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Blind faith

KDude

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Peguy?

Or, anyone for that matter - do you believe there is a way to gain (falsifiable) evidence-based perspective on the existence of a hypothetical deity?

I believe there is none whatsoever.

Deities are nice ideas for some though, and depending just how much you like the idea, you'll believe in one. I like the idea myself, and sort of leave it at that.

I agree with everything an empiricist may say as far as lack of evidence for God goes -- and I think Apologetics/Arguments for God's existence are the biggest waste of time. I simply believe in God because I like the idea. I guess that's blind faith in a way, but I don't think of myself as anymore blind than others. At a certain point, everyone is blind. You then either choose door number 1 or door number 2, or.. you can just sit there too, I guess. Will there be consequences to which door you choose? That may be the real question. I'm leaning on.... no. It's hard to imagine getting smacked for simply picking a wrong door. haha... that would be so lame.
 

Night

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I believe there is none whatsoever.

Deities are nice ideas for some though, and depending just how much you like the idea, you'll believe in one. I like the idea myself, and sort of leave it at that.

I agree with everything an empiricist may say as far as lack of evidence for God goes -- and I think Apologetics/Arguments for God's existence are the biggest waste of time. I simply believe in God because I like the idea. I guess that's blind faith in a way, but I don't think of myself as anymore blind than others. At a certain point, everyone is blind. You then either choose door number 1 or door number 2, or.. you can just sit there too, I guess. Will there be consequences to which door you choose? That may be the real question. I'm leaning on.... no. It's hard to imagine getting smacked for simply picking a wrong door. haha... that would be so lame.

I appreciate your honesty. William Lane Craig offers a series of interesting arguments on the unimportance of offering an empirical schematic for the existence of God.

I can't say that I necessarily agree with him. I like to have tangible data before I can make a decision - especially on a topic as significant as theistic belief.
 

Polaris

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Peguy?

Or, anyone for that matter - do you believe there is a way to gain (falsifiable) evidence-based perspective on the existence of a hypothetical deity?

Any and all suggestions are welcome.
Questions about the existence of a deity are inherently ironic. They seek evidence for an entity that transcends everything, including reality itself, and for this reason, it's at the moment when someone proves God that they prove their defeat; they've taken a being that is totally beyond us and ascribed all kinds of limiting characteristics to it. "God is a trinity, not a monad." "God is love, not hate." "God is everything--these feelings, these ideas, and that table over there." Every time you speak, think, or posit a god you prove that it isn't God: you shoot the idea through with comparisons, contrasts, and limits. Nor is this even a matter of keeping quiet about that of which you can't speak. God is literally unconscionable on any level. Even a wordless awe that wafts through your soul like a savor will never manage to enfold everything; this sense of awe is always on the move, always seeking to get a hold of something beyond itself. Never is it a perfect awe; it's an awe that loses itself in a sense, however faint, of the mundane and incomplete. In fact, it's only by virtue of the worldly that this awe can even exist, otherwise it would have nothing to be in awe of. Worse yet, the moment this awe gets a hold of itself--and it always does know itself, or you wouldn't be aware of it--it realizes that it too is only a thing in the world.

God is thus a kind of self-deception, a lie that knows it's a lie and yet still believes in itself. You'll find this same characteristic in all logical formulations; they're all ways in which we try and fail to lift ourselves above the world, and they always touch us with a sense of the absurd. Probably it's the rationalist who finds himself most unable to believe in the world; he's a student of nonsense, a weaver of webs who knows they're webs and still clings to them as though they're truths. As the absurdity of his universe mounts, he stands a good chance of reaching the supreme act of nonsense: he may come to believe in God, which amounts to embracing the emptiness of logic with yet another act of logic.

If we can't count on the rational, all we're left with is faith. To have faith is neither to ask for proofs nor to concoct arguments; to have faith is to be like a child and believe for no reason. Faith is the antithesis of logic, the sole remedy for it, and it's only through a spirit of faith that we can convince ourselves of anything. It's possible that we could even convince ourselves that there's a God, although this belief, like all beliefs, will always have a taste of nonsense about it.
 

Night

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Questions about the existence of a deity are inherently ironic. They seek evidence for an entity that transcends everything, including reality itself, and for this reason, it's at the moment when someone proves God that they prove their defeat; they've taken a being that is totally beyond us and ascribed all kinds of limiting characteristics to it. "God is a trinity, not a monad." "God is love, not hate." "God is everything--these feelings, these ideas, and that table over there." Every time you speak, think, or posit a god you prove that it isn't God: you shoot the idea through with comparisons, contrasts, and limits. Nor is this even a matter of keeping quiet about that of which you can't speak.

