You believe God exists, you do not need to worship Him...

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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It would explain why people keep falling off the face of the earth.

I understand why you all are saying, I just don’t understand it. I have friends who believe different then I do. We discuss different aspects of each way. Are they wrong in their beliefs? I would never say that or even think it. To them they feel it is the way they should walk in their life.

I am sitting here most of the past hour trying to think how I could feel otherwise in this. I can’t. I am not saying any of you are wrong in your beliefs, thinking with the arguments, I just cant understand.

If ones beliefs leads them to a greater understanding of the universe and allows them to show compassion and love for another, harming no one; could it be wrong or right?

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Raven’s Moon –

When you talk about beliefs with your friends, and some of those beliefs contradict eachother, there are two possibilities: all are false, or only one is true. Contradictory beliefs cannot all be true, but they all may be false.

The truth of a belief does not depend on whether or not it has positive results, or whether or not it would hurt your friends’ feelings to know it was false. However, if a belief is true – it will have positive results: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal. 5:22-23).

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AS one man said and i have worded otherwise but he put more succinctly.

“When you die you will become what you were before your birth.”

Worship is not necessary unless one makes it so. God is necessary until one makes him/her unnecessary.

Ichthus, Arguing using logic to “believers” in the religion forum is like arguing for god using emotion in a science forum.

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joekoba,

I am just trying to explain to Raven’s Moon why believers disagree… she seems really distraught about it.

Arguing anything using emotion in a science forum would probably be very effective (if done right), if the norm is to approach a topic without emotion. It would be like offering water to a person lost in the desert (or dessert, not sure which spelling is correct). You must assume ‘scientists’ do not feel. What do you think motivates them to study?

And I think you are wrong to separate logic and emotion. Beliefs about what really matters must both be logical (mind) and resonate (heart)… or they do not represent the Big Picture (truth and love).

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well I am not really distraught so to say. More confused. Who says all can not be right? Because man has said so?

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No. Contradictory beliefs cannot all be true because reality says so. What Man says or believes about reality has no effect on reality.

Here’s an example:

Say that one person says, “I can jump from the tenth-floor of this building, flap my arms like a bird, soar through the air, and make a soft, non-lethal landing on the concrete below” and another person says, “No, you can’t.”

No matter how badly we may wish or want to believe that both of those people are correct, in fact, only one is correct. The other is wrong (and probably ‘dead’ wrong if he acts on his belief). Personally, I don’t see what is so difficult to understand about this.

Something tells me that you are being a bit insincere here. I hardly doubt that if someone you loved were standing out on that tenth-floor ledge about to jump, that you would say, “OK, go ahead and jump. You’re probably right. You probably can fly like a bird if you believe you can. Who am I to dispute your belief?”

Tolerance is not believing that false beliefs are true; on the contrary, it is patronizing and really sort of dumb since it is so easily disproved.

Tolerance is respecting someone’s right to hold false or mistaken beliefs. The mistaken belief itself, however, does not have to be respected (and in fact probably shouldn’t be respected if you care about the truth).

It’s OK to say “Your belief seems to be mistaken and here is why . . .”

What’s not OK, and what is intolerant, is to say “Your belief is false and I’m going to have to imprison you (or persecute you or worse) because you believe it.”

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Maybe more emotion is needed here.
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joekoba,

Do you mean ‘here’ as in the religion forum?

I don’t read very often in the religion forum, and it is pretty much the only forum I read (besides the creative writing forum, now and then). I cannot therefore really answer your question. If the response to my threads is any indication, both logic and genuine love are equally lacking.

There is a problem in your copy-paste job of what I said. You quoted me as saying “All scientists do not feel.” I never said that, nor would I ever say that.

A note. Logic is not truth. It is merely the grammar of truth. A logical statement may not be true. A true statement, however, will be logical. I am perhaps ‘preaching to the choir’. Just wanted to clarify, just in case.

Raven’s Moon,

I hope Reality Check’s explanation helped you. I have a question. What interests you about the religion forum? What brought you to this philosophy site?

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Maybe you should appeal to Raven’s emotions then eh? You just clarified my point. It’s not the forum but the people within the forum that matter in this case.

Your assumptions of my assumptions are keeping you narrow minded. Thirst for knowledge and truth is what keeps people motivated to study.

Assumptions assumptions (Sighs) Where you pulled this from is beyond me. (from my first post). I love it.

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[quote=“Ichthus”]
joekoba,

Do you mean ‘here’ as in the religion forum?

