Why do/don't you believe in a higher power? (Any HP)

[Neutraligon]

So why do you even say it?

Besides, the idea of God just straight-out mixing metaphor with face value and covering it in ahistorical data seems fishy.

God does not mix metaphors. I can't believe how many times I have to repeat this, but once again, God did NOT write the Bible. The Bible was written by humans, in human language of the humans who lived in that era. Humans wrote the Bible, and humans are NOT infallible

So why didn't god didn't ensure his message was set down perfectly?

[Valrifell]

God does not mix metaphors. I can't believe how many times I have to repeat this, but once again, God did NOT write the Bible. The Bible was written by humans, in human language of the humans who lived in that era. Humans wrote the Bible, and humans are NOT infallible

So why didn't god didn't ensure his message was set down perfectly?

This was the more entertaining option.

[Ifreann]

I'm guessing imperfect, impure, and hate respectively.

Like I said it is interesting that they are using the same words that an abusive partner uses to control their victim, and that a conman uses to fleece their victim.

He seems to be trying to syncretise ancient Greek scepticism and Christianity. The Greek sceptics, or some of them at least, were all about this "nothing is good, nothing is bad, everything just is, or maybe it isn't, whatever man" stuff.

[Pope Joan]

This is why I believe:


In the middle of the road there was a stone
there was a stone in the middle of the road
there was a stone
in the middle of the road there was a stone.

Never should I forget this event
in the life of my fatigued retinas.
Never should I forget that in the middle of the road
there was a stone
there was a stone in the middle of the road
in the middle of the road there was a stone.

Original Portuguese:

'No meio do caminho'

No meio do caminho tinha uma pedra
tinha uma pedra no meio do caminho
tinha uma pedra
no meio do caminho tinha uma pedra

Nunca me esquecerei desse acontecimento
na vida de minhas retinas tão fatigadas.
Nunca me esquecerei que no meio do caminho
tinha uma pedra
tinha uma pedra no meio do caminho
no meio do caminho tinha uma pedra.

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

[Australian rePublic]

I'm pretty sure we weren't meant to interpret that literaly

If we found the same things in another text of the period that came from one of the many Ancient Near Eastern religions that are no longer practised we wouldn't bat an eyelid. We'd just say that evidently the Assyrians (or whatever) believed their holy men had the ability to curse their enemies. It's only problematic because a descendent of this religion still exists, so we feel that this particular ancient text must in some way be read so as to be compatible with 21st century ethics.

No. The problem is reading the Bible in English. Until you study Ancient Greek/Hebrew, until you study ancient Greek/Hebrew figures of speech, until you vigerously debate the contents of the Bible with other scholars who studied the ancient languages, then you can not claim that you know more than they do. I'll give you an example.
It says that during Noah's flood, it rained for 40 days and forty nights. That was NEVER meant to be taken literally. "40 days and 40 nights" is a Hebrew expression meaning a "really long time". The equivalent would be writing an English version of the Bible and saying that it was "raining cats and dogs". Sure, no English speaker will picture cats and dogs falling from the sky, but it won't translate well

[Valrifell]

Like I said it is interesting that they are using the same words that an abusive partner uses to control their victim, and that a conman uses to fleece their victim.

He seems to be trying to syncretise ancient Greek scepticism and Christianity. The Greek sceptics, or some of them at least, were all about this "nothing is good, nothing is bad, everything just is, or maybe it isn't, whatever man" stuff.

Greek skeptics are a blight on good-faith intellectual discussion. What a shame their style is back in vogue.

[Ifreann]

He seems to be trying to syncretise ancient Greek scepticism and Christianity. The Greek sceptics, or some of them at least, were all about this "nothing is good, nothing is bad, everything just is, or maybe it isn't, whatever man" stuff.

Greek skeptics are a blight on good-faith intellectual discussion. What a shame their style is back in vogue.

There's too much bloody coleslaw.

[Australian rePublic]

To see whether or not your disbelief holds any water or not, haha.
You always see atheists trying to poke holes in the faith, but the fact that God is a God of truth, means that we Catholics have the fullness of truth on our side, and should therefore never be scared to go on the offensive.

That being said, intellectual sparring is just good ass fun, dontchya think?

I don't need to poke holes in your faith.

If it gives you strength, go for it. Just don't sell it to me, I'm not buying

You've done nothing but try to debunk religion this whole, and now you don't want to any more?

[Valrifell]

I don't need to poke holes in your faith.

If it gives you strength, go for it. Just don't sell it to me, I'm not buying

You've done nothing but try to debunk religion this whole, and now you don't want to any more?

Can't debunk an unfalsifiable claim, hence the word "unfalsifiable". Nobody really "tries" to debunk religion, but there are several points of contention presented by believers.

[Farnhamia]

I don't need to poke holes in your faith.

