by czarofmischief 348 Replies latest jw friends
Abaddon wrote:
But to reach largely empty agreements as to reality based on synchronicity isn't that impressive.
What do you mean by that? That events that seem to fall into place so consistantly that they could not be coincidence and therefore a belief in a God did it develops?
Care to elaborate please?
Tor
Hi Ross!
I would suggest that if they believed it to be merely a construct of their mind, they would stop having such faith, as belief presumes a reality.
Cog Dis 1.01, in'it? Many (not all, not neccesarily half) accept there's no 'proof' of their beliefs in the way that there is proof of pie (ya know, 3.1415 etc., not proof of apples and pastry... ).
Despite this (thus the old cog dis), they believe what they believe is not just a construct. Thus there is no problem with them having faith, as they can hold these strange bedfellows to both be true, indeed, cog dis could be said to be part of faith, if one accepts that faith is the assured expectation of that which is not yet perceived.Not necessarily at all, hence this portion is a flaw in your reasoning. It is possible to believe that something is real, and personal to you, without taking the position that all others are wrong.
... which is what I describe as, in most cases, as "acceptance of such Chicken Soup for the Soul platitudes about god being "all things to everybody" that the idea of god becomes utterly insubstansial and irrelevent." It gets to the point where 'god' becomes hopelessly vauge, and one might as well talk about 'The Force' instead.
Btw, Calvinism has more than just "hardline" adherents, who damn those who differ to Hell.
Oh, I know, thus 'hardline', although the idea of non-hardline Calvanism is somehow, for me, tied into the Neil Young lyric in Keep on Rockin' in the Free World;
A kinder, gentler, machine-gun handHave you read the His Dark Materials trilogy by the way? I've just been through it. Strikes me when fiction is more logical then faith, there's a problem with faith... but that's just me.
I've re-read the thread... to try and come up with just what about it yanked my chain so much (beyond the fact that two posters in this thread have intimated violence towards people who didn't agree with them. Not in this thread however, so don't look).
I found myself with a strong case of deja vu..... and finally realized why. I'm hearing the thought process of a Pastor Russell, a Judge Rutherford, a Freddie Franz, and a million other religous "leaders" all over again.
Russell, Rutherford, or Franz didn't just start fresh out of the womb as the insane clown posse they ended up as. No, they simply started structuring god into their lives, then they started structuring their lives into "gods plans", then they started telling others how god works. Their insanity had it's first breath of air about the same time one of them thought "the good lord works in mysterious ways, thanks for leading me to find that pamphlet on the street, Lord. It was just what I needed. Oh, and thanks for the stock tip too".
Crazy.
Do you think Russell, Rutherford or Franz had a tendency to think the way rem thinks, or Abbadon thinks? Hell no. We are safe from those two (barring a night of binge absynthe intake), but it doesn't mean we are safe from insanity. And sanity is often a choice for the very intelligent. Pastor Russell didn't have to believe that God's time and energy were focused around his little world (subsequently ignoring the reality of the world around him), and neither does anyone else. It's a choice, and it's a crazy one.
"Moreover, while she found the blue nude coincidence remarkable--Domino couldn't help but be amazed that he'd grown up around that particular painting - she saw no need for Switters to get so carried away. Maybe she was right. More than she might realize. A man immobilized by a pyramid-headed Indian's curse was not a man who ought to be overreacting to a dollop of synchronicity, even when it involved an object of much sentimental wahoo."
any attempt I made to present evidence would merely open up my private life and private faith to the public for no good reason.
Why not CZAR? Not all would ridicule your comments.
I think if people make an honest choice to believe in a diety who cares for them, it can be a good thing if it brings them true happiness and contentment, and does not harm them or anyone else. They will die with a warm spot instead of an empty one.....which is proly a more comfortable ride home.
Gumby
Hi Six,
You said:
Russell, Rutherford, or Franz didn't just start fresh out of the womb as the insane clown posse they ended up as. No, they simply started structuring god into their lives, then they started structuring their lives into "gods plans", then they started telling others how god works.
I liked your 3 steps:
There were a couple of things that really got under my skin in this thread; one was Czar saying he was head of the house; the second was a dismissive discussion of why god allows little children to suffer child abuse. I'm not going to bother trying to rebut these, but just say
Pat
the second was a dismissive discussion of why god allows little children to suffer child abuse.
No Christian group has EVER given ....at least to me.......a satisfactory answer to this. God becomes a mystery at this point in their explanation of him.
Not only children......but anyone. Why does a god not answer honest pleas of ones who beg for relief and mercy, yet seems to answer the prayers of many christians who claims he answers them?
A little girl is abused by her father, tied to a bed for years and lives in her own feces. I read a story like that and wondered how many times this poor little girl CRIED OUT to god to save and help her? Her story tells of no aid from god.......just of a neighbor who caught him and turned him in. And no......god didn't use the neighbor YEARS later for those who believe he did.......unless he didn't mind it happening for years and years before he decided to stop it.
Gumby
the second was a dismissive discussion of why god allows little children to suffer child abuse.