Right - I've heard this before, but how do you know that God is inherently things like omnibenevolent, omniscient and the like? Furthermore, what do these terms mean in practice? I think we've all seen these ideas theorized in biblical text, but certainly have never seen them in physical expression.

And, how do you know that God is 'all things' - like the chair upon which I sit, or the forum we share to think.

What metric are you using?

The point I'm trying to make is that believers often ascribe transcendent terminology to describe what is essentially an exercise in pure thought/abstraction. In order for something to be viewed as credible in any other circle, one would require concrete, testable rationale. Yet, in religion, it seems to me that we require nothing of the sort in order to form profound conclusions on the essential nature of the universe.

God is literally unconscionable on any level. Even a wordless awe that wafts through your soul like a savor will never manage to enfold everything; this sense of awe is always on the move, always seeking to get a hold of something beyond itself. Never is it a perfect awe; it's an awe that loses itself in a sense, however faint, of the mundane and incomplete. In fact, it's only by virtue of the worldly that this awe can even exist, otherwise it would have nothing to be in awe of. Worse yet, the moment this awe gets a hold of itself--and it always does know itself, or you wouldn't be aware of it--it realizes that it too is only a thing in the world.

God is thus a kind of self-deception, a lie that knows it's a lie and yet still believes in itself. You'll find this same characteristic in all logical formulations; all of them are ways in which we try and fail to lift ourselves above the world, and they always touch us with a sense of the absurd. Probably it's the logician who finds himself most unable to believe in the world; he's a student of nonsense, a weaver of webs who knows they're webs and still clings to them as though they're truths. As the absurdity of his universe mounts, he stands a good chance of reaching the supreme act of nonsense: he may come to believe in God, which amounts to embracing the emptiness of logic with yet another act of logic.

If we can't count on the rational, all we're left with is faith. To have faith is neither to ask for proofs nor to concoct arguments; to have faith is to be like a child and believe for no reason. Faith is the antithesis of logic, the sole remedy for it, and it's only through a spirit of faith that we can convince ourselves of anything. It's possible that we could even convince ourselves that there's a God, although this belief, like all beliefs, will always have a taste of nonsense about it.

So, what is your governing rationale for what to believe in? Where do you draw the line?
 

Polaris

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Right - I've heard this before, but how do you know that God is inherently things like omnibenevolent, omniscient and the like? Furthermore, what do these terms mean in practice? I think we've all seen these ideas theorized in biblical text, but certainly have never seen them in physical expression.

And, how do you know that God is 'all things' - like the chair upon which I sit, or the forum we share to think.

What metric are you using?
I didn't use any real metric--those we're just examples I gave to illustrate the idea that claims about God are always ironic. You could describe, experience, or think of him in any way you want, and it would only prove my point.

Night said:
The point I'm trying to make is that believers often ascribe transcendent terminology to describe what is essentially an exercise in pure thought/abstraction. In order for something to be viewed as credible in any other circle, one would require concrete, testable rationale. Yet, in religion, it seems to me that we require nothing of the sort in order to form profound conclusions on the essential nature of the universe.
Faith is always in question: "I believe this, but it isn't a reality here and now; I can only hope and wait for it." So even the person of faith will find himself in a state of testing the waters, so to speak, although in practice he'll be more resistant to changing his mind than someone who takes a "scientific" approach. Why? Simply because you have faith to the extent that you ignore or lack reason. Faith waits, expects, and holds it breath, while reason questions. Never can you have one of the two divorced from the other. Faith is always anticipating, and it seeks to relieve this anticipation with an answer in the form of evidence, and any evidence will assert itself as something for you to believe through faith. Never can you escape this; at any given moment, you will have proof of various things and at the same instant various degrees of faith in those proofs. The only thing that can be distinguished between the two is how much questioning you do relative to believing. The scientific ideal is to do nothing but question, to question so thoroughly that you can never get a hold of anything to have faith in. The religious ideal is to wipe out questioning and turn everything into an infinite thickness of certainty. People can approach either of these ideals, but they can never achieve them, since to do so would be to destroy reality by turning it into an absolute fluidity (of questioning) or an utter stillness (of certainty).

So what I want to say, basically, is that what you mentioned is a difference of degree rather than nature.

Night said:
So, what is your governing rationale for what to believe in? Where do you draw the line?
Sometimes I believe in dragons and other times I believe in science. If I draw any lines at all, I draw them while refusing to draw them anywhere.
 

Katsuni

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Whaa the topic keeps changing so fast XD First I wanted to cover my personal views and expectations of whot I thought would happen, then I wanted to finish the statement I'd made but had to cut short due to class, and now ... oh meh I may as well just hop into the current conversation. Whotever XD



They seek evidence for an entity that transcends everything, including reality itself, and for this reason, it's at the moment when someone proves God that they prove their defeat; they've taken a being that is totally beyond us and ascribed all kinds of limiting characteristics to it.

