If religion isn't a motivator for violence...

Ah, so anything inconsequential, trivial, unimportant, unnecessary and meaningless is therefore "bullshit superstition"?

So, your criticism of religion is that it is inconsequential and trivial? Yet, it is important in the lives of many millions of people, it has shaped our ethics, history, philosophy, music, architecture and art - and does so for most cultures. Does that make it inconsequential, trivial or unimportant? If not, I take it we agree that religion is also not "bullshit superstition"!

So the humour in a joke can be objectively measured? What units is it measured in? Are there data tables of jokes? On the other hand, someone's religion has a very profound effect on their reality - and is therefore far from meaningless, inconsequential, or trivial.

Reality is also my evidence. Strange that!

Love is a reaction between chemicals!? What chemicals? What reaction? I don't recall learning about lurv in chemistry lectures? Tell me what units do you measure it in and how do you measure it? This is unbelievable stuff you are telling us audible!

Why is subjective truth not reality? Is the sky not really blue, or strawberries not sweet? Is music just noise? What an extraordinary (if rather dull) world you inhabit!

So, are you saying that only scientific truth has value? "I wandered lonely as a cloud" - Sorry Mr. Wordsworth, untrue and therefore "bullshit" because a cloud has no CNS and therefore cannot possibly be lonely!

No-one has experienced the ipu or fsm as far as I know. However, many people have had profound and life changing experiences of God.

Untrue. You should read "Varieties of Religious Experience" or "Surprised by Joy".

Ah yes, 'see-through' blinkers! The most deceptive type there is...

 

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Diogenes' Dog:

You are running from the point here. Nobody doubts that people use religion for emotional benefits. Just like beliefs in UFO's, Loch Ness Monster and Astrology, this is not in any doubt that their emotional benefits could be measured.

However, the beliefs themselfs have no evidential merit, and to be so specific about your beliefs with zero evidence means that you are following a 'bullshit superstition'.

 

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I've answered you on this before Kenny. It is a poor religion that is "for emotional benefits" - prozac is much better. As I keep repeating, religion is a means to a form of truth - to a realisation of inner truth.

UFO's, the Loch Ness Moster etc. are all conjectural objects/phenomena in the world. They can be measured/observed or not. Such also is the IPU or FSM. God is NOT an object in the world that can be observed or measured - God is experienced.

Ah, we've been here before! The evidence is not objective and measurable, but found in experience. Much the same (strangely) is the case for humour, or the colour blue, or pain. They can only be known through experience! There are many accounts of religious experiences! Does that count as evidence?

 

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There's that 'inner truth' again. Vague to the point of insinuating delusion via superstitious practices. Besides, people do use religion mostly/purely for emotional benefits. Why do you think heaven, prayer, afterlife, the soul, and the prospect of an invisible father figure watching over you at all times exist in the first place? Emotional benefit. Call it 'internal truth' if you like, it doesn't hide that fact.

God is experienced? If God is not observed or measured then 'he' is simply made-up. And if you are 'experiencing' something that effectively does not exist, then how is that not superstition?

Yes, we 'experience' evidence through the real world. But since beliefs of all kinds - that have no evidence - are emotionally generated or 'experienced', then we understand that this comes through the window of superstition that is in all human minds. Emotions create superstition, so don't come back saying emotion is itself superstition.

 

It seems that people are prone to murder whenever theres that lethal combination of poverty and absolutism in belief.
Belief in general seems to breed intolerance, just the other day a guy who i always thought was intelligent and chilled told me that anyone who didnt believe in christianity was either grossly uneducated or a psychopath.

I personally prefer keeping my options open, at least that way instead of telling everyone how inferior i think they are i can say 'hey thats an interesting idea...you never know there might be something in that, lets talk about it.'

 

I would have respondend: You are an IDIOT!!

