Polarity for retards. -- Christian-as-ever!

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

Here we go, this will be “enlightening” for sure [sarcasm].

In the simple mind, when problems arise, and one is incapable of actually solving/explaining exactly why/how that problem exists, it is much easier and much faster to blame something single, stereotypical and invisible/theoretical/unfalsifiable.

Now, “evil” exists because of “Satan”, “Imperfection” and “Sin”, etc. There is no-longer a need for a REAL explanation of HOW, there is just an incredibly simple “why”. When people die, “God took them”? When Hitler died, it was “divine punishment”?

It may be insane, but superstitions have been with humanity for a long time, and delusional-reason tends to help a person come to terms with an event, but in a specific way:

If somebody expects life to have meaning and reason, made by a perfectly just & holy “God”, then one must also develop a reason for every time in which life has no meaning, reason, holiness or justice. Universally unmet moral expectations of justice – eventually lead to such ideas as:

“Adam and Eve sinned in the garden of Eden.”
Or
“You did bad things in your passed life, and in this life, you suffer for it.”

Both of these are examples of scape-goating, due to an unrealistic, unmet craving for “justice”/“fairness”.

If people are ever wondering how a whole universe got here, then “poof”, God decided to just up and make it that way, because:
“He wants to share his love with us.”
“He is creative and artistic.”
“He wanted to know what it was like to die, so blew up into a universe.”

Etc. each of these “explanations” for “reason” are based upon
PETTY HUMAN WANT.
A disturbed, whimsical muse.

Is that the best phantasm you can come up with?

Please…

2

Do you feel there is polarity (good-bad, just-absurd, etc), and that religion has just simplified it to an unreasonable extent, or do you think it is totally illusory?

Is a simple explanation of “why” a terribly unenlightened thing, even if it doesn’t preclude a search for an explanation of “how”?

3

Unless a mind catagorizes and disects concepts, the universe is a whole thing.

“Polarity”, “Good” and “Evil” tend to be concepts only existing within consciousness.

“Religion” doesn’t do any one thing, but some religions offer “untrue” explanations for things.

“Polarity”, “good” and “evil” … each of these probably objectively exist… how so? Because a material body is an object, and part of that real object is the behavior, the moral mobilization, the state-of-being, etc.

What I don’t like is when people play ignorant metaphysical blame-games.

That all depends on whether or not it is preached literally.

If they had a more gnostic, non-literal attitude about their beliefs, they would not blindly submit to their church, but instead, develop their own ideas for the meaning of almost purely symbolic texts.

To one side: an end of thought.
To the other side: spawning thought.

Dogma goes like this:
“All fags are bad”

Gnostic goes like this:
“Anti-homosexuality council had a deeper meaning. Purely one force, combined with exact similars – can produce nothing new, alive, or natural. If a person is by themselves with only their own thoughts, or in a small group of people who only believe in 1 simple thing, their minds do not grow very well, and new thoughts/thought-quality is rare. But, when different kinds of people interact, this produces far more things which are “alive”. Heterosis is, in essense, cooperation and tolerance between beings and forces which are very different from one-another. The same principal is seen between positive and negitive electrons. Compatable opposites unite, to create existence. It was not a command, but infact, a universal principal.”

Each example-comment was a reaction to the same message in the same text…

4

Dan,

Many of your claims are just very broad generalizations. You act as if all religions are the same, when we know for a fact they’re not, and only one can be true. For these people that say hitler dying is justice, and someone else dying it was just God taking them, that’s only their opinion, they have no idea at all about What God thinks.

I’m not sure how God’s creation can just be poof, even though it can, I’m really not sure why I’m taking the time to listen to your iconoclastic ramblings. Nevertheless, I’m listening. But you act as if you’re talking to one person? As if all this information is based on someone, and your taking every religion down with them.

Good and evil objectively exist huh? A material body is an object? behavior? moral mobilization? State of Being?

You mean good and evil exist within certain cultures right? Not objectively universally, because you’d really have to back that claim up as to why other intelligent lifeforms in the universe could have a totally different set of objective morals, and then your just back to moral relativism.

I’m not sure what backward religion is teaching homosexuals are bad, they act of homosexuality is bad in my religion, not the person.

5

If only religious thinkers were stupid enough for your theories to carry any water. Have you ever asked any religious thinkers how and why they process the things they do, instead of just telling them how they must do it? As long as your starting point is “Religious people are so stupid that it should be obvious to everyone”, you’re never going to actually understand anything about us.

6

Exactly Ucci. It’s a typical problem with an ubeliever not to look at the evidence before making a decision on his eternal path. Sometimes to actually understand something you must look into it, instead you blindly discard it, a free gift that’s life changing.

Even if one were to choose the path to atheism, this life would have no meaning. They couldn’t say an Old woman’s life dying is less important as a 3 year old dying, because time wouldn’t matter. Nothing would matter, you’d just be a blimp on the radar screen of time. And yet somehow this is more satisfying? To assume you have the correct answer that brings you nowhere, rather than to assume you have the right answer that could bring you somewhere.

The problem with philosophy is many of these great philosophers, can’t see the fallicious statements in there teachings because they’ve dug so far for the answers. I dont’ even have to read and search for these answers, even before I obtained the knowledge to defend my religion I was just fine, and never once when I relied upon the bible have I made some contradictory statement, or something that can be disproved as false. I’m not saying this can’t happen, it’s just simply amazing to me that philosophy can work this way. However as Lewis put it, “Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”

7

What makes it so irritating is that it’s possible to be an intelligent, well-reasoned atheist. I can think of two here in a heartbeat that I get along with just fine, because they understand that even if theism, Christianity, and so on is false, it still operates up on a level where it can be fairly discussed. It used to be, when I was like 12, that somebody saying in essence “Religion is obviously stupid to anybody who thinks about it” would make me shiver with uncertainty. That fear, though, was just a function of the same experience that leads people to making those sorts of statements in the first place.