I actually hold this as a strong indication of the inherent flaw in organized religion as a whole; to be a member of ANY faith is to state that yeu know the unknowable; that yeu understand whot the human mind cannot grasp; that yeu are privy to the things that yeu cannot possibly know, such as the nature of god, whot god 'wants', or whot form god would take in the first place.

Religious texts may or may not have divine influence, but they are, in the end, written not just by humans, who are flawed in and of themselves, but moreso they are most often written by committee, and please enlighten me to the last time anything consistent and accurate has ever come out of one of those.

By the mere definition of FAITH, it can NOT have firm proof or evidence. Or it wouldn't be taken on faith...

Now, that being said... we can infer with some degree of certainty, with the information presented to us, that 'something' may exist beyond mortal comprehension. As to whether this 'something' is even a conscious entity, or just a giant set of clockwork gears, this we do not know, nor would we be capable of perceiving, let alone comprehending such, even if we knew of it.

And of course there's the issue that "some degree of certainty" is kind of a pretty large variable in and of itself, not to mention that it relies solely upon current information and understanding of the information we have at this point in time, which's far from inclusive of everything there is to be known, nor all the factors related to such.

We used to believe thunder and lightning, rainbows, and so on, were manually placed one at a time by demons, gods, angels, and mythical creatures. We now know how they operate mechanically, at least to a degree, and it's become apparent that they're not being generated by hand, and rather, there's predictable factors which create such, implying an automated system. So at the very least, either god's not all powerful, or doesn't have infinite patience, so either way, god is not 100% infinite in all regards.

I'm leaning on.... no. It's hard to imagine getting smacked for simply picking a wrong door. haha... that would be so lame.

Another thing I'd like to point out is this line here by KDude... really, we have how many religions? All professing to be the "one true religion"? That all others are false? Whot proof do any of them have? Anecdotal evidence, and personal beliefs mean nothing... if I had cancer and it went into remission, I could either believe it to be just a bizarre medical occurrence, I could believe it to be the work of god, of allah, or of karma, who knows! But the same information would be interpreted to fit THEIR belief system every time.

All religions claim to be the one true one, and none offer any evidence to support such beyond the same evidence every other gives. It is a blind faith spin of the wheel, a door to be picked... to pick the wrong one out of thousands of choices equals certain damnation for all eternity too, of course. Because it makes perfect sense to drop someone in a room with 500,000 identical objects, and tell them to pick the right one, and if yeu pick the wrong one yeu're tortured for eternity. Because it truly is 500,000 identical objects, they give no explanation, no proof, no evidence, no understanding. How can yeu possibly tell the 'truth'? We don't even physically live long enough for the time it'd take to go through each and every religion and sub-religion in the depth necessary to understand them to make even a remotely educated decision, so exactly how are we expected to pick 'the right one' while blindfolded and given nothing solid to work with?

One can only surmise that, whotever god or goddess there is out there, if any, or multiple, that they don't really care which yeu pick, as long as yeu meet certain factors. Personally, I'd like to assume that those factors are related to yeur attempt to try to learn the truth and generally be a nice person to some extent. Problem there being that 'nice person' isn't even a solid concept, but a variable in and of itself; whot may be polite in one society is an insult in another, there's no common ground really... so there's not even that.

Regardless, if a god truly did expect me to "pick the right religion", with no information whotsoever, even *IF* I got it right, I'd boycott heaven on principle, because I refuse to worship anything that undeserving of such.

The only thing we can be certain of, or at least reasonably so, is that the universe seems to exist... or at least we believe it does with the information we currently possess. We also are aware that at one point it did not exist; be it big bang or divine creation, who cares, it doesn't matter, somehow something had to've come from nothing. Therefore, something exists outside the universe as we know it; M-theory thinks branes make it all make sense, but that still requires the acceptance of something infinite beyond our understanding, so really, is putting the name "god" to it any different?

In the end, we must understand that we can't understand the mere concept of infinity as it is, and that from the very starting point we begin at, we've already hit a snag in our ability to understand the universe and our creation.

So... where's blind faith come in? Well... blind faith assumes yeu know something for certain with no evidence at all; as mentioning to victor earlier, MBTI is not reliant upon blind faith. It states that it is flawed and merely the best shot at a vague guide that made sense at the time, but is in no way flawless. There are individuals who treat it as infallible, but that is the failure of the individual, not the system.

Blind faith doesn't reside there, but rather in those that insist on accepting every single thing written in their holy text as absolute unfettered truth with no possibility of error; that their prophet is a semi-divine being and incapable of error, be they the head of a cult, or the pope, the belief is that they have a direct line to god and know the 'truth'.

