igordesu Wrote:Oh God. I tried to "come out" to my Dad just a little bit today about my rejection of fundamentalism and he freaked out. Honest debating with these people is useless. Now I know why you guys were so frustrated with me earlier this year

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it will only get worse. Unlike most slippery slope arguments politicians use, abandoning Fundamentalism really does lead to a series of more and more liberal behavior. You will begin to see those who do not share your views as less and less the enemy of God, and so of yourself as well. You even begin to walk a mile in their shoes and try to see the world from their perspective.
That slide into reasonable thought caused me to question the Truths taught to me by the Southern Baptist church I grew up in back in Arkansas. My family finally stopped attempting to deal with the person I grew into once I shared my seed with a mother who was not of pure white skin eight years ago (mixing races is a major sin there). Though this outlandish behavior was preceded in previous years by my letters to the editor supporting gay marriage on the state ballot, a spot on national TV's Inside Edition defending polyamory as a more natural relationship option, and vomiting across the room like a demon processed host when my mother tried to sneak ground beef into my meal after being a vegetarian for ten years (The Bible says God gave us certain animals we are to eat).

liosama Wrote:

Hashiriya Wrote:if a baby dies before it is born i believe they get a free ticket to heaven card... i think it is at the "age of awareness" that someone has to make the choice between Jesus or another way...

Unfortunately you are wrong. The bible does not say that. According to the bible every single person before christ went to hell. Some crap like that.

Every person before Christ went to hell? Huh? Not sure where you pulled that out of... Might I suggest that you don't tell other people what the bible does or doesn't say if you do not know yourself.


@ Igordesu: I'm intersted in hearing a bit more about exactly which beliefs you no longer hold and the things that lead you to this decision. I'm genuinely curious. I too believe in reason, but do not find it in oposition to my faith, quite the contrary in fact. Anyway, if you're willing to share I (and I'm sure some others too) would be interested in hearing a bit more.

igordesu Wrote:Oh God. I tried to "come out" to my Dad just a little bit today about my rejection of fundamentalism and he freaked out. Honest debating with these people is useless. Now I know why you guys were so frustrated with me earlier this year

Just tell them the good things about what you believe, and leave out the stuff that will just cause argument. It's not like you've stopped believing in God, just that you don't agree with one facet of "Christianity" that is the fundamentalist Christian sect. You're not alone, the world of Christianity (ie Europe, Australia, other American churches, etc) tends to be a lot more moderate than fundamentalists.

@Bodhisamaya: Wow. Thank you for sharing your experience. I just hope I'll still be able to...be close with my family, lol. Though I don't think mine sounds quite so judgmental as yours.

@Captal: Thank you. I'll try that.

@SammyB: Thank you very much for your concern There were several things, but I'll just name few.

1) Major things taught universally in the church today (like all sex outside of marriage = wrong), upon further investigation, are not actually biblical teachings. I know it sounds crazy, but it really is the truth. Kinda made me wonder about everything else they were teaching.

2) My great grandma just died of cancer, and I failed to share the gospel with her when I could have. She wasn't a christian. Will she go to hell, even though she fits the beatitudes almost perfectly? Kinda made me wonder...

3) That led me to thinking about the people "who never hear the gospel." Seriously, I've never, ever heard a completely satisfactory answer (and I've heard a lot). That's when I realized. Maybe *we've* never heard the "real" gospel, and we're in the same boat. Maybe the New Testament writers just made that crap up (like Paul). What if Paul had a vastly skewed view of who Christ was? Then you can pretty much toss out most of the new testament with it being so affected by him. You know? It's just...I think faith in God is great, but I have a problem believing God would send us to hell for not having blind faith in people.

4) Then, this seems to be a problem with all religions with texts/people that claim divine revelation. You really have no way of knowing, and you're forced to put blind faith in people. Especially when these texts claim to be the word of God, they really should be without error. I used to fool myself into thinking this was the case, but...it's not. If the same Author wrote the Bible and...the universe, the Bible really would be perfect.

In the end, I still have a lot of respect and love for Christians and their tradition, which has lots of wisdom. However...I don't think I can accept the blind faith in people aspect of "divine revelation."

konakona50 Wrote:Compassionate? I don't know about that. I was just yesterday talking to my friend about the price of human life. she came to the conclusion that human life was priceless which seems so obvious am i right? I wonder why we still debate about abortion. Couldn't people consider adoption?

