The Religion Discussion Thread

[Speaker to Animals]

Hinduism is actually extremely self-consistent as well. It's a hard one for us because we seem racially predisposed towards the material world being a real thing. If you just start with their assumptions, it seems pretty rational too.

[MilSpecs]

Seriously, arguing about religious belief is like arguing about colors or taste - it's completely subjective. It can only be personal. The benefits of the practices can be proven or disproven, but the brand makes no provable difference. In other words, prayer can be of benefit. Who it's directed to makes no difference.

When you just talk about health and mental benefits, that's plausible. But religion is usually more than that- for Christians, it determines your eternal fate, for Hindus, your next life's quality, etc. So to those people, it very much matters who the prayer is directed to. As an example, taking a Christian view (that probably being the most familiar to everyone here), Tom's praying to Vishnu might give him peace of mind, of less stress, or lead to better behavior morally, but it is really useless and harmful in the long run, because his soul would still lie apart from God in hell, forever.

So understand that the lifetime benefit of something like prayer on Tom's life might not depend on who it is to, but to the religious person, it is not at all subjective. It is personal, yes, but for all religions I can think of the existence of their deity is objective- according to them, God is God whether you believe or not.

To whit, religious belief is personal, but not subjective.

But religion doesn't determine one's eternal fate - we don't even know that there is eternity or fate. Deities don't exist outside of faith therein. We created gods, from the animating spirit of the natural world to the angelic hierarchy. To even start to prove that belief in a particular deity is of benefit, we'd need to find two deities that are essentially identical (including full theology) and compare the lives of believers over time. (Maybe someone has done this study; I don't know but it would be really interesting.)

I'm not saying that humans aren't spiritual beings - humans clearly have always possessed spirituality and it appears to be of great benefit to us. I'm not even saying that there is nothing outside of our own existence or that we cease entirely when we die. I don't know that and neither does anyone else (I mean know for a fact, not believe as a matter of faith). I respect Tom's right to pray to Vishnu and to Christians' belief in an eternal afterlife. My 'religion' requires that I defend those rights. But that right and that belief do not = objective reality (i.e., facts that exist outside of any belief or current knowledge).

[SuburbanFarmer]

Hard to apply logic to religion. Consider:

1) God created you, and wants to test your goodness for eternal happiness. Yet, he can see the future. If God can see the future, then you don't have Free Will. Therefore, the test is meaningless.

2) God created you imperfectly, and if you fail his test, you go off to Hell/Gehenna/Gre'thor, to suffer for an eternity. After 30-70 years of life, you get 1,000,000,000,000,000 years of extreme pain and torment. What kind of sick fuck would do this? And why would you want to serve it?

3) Reincarnation is real, yet the human population changes over time (generally gets larger). Therefore, where are new people coming from? If there's a near-extinction event, where do they go?

4) Hinduism (and Klingons) believe that life is only a dream, before real life begins. Then why wait? Kill yourself and move on.

5) Hebrews stone people for centuries, over minor dietary infractions. Jew prophet comes along, wipes out Abrahamic law, and declares a new plan. What happens to all of the dead souls before he came along? What happens to the souls of the people that stoned them?

[Speaker to Animals]

It's hard to apply logic to that irrational post.

[SuburbanFarmer]

It's hard to apply logic to that irrational post.

It wasn't for you. I know you won't read, or consider it.

[Speaker to Animals]

It's hard to apply logic to that irrational post.

It wasn't for you. I know you won't read, or consider it.

Read it, considered it. It's silly. Like something a high school senior would argue.

Start top-down. I would argue that science provides more evidence of theism than atheism. Reason also supports theism more than atheism. You like to fixate on all the different religions without addressing the higher level ontological issues. Right off the bat, you have Theism, Atheism, and Polytheism. Greek philosophers illustrated all the logical problems with polytheism starting around 2200 years ago. That's out on rational grounds alone. Then in the twentieth century, modern science just kept dealing deathblows to atheism: big bang being the biggest and most devastating to atheism.

This is why American theoretical physics became applied metaphysics in the 1960s. They just couldn't accept that there is a beginning, even if any philosophy grad worth his salt can prove to you the logical inconsistency of an infinitely young timeline. They gave up doing actual science and just publish papers based on mathematical equations that cannot be scientifically tested in the hopes that they can intuit some way around the ultimate beginning of time.