If it gives you strength, go for it. Just don't sell it to me, I'm not buying

You've done nothing but try to debunk religion this whole, and now you don't want to any more?

If people bring up religion, crying, "God does exist! There is proof!" - which has been done in this thread - other people will debunk those claims. That said, even sheep can get tired.

[Australian rePublic]

There is no good argument against the Catholic faith, change my mind

If God loves us, why do we have such fallible free will that leads to such horrible things,

For the same reason that you don't lock your son/daughter in a little cage in his/her bedroom, despite not knowing what he/she is willing or able to do

[Forestavia]

If you discover what God really is for yourself, death won't bother you anymore.

All evidence to the contrary given that all people morn when someone they love dies. Oh and God being for you is also against all evidence.

You can conquer death, forever. Not in a literal humans-become-immortal sort of way but "spiritually". I don't even know if "spiritually" is the right word to use for this.

What does it mean to conquer death "spiritually".

But to go through the narrow door you have to set down all of the baggage that you are carrying.

That would be true whether a god exists or not, since when you die you stop existing.

You have to simplify everything about yourself and your life.

relevance?

This includes suspending all preconceived notions of God, whether they are beliefs or disbeliefs. Even your opinions about cancer should be suspended.

Funny thing, I base my beliefs about a specific god explained to me based on the characteristics explained to me. Some Christians for instance do not believe the bible is innerant or in many parts accurate and so using the bible against them is useless

Enter a state of nonjudgmental neutrality. Accept everything just the way it is, unconditionally. Deny the self completely. Die to the self. Surrender. See what happens.

...No. What you just described is pure gullibility, nothing else. The sense of self is one of the things that gives at least some protects from abuse. Everything you are saying right here,it is something that an abuser would say to take advantage of their victim.

Yes, there is emotional grief. For sure. That pain will be there when a loved one dies. That is part of the human experience. It's an important part our experience. But what I'm saying is you can be at peace with the grief on a practical level. You can cry and be at peace with that emotion. On a spiritual level to conquer death is to realize that death is an illusion. Let me rephrase. It's an illusion that seems very real to us because it has real implications for us on a human level. But there is something eternal that was, is, and forever will be. I don't know how to describe it with words. That's why I use the word "God".

I don't call myself a Christian anymore but I do use the Bible here and there to get my points across. Jesus was onto something. He was telling the truth. Smart dude.

Gullibility? Kind of. You sort of do have to be willing to be vulnerable enough to be gullible for a little while. Took me about two decades to realize that because I was too proud of a false me that doesn't even exist. You don't have to be afraid of God. God's not going to abuse you. I know what I'm describing here sounds vague, philosophical, paradoxical, and counterintuitive, but this is real peace. You don't have to be Jesus or Buddha to do this. Jesus and Buddha aren't special (sorry religious people). They just chanced upon something and decided to share it with people. There are people in their 20's and 30's that are doing this today. This state of being is accessible. I guess what I'm trying to say in not so many posts is that instead of debating beliefs and disbeliefs why don't we actually find out what God is for ourselves. Scripture is helpful but can only do so much. Science is helpful but can only get us so far. Intellectual understanding and logic have their limits too. Even mystical experience itself can be unreliable. There is something that underlies all of this that can be "known". That's all I'm trying to say.

(It's getting late, I'll come back tomorrow.)

[Salandriagado]

So why do you even say it?

Besides, the idea of God just straight-out mixing metaphor with face value and covering it in ahistorical data seems fishy.

God does not mix metaphors. I can't believe how many times I have to repeat this, but once again, God did NOT write the Bible. The Bible was written by humans, in human language of the humans who lived in that era. Humans wrote the Bible, and humans are NOT infallible

So we've thoroughly established that the bible is not evidence of anything relevant to this discussion, and therefore is not relevant to the discussion at all. Can we carry on with the actual discussion, now?

[Salandriagado]

If we found the same things in another text of the period that came from one of the many Ancient Near Eastern religions that are no longer practised we wouldn't bat an eyelid. We'd just say that evidently the Assyrians (or whatever) believed their holy men had the ability to curse their enemies. It's only problematic because a descendent of this religion still exists, so we feel that this particular ancient text must in some way be read so as to be compatible with 21st century ethics.

No. The problem is reading the Bible in English. Until you study Ancient Greek/Hebrew, until you study ancient Greek/Hebrew figures of speech, until you vigerously debate the contents of the Bible with other scholars who studied the ancient languages, then you can not claim that you know more than they do. I'll give you an example.
It says that during Noah's flood, it rained for 40 days and forty nights. That was NEVER meant to be taken literally. "40 days and 40 nights" is a Hebrew expression meaning a "really long time". The equivalent would be writing an English version of the Bible and saying that it was "raining cats and dogs". Sure, no English speaker will picture cats and dogs falling from the sky, but it won't translate well

That's utterly irrelevant, given the fact that the flood absolutely did not happen.

