Passage ...... Where do you go after you die

hmmmm, you have a very interesting
collection of words there Gelisgesti.

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Ahhh, you speak gibberish. Whre did you learn ;o)

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snood wrote:

It's funny - I have more in common with atheists - for it takes just as much faith to believe chance and physics created life as it does to believe God did.

It does NOT take any "faith" to believe that the universe operates in accordance with physical laws and that interactions on an atomic level are random. Scientific research and logical deduction show us that it is possible, if not likely, that life evolved in the universe without any divine intervention whatsoever. It takes a great deal of faith to believe that a loving god would create the viruses, pests, and parasites that torment innocent children and animals as well as sinners.

What takes faith is believing that there is an invisible and undetectable being who sometimes chooses to magically override the physical laws for the benefit of certain individuals, while ignoring the prayers and pleas of the majority.

snood wrote:

Honestly, the only trouble I have in these discussions originates, I think, from a genuine compassion for humans I have inside me. If you live as if there is a God, and it ends up there is not, you've lost nothing. But if the opposite is the case, the loss would be immeasurable, IMO.

Pascal's Wager ignores the personal and societal cost of devoting time and resources to the worship of mythological beings, denying reality (such as disease caused by germs rather than sin or demons), and using the alleged wrath of God to coerce other people into fighting wars, obeying stupid laws and persecuting others.

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Terry wrote:

Quote:

It does NOT take any "faith" to believe that the universe operates in accordance with physical laws and that interactions on an atomic level are random.

Now there's a contradiction.

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Terry wrote:

snood wrote:
It's funny - I have more in common with atheists - for it takes just as much faith to believe chance and physics created life as it does to believe God did.

It does NOT take any "faith" to believe that the universe operates in accordance with physical laws and that interactions on an atomic level are random. Scientific research and logical deduction show us that it is possible, if not likely, that life evolved in the universe without any divine intervention whatsoever. It takes a great deal of faith to believe that a loving god would create the viruses, pests, and parasites that torment innocent children and animals as well as sinners.

What takes faith is believing that there is an invisible and undetectable being who sometimes chooses to magically override the physical laws for the benefit of certain individuals, while ignoring the prayers and pleas of the majority.

snood wrote:
Honestly, the only trouble I have in these discussions originates, I think, from a genuine compassion for humans I have inside me. If you live as if there is a God, and it ends up there is not, you've lost nothing. But if the opposite is the case, the loss would be immeasurable, IMO.

Pascal's Wager ignores the personal and societal cost of devoting time and resources to the worship of mythological beings, denying reality (such as disease caused by germs rather than sin or demons), and using the alleged wrath of God to coerce other people into fighting wars, obeying stupid laws and persecuting others.

I respectfully disagree with you. IMHO it does take faith to believe that everything in existence today came about as a matter of pure chance.

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laws
Terry Smile

Snood, I don't see the physical universe operating "in accordance" with laws of nature, if by "in accordance" one means "in compliance" with....
The laws of nature of are not prescriptions FOR physical phenomena. That would be virtually no different from God's laws. As I see it, the physical universe just IS (I don't want to get into the epistemological problems in this statement); it is a given of our life. It just happens the way it happens because that is its nature. We wish to "explain" these happenings with reference to laws which are actually no more than empirical generalizations of great scope. These "laws" are the product of our need to be able to anticipate what will happen given certain preconditions; they are statistical expectations. They are not RULES which nature obeys; they are descriptions of nature's behavior; nature obeys only itself. It takes NO FAITH simply to make such observations and codify them as formulas and "laws," only patience and intelligence.

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OK, there is God, was a God, will be a God, has been a God, no doubt about it ...... we got God, even got a standby God for weekends and holidays.
Question ..... what does he do all day? What are his ambitions, his plans for us.

Where does he see hinself in 10 years?

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god
Geligesti, If there were a God--the saying goes--and you want to make Him laugh, tell him your plans.

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Are you crazy, look what he did to his son just to prove a point!

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god
Wow, that was an amazing non-sequitur.

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Gelisgesti wrote:

OK, there is God, was a God, will be a God, has been a God, no doubt about it ...... we got God, even got a standby God for weekends and holidays.
Question ..... what does he do all day? What are his ambitions, his plans for us.

Where does he see hinself in 10 years?

God as being the Alpah and Omega, who is in the future and in the past at the same time. - Ten years nothing

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I do not know if there is a God -- but there certainly may be one.

