Religion is true for the believer.
So are idiocy, politics, economics, philosophy, sociology, pathology, etc, etc, et al, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Do you have a point, or you just like one liners?
I have a point, the meaning of the one liner is that you can never argue with a believer because he believes in it. just like you believe in atheism, he believes in God. it is pointless to rationalise about beliefs.
not pointless, unless the one you’re arguing with is lacking a brain.
I think the only way such people would lose their faith is if GOD himself appeared to them and told them he doesnt exist. 
Strange…
The last time I spoke with myself, we didn’t acknowledge atheism whatsoever. I never recall making any atheistic claims.
I don’t personally feel that such beliefs are so unchanging, perhaps it is the necessity of impetus to require a reevaluation of the foundational belief system. Often times, tragic life offers just such impetus, I have witnessed it myself.
You find that beliefs are rationalized? That would appear to me to be a form of zealotry, using epistemic function to assert belief, they are centered in different areas of the mind. Wholly different one would think.
Then again, saitd made a very valid point in a different thread yesterday: theism and atheism are different sides of the same coin. Both are based upon foundational beliefs, it is only the point of focus or perspective that differs.
It could be that the primary issue with changing beliefs is that we do not contend against/for them from the proper perspective?
Carpathian
well, if you actually think about it. people who are religious stand on the other side of the mirror and thinks the athiests are the reflection. None of them can shake the other’s conviction.
Mastriani
agreed. so alot talks about God, homosexuality, is really an athiest heterosexual’s attempt at seening through the eyes of a believer and a homosexual without becoming one. that is impossible.
i tell epople i don’t exist as an act of God,they don’t believe me,yet their religous.
But is it insanity to believe in something that you have no direct evidence of, assuming that there is no direct evidence to be found?
For example, it seems sane to believe that dinosaurs once roamed the earth as living creatures, since anyone can dig up dinosaur bones, and knowing what we do about bones, it seems quite likely that a living creature once possessed those bones.
On the other hand, most people would find the person that believes that elves, fire-breathing dragons, and Darth Vader to have existed on this Earth to be rather insane. There’s no empirical evidence that such creatues ever roamed the Earth, and I don’t believe it would be possible for anyone to show that such beings ever existed A Priori. In fact, anyone who tried to would probably be considered insane by most people.
But why is the belief that God truly exists or does not exist, insofar as it affects out practical life on Earth, considered sane then? I don’t believe we can discover metaphysical truths A Priori (and if you do, then maybe this is a whole different discussion) and there seems to be insignificant empirical evidence of God’s existence in the modern age (and anything older is virtually hearsay). It seems crazy to assert definitively that there IS or IS NOT a God, but based on that assertion, it seems insane to base ones ethical and metaphysical beliefs on a being of questionable metaphysical, ontological, and ethical without subjecting each and every one of those ethical and metaphysical beliefs to the intense scrunity of our rational faculty. For example, without the existence of God, it is possible to think of many reasons why murder would not be a virtuous act or why we should be believe that when we die we die completely. On the otherhand, without the confirmation of God’s existence and the ratification of scripture, it seems that there are very few good reasons to assume that homosexual sex is morally worse than heterosexual sex, that either of these are bad in themselves, or that we are going to survive death. That being said, it seems beyond irrational to adopt these beliefs on the basis of a Being whose existence we cannot know… it seems downright insane.
Any thoughts?
A belief does not require a basis.
for example, if your best friend told you that your mother had an accident, you would believe him, though you have not actually seen the incident.
similar, you have to be religious to talk about religion. as a non-religious person, you can not talk about religion because you do not understand the religious experience. the experience of being touched by God is just awesome!
God has choosen me to his voice on earth, and so the Holy Spirit was commanded to speak through me.
Can you talk more about what this religious experience actually is though, or how you know it is genuine?
why believe in something that we have no facts showing that it exists!!!
That’s Right,TimeCube was inherited within the mind of gene ray as he was experiencing the cubic corners of life’s truth.
Hello Adolf, or do you prefer you newly readquired “Pinnacle of Reason”?
— A belief does not require a basis.
O- A belief has a basis. But that basis is not open to reason.
— for example, if your best friend told you that your mother had an accident, you would believe him, though you have not actually seen the incident.
O- Not the same, because these are things-- mothers, accidents, injury-- which one is familiar with. This familiarity makes our desicion to believe our friend more reasonable than to believe in a All-powerful and All-good divinity. For that you need not just a reasoned belief, subject to verification in this life, but faith in what is verifiable only in an afterlife.