[Australian rePublic]

This seems like a commonplace formula for atheism in the West. And personally, I don't have any quarrel with these views, although I do consider it unacceptable if someone harangues me about my spirituality when I'm not willing to speak to them any further. However, in the context of an open debate and discussion, I want to take the opportunity to question the point of your last sentence.

In my opinion, this is the ULTIMATE fallacy in atheism as an argument with religion and spirituality. I was not aware that any religious person, except for somebody weak/selfish/or simpleminded, could seriously believe that the notion of God includes some pervasive service to extinguish all harm and prevent all negativity in life. At least in regards to Christianity, if you look at the original source documents of the faith, as far as I've ever read any of them (through to the Protestant Revolution), scholars of our religion either make no such claim at all, or they are fairly clear about specifying that God's contribution to justice is usually posthumous and/or retrospective. Fair enough that you, like myself also, consider the modern-day delusion of an omnipresent God to be foolish and impossible, but I would like to qualify that by pointing out that most Christians before the Puritan movement in England and America did not think that God prevented bad things from happening to 'good' people.

I don't think it changes the basis of atheism, but I do think it is a very important distinction, and I think advocates for atheism make a more than trivial mistake when they portray Christianity this way.

All of this is irrelevant: any entity that has the power to end suffering, but allows childhood cancer to continue to exist, is evil. What their fan club says about them is entirely irrelevant, they're still evil. Thus, we are still left with the trichotomy: any deity is either evil (because it allows childhood cancer to exist), weak (because it can't stop childhood cancer), or doesn't exist. So which is it? Is your god evil, weak, or non-existent?

False premise. Whilst a child is indisputablely 100% innocent, said child won't be innocent forever. God knows the future, and sometimes, God needs to prevent said future from happening. God, and God alone is the only one who make these judgements. From our perspective, a human being is a human being and we have the obligation, neigh, duty to preserve human life wherever possible (assuming we work in the medical industry).

[Salandriagado]

All of this is irrelevant: any entity that has the power to end suffering, but allows childhood cancer to continue to exist, is evil. What their fan club says about them is entirely irrelevant, they're still evil. Thus, we are still left with the trichotomy: any deity is either evil (because it allows childhood cancer to exist), weak (because it can't stop childhood cancer), or doesn't exist. So which is it? Is your god evil, weak, or non-existent?

False premise. Whilst a child is indisputablely 100% innocent, said child won't be innocent forever. God knows the future, and sometimes, God needs to prevent said future from happening. God, and God alone is the only one who make these judgements. From our perspective, a human being is a human being and we have the obligation, neigh, duty to preserve human life wherever possible (assuming we work in the medical industry).

And now we're on to literal victim blaming for children with cancer.

Torturing children is still evil, even if it's for the greater good.

[Ifreann]

All evidence to the contrary given that all people morn when someone they love dies. Oh and God being for you is also against all evidence. What does it mean to conquer death "spiritually". That would be true whether a god exists or not, since when you die you stop existing. relevance? Funny thing, I base my beliefs about a specific god explained to me based on the characteristics explained to me. Some Christians for instance do not believe the bible is innerant or in many parts accurate and so using the bible against them is useless...No. What you just described is pure gullibility, nothing else. The sense of self is one of the things that gives at least some protects from abuse. Everything you are saying right here,it is something that an abuser would say to take advantage of their victim.

Yes, there is emotional grief. For sure. That pain will be there when a loved one dies. That is part of the human experience. It's an important part our experience. But what I'm saying is you can be at peace with the grief on a practical level. You can cry and be at peace with that emotion. On a spiritual level to conquer death is to realize that death is an illusion. Let me rephrase. It's an illusion that seems very real to us because it has real implications for us on a human level. But there is something eternal that was, is, and forever will be. I don't know how to describe it with words. That's why I use the word "God".

I don't call myself a Christian anymore but I do use the Bible here and there to get my points across. Jesus was onto something. He was telling the truth. Smart dude.

Gullibility? Kind of. You sort of do have to be willing to be vulnerable enough to be gullible for a little while. Took me about two decades to realize that because I was too proud of a false me that doesn't even exist. You don't have to be afraid of God. God's not going to abuse you. I know what I'm describing here sounds vague, philosophical, paradoxical, and counterintuitive, but this is real peace.

You're describing ataraxia, a state of tranquillity and freedom from mental stress achieved, according to Pyrrhonist sceptics, by suspending judgement on everything. If you convince yourself that nothing is good and nothing is bad then you don't need to worry about anything ever. You have nothing to avoid, nothing to pursue, and nothing to hold on to. Very interesting for those Greek philosophers who had slaves to tend to their every need, somewhat less so for those of us who have to look after ourselves or other people.