Gumby:
Like you, I find this the hardest thing to understand - why there's evil in the world. In fact, the seemingly logical answers that JW's portray are often what sucker folks to join.
However, IMHO, belief or unbelief alters the situation not one jot, as neither perspective has a satisfying solution for it.
At the end of the day, aren't we all trying to make sense of the madness around us?
Patio:
After a re-read, I fail to see where the subject was discussed.
Six disparagingly threw it into the pot, and I effectively called it a "low blow" example (for blaming God for it), but beyond that, it wasn't really touched on.
If you have an issue with what I stated, then say so plainly, but I fail to see what it might be.
However if you still don't want to discuss it, so be it.
LT,
>>Like you, I find this the hardest thing to understand - why there's evil in the world.
Yes, I find this to be one of the most intractable problems of belief in a benevolent personal god.
>>However, IMHO, belief or unbelief alters the situation not one jot, as neither perspective has a satisfying solution for it.
I don't see how you can come to that conclusion There's nothing mysterious about "evil" in a world without a benevolent personal god. The "problem of evil" goes away. That's why it's called the "problem of evil" - it's only a problem because people assert that a benevolent god does indeed exist.
Do you really think that things like carnivorous animals eating other animals alive is a logical problem in a world without god? If you could prove that, then you would have effectively destroyed the "problem of evil" argument. I'm not holding my breath, though, since greater minds than ours have agonized over this problem for centuries.
>>At the end of the day, aren't we all trying to make sense of the madness around us?
Madness? Maybe that is one of the differences between theists and non-theists. As a non-theist I see the world around me just as it is - no reason to justify or change anything (disease, death, disasters, etc. are just natural). Sure there are explanations for certain behaviors, but nothing jumps out as particularly odd. Perhaps theists see the world in a different way - as a place that is all wrong and needs fundamental change?
rem
Rem:
To be honest I find the worldview you propose more abhorrent, in view of the subject matter of child abuse. "It just happens"???
Sorry if I disappoint you, but I'm dissatisfied with that!
Re: using the word "madness". I had considered using the word "chaos". Would that be more acceptable to you?
Six
We are safe from those two (barring a night of binge absynthe intake)
I can't speak for rem, but I'm glad I've lulled you into a false sense of security. Bwa-ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha.Ha. Am at home with ghastly cold and am making myself feel better by getting rather stoned; medicinal use, see? It might not make me feel better, but it makes me care less about how bad I feel.
gumby
the second was a dismissive discussion of why god allows little children to suffer child abuse.
As with you I find this hard to understand. I've known people who've been abused and now realise at one point I was probably being 'groomed' by a paedophile. I don;t underestimate the impact of that at all. But no matter how wrong that abuse is, there are far more children who have died lonely cold hungry deaths that come about inspite of their parent's best efforts. I think the fact that that suffering also exsists is equally relevent.
A little girl is abused by her father, tied to a bed for years and lives in her own feces. I read a story like that and wondered how many times this poor little girl CRIED OUT to god to save and help her?
Under such circumstances I don't presuppose that the scum who did that to her bothered with teaching her about religion. And I doubt very much how she could have come up with the idea herself... yes, conceiving the existence of a benevolent all-powerful entity in such dire straits is a little far fetched. Which rather underlines the point from my point-of-view.
Little Toe
However, IMHO, belief or unbelief alters the situation not one jot, as neither perspective has a satisfying solution for it.
I see what you mean, but the fact you postulate it matters not one jot jars with everything we see around us. Things are the way they are because of the way other things are and have been, from a rock in a stream to a bird in the sky to dolphons, spread out in a rainbow of natural selection over a strand of time.
You postulate that 'neither persepctive has a satisfying solution for it'. Yet a peacock's tail has reasons, the composition of the Earth's atmosphere has reasons, you can find a solution to things when you look at them, given a bit of time and actually knowing there's something to look at, and given the availability of tools with which to do the looking and an understanding of the things you need to understand in order to interpret what you look at. It wasn't possible to describe Ohm's until shortly before it was described as the pieces needed to get there weren't in place
To say the reason, for Life, the Universe, and Everything, is unsatisfying goes against that, unless of course the pieces with which to understand it aren't in place yet.
And this precise situation is what one would expect from a non-god point-of-view. Proper science is barely two hundred years old! We have only been flying for 100 years! We are no where near to understanding everything, but that's entirely logical, as it takes time.
Religion? It has been around ages, a very long time, probably well over 30,000 years. And it still can't provide a satisfying explanation. And as the chap religion tries to represent knows what's going on, the fact it's not communicated it to us is rather curious. It gets all ineffable, and as far as my experience runs, ineffable tends to mean bullshit. We, if there is a god, should know what's going on - not jkust one bunch of bannanas, not just one tree, but all bannanas, everywhere. If it's (suffering) a game, a test, an education, then the rules we hold to in the everyday world would have god banged up in the Hauge before you could say 'war crime'.
At the end of the day, aren't we all trying to make sense of the madness around us?In a way yes, but we should guard ourselves so we don't carry on believing things just because it is comfortable - unless we realise that this is why we carry on believing things. Otherwise we're kidding ourselves, and we had enough of that in the Borg.