 

no only religion, and all the other superstitious nonsense, ghosts, monsters, anything that fabricated and baseless but put forward as truth, etc..

sadly so, people are indoctrinated with the mind virus, from childhood, and some through trauma, if these people were cured, then it would not be so important.

sadly I have to agree that it has played a part in human society, unfortunately mostly to societies detriment.

sadly so, we need to eradicate it.

oh yes and dangerous, it kills people.

on come on! all reality has physics and chemistry attached to it.

humour like love has a chemical effect on the body, along with the objective experiences we had in our lifes

yes agreed they become delusion and see halucinations, they really need to seek help went this happens, but unfortunately other delusional people, make them believe their ok.

but your is subjective reality, mine is objective.

phenylethylamine, oxytocin, serotonins and dopamines, and the mind all play a part, love does not just happen, all the condictions have to be right.

because it can only be in your mind, you can produce no evidence to verify it.

the sky's blue because chemicals make it that colour, strawberrys are sweet for the same reasons, some aledged music is noise to some people, I cant stand rap, it starts with a capital C, it is the combination of that noise, that makes it pleasing to us, which again has a chemical reaction.

 

Religion is not just a placebo for "emotional benefit". What's inner truth?

One 'inner truth' for me was discovering gratitude - seeing how fortunate I am to be born here and now.
Yet another was realising my own value.
Yet another was undoing my own harsh judgements.
Yet another was seeing the value of trying to understand the other's perspective.
Yet another is an appreciation of other people's abilities and minds.
Yet another was discovering the power of handing over situations and 'non-action'.
Yet another is discovering the freedom of not knowing.
Yet another is finding a 'still place' within myself.

So it goes on... many of them are perceptual, and not only experienced by theists. Having said that, people use religion for all sorts of purposes, but it can be a light to reveal what goes on within us - our fears, guilt, hatred, judgements etc. and a way to dissolve them, and thereby release us to realise our value and the value of others.

LOL, unfortunately there are many things we can't measure or observe... e.g. whether animals are conscious or not. Yet that doesn't make the belief that they are (or are not) a superstition! Again, only you know if you feel sad or happy - through direct experience. You can't objectively measure or observe someone elses feelings - they may be acting. Yet to believe they experience sadness or happiness is not a superstition.

We experience phenomena from the outer world as sensations AND have our own internal states of mind which ALSO give rise to our experience. Einstein (who I think we decided was not a theist) seems to have had a very good intimation through science of what religion was reaching for...

He wasn't being superstitious, but the perception he describes is not unlike that which people who have religious experiences describe.

 

You can measure how someone is feeling.. strap them up to a neuron sensor thing and see which part of their brain is being stimulated. Voila - objective, observable proof.

 

And what does believing in Jesus walking on water, or invisible sky fairies have to do with the above? No religion is needed for the above as any atheist would testify to. Please state 'internal truths' which are only gained from believing in God.

In fact just what is the point of you following an organised religion? You never seem to mention it when debating the very existence of God. Could it be that your argument would fall apart (which it already has, but anyway...) if you mention God and your religion in the same sentance? Two equally irrational concepts, and you believe them both together.

What a complete non-answer. I said that God effectively does not exist and you had nothing to come back with except that emotions are hidden inside the skull. No it's not superstition if you don't know what a person is thinking, but if you claim to know what a person is thinking or that people can read your own thoughts, then indeed it would be superstitious.

Ah, the Einstein card. What he said does not sound superstitious to me, because being observant about the laws of nature invokes many emotions about how it came to be. There is no absolute statement of belief.

 

I don't believe in sky fairies, visible or otherwise - that's your idea of what theism is!

You are right. I wanted to show what I meant by an 'inner truth' (as opposed to an external fact), without getting too 'woo-woo'. Here's where it gets theological.

I know that there is an emptiness within me, that cannot be satisfied by food, drink, relationships, work, money, consumer-products, status, novelty etc. etc.
I know it is satisfied and enriched by 'contemplation' i.e. sinking deep within myself 'into the presence of God'.
I know it has become my primary passion - to follow that yearning.
My experience on a fundamental level is I 'was lost and have been found'.
My experience is of being unconditionally forgiven for anything and everything.
My experience is of feeling connecting with something deep within my mind, that is guiding my life, and intriguing me.
My experience is that my mind is filled with mundane thoughts, desires and general crap and that these get in the way of my seeing.
My intuition is that beyond the cloud of mundane thoughts is what people have described as the "pearl beyond price", the "jewel at the centre of the lotus", the "kingdom of heaven" etc.

