Ye Religion Thread

[|iR|Focalor]

ps. I have just declared myself self-proclaimed winner of Ye Religion Thread.

And minister of the department of redundancy department!

LOL Grammar Sniper

Atheists are ducking in their foxholes.

[|iR|Focalor]

Just curious: Are you scared of death itself, or the process of dying?

I imagine we all probably regard the prospect of a painful death as something we'd decidedly like to avoid.  But, death itself?  Nonexistence can't be feared, because there's no 'self' to experience fear.  (Right?)  So the prospect of nonexistence doesn't bother me at all from a fear-standpoint.  I wasn't afraid before I was born, that I can recall.  The 'me' that didn't exist before I was born, physiologically ought not to exist after I'm dead, either.  Nothing to worry about there.

Dying painfully would suck, though... 


This looks quick,

I remember the episode of Tales from the Crypt where a guy plays a nasty trick on his friend. He slips him a drug that completely immobilizes him for a period of time. Then he carts him off to the morgue and pretends to perform an autopsy on him. He can still hear and see though, so he hears and sees what he thinks is his friend sawing the top portion of his skull open and removing his brain. Then all of the sudden, the drug wears off and he can move again. Not long after his friend has a good sardonic laugh, he actually does suffer a heart attack and dies. At which point, he does still experience things going on around him because his brain and nerves are still electrochemically functioning on a slight level.

THAT would scare the hell out of me. Being clinically "dead" but still experiencing the world around me on some diminished level. Feeling the coroner drain my blood and replace it with formaldehyde, knowing their removing my brain for autopsy and then stuffing it back in my stomach cavity, perhaps hearing the casket lid closing and dirt being piled in on top of the vault, or feeling the flames as they shove me in an oven to be cremated.

Remember the old story of Marie Antoinette when they beheaded her at the guillotine? Supposedly they asked her head "If you're alive and can hear me, blink twice." Of course dead bodies have been known to move for a while after they die as the nerves completely die off. If the nerves are not completely dead at the time of being pronounced dead, I think it's somewhat reasonable to assume that one could still cognitively experience the world around them still. Eerie shit.

[haunted]

"Nonexistence can't be feared, because there's no 'self' to experience fear.  (Right?)"

Well the whole point of fearing nonexistence is that you exist when you experience the fear, being that everyone generally fears things before they happen.. Although I totally understand how one could logically convince himself/herself of what you're saying. It depends on where your thoughts are I think. My 'fear' of nonexistence (not exactly a fear, btw... but similar) derives from my disappointment in knowing that my life will come to a complete end with no continuation of being. I feel like I'm really missing out because of this, lol... not that anyone else is in a different position than I in regards to death. My response towards life eventually ending is basically: "What the f***?...... this is it? Then I'm done!? F***ing  " And consequently I have thought about it a little too much, over-analyzed it, and have developed somewhat of a fear to not exist anymore. It's not like I am extremely frightened or anything though, and no painful deaths do not scare me in the least.

In regards to the foxholes bullcrap.... the reward of entering the afterlife equates to god condoning the war, I think. God's support serves as an excellent political tool but in actuality there is no way god would condone something like that.(god's existence being hypothetical and using contemporary wars as a comparison) Aside from that I don't think religion matters in comparison to one's initial reason for joining the service. I'd say whether someone simply wants to be there(in combat) or a not is a better indication of whether or not they would run in fear of their life or not.

[reaper]

As for the countries being atheist, being sucessful or unsucessful, being peaceful, etc.  I looked at the data, and I don't trust it for the reasons I mentioned earlier (is there a large percentage of atheists who would fear god if they killed someone?).  Also Japan is way up on the list, just a little while ago they were killing everyone.  These same people all converted, and conditions in Japan changed?  What conditions, how and why did they change?  In any event the data is quiet suspect, considering all the variables.

Priceless.

I'm aware that people beleived the japanese ruler was "godly" and the majority of these people are now dead or very old.  I still consider the report and placing japan as number 5 on the list of peaceful/sucessful countries highly suspect. 


Some quotes:

"The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead." -- Albert Einstein.

On whether he considered himself an atheist: "I'm not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what that is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the most intelligent human toward God." 

"
On how he feels about atheist efforts to claim him as an ally: "There are people who say there is no God, but what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views."
"

I think he should pick a side like Stephen Hawking did, and I certainly fear death..

[quadz]

On whether he considered himself an atheist: "I'm not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what that is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the most intelligent human toward God." 

