I share your attitude, Whiz. To sacrifice my freedom to inquire for the sake of emotional security is the moral equivalent of a mind evacuating lobotomy.
And that's a serious statement.
Eorl wrote:Chumly
"It was a dazzling four-sun afternoon...."
..a big favourite that one. (The short version even more so.)
He said it all so well. I miss old Asimov and the era he represented.
God inspires you to do what? Do you paint? Compose music? Play baseball? Plant a garden? Or vegetate on a sofa?
God ignores me (which thank god) allows me to do what I please. Funny how god is so selective, must think Rex is pretty smoking.
Aristotle's God, the Great Mover,
is ignoring you. That entity is too busy keeping the Universe in motion to worry about your pathetic little life.
I picked the wrong time to change my signature line:
The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.
--H. L. Mencken
(The ultimate human egotism -- religion).
Chumly wrote: Funny how god is so selective, must think Rex is pretty smoking.
I ain't so sure he's pretty but he's definately smokin'
somethin'
Good setup
Good follow through
A comedy team is born
Stay tuned for further exploits
Re: Why are you religious? Please give your reasons.
Chumly wrote:Why are you religious? Please give your reasons.
There are two rules:
1) Don't say because the Bible or Torah or Koran etc tells you so.
2) Scriptural quotations longer than two sentences punishable by 20 lashings (this mean you kevnmoon!)
hah... well.. accept you..
In my opinion..
Nature is so complex but wonderfull. All systems flow so well. Also all over the space.. There is a perfect laws (which was put into nature) .. I look to ants .. bees... all kind of natural creations r in regular system but humanbeing..
So I believe human life has a principles as ants as bees.. but we don't understand.. All Divine Books and Prophets tells us this system , perhaps we couldn't understand..
So is it possible to say.. I am religious as all beings , all creations..
OR MAY I SAY I AM NATURAL ?
JLNobody wrote:I share your attitude, Whiz. To sacrifice my freedom to inquire for the sake of emotional security is the moral equivalent of a mind evacuating lobotomy.
And that's a serious statement.
So you are free from all necessities?
That question does not follow from what I said, Neo. Of course, I have necessities, but they are all natural rather than supernatural.
I heard a quote on the radio this morning (Diane Rehm show) from Paul Tillich (whom I have quoted before: "The God behind God", a provocative phrase).
Tillich said "Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith."
This implies to me that faith always entails doubt--in good part because religious faith contradicts everyday common sense experience. But it must also follow (to me) that faith is also an element of doubt (see below).
Each requires the other conceptually, in the trivial sense that the meaning of doubt and faith each require the meaning of other.
But there is also another sense of this dialectic: doubt requires faith in that there is something that one wishes were so, i.e., the existence of God, but feels there is a lack of justificatory evidence.
It seems to me that there is a dynamic dialectic there, a continuous STRUGGLE between faith and doubt among Christians (and people of other faiths as well). But in MY case, this is not so; my atheism is not, in any way, a RESISTANCE against faith or an embracing of doubt. I am an atheist because the very notion of supernaturalism, miracles, God, otherworlds, etc. make no sense.
My doubts and beliefs pertain only to the realm of the natural.