I don't want to argue about abortion (okay, I do, but I don't want to right now), but I think the idea that 'human life is priceless' is taken in the wrong direction all the time. You could say that life is priceless, and I agree. I mean that life is beautiful, and it's great that we're alive and everybody who is alive has some value. But despite that, life isn't priceless in such a way that having MORE babies is better. Having more babies is WORSE, no matter how you slice the cards.

The problem is that there are limited resources on the planet. Humans ruin resources either by using them, or by polluting them. As they do this, other animals that need those resources suffer, and humans who don't have access to those resources suffer.

One example: The only way we're even (almost) feeding 6.5 billion people is by doing awful awful things to our food. If you're in America, most of what you eat is corn. Why? Because through genetic engineering and farming techniques we've managed to grow corn REALLY close together and get a ton of calories out of it. The only problem is that it's not edible. The corn that you buy in the grocery store--sweet corn--is not what you see growing in the giant fields in the mid-west. The corn growing in the mid-west is just awful tasting calories. It's fed to cows and other animals, as well as used to make the corn syrup which is used in practically everything you eat. Now, the animal meat is much worse for you (not to mention bad for the cows, who are pumped with antibiotics because of what it does to their stomachs). It has more fat and less protein, among other things. It's also cheap and a great way to feed a lot of people who like to eat meat.

Anyway, because of stuff like this Americans can eat a lot of food for cheap, and a lot of the world follows suit because their populations are high and meat sells well. Quality of food goes down as population goes up.

In fact, not only food, but quality of life goes down as population goes up. Yet people keep living longer, more babies survive each year, and the population goes up and up--and we say it's good.

This isn't just awful for food and human health, but also for things like energy (which quality of life is practically based on nowadays). Every ten years, due to exponential growth, we use as much gasoline as we did in the entire history of humanity. In the 1960s we used more than was every used in history, then we did it again in the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, and we're doing it again now. And then you read silly news articles that say we have enough gasoline to last until God knows when, but those articles always due their math with linear equations when in reality population and gasoline use are NOT staying steady at all.

Granted, science has been amazing and has been dealing with many of the problems that are being created by high population. By if science was advancing AND population wasn't increasing exponentially, quality of life would be even higher than it is now (it would be easier to deal with things like hunger and preventable water diseases). Not to mention, other than truly renewable energies like wind and the sun, all the other resources on the planet are just not going to be good enough as long as the average family keeps having more than 2.0 kids and those kids keep living to be nearly 100.

Whether or not abortion is right or wrong, having more kids is bad. If abortion is permissible morally then MORE abortions is better because less kids is better (especially kids born to young parents with little money). If abortion is not morally permissible then we should be convincing people to have LESS kids in other ways, and should be educating people more about birth control and family planning.

SammyB Wrote:

liosama Wrote:

Hashiriya Wrote:if a baby dies before it is born i believe they get a free ticket to heaven card... i think it is at the "age of awareness" that someone has to make the choice between Jesus or another way...

Unfortunately you are wrong. The bible does not say that. According to the bible every single person before christ went to hell. Some crap like that.

Every person before Christ went to hell? Huh? Not sure where you pulled that out of... Might I suggest that you don't tell other people what the bible does or doesn't say if you do not know yourself.


@ Igordesu: I'm intersted in hearing a bit more about exactly which beliefs you no longer hold and the things that lead you to this decision. I'm genuinely curious. I too believe in reason, but do not find it in oposition to my faith, quite the contrary in fact. Anyway, if you're willing to share I (and I'm sure some others too) would be interested in hearing a bit more.

Ah I tried to dig up some passages but I need more time, I'll get back to you on this one. But you usually get a response from any 'progressive' Muslim or Christian, "yeah because they weren't around, god will forgive them, for he is all forgiving" But that is just their own bias on how *they* want *their* religion to be. This self decision on religion is really common. Any excuses to justify the self decision can be religion isn't entirely complete, god gave us brains so we could solve some of the issues ourselves. God allowed evolution to occur, god started the big bang.

There is this continual adaptation that religions make to 'keep up' with the opinions and thoughts of the masses. This is not uncommon with any other religion. If you study Japanese religions you'll find the fluctuations Buddhism and Shintoism went through in order to stay alive.

Why not reject it entirely and realise every single myth is the same in its own unique way? If you engage in the history of a variety of cultures you'll realise they all came up with similar things to explain their existence, of course the difference can be explained based on physical context mainly. Hunter gatherer societies tended to have gods that mimicked animals since they were always around animals/prey. Agricultural societies (like most of Japan) would tend to have fixated gods based on the seasons; that 'control' plantation (make sense?), nature, life and death. It just so happens that word spread for but a few particular religions that they remain dominant today.