He did clarify that view further, and in considerable detail:

  "The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer."
      - Albert Einstein, quoted in: Einstein's God - Albert Einstein's Quest as a Scientist and as a Jew to Replace a Forsaken God (1997)


  "I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist."
      - Albert Einstein, letter to Guy H. Raner Jr, July 2, 1945, responding to a rumor that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism; quoted by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic, Vol. 5, No. 2


  "I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."
      - Albert Einstein, letter to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, quoted by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic, Vol. 5, No. 2


  "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."
      - Albert Einstein, responding to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein's question "Do you believe in God?" quoted in: Has Science Found God?, by Victor J Stenger


  "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."
     - Letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, January 3, 1954


  "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
     - Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman


  "During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution, human fantasy created gods in man's own image who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate influence, the phenomenal world."
     - Albert Einstein, quoted in: 2000 Years of Disbelief, James Haught


  "It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere.... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
      - Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science," New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930


  "Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it."
      - Albert Einstein, New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930


  "Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also, by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in itself, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. ..."
       - Albert Einstein, Science and Religion (1941)


  "I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God."
      - Albert Einstein, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman

I think he should pick a side like Stephen Hawking did, and I certainly fear death..

Well... "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly."
     - Albert Einstein, letter to Morris Raphael Cohen, professor emeritus of philosophy at the College of the City of New York, March 19, 1940. Einstein is defending the appointment of Bertrand Russell to a teaching position


Err... I mean... What the heck do you mean "pick a side", anyway?

[reaper]

Err... I mean... What the heck do you mean "pick a side", anyway?

On whether he considered himself an atheist: "I'm not an atheist..."

[quadz]

Err... I mean... What the heck do you mean "pick a side", anyway?

On whether he considered himself an atheist: "I'm not an atheist..."

Seems he stated his position fairly clearly on numerous occasions.

He doesn't want to be lumped in with atheists, if that is a label which would be interpreted to imply a lack of appreciation for, and lack of wonder at the subtle structure of nature, parts of which may be forever out of reach of our human understanding.

But, he says, yeah, when the word atheism means disbelief in a personal god, then count me as an atheist.

So again, exactly what "side" are you asking him to choose?

[reaper]

"I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."

Seems he stated his position fairly clearly on numerous occasions.

He doesn't want to be lumped in with atheists, if that is a label which would be interpreted to imply a lack of appreciation for, and lack of wonder at the subtle structure of nature, parts of which may be forever out of reach of our human understanding.

But, he says, yeah, when the word atheism means disbelief in a personal god, then count me as an atheist.

So again, exactly what "side" are you asking him to choose?

If you don't believe in any god you're an athiest, anything else is irrelevent:
On how he feels about atheist efforts to claim him as an ally: "There are people who say there is no God, but what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views."
"

He didn't say he was an athiest,, he said he doesn't believe in a personal god.

you should either believe in god or not. although if you feel it's similar to 50/50 that seems reasonable.  So looking back at the quotations it appears he said he doesn't know what's going on.  In other words, he's not going to discount that some higher power might exist because of the way things are on earth, yet he thinks the idea of a god who is interviening and hence personal is ridiculous, because that is not the case in everyday life.  So I would say that's 50/50, and I can deal with that..

[quadz]

If you don't believe in any god you're an athiest, anything else is irrelevent:
On how he feels about atheist efforts to claim him as an ally: "There are people who say there is no God, but what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views."
"

He didn't say he was an athiest

Hang on, now.  We've already seen he did say he was an atheist, from a particular point of view: "From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist."  So your claim that he didn't say he was an atheist is false, and I think it would help to use words more precisely.

you should either believe in god or not. although if you feel it's similar to 50/50 that seems reasonable.

I don't understand why this 50/50 idea seems so crucial to you.  It's like you prefer black, or white, but you'll tolerate one single shade of gray.

Two questions:

(1) Can you prove the Easter Bunny is not real?

(2) If you answered "no" to question 1, do you believe there's a 50/50 chance the Easter Bunny may really exist?  If not, why not?


Regards,

quadz

[reaper]

I don't understand why this 50/50 idea seems so crucial to you.  It's like you prefer black, or white, but you'll tolerate one single shade of gray.

Two questions:

(1) Can you prove the Easter Bunny is not real?
as far as i'm concerned yeah

(2) If you answered "no" to question 1, do you believe there's a 50/50 chance the Easter Bunny may really exist?  If not, why not?


Regards,

quadz

It's like if you feel the evidence mounts in favor that there is no god:
multiple different gods prove they can't be all true
religious thinking shows fallacies in cases x,y,z etc
god has not interviened
religion is backtracking
no evidence for a god
etc etc etc

then to you the evidence is weighted properly, and with this insight you feel a conviction that it is a riduclous idea that there is a god, and you can come to a conclusion - there is no god.

if you feel the latter, then you should believe in god. 

if there is a jury there's never 100% I know this guy to be guilty, but you can feel confident in your decision based on the evidence.

so you have 3 cases:
there is no god
there is a god
I can't determine which idea is most probable

But to say one is totally ridiculous, but I can't prove a negative, i'm not down with that

[QwazyWabbit]

Einstein's distinction was more subtle than atheism vs. theism. The concept of a "personal god" is the distinction between an active God, manifest in the affairs of Man versus a creator who has done the work and now sits as a disinterested observer of the work as it evolves. His assertion that "if that makes me an atheist" was a concession to those who would put him in a box.