I really grow tired of these discussions because the average atheists is so incredibly ignorant and not really open-minded or rational in the least. It's not that I think you can't make a great argument for atheism, but that all the great philosophers abandoned atheism fifty years ago when the evidence came in. You guys used to have GREAT philosophers, but not any more. Atheism is pretty much dead as a philosophical system. Science killed it. That's the irony atheists don't want to accept.

[TheReal_ND]

1) God knows every outcome therefore giving you some "test" means he gives a fuck how you will perform

Stopped right there

[Speaker to Animals]

He really doesn't see how free will and God's omniscience are compatible. That is how low brow this is.

[katarn]

Seriously, arguing about religious belief is like arguing about colors or taste - it's completely subjective. It can only be personal. The benefits of the practices can be proven or disproven, but the brand makes no provable difference. In other words, prayer can be of benefit. Who it's directed to makes no difference.

When you just talk about health and mental benefits, that's plausible. But religion is usually more than that- for Christians, it determines your eternal fate, for Hindus, your next life's quality, etc. So to those people, it very much matters who the prayer is directed to. As an example, taking a Christian view (that probably being the most familiar to everyone here), Tom's praying to Vishnu might give him peace of mind, of less stress, or lead to better behavior morally, but it is really useless and harmful in the long run, because his soul would still lie apart from God in hell, forever.

So understand that the lifetime benefit of something like prayer on Tom's life might not depend on who it is to, but to the religious person, it is not at all subjective. It is personal, yes, but for all religions I can think of the existence of their deity is objective- according to them, God is God whether you believe or not.

To whit, religious belief is personal, but not subjective.

But religion doesn't determine one's eternal fate - we don't even know that there is eternity or fate. Deities don't exist outside of faith therein. We created gods, from the animating spirit of the natural world to the angelic hierarchy. To even start to prove that belief in a particular deity is of benefit, we'd need to find two deities that are essentially identical (including full theology) and compare the lives of believers over time. (Maybe someone has done this study; I don't know but it would be really interesting.)

I'm not saying that humans aren't spiritual beings - humans clearly have always possessed spirituality and it appears to be of great benefit to us. I'm not even saying that there is nothing outside of our own existence or that we cease entirely when we die. I don't know that and neither does anyone else (I mean know for a fact, not believe as a matter of faith). I respect Tom's right to pray to Vishnu and to Christians' belief in an eternal afterlife. My 'religion' requires that I defend those rights. But that right and that belief do not = objective reality (i.e., facts that exist outside of any belief or current knowledge).

All I'm saying in that post- which I will concede was rather poorly written, as I wrote it over a day between classes- is that to the Christian, God is an objective reality. To Tom, Vishnu is real and you will be reincarnated even if you believe in Allah. To Bob the Anglican, you go to hell if you are an atheist or a Hindu, etc.

To argue that deities don't exist and that we created them is a starting point of bias: From that view, religion doesn't do much at all, even with the negative side of Pascal's wager, but I'd honestly like a few of yoour reasonings for this starting point.

Obviously, religions like Christianity cannot be proven or known for certain strictly through science. BUT- they cannot be disproven either. That is the nature of a premise that exists outside of the natural world; it is logical that it could not be proven by the laws of the natural world.

However, either side could be and is supported by a wealth of evidences both philosophical and scientific (again, not proofs, with the God hypothesis those do not exist). As DSL mentioned, the first cause is a famous and previously discussed (I think in the Chapel thread here, if not then definitely on the DCF before it closed) case for general theism. Another frequent one is the Anthropic principle that examines the odds of certain variables settling where they are, but I don't much care for that one. Irreducible complexity is one that argues against macro-evolution (ie minerals-->one life form--->everything living today evolution).

There are a wealth of readily available arguments from both sides- theism and atheism, without the need yet even to delve into branches thereof. What are some principles you would use to defend your position?

[katarn]

He really doesn't see how free will and God's omniscience are compatible. That is how low brow this is.

Honestly, that one never gave me much trouble. I never saw a conflict between someone knowing something would happen and planning for it and another person choosing to do it.