What I find most amusing however is the fact that this is a forum dedicated to language learning yet by following religious texts you ought to believe that somehow different languages arose out of one big tower which (aims to) explain ~70? languages, but misses about 5930 other live languages that exist today which linguistics, philosophy and basic common sense today has a much better chance of explaining.

ah its 1;30 so excuse any poor english

Yeah. I'm pretty sure Fabrice is going to kill me. I feel bad that I instigated (indirectly) another debate.

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

A wonderful quote, and my only comment on this subject.

One of my favourite books on religion, about 'open source' religion (especially in navigation of the Bible), is an accessible read by Douglas Rushkoff called Nothing Sacred. (Japanese tie-in: You might remember Rushkoff's Cyberia being mentioned in Serial Experiments Lain. [He has the book online for free - http://www.rushkoff.com/downloadables/cyberiabook/ - It's adorably dated and relatively immature compared to Nothing Sacred.)

Interesting that this Paul fellow is being mentioned, I *just* obtained a book by Badiou that takes an intriguing, radically ambiguous look at him. Well, that's what the description seemed to suggest.

igordesu Wrote:Yeah. I'm pretty sure Fabrice is going to kill me. I feel bad that I instigated (indirectly) another debate.

I got pulled in to a religious debate on an ESPN forum last year. I grew up in Arkansas and still follow the football team and the teams they play in the South (Bible Belt). The week prior to kickoff fans from each team debate (I use debate as a euphemism for trash talk here) which team is better. There are generally several thousand posts on a single thread. One user asked me what Bodhisamaya meant. I explained and most every user on that thread from both teams began rants of hatred at the Godless Heathen (me). After a few hours of absorbing this and giving explanations of my point of view calmly, most of the hatred died down and finally someone commented, "This is a football forum you morons! Leave the guy alone. He is going to burn in hell anyways"
I asked him how many different ways can a fan say,
"Your team sucks!"
"No, your team sucks!"
Then referenced to the post count that was over 5,000 at that point. It was a fun diversion and united two enemies in a common goal.
Most of the same people who were burning me at the stake back then have commented how much they enjoy our exchanges over sports now.

@bodhisamaya: sounds like you've been burned at the stake quite a bit over the years...perhaps you can tell us the secret to your resurrection ability?

igordesu Wrote:@bodhisamaya: sounds like you've been burned at the stake quite a bit over the years...perhaps you can tell us the secret to your resurrection ability?

One can not take anger from people who disagree with you personally. It has nothing to do with the object of anger but with anger itself. Actually people online are arguing with the name Bodhisamaya and not me at all. They do not know me. I am actually kind of a pain to be around in real life. Ask any of my three ex-wives ("kind of" will probably be omitted by them).

I challenge superstitions among Buddhists as well. As in Christianity, things get added over centuries that were never intended by the original teacher. I am one of the only vegetarians at my Dharma Center. In Tibet, where my teachers came from, one could not grow vegetables and so yak meat, yak butter and fermented yak milk became the primary food sources. So partaking in meat and alcohol are now part of certain rituals. I refuse claiming those things were necessary parts of practice among Tibetans because of harsh environmental reasons, but are not a part of Buddhist ideals of compassion and clarity of mind as I understand them.
Astrology and numerology are also practiced among many Tibetans as part of their practice because of influences from Bon that predate Buddhism in that region. It was never part of the original Buddhist view but developed from the culture. I have heard no valid argument these things are beneficial in any way.

It's kind of interesting to think about that, though, isn't it? I mean all of our discussions/debates on this forum would probably be waaaaaaay different if we were all actually face to face in the same room. Weird...

They'd be more or less the same igordesu. This debate is only natural. The only reason religion prevails today really is because of psychological brain washing and fear tactics implanted into a child at a young age. But once a person becomes older, opens up, looks out into the world and sees other cultures with fabrications in just the same manner, hopefully reason then will lead them to realise that maybe their religion was also a fabrication. But even still obstinateness prevails and a person will refuse to accept the truth, but I don't blame the person, rather I blame the parents. (Oh but what about the stories of perfectly sane atheists that somehow convert once they are older? - Don't ask me the only reasonable explanation is lack of conviction and the psychological need to stick to an imaginary higher power that will give meaning to your life to which real learning and understanding does a much better job)

So bodhisamaya, I'm confused are you a practicing Buddhist?

I am not one to blame wars on religion that is far too simplistic and unintelligent an assumption, but I am one to blame (lack of) progress on religion.

Sorry I keep bringing a number of new points but i figure any stab I can get at this argument I will go for it.

