ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

Nunez was all downhill after the juggaloes comment, which was both perfect and wrong in the way that Jesus was both God and man.

xp that's a philosophical not a scientific opinion tho, and easily arguable.

My own thoughts on this are difficult to put into a message board post, but I do think that God vs. organized religion is the wrong argument, and "God exists" vs. "God does not exist" is also the wrong argument -- probably the more wrong one. Most of this thread seems to hang on the assumption that God is one thing, no matter how incorporeal or widely dispersed. Monotheism has messed with us hard for 6000 years. God didn't used to be like this.

God was awesome until he signed to major label

The Jews totally sold him out.

Most of this thread seems to hang on the assumption that God is one thing, no matter how incorporeal or widely dispersed

most of the world seems to hang on this assumption?

I KNOW

It frustrates me

I voted for "poetry of the ocean at night, man" and thanks for the mockery.

(from the thread starter, I mean)

God is what is beyond you, I believe by definition. Trying to form a concept of something that you can't possibly form a concept of is a useful exercise. Every religion knows this, and is built from that idea. Something you can almost wrap your head around, but simply cannot -- that's where there's God. I don't mean a "God of the gaps" argument -- it's not about intelligence or knowledge. Philosophers and theologians have been running against the same edges of the same kinds of brains for thousands of years, but they have all agreed that there is something that they can't quite get at. But that's just it -- God is a lesson, not a being. He's a lesson so big that he probably deserves a name all by himself, but let's be careful how we talk about him, because if you're not careful, before you know it there's a man in the sky that you can ask for favors. Monotheism brought God one un-useful step closer to being more like ourselves -- if God made us in his image, then we have a more concrete concept of what he is, and that's a jack that we can crank until we're nearly at his level. This defeats the purpose of his being there altogether, and misses the point. God has no ego, he has no identity, he's as inconceivable as the idea of Nothingness. Nothingness is not empty space; it's nothing. God is not a thing; it's God.

Dowd is the most consistently OTM person here.

Dowd's been making sense all along to me, and Aimless's piece on mysticism was very interesting to read (apart from his hating atheists :))

Kenan, I have no grasp of your concept of what God is or may be. That's not a criticism or anything though.

I have no grasp of your concept of what God is or may be

Exactly what I just said.

I mean that sentence, which you just said, is also what I just said.

omg we have a church hi 5

Let's burn a Koran to celebrate

xp God rotisserie

Am doubtful of yr notion that personification is a later development of our idea of god, and not the earliest idea of all.

You may be right. There's no way to know for certain, I don't think.

It seems to me that a pagan world view disperses the concept of evil more efficiently, though. "Why do bad things happen to good people?" "Because they pissed off the wrong deity."

It makes sense that the oldest One God is also a very cranky one.

Part of what is frustrating about the new fundamentalism in the US is their assumption that this is what Christians have always been like. It's probably impossible for us to understand how, say, 10th century Christians understood their faith (finally got around to reading Veyne's 'Did the Greeks Believe in their Myths', which was awesome, though mostly for it's questions rather than it's answers).

I believe in the book of Job, I think. The world is wonderful, and then it's awful, and it all seems meaningless much of the time, but if you ask God why, his answer is going to be, "You don't get to ask that question, little one." God seems like a bit of an egotist as he explains to Job that he made everything, and Job is very small by comparison, but that's not what the writer is getting at. Imagine Job as a stand-in for all the writer's questions, and God as a stand-in not for a supreme supernatural being but instead for everything the writer is awed and cowed by, and God's speech makes perfect sense. "You do not get to ask."

Thik you're confusing 'Book of Job' with 'ILX FAQ' there

Shh! I'm trying to be all deep and shit.

I love Job - and it's interesting in that it has pretty much always (from early Judaism through the Church fathers on up) been considered an allegory, and Job not a historical figure. It's only recently that biblical literalism got a hold of some groups that this changed.

xp yeah sorry, that was a good post. Think underrated aerosmith and others have stanned hard for 'Book of Job' before too.

iirc the acceptance of the creation story in Genesis as literal started with Martin Luther, and remains primarily a feature of protestantism?

boy that guy really liked to stir it up huh

tho not having entered a discussion on theology with a priest since i was maybe 11, i couldn't give you an irish catholic perspective for certain- but i think that if asked officially they have to declare as literalists as well so not sure about it being 'mainly protestant'

I've kind of lost track of what is happening in this thread any more (I now understand that the things I was objecting to in Phil N's posts are basically some wacky misreading of atheism that not even the atheists on this thread agree with.)