8

Exactly, Religion has undoubtfully become just one of those things people hate to talk about now. It’s not supposed to be brought up anymore, so Christians render it useless to study apologetics. I feel in my own conscious that bringing up Christian views is a very bitter and dark subject for someone to talk to their friends about. Yet opposing forces seem to do just fine, nobody wants to repudiate the atheist except an apologetist, christians feel weak and there only defense nowdays is to attack with Bible verses. I’m not saying that’s wrong, it’s just not gettin on their level and discussing your faith without using your faith.

Our world is becoming confused as to truth all the time. Ucc, I’m not sure if you listen to Ravi Zacharias or not but he is great to listen to for apologetics. He brings up Camus, Kant, Sartre, Nietzsche, Heidegger(sp?), and discusses the fallacies within their ideologies. He discusses more on level with College Students, which I love since I am a College student. But he talks about the professors who come to him hostile, and don’t realize the fallacies in their own arguments. He talked about one professor of philosophy who came up to him after a lecture and said, I want you to lecture on why you’re not a hindu. Of course Ravi would not want to speak on a subject such as that, but he asked the professor why, and the professor said because you are looking at eastern philosophy as a westerner, so Ravi invited him to lunch.

Anyway making this story short, the Professor brought along a pyschologist, not sure why, but as they sat there eating the Professor starts talking about Western Logic being either or, and Eastern being Both and. The professor sat there and debated while Ravi sat back and ate and at the end of it all, Ravi said, So what you would prefer me to do is look at it as Both and OR nothing? The professor says…the either or logic does seem to emerge, and Ravi Said yes, even in India we look both ways before crossing the street, it’s either me or the bus.

9

  • No I don’t.

  • Don’t apply what I say to those which it does not apply to.

  • Read what I said properly.

Also:

“Only one can be true”?

Either god created something or “he” didn’t. Yes, in many cases, only one can be “true”, and most often they are based on ancient supersition, thus “untrue”.

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It’s implicit in your argument.

Yes only one can be true, only one religion. So yes maybe many religions based on ancient superstition are untrue, what have you refuted here? I’m glad my religion isnt however.

12

How so? Is this an objective statement?

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How so, because every religion has something exclusive to offer.

14

But most also have something in common as well. Some religions take cue from others or evolved into another. I know just off the top of my head Buddhism says that their are other gods but they suffer the same fate as humanity in a way.

Think of it like this. You have to choose BMW or Mercedes. BMW offers a 10 year warranty while Mercedes is a 7 year but with a ton of toys. Now would you still be able to get to home and work with both cars? So who is to say there can be only one path to truth?

15

There’s also the option that no religions are true.

16

This is the great dilemma of believers and what makes it so hard for me to believe them.
There is a myriad of religons with many millions of fervent believers, each finding solace and meaning in their particular faith.

The exclusive position of the one true path that each takes is difficult for me to fathom. I cannot believe that god would be so picky. Only petty selfish people could act like that.

17

sigh im with Dan~ on this cant be bothered reading all the rantings from people that dont ‘get’ his post.

Dan~ dont expect them to be getting out of their comfort zones anytime soon…

18

Atheism means “no theism”, rather than “no meaning” or even “no religion.” Furthermore, atheists certainly don’t all blindly discard theism.

Because you were clumsy enough to generalize, are you iconoclastically rambling?

“Something and the absence of something”, not “something or the absence of something”, because they aren’t defined if they’re alone. Even to the extreme of nothingness, you have both “everything and nothing.”

Just because every religion is different doesn’t mean only one is a true description of reality. An apple is a different fruit than an orange, is one of them the only real fruit? What if two different religions were describing two different pieces of the same reality? What if they were just using different words in the same description?

19

Atheism means no theism?? Wow, profound. No, I’m not saying all do discard theism. But if they don’t believe in a diety of some sort, some hope, what meaning can there be to their infiniteness?

He was using broad generalizations, what more can you ask.

You were clumsy enough to miss the situation of that story, good job. But i’ll explain it better for you, the professor wanted Ravi to use Both and, and not Either or. Ravi just brought that point out, and a good point at that.

If a religion has a component that is false, how can that religion be fully true? So in this case , not all religions can be true or as Ucc pointed out, none of them can be true.

20

So Hindus and Buddhists don’t have any sense of value? How can there be Humanists, who value people above all else? Your assuming that people can only percieve value through God seems even further off than your assuming that all atheists are also nihilists. God is not the same as hope, God is a way in which some concieve and justify hope.

My point is that you’re using broad generalizations, but seem pretty confident in your righteousness. Contrarily, Dan~'s generalizations get him labeled as an iconoclastic rambler who is apparently not worth reading. You’re both just using generalizations so that you don’t have to write modifiers to explain who your statements do and don’t apply to. So, I was asking you to stop attacking him with virtually irrelevent classifications as opposed to actually trying to glean his ideas from the post.

I was saying Ravi’s point is wrong; it is, at best, a twisting of words that ignores the concept. How that is that a clumsily unrelated comment?

“Fully true”? Why do we need these absolutes when they aren’t possible for us to attain? (Which is probably what that professor in your story was trying to say, btw; either-or, implies that only the extreme, absolute positions are applicable, whereas in reality there is always some measure of duality.)