Dogma, by definition, is a set of rules for interpretation; they TELL yeu how to think, and how to believe. Blind faith is when yeu truly believe without any idea of whot yeu believe or WHY yeu believe it. To insist that christianity, or muslim, or whotever, is the ABSOLUTE TRUTH, and yet... have no more reason to believe that than any other religion out there, is foolish at best, and definitely negligent if yeu force such beliefs upon children who have yet to be able to think rationally about such things themselves. Telling them it's true from a position of authority, yet giving no reason why... and not even knowing yeurself... really how does this get classified as a good thing?

We need not pick the door in KDude's example blindly though. We can look at the door, inspect the quality, if there's cracks in its' foundation, we can tap the handle to see if it's hot. We can use our minds to try to process this information to try to come up with something that vaguely resembles at least the attempt to've understood.

Of course, if we go by MBTI standards, I have a heavy weight of Thinking preference in my values; to me, to accept the first thing yeu're told blindly without questioning it is madness, and no god who expects that of anyone is worthy of worship, especially if it's a 1 in 500,000 chance to get it 'right'.

Of course, those who are heavy Feelers, and likely Judgers, likely think me a fool for not being willing to accept a strict organized layout on faith alone.

We will never see eye to eye, but I still think that if yeu want to call yeurselves the 'children of god' or treat yeurselves as demigods, or 'better than nature', that yeu should really be using yeur brains for once. I just find it so ironic that those who are of the firmest belief that they are superior, are the same ones who are anything but.

"I'm smarter than a dumb animal! Animals didn't invent guns!" Yeah... that gives yeu all the right to go out hunting... oh wait, yeu're just giving into basic instinct on the need to hunt/kill, thereby showing yeu're not any better than the animal yeu hunt, and yeu personally didn't invent guns, and chances are yeu wouldn't be capable of such since yeu've already shown very little in the way of capacity to outreason yeur natural instincts >.>

Oh well I'm ranting now. I'll stop for now =3

Blah blah blah blah blah!
 

Night

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Faith is always in question: "I believe this, but it isn't a reality here and now; I can only hope and wait for it." So even the person of faith will find himself in a state of testing the waters, so to speak, although in practice he'll be more resistant to changing his mind than someone who takes a "scientific" approach. Why? Simply because you have faith to the extent that you ignore or lack reason. Faith waits, expects, and holds it breath, while reason questions. Never can you have one of the two divorced from the other. Faith is always anticipating, and it seeks to relieve this anticipation with an answer in the form of evidence, and any evidence will assert itself as something for you to believe through faith.

So, as a person who readily understands and employs (presumably) faith-based reasoning, how can you be certain your decisions are ultimately factual?

I'm certain - if you are anything like me - you carry with you at all times an organic skepticism wherein your decisions are perpetually measured against an internal standard of "truth" - in your case, a faith-based truth, in mine an evidence-based - as a way to further personal understanding of your reality.

To that end, where do you get your "faith-based" evidence? What is your source of proof for the existence of God?

Never can you escape this; at any given moment, you will have proof of various things and at the same instant various degrees of faith in those proofs. The only thing that can be distinguished between the two is how much questioning you do relative to believing. The scientific ideal is to do nothing but question, to question so thoroughly that you can never get a hold of anything to have faith in.

The scientific ideal observes, examines and classifies according to measured experience. In that sense, it is a recreation of falsifiable material. While science does not (and may never will) have all the answers, the primary difference between science and religion is progression of ideology.

Monotheistic religion often stagnates belief around theistic tradition, typically around a holy book of some sort. Science is constantly reevaluating to arrive at an understanding unencumbered by belief.

The religious ideal is to wipe out questioning and turn everything into an infinite thickness of certainty. People can approach either of these ideals, but they can never achieve them, since to do so would be to destroy reality by turning it into an absolute fluidity (of questioning) or an utter stillness (of certainty).

This seems like a scary concept - "wipe out questioning"? The elimination of thought makes easy way for absolution in compliance. Why would this 'elimination' ever be a positive thing for human understanding?

And even then, "thickness of certainty" seems to defy the very essence of what constitutes "faith".

Do you believe the ultimate goal of religion is to destroy faith?
 

Totenkindly

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Another thing I'd like to point out is this line here by KDude... really, we have how many religions? All professing to be the "one true religion"? That all others are false? Whot proof do any of them have? Anecdotal evidence, and personal beliefs mean nothing... if I had cancer and it went into remission, I could either believe it to be just a bizarre medical occurrence, I could believe it to be the work of god, of allah, or of karma, who knows! But the same information would be interpreted to fit THEIR belief system every time.