I do not know if there are no gods -- but it is quite possible there are none.

Nothing anyone has said to me -- or that I have seen written -- persuades me that anyone else KNOWS there is a God or that there are no gods.

But I understand that the temptation to guess one way or the other is very, very great.

So for those unable to resist the urge to guess -- why not just guess, but acknowledge that it is a guess (or estimate, if that makes you feel better) -- and be done with it?

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I don't know, does gravity require faith?

Universal principles or physical laws are a fact of observation. They will do what they do regardless of what I believe or understand about them.

Faith comes in with repetitions of consistent patterns and causes and effects of future events

That the sun will rise tomorrow is not a fact of observation. That an apple will fall to the ground tomorrow is an unknown.

That something happened a billion times before is no assurance it will happen in precisely the same way one more time. One day the sun will not rise (a misnomer). One day an apple will not fall.

The observation of these laws doesn't require faith, ( apart from the issue that one has to have faith in their observational abilities) that they will repeat does require faith. Of course if they didn't repeat they wouldn't be laws.

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Re: laws

JLNobody wrote:

Terry

Snood, I don't see the physical universe operating "in accordance" with laws of nature, if by "in accordance" one means "in compliance" with....
The laws of nature of are not prescriptions FOR physical phenomena. That would be virtually no different from God's laws. As I see it, the physical universe just IS (I don't want to get into the epistemological problems in this statement); it is a given of our life. It just happens the way it happens because that is its nature. We wish to "explain" these happenings with reference to laws which are actually no more than empirical generalizations of great scope. These "laws" are the product of our need to be able to anticipate what will happen given certain preconditions; they are statistical expectations. They are not RULES which nature obeys; they are descriptions of nature's behavior; nature obeys only itself. It takes NO FAITH simply to make such observations and codify them as formulas and "laws," only patience and intelligence.

Are you saying that the way the universe was created will become manifest in time, to someone with the requisite "patience and intelligence"? So I guess you're one of those people who believes it is possible for a human being to understand everything? In other words, that there is no knowledge that is higher than man? Okay, so one person says God created the Universe - someone else says the universe just "happened". What factual, unassailable proof does the second person offer to the first that all we see came from nothing, for no other reason than that it just "is"? Isn't it, at bottom, a matter of the second person being willing to believe that these laws (or whatever you would call them) of nature happenstanced into you and I, and the universe? Isn't that just as much a matter of personal choice of beliefs, just as it is when someone chooses to believe that God created everything? Faith is belief sans evidence. You can't prove to me you are a product of physics and chance, and nothing else. I can't (and wouldn't try) to prove to you that there is a higher sentient power who made the universe for a purpose.

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JL, several trains of thought ..... it's how the platypus was created.

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god
Twyvel, nothing you said contradicts anything I said. The inductive method of science (at least 19th century science) does not provide "proof" for assertions about future phenomena. But it does provide EVIDENCE for a feeling of confidence that such and such will most probably happen--like the rising sun tomorrow morning. Snood, I think, defines "faith" as belief sans evidence. Inductive science provides evidence, but not absolute proof.

Frank, your position is a safe one. We do not know with certainty. BUT the evidence in support of theism is SO much more flimsy than that for atheism. We must face the fact that the evidence from physics, biology, geology, theoretical astronomy, and the evolutionary theory that tries to organize them with regard to animal life, is SO much more substantial (or less insubstantial) than the obviously mythological conclusions of theological thinking.

If I had to choose, and it seems I must (or just meditate blissfully), I would choose the imperfect conclusions of science and values of humanism over the vastly inferior (and infantile) fantasies of religious thought. By the way, I am not including here the profoundly wise insights of the Hindu and Buddhist literature. That's a TOTALLY different kind of "religion."

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Re: god
JLNobody wrote:

Quote:

Frank, your position is a safe one. We do not know with certainty. BUT the evidence in support of theism is SO much more flimsy than that for atheism.

Well, first of all, my position is not offered because it is "safe", but because it is TRUTH and unassailable.

Notice that theists can properly portray atheistic arguments as "beliefs" and as "faith."

Atheists, can properly portray theistic arguments as "beliefs" and as "faith."

But neither can realistcally say that "I do not know" is a belief or an act of faith.

It is simply a recitation of the truth.

