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Christians: why do you trust God?
- Thread starter Bungalow Bob
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Bungalow Bob
Banned
Obviously abstinence is greatly revered in many religions. Does anyone have a good explanation as to why so many people relate abstaining from sex to the divine?jaxword said:
Here's a post of mine related to this:
The most basic human desires include: eating, sleeping and fornicating. For some reason, a high percentage of humans consider it impressive to the point that it might be divinely inspired when they see someone abstain from one of these basic desires. Now obviously sex is the only one of these that can be abstained from that doesn't result in death.
If I decided to start a new religion/business I would be sure to do what is necessary to convince the members that all my priests not only abstain from sex, but also from sugars, cereals, legumes, alcohol, coffee and other unhealthy foods to give me a leg up on the competition.
Just look at the Roman Catholic Church (the wealthiest religious organization in the world); it's obvious that their decision to only ordain priests that are celibate results in the vast majority of the priests: having severe sexual problems; and being incompetent councilors due to their lack of experience in one of the most important aspects of humanity. But due to the irrational human idea that abstinence is divinely impressive, this decision also allows them to keep and convert more people than they otherwise would, so it's a net positive for them.
Pollux
Member
jaxword said:
LOL I think it's because it is 5 in the morning and most of GAF is sleeping. Although this has been a great debate so far and I look forward to continuing when I wake up in a few hours to buy my Charlie Sheen tickets on Ticketmaster.
And to chime in on the topic of the thread....I know God exists because I just do. That's a stupid thing to say, I understand that, but this whole topic is one of those you believe or you don't and nothing anyone says is going to change it. kind of things. Bungalow Bob doesn't believe, thats his choice and he's neither right or wrong, we just don't know. I do believe and thats my choice, so I like that we can agree to disagree.
Cheers to you, Civil-Gaf, keep it up, and lets keep the debate polite, lively, and spirited.
jaxword said:
All memes, including religion memes such as Christianity have fitness. They evolve, adapt, and are defended.
One of the defense mechanisms of Christianity is the meme "I have faith" - like that means something, it's circular logic so it has a high level of fitness because it is nearly impossible to counter.
Rather it is impossible to counter with a logical argument, so another vector is often taken, appeals to ethos are one of the tools atheist have.
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep, I've thought about it, Satan (or lets just call it 'evil' or 'ignorance'?) has his clutches all over this rock and people don't even realize it, we're almost sliding back into animalistic behaviour.jaxword said:
Maybe it is not the pit of fire for cleaning souls, but perhaps Earth is one of the less spiritually harmonious places in the universe right now, there is still beauty, there is still good, but we are really out of balance, and that is causing lots of suffering for our own people by the way we live and for the environment that has to accommodate us.
Hah, I was going to mention, this has been the most spiritually filling debate GAF has probably ever hadjaxword said:Also, Kudos to everyone on the last 2 pages, this has been one of the more civil and interesting religious debates on GAF without any trolling or people melting down in a rage. Have a cool picture to keep the good vibes going.
Trent Strong
Banned
BocoDragon said:
I think the reason we can never really enjoy a status quo is because our evolutionary ancestors who were complancent and never got bored were less likely to survive and reproduce than our ancestors who always wanted to push forward even if they were satisfied. I don't think the stuff you're describing is written into the universe somehow, I think all of our emotional responses to good and bad and high and low are just products of our psychology and evolution. In fact, if we were in 'heaven', and were immortal and couldn't be physically hurt, would concepts like 'good' and 'bad' even make sense, since nothing could hurt us?
Bungalow Bob said:
Control. Regardless of your religious beliefs, the churches have been a major player in keeping the populace under their control for thousands of years. They still are today, in several countries.
Think back to what I said earlier about what cultures seem so incredibly angry towards the more "open" cultures about sexuality.
Sex is our basic instinct, but we won't DIE without it. But that energy, and pulsing, obsessive drive, doesn't go away. It wants to be channeled and that energy needs to go somewhere.
Some very, very smart people realized this and also realized that the energy can be channeled by making sex evil, but another action with a similar release, violence, acceptable.
When you have a group of pent-up, violent men looking for a release...you have an army. And if they have God on their side...that gives them even more power, because now they are officially the Good Guys.
It's always about control and power. Every institution is.
As I've said before: I've yet to meet an angry, violent man who has a happy, healthy and satisfying sex life.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
But I'm saying that any brain would assign value the same way based on the way that things work in any universe.... if it's judging value at all.Nocebo said:
If you have constant pleasure.... there's no value to be gleaned by any brain. It's all the same. It logically follows that there's no value to determine.
If you have alternating pain and pleasure... then value can be gleaned from the ups in contrast to the downs.
