There is no evidence for GOD...but I believe anyway. (agnostic, abortion)
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It sounds to me like human relationships have harmed him and he has constructed a being who has not, will not and cannot harm him. So looked at from that direction it is quite understandable.
Yes I think you hit the nail on the head with this.
In fact I see a lot of people using religion as a crutch due to being damaged by the humans they were raised by and or encountered throughout their life.
It's a doggy dog world for sure but one has to find healing from within. Once one learns to find this within and masters it, it becomes much easier to enjoy your place here on Earth without crutches.
I am a Gnostic, and for me "original sin" is the moment in which people started questioning reality and seeking that which is forbidden by Satan (the worldly) and sought understanding that transcends the day-to-day. We believe Eve was the first prophet and the snake was sent from GOD, and the GOD of the garden is Satan (as is the God of most of the OT) So there is no original sin, but rather an original virtue.
Yours is obviously a very different interpretation from what mainline Christian churches teach. So, I'm curious.
In your view:
How does a being who allegedly created the universe (God) have a "Son"?
Why was there any need for a Son of God to come to earth?
Why would God even care about something as insignificant as the earth, much less humans?
Are all of these things merely metaphors for something completely different?
Romanticized credulousness is still credulousness.
That is not a knock, in your case, as you are willful and self-aware about it. I purposely deceive myself about certain things too.
So there is nothing wrong with mindfully tricking yourself, and I don't mind that you do it with gods. Any port in a storm. The human mind is amazingly easy to fool, and I used to fool it in dysfunctional ways, largely via religion. Having become aware of that problem, I prefer to avoid religion but sometimes take advantage of my own credulousness to distract myself from certain unpleasant realities of my existence. But fooling myself in the way I described above is relatively inconsequential and does way more good than harm.
We all deceive ourselves and deep down, we all know it. For example: how sure can one be that their children actually love them? At any given moment the question that their children actually truly hate them creeps in, but they push it under a rug of their own creation. Instead, they picture a world in which everyone has the same minds as they do and sociopaths like myself do not exist.
How sure can someone living in an Earthquake zone be that there won't be an earthquake tomorrow? They can't, logically, and yet they live in a life in which it will NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPEN, so much that they don't even talk or think about it and quickly change the subject when you bring it up (I live in Seattle, this happens all the time)
Or how sure can someone be that they will be healthy, financially stable, or "sane" for their entire lives? They can't be, but they deny this and build a better internal reality all the time.
All of society has this kind of mental overcoming of reality. However, it is those of us with religious faith that make that leap willingly into something beyond the day-to-day.
In short, most human beings have their materialistic "idols" constructed in their own minds, while we of faith have a God of the transcendent beyond the materialistic that we leap towards.
Or, the people bowing down to their families or the latest Apple product or other creature comfort are even more delusion than those of us who bow down towards something we admit logically should not exist. At least we admit to our aspirations for God and can even concede how they may sound &@+ $#!+ crazy to someone outside this paradigm.
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I can see how religious ideation could be used in the same way. I am biased against it, admittedly, because I was trained almost from the cradle to approach it in a different way ... as serious dogma, almost as if in my example above, I walk because some holy book says I have to, and skip the restaurants because I will burn in hell if I yield to that temptation. Too much compulsion and angst in that for my taste.
That is not what every religion advocates. But the rules, I have seen, are a way of bringing life closer to a divine and forsaking the materialistic.
I'm a Gnostic so I don't hate eating pork so much I regret doing it, or hate alcohol so much I regret drinking it or anything. I just live...and regret the more-than-likely existence of this world itself.
Yours is obviously a very different interpretation from what mainline Christian churches teach. So, I'm curious.
*sigh*
Nothing personal, just remembering I have to explain this again:
Before what is now regarded as "Christianity" there were many schools of thought, from the Jewish Christians (Ebionites) to those who believed Jesus was the son of the Old Testament God (proto-Orthodox) and those who believed Jesus came from the true God. There were always those Jews and others who believed that Satan created the universe, and that Satan was born when the primordial essence of that which was everything (Pleroma) allowed a piece of itself to become separate. That piece then awoke separated from the whole and thought it was the most powerful being...and it kind of was because it was the only thing there.
It created the Universe for the sole purpose of have watching life suffer and having things worship it, and is the creator of all strife as strive, pain, and suffering are only possible outside of the fullness (Pleroma) But from the Pleroma (true God) occasionally come manifestations into this world, like sentient tentacles of an awesome, celestial amoeba. They are the true prophets who preach love and peace and embracing the fullness of GOD, like Mani, the Buddha, and Jesus.
In short, the Gnostics always believed that the GOD of the OT was the devil of the NT, and the nice GOD of the NT was the true "father" of Jesus. They were always peaceful and as such ended up wiped out by the end of the 13h century or so. But now with the pesky "freedom of speech" Gnosticism has made a return.