(BTW - there is always the off-shoot chance that I do KNOW if there is a God or that there are no gods --but that I am unable to KNOW that I know it. I recognize that and in more intense debate deal with that possibility. Suffice here to say: If I cannot reliably say that I know something, that is equivalent to not knowing it.)

Your comment that "the evidence in support of theism is SO much more flimsy than that for atheism" is wishful thinking at best.

Quote:

We must face the fact that the evidence from physics, biology, geology, theoretical astronomy, and the evolutionary theory that tries to organize them with regard to animal life, is SO much more substantial (or less insubstantial) than the obviously mythological conclusions of theological thinking.

This does not really make sense.

The theistic position is that there is a God.

The atheistic position is that there are no gods.

The physical evidence does not provide any unambiguous evidence in either direction. Both positions are the product of faith.

The absence of proof of a God is not proof of the absence of gods.

Quote:

If I had to choose, and it seems I must (or just meditate blissfully), I would choose the imperfect conclusions of science and values of humanism over the vastly inferior (and infantile) fantasies of religious thought. By the way, I am not including here the profoundly wise insights of the Hindu and Buddhist literature. That's a TOTALLY different kind of "religion."

You don't HAVE TO choose. You choose to choose.

I choose to acknowledge that I do not know -- and that there does not seem to be enough unambiguous evidence upon which to make a meaningful guess.

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god
Frank, I havn't read your last post yet, only the first lines. And they literally PROPEL me to state the following (let's see if I continue to hold this after reading your post): I do not know in the technical sense if god exists or not, granted. But then in the same sense, I do not KNOW if three-headed, egg-laying, backward flying unicorns exist.
Now I feel better. On to your post.

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god
Frank. Good points. You have a subtle mind (especially as shown in the paragraph beginning with "BTW")which makes discussion with you so interesting.
Atheism, TO ME, is not an active disbelief in a God or gods. It's simply an absence of any impulse to hold such a belief in the absence of evidence. I do not believe in a No-God and worship him, as Madeline O'Hara did.
I like to think that I and you are choosing to believe as we do, but I'm not sure that that is unambiguously so. Notice that there seems to be an overall coherence in the values, lifestyle, worldview, (what we mean by personality) of believers that seems to differ from the coherence seen in atheists and agnostics.
By the way, I've always considered myself an agnostic, but now I think I was sitting on the fence, insincerely. Even Buddhists are atheists, yet they have no anomosity toward theists; they would most likely simply refuse to discuss the subject. I am an atheist in the passive sense defined above.

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Where do you go after you die?
Is one question & an interesting one.

Why exactly is it, that this subject MUST
connect with the quasi-religious, or the:
God?yes / God?no
discussion that is going on here?

If you really want to discuss the issue of:
"Is there a God?" yes or no,
then don't you agree that this particular
topic deserves a special title of its own?

If God exists as the worlds major religions
claim in their many, many forms - then
it's all gonna be okay when you die, since
after all - the true meaning of the word
"SIN" is so simple.
It is just an ancient archery term.
It means that your shot missed the
bulls eye. So, maybe you erred a
little to the right, or a little to the left.
But, come on now, does this mean
brimstone, hellfire and damnation?
Would a Creator not be fond of its
creations, to some extent?

Wouldn't we get a little bit of leeway
for instance if we happened to be born
in Japan where Shinto or Tao are the
cultural choices of religious practice
common among these peoples.
Or born in a land where Buddha is the
spiritual leader. And what if we did indeed
devoutly follow all of the teachings of
Buddha, to the best of our human
ability, for example;

"Destructive emotions refer to an emotion that leads
us to do something that harms ourselves or someone
else. There are helpful insights from both the deep
spiritual wisdom of Buddhism & from modern findings
in science, and that each might inform the other.
Almost any emotion can become destructive. Even too
much happiness, if it's manic excitement, can lead us
to do destructive things. But talking about anger,
focus on anger. Anger, from an evolutionary point
of view, serves a purpose. It's helped us survive.
Anger is quite an appropriate response to an injustice
or a wrong that needs to be righted. If you are going
to be effective in responding to what makes you angry,
you need to keep the focus & energy of the anger,
but drop the anger itself in order to act more skillfully."

I think that these could be good words to live by also.
Don't you?
Btw, Frank - I like the way you put your words together
I can understand that the temptation to guess is very
great

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Passage ...... Where do you go after you die

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