I don’t read very often in the religion forum, and it is pretty much the only forum I read (besides the creative writing forum, now and then).

You’ve been missing out.

I cannot therefore really answer your question.

Didn’t have one. But i might in the future, so lets keep that open.

If the response to my threads is any indication, both logic and genuine love are equally lacking.

Love to just jump into assumptions don’t ya?

A note. Logic is not truth. It is merely the grammar of truth. A logical statement may not be true. A true statement, however, will be logical. I am perhaps ‘preaching to the choir’. Just wanted to clarify, just in case.

What’s true to one is not true to another. On equal grounds one can come to understanding both yet still disagree. The semantics of truth don’t concern me as much as what is being said.

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– joekoba

With this I agree. I do love agreeing, don’t you?

If something is true for one person, it is true for every person. Truth is not subjective, it does not depend on a person’s believing it in order to be true. What interests you about the religion forum…?

Yes, I just attended a discussion on that very subject this past weekend. Again, I agree. Ending on a positive note… sounds good.

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RC…Don’t agree. Believing one can fly from a building is not the same as ones religious or spiritual beliefs.

Ok take for example my grandmother. She was told that she had stomach cancer. Was nothing they could do. She was given only months to live. Sad reality dont you think? However the reality became she prayed and one day vomited up the tumor. No joke…this is reality. She lived another 26 years.
Doctors didnt understand it for to the it was not reality as it should have been.

I had a golden retriever several years ago. The vet told me I had to decide when to put her down. Her kidneys and liver were in failure. Something she had gotten into. They were not producing at all. She was only 4 at the time. i held her head and she looked up at me and I thought she wants to live. So I feed her herbs and water and I slept with her for over a month. Then one day she was sitting up. I took her to the vet her kidneys were half functioning. Within several more weeks she was on her way to recovery. The vet sent he reports to the State labs, no one could understand. But you see the reality is she should have died and not lived another 8 years.

No I am never insincere when it come to faith.

Joe… I rather stumbled into this place by accident. Why am i in a forum of religion? I have always been interested in knowing of others and their thoughts on their faith since a young girl.

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It’s the same in this respect: religious beliefs are either true or false.

Reality is that your grandmother vomited up the tumor and lived another 26 years. THAT is reality if that is what happened. Now, whether the prayer had anything to do with it is an empirical question that has an answer even though none of us may know what the answer is. Based on studies that I’ve seen I’d guess that it didn’t have anything to do with it, but it certainly isn’t impossible that it did.

I disagree. The reality of the situation is that the vet was mistaken, as all we humans sometimes are, and that your dog lived another 8 years.

Science is not based on anything like certainty. Science is about probability and provisional truth. It is our best guess about what will happen next. Not every human or animal who appears to be dying from an illness, actually goes on to die from that illness. That is an empirical fact. But surely it is not your belief that most or even a significant percentage of patients who are diagnosed with a terminal illness beat that diagnosis through prayer?

The sad truth is that if you are diagnosed with a terminal illness you are probably going to die within the expected time period for that illness. But only probably. Nothing in the world is certain.

For this reason, doctors rarely if ever say “That’s it. You’ll be dead in a year, period, and I am absolutely certain about that.”

At most they’ll say something like, “This doesn’t look good. MOST patients with similar conditions live another year or so. Sorry.”

On the flip side, occasionally good Christian men and women pass a physical checkup with flying colors and then keel over dead the next day. What should we make of this?

What I make of it is that science deals in probability and contingent truth and not in absolute certainty.

If one is honest with oneself I don’t see how it’s possible to believe that faith with its checkered results is even close to being as accurate a predictor of things like death as science is. If ten people are given terminal diagnoses and all ten pray to God to save them (as in fact in our country they are all likely to do) it is HIGHLY improbable that all ten of them will live longer than the estimated life expectancy for that terminal illness. That one survives, though, doesn’t seem to be an unusual state of affairs; however, I certainly wouldn’t count that as evidence that faith works although I realize that the lucky survivor often does.

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Raven’s Moon,

One’s religious or spiritual beliefs are about the fundamental nature of reality. If their beliefs reflect the fundamental nature of reality, their beliefs are true. If two beliefs contradict, only one can be true.

For example. God concepts. Pantheists believe God is in everything, and that you yourself are God. Monotheists believe God is one, and that you are a creation of God. Atheists believe there is no God (limited to their concept of God), whereas nontheists (not self-titled) have no God concept whatever. Polytheists believe there are multiple gods. Not all of them can be correct – not all of them reflect the fundamental nature of reality.