[Australian rePublic]

You have to begin by offering proof that what the Bible says about you is untrue. They say that you descend from a line of people who are defined congenitally by their inexcusable and despicable proclivity to lie, to cheat, to steal, to do harm, to show disrespect to authority, to have no concern for law and order, to put their arrogance before their compassion and do what they want to others. Unless you can show that it's not true about you then, regardless what your particular opinion may be, there is reason to view God's sentence passed upon you (and our species) as justified. And if you aren't such a person, then there is actually a rather heroic and admirable figure, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who gave away his life under painful and humiliating circumstances in order serve as an inspiration and a succor for you, and to give you the reassurance and the peace of mind that your hard material life may not be all there is to look forward to, but in fact you may have a just reward prepared for you after death, to sit in the kingdom of heaven as one free of sickness and misery, liberated from evils such as cancer

Why would the crimes of your ancestors justify torturing you?

It doesn't. Your crimes are punished, not your ansestors'

[Australian rePublic]

False premise. Whilst a child is indisputablely 100% innocent, said child won't be innocent forever. God knows the future, and sometimes, God needs to prevent said future from happening. God, and God alone is the only one who make these judgements. From our perspective, a human being is a human being and we have the obligation, neigh, duty to preserve human life wherever possible (assuming we work in the medical industry).

And now we're on to literal victim blaming for children with cancer.

Torturing children is still evil, even if it's for the greater good.

I'm not blaming any victim of cancer. What I'm saying is is that God knows how to do His job, but let's roll with your misinterpretation of what I wrote here. If you were God, would you kill baby Hitler, knowing that He would grow up and cause the holocaust?

[Ifreann]

False premise. Whilst a child is indisputablely 100% innocent, said child won't be innocent forever. God knows the future, and sometimes, God needs to prevent said future from happening. God, and God alone is the only one who make these judgements. From our perspective, a human being is a human being and we have the obligation, neigh, duty to preserve human life wherever possible (assuming we work in the medical industry).

And now we're on to literal victim blaming for children with cancer.

Torturing children is still evil, even if it's for the greater good.

I don't have children, but I shudder to imagine what I might do if I did have a child, and they were sick, and someone told me that God was killing them because my child was going to do something evil in the future.

[Australian rePublic]

God only 'controls' himself; he is 'omnipotent' in the sense that, in his capacity as a discrete entity, he can appear anywhere.

Whose idea was it to call God omnipotent because he can go anywhere?

If I tried to sell people an omnipotent car they'd be pretty mad to learn that what I meant was "off-roader".

We don't. We use BOTH terms, omnipotent AND omnipresent to describe God, and they both have different meanings

[Frievolk]

And now we're on to literal victim blaming for children with cancer.

Torturing children is still evil, even if it's for the greater good.

I'm not blaming any victim of cancer. What I'm saying is is that God knows how to do His job, but let's roll with your misinterpretation of what I wrote here. If you were God, would you kill baby Hitler, knowing that He would grow up and cause the holocaust?

I would prefer to kill the kind of moronic immoral maniac who would suggest "this is baby Hitler, kill him." instead.

[Australian rePublic]

And now we're on to literal victim blaming for children with cancer.

Torturing children is still evil, even if it's for the greater good.

I don't have children, but I shudder to imagine what I might do if I did have a child, and they were sick, and someone told me that God was killing them because my child was going to do something evil in the future.

Once again, I never said that. You misinterpreted me

[Salandriagado]

And now we're on to literal victim blaming for children with cancer.

Torturing children is still evil, even if it's for the greater good.

I'm not blaming any victim of cancer. What I'm saying is is that God knows how to do His job, but let's roll with your misinterpretation of what I wrote here.

Yes, you literally are. Absolutely and explicitly. If you're blaming the existence of suffering on anybody but your god, and still claiming the existence of that god, you absolutely are victim-blaming.

If you were God, would you kill baby Hitler, knowing that He would grow up and cause the holocaust?

This, this right here? Also victim blaming. Note how you're implying that every child who dies of cancer would otherwise have grown up to do something evil.

And no, no I wouldn't. Because, not being unimaginably stupid, I wouldn't have let the situation get to that point in the first place: I'd either set up the universe such that such things never occurred, or I'd simply tweak which sperm managed to fertilize his mother's egg to fix the problem. Any entity that doesn't do this, apart from being irredeemably evil, is also monumentally stupid, and so is not any kind of god.

[Ifreann]

I don't have children, but I shudder to imagine what I might do if I did have a child, and they were sick, and someone told me that God was killing them because my child was going to do something evil in the future.

Once again, I never said that. You misinterpreted me

You did say that, quite clearly.

Whilst a child is indisputablely 100% innocent, said child won't be innocent forever. God knows the future, and sometimes, God needs to prevent said future from happening.

Or maybe you're saying that God gives some children cancer to keep those children from growing up and perpetrating some trivial evil, which is even worse.