For an expression of what a impersonal God might be like, see Mark Twain's "Letters from the Earth".
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/twainlfe.htm

"Very well, then, let us proceed. We have witnessed a wonderful thing; as to that, we are necessarily agreed. As to the value of it -- if it has any -- that is a matter which does not personally concern us. We can have as many opinions about it as we like, and that is our limit. We have no vote. I think Space was well enough, just as it was, and useful, too. Cold and dark -- a restful place, now and then, after a season of the overdelicate climate and trying splendors of heaven. But these are details of no considerable moment; the new feature, the immense feature, is -- what, gentlemen?"

"The invention and introduction of automatic, unsupervised, self-regulating law for the government of those myriads of whirling and racing suns and worlds!"

"That is it!" said Satan. "You perceive that it is a stupendous idea. Nothing approaching it has been evolved from the Master Intellect before. Law -- Automatic Law -- exact and unvarying Law -- requiring no watching, no correcting, no readjusting while the eternities endure! He said those countless vast bodies would plunge through the wastes of Space ages and ages, at unimaginable speed, around stupendous orbits, yet never collide, and never lengthen nor shorten their orbital periods by so much as the hundredth part of a second in two thousand years! That is the new miracle, and the greatest of all -- Automatic Law! And He gave it a name -- the LAW OF NATURE -- and said Natural Law is the LAW OF GOD -- interchangeable names for one and the same thing."

Einstein's view was that the universe and the laws of nature were for man to discover and understand and that such understanding was key to beholding the wonder of creation. Understanding, in Einstein's view, was verifiable and quantified in the rules of mathematics. He didn't need a divine interventionist god or miraculous explanations the way creation "science" needs them.

[quadz]

It's like if you feel the evidence mounts in favor that there is no god:
multiple different gods prove they can't be all true
religious thinking shows fallacies in cases x,y,z etc
god has not interviened
religion is backtracking
no evidence for a god
etc etc etc

That's a good list, but we should remember these points don't constitute "mounting evidence".  The lack of evidence for god, is not the same as evidence for the lack of god.

so you have 3 cases:
there is no god
there is a god
I can't determine which idea is most probable

But to say one is totally ridiculous, but I can't prove a negative, i'm not down with that

I wish you would have answered my two questions...

So, I'll assume we agree we can't prove the Easter Bunny doesn't exist.

But I am interested in whether you believe there's a 50/50 chance the Easter Bunny is real.  And if you don't think it's 50/50, then what reasoning do you use to arrive at a different likelihood?


Regards,

quadz

[reaper]

That's a good list, but we should remember these points don't constitute "mounting evidence".  The lack of evidence for god, is not the same as evidence for the lack of god.

well I also forgot to put some stuff in there, that is "evidence" for an alternative explanation

So, I'll assume we agree we can't prove the Easter Bunny doesn't exist.

as far as i'm concerned yeah, I've proven the easter bunny to be false.  you might as well just say there is no such thing is fact if you wanna operate like that

[|iR|Focalor]

Err... I mean... What the heck do you mean "pick a side", anyway?

On whether he considered himself an atheist: "I'm not an atheist..."

Seems he stated his position fairly clearly on numerous occasions.

Seems people like to take his words out of context too. From what I've always read about Einstein, he never once explicitly stated, "I do not believe in the existence of God." From what I understand, he was basically of the same opinion as Voltaire, that the creator was like a great clockmaker who designed the universe with specific laws to govern it but does not personally intervene in it's functioning any longer... thus the "I don't believe in a personal God".

[quadz]

That's a good list, but we should remember these points don't constitute "mounting evidence".  The lack of evidence for god, is not the same as evidence for the lack of god.

well I also forgot to put some stuff in there, that is "evidence" for an alternative explanation

I'd be interested to know what you have in mind.  (All I'm currently aware of is that there appears to be no need for any supernatural interferance since the big bang.)

So, I'll assume we agree we can't prove the Easter Bunny doesn't exist.

as far as i'm concerned yeah, I've proven the easter bunny to be false.  you might as well just say there is no such thing is fact if you wanna operate like that

I would be interested in your proof.  (I am extremely skeptical that you will be able to produce any such proof.)

Edit: For example, If told you I've proven god doesn't exist, I'm pretty damn sure you'd ask to see the proof.  As you should.  So, let's see your proof for the Easter Bunny's nonexistence.  OK?  (And yes, I'm pursuing this line of inquiry for a reason...)


Regards,