This matters because if you don’t have the correct concepts, you will never realize why you exist in the first place – you will never appreciate the gift. You will miss the point.

joekoba,

You asked me to appeal to Raven’s Moon’s emotions. What I said about using emotion in a science forum had nothing to do with the logical fallacy where a person’s emotions are manipulated rather than providing good reasons for accepting a conclusion. I just wanted to be sure you understand that. Consider this quote from Ravi Zacharias’ “Jesus Among Other Gods” – it concerns answering the question of evil and suffering…

Back to Raven’s Moon…

You keep asking a very good question I unfortunately kept missing. But I see it now. “Who says all can not be right? Because man has said so?”

If man decides what is “right” – there is no “right” apart from man. There is only a “right” apart from man if it is “right” despite man’s acknowledgment – only if there is “right” because it is part of the fundamental nature of reality – the Big Picture. If you don’t see the Big Picture, you don’t see “right” – and your whole life reflects that. If you settle for something besides the Big Picture (a cheap imitation), you might do some nice things in your life, but at the cost of never seeing the Big Picture.

That is why there is evil in the world. Because the blind do not yet see, or opt for a cheap imitation.

Those who see the Big Picture worship Him – sacred love. “Only when holiness and worship meet can evil be conquered,” (Zacharias). With all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your … strength.

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In response to the OP: –

I agree that society is based on the urges of life (which includes supermaterial needs). But how do we operate without reference to the urges of life?

According to natural law theory, God does adhere to this concept.

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Checkered results… but you just said the same about science; no “absolute certainty”. Then if that is so then neither is truth?

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Ok let me ask you something. If one doubts of their faith …Ok lets use examples instead. If one was a Christian and then thought, maybe there is more. So they set out and found Buddhism. They found peace in this but also found that part of their faith was still in their past. So then they have the mixing as it is called. Is one of these wrong? Or are they both right because he has looked into his heart and soul more then man’s words.

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What in your view is “a proven fact”? If a “proven fact” is not a proposition that man has determined then waht is it? Any so-called “fact” about the world is only a proposition that we have determined to be true. No fact about the world is absolutely, indubitably true. A “proven fact” is only true insofar as it is perverse not to believe that it is true.

If by “proven fact” you mean something else, then what is it that you mean?

No one but a person who does not understand scientific truth would call such a claim scientific truth. Again, scientific truth does not deal in absolutes. Scientific truth is provisional truth. It not only can change as human experience in the world accumulates, it WILL change. Hear me out on this, because it is actually a good thing and nothing to fear.

Just as you and I don’t necessarily believe the same things are true today that we believed were true when we were four, neither does our species today believe the same things are true that we believed were true in our species’ infancy. As experience accumulates, knowledge increases.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that everything we believe to be true today will be considered mistaken in a couple of centuries in the way that Ptolemy’s astrological charts are considered mistaken today (although that’s possible). More likely it means that a revision or a refining of the knowledge that we’ve accumulated since the scientific project began will occur.

Because ‘truth’ is independent of our ability to know what is true. ‘How do we determine what is true?’ is a different question than is the question ‘What do we consider to be true?’

I consider the claim “The earth is round” to be true; but from the mere brute fact that I consider that claim to be true, it cannot be determined why I consider that claim to be true because those are different questions.

You don’t seem to believe in truth which makes your arguing for a particular point of view (‘naive relativism’) somewhat queer. If you don’t believe that what you believe is true, then why don’t you believe something else? Why don’t you simply change your beliefs about what is true every morning when you wake up?

Isn’t it clear that your belief that all claims are true is a self-refuting belief? If your belief is true, i.e., that “All claims are true,” then the belief that says “Some claims are false” must be true; so why are you arguing against a belief which you yourself accept as being true, i.e., the belief that some claims are false?

“Truth” is not “absolute certainty.” Just because we cannot be absolutely, indubitably certain about how the world is does not mean that some beliefs about how the world is are not more accurate depictions of how it is than are others or that all beliefs about how the world is are equally true (or false).

I consider it to be significant if one method used to cure a disease cures that disease 99% of the time and if another method cures it 5% of the time.

It’s somewhat ironic that your grandmother’s and your dog’s beating “the odds” leads you to the conclusion that faith is true and reason is false when “the odds” ARE “the odds” in the first place because reason is a MUCH more accurate predictor of future events than is faith.

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As to the truth and falsity of religious doctrine, couldn’t we say there are just different degrees of insightfulness? (My religion being most insightful.)

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