All religions claim to be the one true one, and none offer any evidence to support such beyond the same evidence every other gives.

I appreciate your post, so I apologize for only responding to a small part of it... and seemingly to criticize. It was just something that leaped out to me when I read.

One thing I don't like about basic postmodern thought is that sometimes it can be sloppy in tracking foundation of proof. Case in point -- in terms of pure belief systems, it's become convenient to say "all religions are built on nothing, they're all purely belief." Maybe philosophical, at core, all views are "beliefs"...

... but some religions have more accumulated anchoring data than others.

I will only talk about two religions I know something specific about, especially because they contrast.

Mormons lay claim to a civilization that existed here in North America in the 1000-1200AD time period (if I have that right)... but there is no archaeological evidence at all that such a culture existed. To me, this is a very damaging claim and any beliefs built on it lack validity to me.

In contrast, there is a lot of hard evidence of locations and cultures from the Biblical record, as well as a pretty distinct and copious collection of docs running back close to the first century. While there are lots of questions even at that point (archaeologists are still arguing about what evidence means what and whether the Biblical record is entirely supported, and just because a textual record can be traced back still does not verify whether particular incidents and conversations ACTUALLY occurred), I would have to weight "plausibility" of the faith far differently. One is built far more on connective historical ties than another, which then weights the credibility of each.

(... I haven't commented on Muslim documents, in comparison, because I don't know much about them, except that they only have a few copies in existence of their faith because the transmission of the docs has been aggressively controlled.)

In any case, it means I give more weight to historical faith systems than I give to "fluff" - like belief in unicorns, for example.
 
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What I'm interested in is a means to gain epistemic/evidence-based insight into the existence of a creator deity.

I see your point of view, but I think it's moot. You are asking the wrong questions if you want insight into faith. I believe measuring religious belief in an scientific way is like measuring temperature with a ruler. I just don't think that faith operates on a spectrum of rationality/irrationality.

I think that religion, when it isn't corrupted by zealotry with ulterior motives, is concerned with answering questions that reason does not. Reason asks "what". Religion asks "why". Reason has told us about the Big Bang and it has showed us how the universe has evolved. Religion attempts to tell us not what happened, but WHY these things are happening. Why is there a universe at all? Why did life evolve? Do we have a purpose?

This is why I don't see faith and reason in conflict, and I think religious people and empiricists who see conflict are more interested in winning than in finding truth.
 

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I see your point of view, but I think it's moot. You are asking the wrong questions if you want insight into faith. I believe measuring religious belief in an scientific way is like measuring temperature with a ruler. I just don't think that faith operates on a spectrum of rationality/irrationality.

I think that religion, when it isn't corrupted by zealotry with ulterior motives, is concerned with answering questions that reason does not. Reason asks "what". Religion asks "why". Reason has told us about the Big Bang and it has showed us how the universe has evolved. Religion attempts to tell us not what happened, but WHY these things are happening. Why is there a universe at all? Why did life evolve? Do we have a purpose?

This is why I don't see faith and reason in conflict, and I think religious people and empiricists who see conflict are more interested in winning than in finding truth.

This is more or less what I believe, too. Stephen Jay Gould labeled this methodology as NOMA - Non-overlapping magisteria.

I'm just at something of an intellectual impasse on the concept itself. I want to see if I'm missing something. Seems a lot like an existential crapshoot at this point.
 

Totenkindly

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I see your point of view, but I think it's moot. You are asking the wrong questions if you want insight into faith. I believe measuring religious belief in an scientific way is like measuring temperature with a ruler. I just don't think that faith operates on a spectrum of rationality/irrationality.

I think that religion, when it isn't corrupted by zealotry with ulterior motives, is concerned with answering questions that reason does not. Reason asks "what". Religion asks "why". Reason has told us about the Big Bang and it has showed us how the universe has evolved. Religion attempts to tell us not what happened, but WHY these things are happening. Why is there a universe at all? Why did life evolve? Do we have a purpose?

This is why I don't see faith and reason in conflict, and I think religious people and empiricists who see conflict are more interested in winning than in finding truth.

This is more or less what I believe, too. Stephen Jay Gould labeled this methodology as NOMA - Non-overlapping magisteria.

I'm just at something of an intellectual impasse on the concept itself. I want to see if I'm missing something. Seems a lot like an existential crapshoot at this point.

In general, in the end, I think one just believes whatever happens to reflect one's values. It ends up being a choice. That's where the "existential" aspect comes in -- we give value to our own lives, in order to fill in the gap between any "evidence" we might find and the "Truth" ... whatever that is.

But I know I struggled with it because my natural processes (1) gather information and possibilities from the EXTERNAL world and (2) process them INTERNALLY. So the only information I legitimately trust is information coming from outside, that I observe -- the data itself AND the potential ramifications of the data.