Vincent Alexander
Member
This definitely didn't start civil. I'm actually surprised it is still going on. Think I'll jump back in if I see an opportunity.jaxword said:
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Trent Strong said:
"Something cannot come from nothing" is not a statement that can actually be verified beyond doubt, and its use in philosophical discussions comes from either an axiomatic claim (because it is intuitive), or as an inference from thermodynamics. Thermodynamics does not actually say "something cannot come from nothing", what it says is that net energy never increases, so in the video you're discussing, he gives sometime to explain that under a certain model, you can consider the net-energy of the universe to be zero, and thus satisfy the thermodynamics of why things exist rather than not. This is a very elegant idea.
Axiomatic assertions that something cannot come from nothing cannot be assumed to be true, since we never deal with "nothing" in our day to day lives (we exist inside of spacetime, therefore we cannot even draw proper inferences about this), but further because as with all axioms, Godel and his damn incompleteness theorem ruins everything.
Arguments for the existence of god regarding "everything must have a cause" and such can be satisfied by simply stating that the universe existed eternally, since at every point in time the universe existed in some form or another. There has been finite time since the big bang, but there was no time preceding this (for obvious reasons), so the universe has "always been here" and so is on equal footing with the "oh, god was always there so he doesn't need a cause" crowd, only with the added benefit of not creating a wierdo paradox regarding how it is possible for the present to exist if there was infinite time in the past.
Intellectually this is not a satisfying conclusion to reach, but it is no worse for wear than any other, I suppose. It's certainly more elegant than goddidit.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
I think it's possible in some existance, sure.Trent Strong said:
But we would be like an amoeba. No opinion. No interest. No character. Just existing somehow.
Putting aside all these big questions about God... I think the existence of pleasure and pain is what gives humans their interesting lives. Their struggles, their accomplishments.. their debates (like this one), are entirely due to the contrast of accomplishment with the lack of such accomplishment.
We wouldn't have this thread without those who think differently... and thus this existance would be that much less interesting for the lack of it. And it goes furthur... all our struggles bring interest.
Could a stuggle-less angel/fungus exist? Sure. And it would be boring.
jaxword said:
Pretty sure pimps have a whole lot of sex and still beat the crap out of their women. I bet I can look through history and find some sexually open cultures that still had killings/wars too.
Unless you think that the sexual freedom you speak of would get rid of jealous, greed, envy, and other emotion that can cause people to act out in a hateful manner.
We can just look in reality and see that if people were allowed to choose their sex like they choose their music you would not only have a spread of a ton of STDs , but also sex between young age groups and maybe even animals.
Trent Strong
Banned
BocoDragon said:
The weird thing is: you believe that morality can't be objective, but do think that assigning value can be objective. I think morality is objective, but assigning value to something can't be objective...or something, I'm not sure.
My question is that if time did not exist before the Big Bang, what was the impetus behind that event? I mean, if time is not flowing, how could anything ever change? If I presume the infinitesimal point pre-Big-Bang was "always" there, why did it never explode before 13.7 billion years ago?ThoseDeafMutes said:
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Regarding morality:
All morality is subjective, because moral statements are all judgments made by minds, not facets of reality measured by senses. Even if you can find something that all minds would agree on, this does not change anything - the definition of objective is that it is "mind independent", and subjective things are those that are not.
Although arguing the point is much ado about nothing, since a society of ethical subjectivists will look the same as one of those who believe it is objective, just for different reasons. The latter because they think there are universal moral truths that need to be upheld, and the former because they want to construct a society to be a certain way by mutual agreement. In both cases, "moral truth", be it objective or subjective, is achieved by consensus.
All morality is subjective, because moral statements are all judgments made by minds, not facets of reality measured by senses. Even if you can find something that all minds would agree on, this does not change anything - the definition of objective is that it is "mind independent", and subjective things are those that are not.
Although arguing the point is much ado about nothing, since a society of ethical subjectivists will look the same as one of those who believe it is objective, just for different reasons. The latter because they think there are universal moral truths that need to be upheld, and the former because they want to construct a society to be a certain way by mutual agreement. In both cases, "moral truth", be it objective or subjective, is achieved by consensus.
Net_Wrecker
Member
ThoseDeafMutes said:
But is it not true that all of the things people thousands of years ago felt "always were" or "just were" or "are God's work" have been, and will continue to be proved as explainable events with very real scientific evidence backing them up? Is it not fair then to think that someday, eventually, we could find out that the universe DID come from something, whatever that might have been, even if the answer turns out to be some sort of higher power? (god(s), aliens, a scientist and we're his experiment, whatever)
Trent Strong
Banned
ThoseDeafMutes said:
Agreed, although have no idea who Godel is.
onipex said:
I've never met a pimp, so I honestly cannot agree or disagree with you there, Hollywood portrayals can't be trusted.
