Religion...is ancient failed science

[kalm]

On the other hand, I've met a number of "fiscal conservatives" who be the first to roll the dice or throw money at a problem. I'm sure you do too.

I've never met fiscal conservatives who would do that. If they did I would not classify them as fiscal conservatives.

.

That's why I put both ideologies in quotes. You made the point in another thread that there were very few true conservatives around. I agree.

[kalm]

watch this...
the ability to objectively view our own beliefs Julia is The shiznit

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLG0kkgnRkc[/youtube]

AKA being liberal and introspective.

Holy cow...watching that through the lense of what takes place on this forum is...awesome.

Btw, she kinda of grows hotter as she speaks and flitters her hair...in a nerdy intellectual sort of way, but she'd need to wear glasses to fulfill that fantasy.

Who is she?

[D1B]

Bullshit. Your faith is built upon suspending reality.

I like Joe's notion of god here. But it's not the focal point of most religions is it?

You can probably get as close to god through psylocibin as you can through any church.

Billions of people LOVE Joe's notion of a god. It's the ultimate fantasy.

[CID1990]

I've never met fiscal conservatives who would do that. If they did I would not classify them as fiscal conservatives.

.

That's why I put both ideologies in quotes. You made the point in another thread that there were very few true conservatives around. I agree.

True, but that depends on what makes a true conservative. Consistency?

I mentioned earlier that I could possibly vote for Jerry Brown for President. He's a flaming liberal with a twist: he's fiscally conservative

thats an oxymoron

Let's all say it together: a liberal fiscal conservative

But because fiscal conservatism and domestic manufacturing as a strategic asset are my #1 and #2 priorities (and #3 is so distant as to not bear mentioning), I am willing to overlook Brown's space alien liberalism for someone who might bring some fiscal sanity to the federal government. We'll see who the GOP puts up.

So, there are probably LOTS of conservatives who would say I am not a true conservative. But I would argue that CONSERVATIVE is a label that applies ONLY to fiscal conservatives and rule of law strict contructionists, of which I am both.

All the other attributes that get people labeled as conservative- the social conservatives are just parasites on the ass of conservative principles, which are first and foremost fiscal and 'rule of law' in nature.

[YoUDeeMan]

watch this...
the ability to objectively view our own beliefs Julia is The shiznit

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLG0kkgnRkc[/youtube]

AKA being liberal and introspective.

Holy cow...watching that through the lense of what takes place on this forum is...awesome.

Btw, she kinda of grows hotter as she speaks and flitters her hair...in a nerdy intellectual sort of way, but she'd need to wear glasses to fulfill that fantasy.

Who is she?

She is the devil.

Notice she first flits her hair when she says, "Visualize yourself as being wrong." Typical woman...she knows she is losing her own argument, so she resorts to bringing out her feminine weapons. Notice, also, that she puts in her bigger "gun" theory at the end...as if you'll be a better man, and a more attractive mate/lover, if you just give in to her way of thinking.

She is a siren luring you onto the rocks with her voice and subtle hair flitting.

Deep inside though, she probably secretly loves talking dirty and being dominated...they all do. So if you ever get into a discussion with her, just first fill her mouth with your meat and then take her from behind.

















I have to excuse myself right now.

[kalm]

AKA being liberal and introspective.

Holy cow...watching that through the lense of what takes place on this forum is...awesome.

Btw, she kinda of grows hotter as she speaks and flitters her hair...in a nerdy intellectual sort of way, but she'd need to wear glasses to fulfill that fantasy.

Who is she?

She is the devil.

Notice she first flits her hair when she says, "Visualize yourself as being wrong." Typical woman...she knows she is losing her own argument, so she resorts to bringing out her feminine weapons. Notice, also, that she puts in her bigger "gun" theory at the end...as if you'll be a better man, and a more attractive mate/lover, if you just give in to her way of thinking.

She is a siren luring you onto the rocks with her voice and subtle hair flitting.

Deep inside though, she probably secretly loves talking dirty and being dominated...they all do. So if you ever get into a discussion with her, just first fill her mouth with your meat and then take her from behind.


















I have to excuse myself right now.

[JoltinJoe]

Bullshit. Your faith is built upon suspending reality.

I like Joe's notion of god here. But it's not the focal point of most religions is it?

It is the focal point of some religions, studied more deeply, such as Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, and many of the more closely related Christian religions, such as Episcopalian, Anglican, Methodist, which share a form of apostolic succession with the first century Church. Granted, there are a number of Christian churches outside of this shared succession which demand an unthinking acceptance of Biblical literalism in all respects.

You see, I was at best a cultural Catholic when I went off to college. I stopped attending Church regularly when I was on my own, and didn't really believe in what I had been taught over the years. When I did attend Church in my early college days, it was principally to meet girls at the social hour after the 10 p.m. mass.