It was really really difficult for me to "choose" something and commit to it INSIDE without it being driven directly by realistic external potentialities. I fought that process for years.
 

Katsuni

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I appreciate your post, so I apologize for only responding to a small part of it... and seemingly to criticize. It was just something that leaped out to me when I read.

One thing I don't like about basic postmodern thought is that sometimes it can be sloppy in tracking foundation of proof. Case in point -- in terms of pure belief systems, it's become convenient to say "all religions are built on nothing, they're all purely belief." Maybe philosophical, at core, all views are "beliefs"...

... but some religions have more accumulated anchoring data than others.

I will only talk about two religions I know something specific about, especially because they contrast.

Mormons lay claim to a civilization that existed here in North America in the 1000-1200AD time period (if I have that right)... but there is no archaeological evidence at all that such a culture existed. To me, this is a very damaging claim and any beliefs built on it lack validity to me.

In contrast, there is a lot of hard evidence of locations and cultures from the Biblical record, as well as a pretty distinct and copious collection of docs running back close to the first century. While there are lots of questions even at that point (archaeologists are still arguing about what evidence means what and whether the Biblical record is entirely supported, and just because a textual record can be traced back still does not verify whether particular incidents and conversations ACTUALLY occurred), I would have to weight "plausibility" of the faith far differently. One is built far more on connective historical ties than another, which then weights the credibility of each.

(... I haven't commented on Muslim documents, in comparison, because I don't know much about them, except that they only have a few copies in existence of their faith because the transmission of the docs has been aggressively controlled.)

In any case, it means I give more weight to historical faith systems than I give to "fluff" - like belief in unicorns, for example.

Yeah sadly I dont' know as much as I'd like to about muslim stuffs, mostly because it's considered a sin to translate it and I don't read that language; arabic languages are outside of my comprehension, I'm limited to latin based ones ;_;

Regardless though, I do agree, and worded it poorly, yeu're right. There are obviously differences in religions, not all are equal, some do have significantly more evidence to them than others.

The main points, however, such as on god or the afterlife though, the really important parts that define a religion, all tend to stem from the same location though... pure faith and personal anecdote.

So many times have I met people who claim "I believe in god because of this religious experience I had!" but... if yeu were say... a Buddhist at the time... yeu would've attributed that exact same religious experience to buddhism instead of christianity, so I don't see the relevance?

In any case, yes, the bible has alot of evidence supporting parts of it... though admittedly a large part of that is due to the fact that it's a rather uneven mixture of stolen myths from other cultures, historical records, morality fiction, and so on... there's some parts which will have evidence, such as actual historical records of wars and cities, and natural disasters.

The problem is that people will automatically assume that because one part is true, that all is true. This's not a wise decision; it's a form of media... it's like saying "because I saw a news report on the internet that I was personally involved in, this's proof that everything on the internet is 100% true". It's like... no. No, that proves nothing of the sort. It does provide evidence that there may be more accurate passages than we're currently aware of, but just because one section is true, it hardly means that the whole is as well.

And of course, even *IF* all of it were true... it's been strained and filtered by human minds. From whot we know of the creation of the universe astrologically, the first bit of genesis actually makes semi descent sense, if yeu assume of course that angels were aliens on another planet or reality outside of our universe, and assume that the "7 days" thing (well 6 really) can be measured in billions of years and that a day is an abstract meaning of time, especially since the first day finished before night existed according to the bible o_O

There are hints that certain parts are accurate. There are also hints that other parts are anything but...

There's no historical data pertaining to jesus, nor of his crucifixion, which's kind of surprising considering how detailed the records the romans at the time had for criminals. It may've gotten lost in the shuffle somewhere, but something that major yeu'd think that it would have some copies made of it.

Though, then again, it's not like it's impossible, or even implausible... even 100 years ago we couldn't tell reliably if someone was in a coma or just dead. The term "dead ringer" literally came from having a string lowered into a casket of someone who was buried, so that if they happened to wake up they could ring the bell and be dug back up again. 3 days is well within the limits of possibility of any human without divine origin to live through, and considering the method of death was blood loss... the chances are exceptionally high that someone would pass out from blood loss long before they actually died from it.

Such things provide cursory evidence, but not really enough to truly prove much, unfortunately.

Even so, I must concede the point that not all religions are equally ungrounded or anything, but the biggest aspects always do come down to faith... otherwise they wouldn't be a religion, and all religions would share it if they had solid evidence now wouldn't they?
 