Dowd has been talking a lot of sense, especially:

the debate between theists and atheists is a distraction from real problems.

Yeah, this has been my experience again and again, that it tends to divide people (who might otherwise work together on solving those problems).

I think it's quite easy for Atheists to fall into the trap of saying "religion is the cause of 90% of the world's problems!" when actually it's something more like "humanity is the cause of 90% of the world's problems" and "90% of the world's humans are the cause of the world's religions." B and C may be true, but that doesn't mean that A follows.

(And this is probably the atheist equivalent of the "how can you be moral without god?" fallacy.)

xp Martin Luther presented the creation story as being literal because he didn't think the unwashed masses understood the concept of allegory. Or, even more cynically, he understood that "it's just a story" was no way to start a revolution.

I think most Atheists are less interested in making religion a big issue as they are in saying 'religion isn't really relevant, can we please not bring it up in this context' tbph. Which is what Dowd was saying too I think, and is probably compatible enough with the 'my spirituality is a personal phenomenon' people as well.

It's weird to me that people are seemingly still continuing to insist that current christians don't *ever* stand up and say "it's a bunch of stories and allegories and Myths" given that was basically my entire education in christian schools all down the line.

Like, is Episcopalianism that weird and unusual a sect?

xp

yeah there's also (re: luther) the idea that a lot of luther's (protestism in general's?) power and authority came from bringing the bible directly to the people without church intervention- which would have made it in his interest to authenticate as much as possible the information therein i suppose.

Precisely.

Yay Protestantism, imo

"You're all individuals!"

"Yes. We are all individuals!"

Darragh, I think that religion is pretty darn relevant in a thread about people's religious (or not) experiences and beliefs. Why is it that that atheists feel they have to vent about how it's brought up in inappropriate settings, in a place where it is highly appropriate?

(This is not just about this thread, it's about every religion thread I've ever been on, across every forum I've been on, on the internet.)

Again, this is where us reasonable theists start to feel really impinged on, and start to get negative views of atheists, who come across as wanting no discussion of religious topics, ever, anywhere.

But anyway, I have to actually do some work this morning.

Oh for the love of Christ.

eh i was broadly sketching what atheists outlook on religion was in the real world, not commenting on the discussion of religion in a thread about religion, if you see what i mean.

but if it's not clear after i don't know how many posts to this thread, i'm not against "discussion of religious topics, ever, anywhere"

and i think most atheists (as i do) still find it a fascinating topic, you can't seperate it from any aspect of human history. and even to hear those with faith/belief discuss it like in this thread is a fascinating read imo.

I think it's quite easy for Atheists to fall into the trap of saying "religion is the cause of 90% of the world's problems!" when actually it's something more like "humanity is the cause of 90% of the world's problems" and "90% of the world's humans are the cause of the world's religions." B and C may be true, but that doesn't mean that A follows.

Amen.

After several of my friends and I saw that Bill Maher movie, the discussion was not so much about theology as about what percentage stuffed with fluff Bill Maher was.

(Consensus: pretty high.)

he's fucking nuts, he doesn't believe in germ theory

That's overstating a little bit, but he has said things about vaccines that are way Hollywood, imo.

BM: I don't believe in vaccinaiton either. That's a... well, that's a... what? That's another theory that I think is flawed, that we go by the Louis Pasteur theory, even though Louis Pasteur renounced it on his own deathbed and said that Beauchamp(s) was right: it's not the invading germs, it's the terrain. It's not the mosquitoes, it's the swamp that they are breeding in.

...

BM: You're in denial, about I think is a key fact, which is it is the at... people get sick because of an aggregate toxicity, because their body has so much poison in it, from the air, the water...

i think he may have rescinded somewhat under pressure. still nuts though.

Again with someone saying "Something is terribly wrong with the world, and I have decided what it is."

But let's not go there again.