I stand by what I said that someone who just had sex likely doesn't feel like committing acts of violence at that moment.
I realize it is not a foolproof plan, and would need careful regulation and health-related controls. But I think it'd be better than this self-loathing attitudes our religions and cultures have towards sex while being obsessed with it at the same time. I mean, Janet Jackson's boob pops out and the entire US freaked out and threatened her with legal action.
Seriously? That's the most advanced nation in the world's response? While at the same time the very same leaders have a constant stream of hookers and at least half the internet is porn?
I stand by what I said, I think a culture that has a respectful, mature approach to HEALTHY sexuality would be a better one.
I don't think it will solve ALL foibles of humanity.
However, I think it would calm people down. And I think we all agree that many, many problems are caused by people acting in anger and rage and tension and stress that reach a breaking point.
I think a world with a healthier sex life would at least decrease THOSE problems.
MikeOfTheLivingDead
Grapetastic!
Bungalow Bob said:
What makes a therapist qualified to counsel victims of violent crimes, the terminally ill, mentally ill, veterans... pick your problem? Does a competent therapist need to have experienced all of the world's joys and ills to be able to effectively empathize with and treat their patients?
I always thought of it as eliminating sensory pleasures, as long as you experience them, you are tethered to the physical realm and you won't be able to gain any insight of reality from a physical perspective. You are also encouraged to eat plain foods rather than those pleasing to the tongue.Bungalow Bob said:
To me, that is a lot like being a ghost... and in many ways a ghost does not live in this realm. Perhaps that is why people under sensory deprivation tend to 'hallucinate', but we can not tell if what they are seeing is in their head, or their perception has changed to a point where they can see these things for themselves.
Another way is to be in 'tune' with the universe, and then chanting (tibetan monk or otherwise) and meditation make sense as ways to alter consciousness beyond contemporary wakefulness. And perhaps when you do a bag of mushrooms (DON'T DO THIS), it is that alteration of perception that allows you to see reality in a new way, prompting an 'AHA, THAT'S HOW IT WORKS' moment.
Most religions do not encourage people to explore their consciousness in order to trap people into their dogma, perhaps this is why certain arts are forbidden in China, because they pose a threat to the status quo. The same way marijuana is a threat to the status quo in the west, so it is banned.
It would be great if more research was done on this subject.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Feep said:
Because there was no "before 13.7 billion years ago". There cannot be something "before" the first moment in time, by definition. "Before" means "existing in an earlier time", but there is no earlier time.
You are imagining this in your mind as though "Time started" at some point in time, but there was still time before that. You can't not imagine it that way, but I hope you can at least understand that this isn't what is being proposed at all. The other confusing thing for people to visualize is the expansion of space (well, spacetime, but the space component in particular). They visualize it as a large bubble expanding into empty space, but this is not accurate at all, since it is SPACE that is expanding, it is not something expanding INTO space.
Vincent Alexander
Member
I've only started hearing this recently on Discovery channel shows (sorry if this isn't a good source) but a lot of scientists were saying as far as they are concerned the Big Bang theory isn't concerned with before, but only the after. Who knows though---I'm no physicist, and this sounds like a new position for scientists to be taking.Feep said:
Wii, read about "The God Spot."
Here's an article to start your research:
http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/images/new_page_2.htm
Basically, it postulates that religiosity stimulates a specific part of the brain, and that in itself produces some pleasurable reactions.
Humans can be addicted to anything, and I think that may be a factor you are looking for in your arguments.
Here's an article to start your research:
http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/images/new_page_2.htm
Basically, it postulates that religiosity stimulates a specific part of the brain, and that in itself produces some pleasurable reactions.
Humans can be addicted to anything, and I think that may be a factor you are looking for in your arguments.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Ha! Maybe so. Good observation.Trent Strong said:
I don't really think I'm asserting a fact woven into reality, though... I just think that the value of any beings with judgement is determined by its contrast with its opposite.. And that any reality with any beings will require opposites in order to give the concept of "value" any meaning. People are free to debate this, of course.
Vincent Alexander
Member
I'm just jumping in, so I'm not sure where this argument stems from, but I completely agree. As a species, we are obsessed with binaries. Man/Women. Good/Evil. Tall/Short. White/Black. It is as if our brains can't comprehend one without the other.BocoDragon said:
Bungalow Bob
Banned
What makes you think we're so different from all other animals?Net_Wrecker said:
I remember hearing about an elephant who had a bell on him so that if he came to eat the crops, people would hear the ringing and shoe him away with spears. The elephant put mud inside the bell so that it wouldn't ring and he could eat the crops.
Many social animals have social rules, such as "if you find a big fruit, share it with the whole group." Sometimes one of these animals will try to eat a whole big fruit themself if he thinks he can get away with it. If he gets caught he gets punished a little by his group.