Katsuni

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Oh oops missed something from Jennifer:

The thing about mormans believing that north american culture's existence... they also believed another existed around 100ad-ish, the concept that jesus, after resurrecting, wandered the earth for a time before re-ascending to heaven. I forget exactly how it went, but vaguely recall reading up on it how they have their own extra holy book other than the bible because the creators of the religion basically poured over other religions' texts to try to come up with a rough outline of whot happened to jesus after the known timeline ended, since there was supposedly a fair bit of time missing, as in a good 10 years or so just not accounted for.

Now... how accurate that is, who knows... they basically plastered the jesus face on any myth they could find that was remotely similar, but there may be a few odd cases where it may be more accurate than we think... then again... they do have some rather odd beliefs elsewhere due to that same trying to force everything to fit together with a hammer dealie that makes yeu question the rest of it as a whole.
 

Polaris

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So, as a person who readily understands and employs (presumably) faith-based reasoning, how can you be certain your decisions are ultimately factual?

I'm certain - if you are anything like me - you carry with you at all times an organic skepticism wherein your decisions are perpetually measured against an internal standard of "truth" - in your case, a faith-based truth, in mine an evidence-based - as a way to further personal understanding of your reality.

To that end, where do you get your "faith-based" evidence? What is your source of proof for the existence of God?
I don't make a strict distinction between faith and evidence--that's one of the central points I've been struggling to make--so there really isn't any way for me to answer this without drawing back from my position. I suppose I would just mention that we have to be careful not to let words deceive us. Language is a tool that often slices wholes into parts, but it can just as easily move in the opposite direction, whereupon we find that pairs of opposites, like faith and proof, are actually of one structure. That isn't to say that they're synonyms so much as it is to say that they depend on each other and intermix, much like a spectrum of colors.

By the way, I believe in God about as much as I believe in Santa Clause, which is to say, very little. I don't blame you for thinking otherwise, though, since one of my goals was to emphasize the ambiguity of everything including my own beliefs.

The scientific ideal observes, examines and classifies according to measured experience. In that sense, it is a recreation of falsifiable material. While science does not (and may never will) have all the answers, the primary difference between science and religion is progression of ideology.

Monotheistic religion often stagnates belief around theistic tradition, typically around a holy book of some sort. Science is constantly reevaluating to arrive at an understanding unencumbered by belief.
Yes, I agree with you absolutely, and this is why I tend to favor a more "empirical" approach. I don't limit that to things that can only be duplicated in a lab, though; I think that some our best mystics were also rigorous experimenters.

Night said:
This seems like a scary concept - "wipe out questioning"? The elimination of thought makes easy way for absolution in compliance. Why would this 'elimination' ever be a positive thing for human understanding?

And even then, "thickness of certainty" seems to defy the very essence of what constitutes "faith".

Do you believe the ultimate goal of religion is to destroy faith?
I believe that religion seeks to distill faith into its purest essence--in other words, to make it an absolute certainty--and then to spread this certainty (which entails the object of faith, since there is no such thing as faith "in itself") across all that exists until nothing remains except that essence. The goal of Christianity (for instance) is to convert the cosmos itself to Christianity.
 

Mole

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Fact is, guns really DON'T kill people. People kill people.

The fact is that the most popular decision by our Prime Minister was to ban guns.

So for my entire life I will never even see a gun except on police.

And so our Prime Minister has given the lie to your gun culture and your National Rifle Association.

And in exactly the same way I give the lie to your MBTI.

So the facts about guns and MBTI have changed. And when the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do?
 

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Yes, I agree with you absolutely, and this is why I tend to favor a more "empirical" approach. I don't limit that to things that can only be duplicated in a lab, though; I think that some our best mystics were also rigorous experimenters.

Ah. I guess the error is my own. You gave a convincing account, and I presumed that your sincerity was consequent to intellectual "muscle memory". I've read the arguments before on the nature of belief.

I was hoping to get an informed response from a believer, you see. Not that it destroys the verity of your response; just communalizes the flavor a little.
 

Mole

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Exodus and MBTI

Mormons lay claim to a civilization that existed here in North America in the 1000-1200AD time period (if I have that right)... but there is no archaeological evidence at all that such a culture existed. To me, this is a very damaging claim and any beliefs built on it lack validity to me.

In contrast, there is a lot of hard evidence of locations and cultures from the Biblical record

What is utterly fascinating is that no archeologist in Israel believes the Exodus occurred.

And I hardly need point out that the Exodus forms the foundation of Judaism, and Judaism is the foundation of both Christianity and Islam.

Also I understand that no double bind test has been applied to MBTI for seventy years.

So the question still remains - when the facts changed for the Exodus and MBTI, I changed my mind, what will you do?
 

Polaris

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Ah. I guess the error is my own. You gave a convincing account, and I presumed that your sincerity was consequent to intellectual "muscle memory". I've read the arguments before on the nature of belief.