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How does a being who allegedly created the universe (God) have a "Son"?
We don't believe Jesus was human, but was a manifestation of the power of the true GOD on Earth.
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Why was there any need for a Son of God to come to earth?
To impart wisdom. From that wisdom is gained a learned understanding (Gnosis) on the nature of ourselves as spiritual beings who should seek the Kingdom of Heaven, not this Earthly hell. And that does NOT mean after you die necessarily as we are told that the Kingdom is all around us (Gospel of Thomas, Logion 3)
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Why would God even care about something as insignificant as the earth, much less humans?
Why would someone as big as you care about a single germ in your blood stream? And yes you do care about it, which is why you sent a white blood cell to case it down!
God cares because it is in the nature of its systems to want to remain whole and pure. Eventually everything will end and we will all rejoin Pleroma...like billions of years maybe. But until then we can get closer to GOD in this life. But I am not sure will if this is God "caring" about us or maybe being as unaware on an ultimate level of our very existence as a person is of a single white blood cell living out its life 20 day lifespan.
But it is something bigger than the thing that created the entire universe. I may be arrogant, but I would never be so arrogant as to claim I can understand the "mind" of something like that.
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Are all of these things merely metaphors for something completely different?
Another metaphor: Tom has 9 big watermellons. He eats 8 all at once. How many apples does Tom have now?
Did the fact that your kindergarten problem involved a person who may never have existed doing something that is impossible take away from the point, which in this case is 9-8=1?
It is true because it works, and even if it turns out to be not true...it still works. But I do believe there is enough ultimate truth to it to warrant it, aside from how the practice of faith in and of itself is a great thing.
Easy to look this up on your own. Knowledge: facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.
You are one lost human. So you're trying to sell to me that medical science cannot tell me my blood type without being dependent on Philosophy? And that science cannot map my gene and calculate my ancestry and tell me about any mutations without being dependent on Philosophy?
It is a well known fact that the origins of science lie in philosophy many moons ago, and ideas such as the scientific method started with Aristotle and finally concluding with Francis Bacon. Hence, all science is dependent on philosophy as it started as THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY/POSITIVISM!
"Section 3 turns to 20th century debates on scientific method. In the second half of the 20th century the epistemic privilege of science faced several challenges and many philosophers of science abandoned the reconstruction of the logic of scientific method."
You should be completely embarrassed by your ignorance instead.
Answering ethics questions is not knowledge generation. It's plain common sense unless you are dealing with a damaged human. No new knowledge is generated by answering ethics questions.
What new knowledge is being generated in answering any of these questions? It's just basic common sense.
So the question "equality vs freedom, which is more important?" is just a common sense question? Okay, so I guess Milton Friedman, Karl Marx, John Keynes and Friedrich Hayek should have just stopped talking because it was all so "obvious." I guess questions of citizenship, the nature of man and the state, the needs for security vs liberty etc are also "very obvious questions," so much in fact that they don't even need to be explored.
Yep, stop all elections! We got the guy with all the answers here
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You wanna bet?
Ever hear of climate change? Ever heard of creationism trying to be taught in our schools.
Yes, but that is a minority view among theists.
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We exist in it so there you go! Space exploration gives us lots of information about the Universe.
Does reacting like a smart *** help you to feel superior? Yes I know what an election is. So what if you think you are seeing philosophies re-emerge...the fact still remains that once Philosophy and Science went their own ways, Philosophy has been more and more marginalized.
First, we do not know if we are here. We may be dreaming, locked in the Matrix etc. And science cannot answer the question "is everything I am feeling and seeing and hearing real?" Solipsism...2,500 years later and it still messes with own minds.
And actually, philosophy is more and more important. Karl Marx and Thomas Jefferson influenced society more than any scientist in the last fifty years has.
Economics, politics, media, business, there are all the fields of philosophy. Are you really telling me politics is becoming "marginalized?"
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Let me repeat since you missed my point. The Philosophers can talk about it and think about all they want and maybe even add insight, but at the end of the day they don't generate knowledge.
They observe, theorize, and test. That is how knowledge from philosophy is derived. For example: It was theorized that if everyone shared everything it would lead to a utopia. That idea was tried and failed. Hence, philosophy, by implementing centrally planned communism and seeing it collapse have generated the knowledge that centrally planned economies do not work. Not experiment in a lab could have pulled that off. And now, economists, sociologist and other PHILOSOPHERS will gather the data and use it to come up with new theories
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In this sense, once Philosophy became divorced from Science...i.e. once Philosophy separated out on it's own, Science became Natural Science and Philosophy remained Philosophy. At this point Philosophy started becoming marginalized and it's been more and more marginalized ever since.
That's right is since it's a Social Science issue.