Enough "bullshit superstition"?

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Has it fallen apart...? I hadn't realised - what a pity!

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I don't really follow any 'organised' religion... I hate church services!
Do you mean why if I mentioned God and Christianity in the same sentence, would I fall apart? Well, I find the term 'God' inflammatory to many people, who imagine bad tempered sky fairies. Christianity is more inflammatory as it suggests fat TV-evangelists, creationism and homophobia. Bad press!

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No, you said "If God is not observed or measured then 'he' is simply made-up." to which I replied that the fact that we cannot observe or measure something doesn't mean it doesn't exist e.g. animal consciousness and hidden emotions.

You can observe a part of their brain is active, but unless you'd experienced 'sadness' yourself, you wouldn't know what it was like from a brain-scan? So, you can't 'observe' or 'measure' the experience with a brain scan, only the presumed underlying neuropsychology.

So, if I said I "sensed that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection.", and I for convenience named that 'something' GOD - is this now a "bullshit superstition"?

Would it be different if I called this something "Gordon", "Cilla" or "the something Einstein referred to that our mind cannot grasp"?

 

But you believe that the universe was created by intelligence, right?

Despite your efforts to dress it up as pseudo-spiritualism, it does nothing but show the emotional benefits you can get if you believe in 'God' and 'Heaven'. I could probably have already typed the emotional benefits of believing in God even though I haven't believed in it since I was about 10 years old. But so long as these emotions stem from a belief in God then it is superstition, because as I have said, God effectively does not exist, even for those with 'faith'.

Well if you have a bias towards one religion then that would class you as belonging to an organised religion in my eyes. Although seeing as you are keen to be rational and a believer in God at the same time, I don't trust you to state your beliefs with certain religious fantasies. For example, how much of the Jesus story do you think actually happened, or is likely to have happened?

Well your retort consisted of bad examples, because it's reasonable to assume that most advanced animals have conciousness similar to ourselves and that emotions in other people exist. More to the point we know that animals and people exist in the first place so at least there is something to work on if we don't understand everything about them in the first place. God on the other hand, might as well not exist at all... Hence the superstition on your part for believing such a thing exists.

Well that depends. If you believe in any of the following: Prayer, an intelligent creator, heaven, hell, the soul then that is superstition. If on the other hand you are just giving something a name, but lack belief, then it's not so. Einstein believed in none of these things but is just expressing a sense of wonder for the things his mind can and can not perceive. That is pretty sensible. It has nothing to do with theism, or belief in any of the superstitions attributed to belief in God.

It doesn't matter what you call 'it'. If you believe in something that effectively doesn't exist, then that is superstition.

 

We ain't going to agree about this Kenny, and I need to disengage. I notice too we've strayed off the subject...

For me it's about answering the call to finding the transcendent God within. That is the fascination - not just the "emotional benefits" you seem to want to reduce it to. Having said that, I have found emotional benefits, so you're not totally wrong.

I believe I'm on the right track to finding what I seek - and I know you see that as "superstition". We look for our fulfilment in different places. I hope you end up finding your "emotional benefits" wherever it is you are seeking them.

P.S. You asked what I thought of the gospels... I think they are as reliable as any other reconstructed accounts based on documents and witness statements. The parables I think are probably accurate. I also believe in the resurrection which seems fundamental to the message. However, I'm sure there are some inaccuracies and some embellishments in the accounts but then, they don't seem that important! It is the message that counts.

 

Just noticed your edit... I really wish people wouldn't edit their posts ages after the original.

What rational basis do you follow this myth on? Especially after admitting 'some' inaccuracies and embellishments in the scripture? The whole description of the resurrection is one big inaccuracy and embellishment.