Obviously our species is the smartest, but we're really not that special.
edit: And perhaps the most intelligent species ever is extinct.
Net_Wrecker
Member
ThoseDeafMutes said:
But again, NOTHING in the most literal sense is not something we can comprehend as of now, and might very well be something. When you think of nothing, you think of blackness. Just pure emptiness, but even then, there couldn't be black if there was nothing, correct? Bam, the human mind in its current state with our current level of understanding is broken.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Net_Wrecker said:
If we did discover that what we currently consider "the universe" (The universe is defined as "All that exists", so if we discover something other than space-time, we would simply include that in "the universe", but...), the "meta-universe" that created our own would require explanation, and the current reasoning we're using to avoid infinite regression and related paradoxes would apply to them.
Vincent Alexander
Member
Robert Sapolsky: The uniqueness of human (TED). A truly fascinating video for anyone who has spare time. Something you might be interested in.Bungalow Bob said:
Net_Wrecker
Member
Bungalow Bob said:
OK, so maybe we're not special, but at the same time, do we understand what happens to that soul, or spark of life when we die in the current form whether that be humans, elephants, ants, cells, or whatever else? For all we know, that energy may be transferred up through the theoretical dimensions/universe bubbles if you believe in that sort of multi-verse/multiple dimension sort of thing.
Bungalow Bob said:
Dolphins have been shown to be pretty damn smart. There's almost no cases of them killing humans, for example (I believe there's one that got a guy in self-defense) but otherwise, that's a pretty good track record for a species we've kept in captivity. And they can do rudimentary communication with us with symbols.
Who knows, maybe they're laughing at us while having a good time in the ocean.
MorisUkunRasik
Member
ivedoneyourmom said:
I think "sense" is the wrong word, comprehension seems more appropriate. You can't denounce evolution based on it not making sense, you do so because you can't comprehend.
Try to explain both processes to a child and he'll grab onto the God explanation over evolution.
All powerful thing created everything ever, gotcha.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Feep said:
Things that are abstracted from time do not "start existing", they either exist or they do not. There can be no intermediary or transitional states nor any changes. If you consider the universe in this fashion, then it is an infinitely large 4D object, with all points in space and all points in time, past present and future, splayed out in sequence, like an infinitely long film reel lying on a cinema floor.
Our perception of time actually passing comes from our existence inside it, but when we consider things "outside of time" this does not apply.
Hmm. The film reel analogy makes sense: we can see the entire film, end to end, but to the characters inside, it feels like something "began". For us, it's like, whatever, that's the first frame. And the characters might ask, "What came before the first frame?" but that statement is stupid, nothing.ThoseDeafMutes said:
All right. Thanks.
Vincent Alexander
Member
My brain is hurting.....
Net_Wrecker said:
Apologies, what I meant to say was that there will never be a definitive proof of the non existance of a god. You can't prove a negative, and a god normally has the advantage of being defined as both beyond the the reach of science and all powerful such that our reality can be distorted to always leave our evidence questionable. The best science will achieve will be to render a god completely unnecessary by finding a natural explanation for everything. But that still wouldn't prove the non existance of a god, even if we found a natural cause for the creation of the Universe.
Proof of an all powerful god could arrive at any instant. But so far, there hasn't been any.
What actually makes us different than any other animal on Earth? Aside from our superior intelligence, we aren't really that different.
Or maybe you are just wishing for something that isn't there.
MikeOfTheLivingDead
Grapetastic!
Feep said:
Actually the primeval atom theory, which is where the big bang theory comes from, and which was posited by a Roman Catholic priest oddly enough, suggests that the universe exists in a cycle of expanse and collapse. Prior to the "big bang", which is a bit of a misnomer, all of the mass and energy in the universe existed at a single point, and began to expand outwards. At some point it will collapse back to a single point and eventually expand again. It's possible that there was a universe or many universes in this cycle prior to the "big bang".
I belive this to be true because I saw it on Futurama.
Bungalow Bob
Banned
But people have always had the choice between religions that consider following our sexual impulses to be good and natural, and others that consider doing so to be amoral. Why have the latter religions outperformed the former religions? Is it because the "sex is amoral" religions lead to better armies? Is it simply bad luck?jaxword said:
Net_Wrecker
Member
Feep said:
But what about pre-production? Was that not technically before the first frame? Was there not planning for that first frame to come into existence? It's hard for me to believe that the universe went from __________ to BAM gas and explosions, and and atoms and crap everywhere. There's an explanation out there somewhere, I can feel it
Vincent Alexander
Member
Watch the video I posted. He'll tackle what makes us unique. It is decent length though, so be prepared.Mario said:
Glad you like it. I haven't watched it in forever. Probably watch again tomorrow.Monocle said:
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