So you really think social science is a science? Really?
Common sense should tell you it's bad. Take a good look around the world and you tell me how the scientifically illiterate are helping to improve societies and life on this planet?
Buffoons. No better than the fedora boys who believe in the singularity.
Do you even read what you post? It was never considered cutting edge science, such as the cutting edge CRISPER is today.
Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population. It is a social philosophy advocating the improvement of human genetic traits through the promotion of higher rates of sexual reproduction for people with desired traits (positive eugenics), or reduced rates of sexual reproduction and sterilization of people with less-desired or undesired traits (negative eugenics), or both.
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It was based on the scientific understandings of the day. It was for its time what worrying about global warming is for today: something the public latch onto "because science says so!" And if you are going to take credit for science for the "green movement", then you also have to give science the credit for the Eugenics movement.
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You poor thing you just don't read very well do you? I did not say "Math is Science". I said it's a formal science. A "formal science" is an area of study that uses formal systems to generate knowledge such as in Mathematics and Computer Science. Formal sciences are important subjects because all of quantitative science depends on them. Mathematics.
Second you should learn to understand what's written in the links you post. From *your* link the very first sentence says...
*Mathematics is certainly a science* in the broad sense of "systematic and formulated knowledge", but most people use "science" to refer only to the natural sciences. Since mathematics provides the language in which the natural sciences aspire to describe and analyse the universe, there is a natural link between mathematics and the natural sciences.
In short, your twisted views don't speak for or represent either Science or Philosophy.
The point is, math is NOT A NATURAL SCIENCE, and that is what we are talking about here. Otherwise, we may as well say "creation science" is valid or "political science", which is really philosophy.
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Both Philosophy and Science's primary goal is to understand the Nature of the Universe.
That is not in the least what philosophy is:
"Quite literally, the term "philosophy" means, "love of wisdom." In a broad sense, philosophy is an activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each other."
It is not interested in the age of rocks or how the world came about or what disease is what. It is about understanding the nature between everything. It is about UNDERSTANDING.
We can have the knowledge to kill a criminal...how do we UNDERSTAND if it is ethical to kill a criminal or not?
That belies the fact that Humans are social creatures. Some relationships clearly are based on one party using the relationship as a crutch (probably bleeding the life-blood out of the other party). Not all relationships are healthy.
Humans are also spiritual beings too, just as much as we are "social creatures."
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A relationship with an invisible being that does not exist is very unhealthy.
I am right in the mirror.
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When you're self-described as "a pretty angry, mean, bitter person who finds little value in our poor excuse for a species," it suggests rather powerfully, that you cannot handle Life.
So when you have diarrhea and find it annoying, uncomfortable, and all around unpleasant, does that mean you can't handle diarrhea? No. You are just realistic about it. I look at humanity and the world in the same way: I am absolutely realistic. It stinks. Existence is spiritual diarrhea: something I can certainly handle, but find annoying, uncomfortable and all around unpleasant.
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Only you can change your life, and your god-thing is not going to help you.
Change comes from the same place God lives: within.
I am fine being at odds with the world, and hence I am on good terms with life: it stinks. I understand that and move on.
"Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed"-Alexander Pope
Because we can only rationally draw conclusions about the world we know of
But what are "we," "conclusions," "world," and "know," and why must we use materialistic definitions for them to explain why we must use materialistic definitions?
But what are "we," "conclusions," "world," and "know," and why must we use materialistic definitions for them to explain why we must use materialistic definitions?
Well for starters....those are words to describe concepts in reality and are standardized in language. We use language, a more formal method of grunting in specific ways, in order to communicate concepts to each other, and it is additionally helpful for our own thinking. So while none of us are formally obligated to engage in the standardized grunting....it is helpful when one wishes to articulate a concept without going to great lengths to do it in other ways.
As to "materialistic definitions".....I'm afraid that's the only reality we are aware of...with us being materialistic creatures, in a universe of materialistic elements.
But just so I don't overlook something....what would a non-materialistic definition of something (for lack of a better word) look like?
But what are "we," "conclusions," "world," and "know," and why must we use materialistic definitions for them to explain why we must use materialistic definitions?
For the reasons I explained. If you question what we bang bang together and the science that shows what happens when we bang it together, then you need a better alternative than the ones offered by religious speculation.
The 'How do we know what we know?' apolgetics package is an old gambit, but it was a quite good one. Mystic Phd put his finger on it is waving away occam's razor. However, occam's razor works in a practical way, just as mathematics and the calendar relate to real things like an apple in each hand, and the alternation of night and day. That we devise languages for dealing with these things and of course, names to identify the concepts, does not mean that the things themselves are somehow to be doubted.
That is the basis of the materialist default and anyone proposing to replace it with anything else has got a lot of work to do.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 06-11-2016 at 07:41 AM..
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