— similar, you have to be religious to talk about religion. as a non-religious person, you can not talk about religion because you do not understand the religious experience. the experience of being touched by God is just awesome!
O- True. You must have that “Oceanic feeling”, or rather fear, as the psalmist declares.
— God has choosen me to his voice on earth, and so the Holy Spirit was commanded to speak through me.
O- And this is the Pinnacle of Reason or the pinnacle of faith?
I’m not advocating religious belief here, but you either have to believe that the universe is caused or uncaused. If it is caused, some type of Supreme Being would be one somewhat coherent argument for what caused the universe.
So again, while I’m not advocating religious belief, I don’t think it’s completely nuts to at least suspect there is some higher power out there…
Dear Sturdt – can you prove your existence to the entire world? if your answer to this question is ‘yes’, please educate me.
My existence depends on other people’s views of me.
I’d like to paraphrase a little Descartes…we are imperfect beings. Once we realize that we exist as a lack of perfection we must also realize that there is a perfect being, for we cannot exist with there not being an opposite of us.
That is something you cannot deny, as you cannot prove you are perfect. Insodoing you prove imperfection. God…or something bigger (something perfect) HAS to exist.
-Peter
why do you think our imperfection must mean that perfection exists? what is perfection? bob dylan said “don’t criticize what you don’t understand”
Okay, but is it okay for two religious believers, religious believers who believe different things, to argue?
when i think about religious stuff, or realize something that i should be doing that i think is what god wants me to do, or some coincidence happens that looks like its god’s predetermined show teaching me about the best way to live, i feel extremely good.
when i believe, usually only when on drugs, that god (or the intricately designed, predestining universe story) is talking to me, i just get spine tingles and im happy and i feel like my life is going to accomplish something with this new knowledge or feeling that ive acquired. things like something ironic happening to someone or thinking to myself that ive done too much drugs, and then i turn on the tv and That 70s show says ‘drugs are bad’ right away. it involuntarily causes me to feel good.
when my brain does something that isnt completely under my control, i find it easy to believe that evolution caused the particular brain function to exist for the sole purpose of causing me to be a more succesfull dna reproducer. How the Mind Works by steven pinker is a great, eye opening book that describes this.
i find it easy to believe that there is a brain function that causes you to respect your parents by rewarding you whenever you do so, and that this is the sole cause for my happy feelings when i pseudo-rationally experience god. i feel the same way when i realize that im going to be pleasing my dad, or simply knowing to myself that i will do what he wants because it will be good for my life: spine tingles, happiness, hope. same feelings, same brain section.
the reason why an invisible, unproven god is capable of causing this reaction (or anything is capable of creating any reaction) is because the subconscious brain activites like spewing spine tingle fluid and dopamine are triggered by my conscious perception. they are not triggered by the actual event itself, but by my conscious observation of the environment and cataloging of interesting things into categories like ‘things that will cause me pain soon’, ‘things that will feel good in my stomach’, ‘things that will make my life easier’, ‘things that will help me keep my territory free from trespassers’ and many other very specific things. these individual emotional reaction triggering stimuli have been created by random mutation, and selected because the ‘feel good’ reward only comes when survival facilitating things are accomplished due to the fact that animals do anything that causes the most of that ‘feel good’ brain chemical spew.
i can categorize religious experiences as informative advice given to me by big super dad, worthy of listening to in the same way as advice from my regular dad. little reminders to tell me when ive strayed or that i should do more only have an effect on me because i feel that learning that lesson will cause my life to be better. the evolutionary section of my brain that rewards me for listening to dad was naturally selected because when you interpret new information that you feel will be helpful in your life, your brain rewards you with happiness chemicals. and because of that reward, creatures born with this reward and who then subsequently pursued were doing things that were taught to them by their dad, and following those things generally leads to more survival and reproduction.
so what do you want to get from religion? do you want your brain to feel good when you think about great it is to help strangers? do you want to notice informative coincidences and get spine tingles when it happens? well you can get all that stuff just fine. you can really believe that its true because it really happens and your brain really feels good, directly as a result of whatever it is that caused the universe to exist like it is. the only slight problem is that it is you who decides whether you get brain tingles from learning that god wants you to love all people or hate gay people. the internal brain reward is based on experiencing something that you think, possibly wrongly so, will make your life and the world better.
as for believing that prayer causes miracles, thats probably a crutch we could do without until science empirically verifies prayer’s efficacy. but hey you might as well ask for a favor briefly without expecting it too much, cant hurt.