The very fact that the bible has been translated and edited (and Christians admit this too!!) doesn't that tell you something? Shouldn't a religion be perfect and untouched word of god? Also what I never understand is pro-gay Christians or Christians that are gay that want a gay church????

SammyB: You're Australian I'm sure you've seen that debate on tv on qanda with Christopher Hitchens (Whom I agree with when it comes to religious debates, but is a nutcase when it comes to anything else)


My favourite athiest however, is Carl Sagan.

@liosama: I can understand what you're saying. The only thing is...many atheists (not all, by any means, and this is only coming from my own, limited experience.) often fall into the same trap as believers and promoters of organized, "revealed" religions; namely, neither encourage the exploration of philosophical ideas like "God" outside of religious traditions. You know? It's almost like...organized, dogmatic religion left a bad taste in the mouth of many atheists. Perhaps that's the problem. At least, that's why *I* became a deist.

igordesu Wrote:Maybe the New Testament writers just made that crap up (like Paul)....I think faith in God is great, but I have a problem believing God would send us to hell for not having blind faith in people.

Just try to remember the story for 信: The character tells us that we can have FAITH in a PERSON'S WORDS. I think whoever first wrote/simplified this kanji was being rather naive though.

@Liosama
I am not sure how to define myself. I don't spend enough time in meditation to call myself Buddhist "one who looks within" though the beings I admire the most do. I aspire to the ideal of a Bodhisattva "selfless being"; the idea is that I am only one and the number of sentient beings is infinite. Even if this is the only life, it is better to live with the focus on others' happiness and ignore one's own ambitions. It is impossible to have much affect on the vast suffering that occurs in this world, but since most of us here live in rich countries, if we make an effort, we can have a profound difference on at least 100 people, maybe more. To me, that would be a well lived life much more so than dying with a big house and bank account. If it is true what the Lamas say in that you can choose to be born again as a human and work towards that same goal for an infinite number of lives, that would be very exciting too. I have no proof this is true so I focus on this life only, for now.

liosama Wrote:My favourite athiest however, is Carl Sagan.

liosama, Carl Sagan is not an atheist! Sagan denied that he was an atheist and said:

"An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid."

In reply to a question in 1996 about his religious beliefs, Sagan answered, "I'm agnostic."

Let me throw a monkey wrench at this: What if a god existed, but you did not worship it. Would that make you an atheist?

Consider, there are those that worship the sun. The sun exist. Heck, I concur that it exists. But does that mean I'm no longer an atheist?

I think defining atheism on the basis of discounting one particular god or gods is limited. I think atheism is better defined by the refusal to worship or to accept a thing or concept as a god.

Should any of the Christian gods happen to exist, I still would not worship any of them. I might agree that they exist (much like the Sun exists), but that does not mean any rate sacrifice from me to them.

liosama Wrote:The only reason religion prevails today really is because of psychological brain washing and fear tactics implanted into a child at a young age. But once a person becomes older, opens up, looks out into the world and sees other cultures with fabrications in just the same manner, hopefully reason then will lead them to realise that maybe their religion was also a fabrication.

Really? It seems like a bit much to blame this on 'psychological brain washing' and 'fear tactics.' I mean, the primary way cultural beliefs seem to spread is from parents to children, and this seems to happen just fine without psychological brain washing or fear tactics. I'm sure that fear tactics and other things help religion to be a particularly strong cultural idea that is passed on... but it's certainly not the only thing going on. Most people in America believe that being outside in the cold increases your chances of getting sick (Similarly, in Japan people gargle iodine solutions and wear masks because they think it helps prevent against disease). Most people in America also put their underwear and socks in the top drawer. And many many people believe that cold water boils faster than hot water. None of these seem to be working through fear mongering or psychological brain washing, but nevertheless they're cultural ideas that get passed on very efficiently... and it's certainly not because they're true (or necessary, as in the underwear drawer example).

ahibba Wrote:liosama, Carl Sagan is not an atheist! Sagan denied that he was an atheist and said:

"An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid."

In reply to a question in 1996 about his religious beliefs, Sagan answered, "I'm agnostic."

Actually, recently many people who share the exact or very similar beliefs with Sagan call themselves atheists. The idea that 'teapot agnostic' and 'atheism' are not meaningfully different has largely become popular only in the last ten years.