I was hoping to get an informed response from a believer, you see. Not that it destroys the verity of your response; just communalizes the flavor a little.
I understand, and I'm glad that you found my account convincing. I'll be waiting with you for some believers to come along with an account of their own.
 

Katsuni

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The fact is that the most popular decision by our Prime Minister was to ban guns.

So for my entire life I will never even see a gun except on police.

And so our Prime Minister has given the lie to your gun culture and your National Rifle Association.

And in exactly the same way I give the lie to your MBTI.

So the facts about guns and MBTI have changed. And when the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do?

Actually I consider the NRA to be a pack of idiots looking for an excuse to carry guns, and I see no reason for anyone to be carrying them around unless they have valid use for it as a tool. Guns are used to SHOOT things, that is their design.

That being said... guns still are not the evil they're made out to be, they're just ruthlessly efficient at the one task they're designed to do, and they're not really multipurpose; they don't do much else other than shoot stuff. Therefore, if yeu have a gun, yeu intend to shoot something with it. Some may do so for competition, like trying to keep score of accuracy and such against targets, and for something like that I can understand the competitive concept, even if I don't personally share it. I see no reason why yeu would have to own yeur own gun for such though, or couldn't just store yeur gun at the rifle range where there's kind of limited risk of taking it out to shoot people with it.

In any case, the point does still stand; a tool is still a tool. If used properly for whot it is intended to do, then it is still a tool. if used improperly, it is once again, still a tool. It is neither good nor evil, for those require a conscience and the ability to choose.

I still think that keeping dangerous tools away from people is a good idea.



MBTI can, in some cases, be used improperly. Yeu are correct in this. As with guns, it's also the minority of the time. Unlike guns, however, it's a tool designed with practical application in mind, and is most frequently used to better ones' relations with others. Guns are made with the sole purpose of shooting things. MBTI is made with the intent of attempting to vaguely describe a complex variable into a semi-orderly context so that it's easier for people to understand each other. In most cases, MBTI, like any other personality test, even those silly "which power ranger r u!???" things online, will aide yeu in better understanding someone else. Sure it won't tell yeu everything about them, and sure it won't be 100% accurate, I mean yeu're trying to quantify something that can't really be quantified. It's a reasonably descent approximation for the generic purpose it sets out to do however.

And as such, in most situations, having a tool like MBTI generally makes it easier for people to get along. Due to having been introduced to such, I can better grasp where some people come from, whereas it was foreign territory to me before. The whole SFJ concept was beyond anything I could understand, and INTJ's were just so bizarre that my mind couldn't fathom their existence or how they could live like that.

The lack of MBTI meant that I truly did believe that everyone had the potential to be identical to me, and to think of things in the same way I did, to see things the way I do. I see now, that this was kind of silly of me to believe. We each have our preferred values and methods of processing information. MBTI fails to adequately describe these with intensive detail, but it does scratch enough of the surface to explain that, yes, we do have differences, that no, this isn't a bad thing, and that yes, each of our forms of processing information needs to exist for us to exist as a culture as a whole. With any one 'type' missing, we'd be the lesser for it. I may not get along well with INTJ's in general, but I recognize that they exist for a reason, and have grown to fill their niche role quite well, and it's one which I hold no desire to take the place of myself.

At the same time, I also realize that MBTI can be abused; there have been rare cases where someone has been declined a job because some manager with only the vaguest knowledge of the system tried to apply it without fully knowing how it works, or more importantly, that it doesn't fully work at all. I've never encountered a case where I was typed for a job interview, though I do know that such has occurred before. Sometimes they're just trying to see where that individuals innate talents may best fit, or how better to handle them socially or on a management level. And sometimes they abuse it and decide "anyone who falls under this type is a slacker I don't want in my department!", completely defeating the intended purpose of the system.

And therein lies the primary difference between guns and MBTI; guns can only shoot. If misused, they shoot people. MBTI can be used to better understand each other, and make our dealings with each other significantly easier, and broaden our understanding of our fellow coworkers or friends. It CAN be used negatively, but, then again, so can water.

How many people have been murdered via drowning? It's pretty rare, but it can happen! Let's go ban water! That'll cure all those people from drowning!

The 'cure' yeu suggest, is a greater ailment than the 'disease' yeu intend to cure. Yeu need not amputate the limb because of a small splinter.

The better cure, would be education, to teach those who would misuse it how to properly make use of the tools they've been given, in the manner they were designed.

Yeu don't blame the microwave for the crazy old woman who microwaved her dog to dry it off after a bath. Yeu tell her that was a dumb thing to do and make sure she understands that a microwave is for cooking food, rather than banning microwaves everywhere.
 
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