meaning of meaning since 1923.

Yes, the meaning of meaning can make our heads spin unless we read the book The Meaning of Meaning introduced by Umberto Eco.
 
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