Nowadays, whether someone who is a 'teapot agnostic' calls themselves an atheist or an agnostic seems to depend mostly on how much they're intent on promoting the recent atheist movement, rather than based on a difference in beliefs. (However, those are agnostics or atheists in the strict sense refer to themselves as such based on beliefs)

Tzadeck Wrote:(Similarly, in Japan people gargle iodine solutions and wear masks because they think it helps prevent against disease). Most people in America also put their underwear and socks in the top drawer. And many many people believe that cold water boils faster than hot water. None of these seem to be working through fear mongering or psychological brain washing, but nevertheless they're cultural ideas that get passed on very efficiently... and it's certainly not because they're true (or necessary, as in the underwear drawer example).

Never seen people gargle iodine here in Japan, but are you saying wearing masks doesn't help at all? I mean I'm sure 100% of the germs you sneeze/breathe into the mask don't stay there, but it must be better than sneezing your germs all over a room. Then again I'm just going with what feels logical. If it doesn't work at all, why are so many people, even in the US, advising using masks dues to the new swine flu?

I've never heard a person say cold water boils faster than hot- though I have heard that hot water freezes faster than cold- never looked into it though.

Ok I had to look it up- apparently it is possible for hot water to freeze faster than cold water- it's called the Mpemba effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba

Wearing a mask will prevent the spreading of the flu once it is caught to others but will not protect from getting it in the first place. I have heard that most people have an iodine deficiency. I doubt gargling iodine will do anything as far as preventing the flu but I would think it would have health benefits in other areas.

Nukemarine Wrote:Let me throw a monkey wrench at this: What if a god existed, but you did not worship it. Would that make you an atheist?

Consider, there are those that worship the sun. The sun exist. Heck, I concur that it exists. But does that mean I'm no longer an atheist?

I think defining atheism on the basis of discounting one particular god or gods is limited. I think atheism is better defined by the refusal to worship or to accept a thing or concept as a god.

Should any of the Christian gods happen to exist, I still would not worship any of them. I might agree that they exist (much like the Sun exists), but that does not mean any rate sacrifice from me to them.

Actually, whether or not you choose to or are obligated to worship God is a different theological issue. The terms "Atheism" and "Theism" and such merely refer to beliefs about the existence of God. Example:

<-------------------------I------------------------->
Atheist Agnostic Theist
strong weak 0 weak strong
belief belief belief belief

On the above spectrum of belief about the existence of God, the center refers to someone who claims to have no belief (postive or negative) because they haven't seen (for whatever reason) sufficient evidence to be pulled to either side. The right side represents positive belief in the existence of God, and the left side represents negative belief. At the very end point of the spectrum on the right side, you have people who claim not only claim a "strong belief" in the existence of God, but they claim that they have "knowledge" about the existence of God (Anselm, anybody?). And likewise for people at the very end of the left side of the spectrum, except they claim to "know" that God doesn't exist..

Carl Sagan's point in saying that he wasn't an "atheist" probably wasn't that he was on the right side of this spectrum at all. His point probably was that he held some type of negative belief about God (or perhaps positive), but that he would never claim "knowledge" about the non-existence of God. That's because to do so is frankly stupid. No offense (and I'm seriously not being biased), but proving negatives is just really, really difficult. Example: prove to me that the flying spaghetti monster doesn't really live in the center of the sun. Exactly. Claiming knowledge about the existence of God probably isn't so smart either (unless you're, like, Moses or something), but it would seem easier to prove than to disprove such a thing.

Whether you have to believe God exists *and* stroke His/Her ego or something in addition to that belief seems to be a different matter entirely.

Igordesu, you kind of missed the point. You're capitalizing god which puts it in the realm of referring to the various Christian gods (and the Judaic and Muslim gods to boot). But what about those, such as the sun worshipers, that don't acknowledge any Christian gods? Are they de facto atheists? What about a Catholic that doesn't recognize any of the Jewish gods, is she atheist?

You're trying to define atheism to gods that may or may not exist. At least with sun worshipers, their god not only exists, they can point to it and prove it. Not so easy should your god be Zeus (manifested existence in thunderstorms) or Santa Claus (manifested every Christmas time) or Elohim (manifested in pillars of dust and fire). Nigh impossible should your god be the Christian type as it's been defined into impossibility and self contradiction at times.

So, I'd say atheism has nothing to do with denial of any particular god. If such, everyone is an atheism at some point. No, I'd argue a true atheist is one that does not worship beings or concepts. This removes problems about which god is the real god I'm supposed to not believe in. There's just so many to not choose from.

Anyone else here read Quentin Meillassoux's "After Finitude"? Brilliant stuff, though still a work in progress and thus more of a 'prolegomena' that carves a glimpse at a way past our post-modern rut in agnosticism and the polarities on either side.