But (take notice Cleets & D1B), I became persuaded in the truth of Christianity, and more comfortable with Catholicism (given its more rational acceptance of science, evolution, etc.; its willingness to accept that others outside the Church were saved through the mercy of God, i.e., the faithful act uncharitably when the seek to limit the boundless mercy of God, or to hoard it for themselves) through study of philosophy and world theology. You see, I've already and long ago had the debate Julia suggests in your video, and I conceded I was wrong.

Without going on and on, here is an outline of my process.

I became convinced through my philosophy courses that there had to be a "First Cause" of creation, what Cleets has called the "I Am," which coincidentally (actually, not coincidentally, since there are no coincidences) is the name of God claimed in the Hebrew bible.

Given the existence of the "First Cause," the "I Am", or "God," the question becomes, is God an impersonal force, or a personal force, i.e. more like a being. Now here is where the issue of faith comes in, but I ultimately concluded God had to be a personal force, a being.

Why? Well, first of all, an impersonal force would mean nothing to me. If God was an impersonal force, why would I give a rat's ass about it? And for that matter, why would I even care how the universe was created? After all, I'm just a biological accident, so live it up while I can before I inevitably die. Who cares how I got here, I'm going to die anyway. Who cares about family or other people? I guessed I could feign interest in them in order to promote my own enjoyment, but any expression of affection or love would only be to dupe people into helping me promote my own enjoyment. I guess you can see where this is going. I was genuinely interested into how and why I was here. I genuinely loved and had affection for others; it wasn't a ruse to promote my enjoyment. It seemed to me that I was biologically drawn into being a part of the community of mankind; programmed that way, and that convinced me that God was a personal being.

Next, if a personal being, then how does God manifest himself to us. To make a long story short, I came to believe that a personal God would be the most perfect personal God, and that this suggested that, at some point he would become incarnate. What some writers, most notably Anselm, have called "the necessity of the incarnation." I think you guys would find the writing on this subject very moving and very reassuring. No subject I have ever read about made me feel more happy. You can get a pretty good foundational overview just by googling "the necessity of the incarnation."

So I wound up back in the Catholic Church, for some reasons cited above.

I resisted a lot of this initially. After a few sessions of Introductory Metaphysics, I declared in class that "Metaphysics is bunk." But I ultimately was drawn into the subject more and more, and by the end of the semester I was asking my professor for additional readings. "So, Joe, do you still think metaphysics is bunk?" she asked. And my interest in metaphysics drew me to applications of metaphysics in theology and philosophy, and I took 27 credits in each (three more in either, and I would have doubled majored in one of them).

So I've had the debate and lost.

But I'll concede D1B's point that parents often try to indoctrinate their children with childish explanations of God, and then wonder when they reach the age of reason why they reject these stories. I try to explain to my kids that, whatever they are taught in religion class, the subject of God and his existence is more complicated and these stories are taught to them to help them understand, and nothing more. God is not like Santa Claus sitting on a cloud.

[JoltinJoe]

AKA being liberal and introspective.

Holy cow...watching that through the lense of what takes place on this forum is...awesome.

Btw, she kinda of grows hotter as she speaks and flitters her hair...in a nerdy intellectual sort of way, but she'd need to wear glasses to fulfill that fantasy.

Who is she?

She is the devil.

Notice she first flits her hair when she says, "Visualize yourself as being wrong." Typical woman...she knows she is losing her own argument, so she resorts to bringing out her feminine weapons. Notice, also, that she puts in her bigger "gun" theory at the end...as if you'll be a better man, and a more attractive mate/lover, if you just give in to her way of thinking.

She is a siren luring you onto the rocks with her voice and subtle hair flitting.

Deep inside though, she probably secretly loves talking dirty and being dominated...they all do. So if you ever get into a discussion with her, just first fill her mouth with your meat and then take her from behind.

















I have to excuse myself right now.

She needs nerdy, librarian glasses to close the deal.

[JoltinJoe]

In a remarkable coincidence (see what I did there, ), a friend just posted this New York Times column on Facebook, published yesterday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/opini ... alone.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Audrey Assad is a Catholic songwriter with a crystalline voice and a sober intensity to her stage presence. (You can see her perform her song “I Shall Not Want” on YouTube.) She writes the sort of emotionally drenched music that helps people who are in crisis. A surprising number of women tell her they listened to her music while in labor.

She had an idyllic childhood in a Protestant sect prone to black-or-white dichotomies. But when she was in her 20s, life’s tragedies and complexities inevitably mounted, and she experienced a gradual erosion of certainty.

She began reading her way through the books on the Barnes & Noble Great Books shelf, trying to cover the ones she missed by not going to college. She loved George Eliot’s “Daniel Deronda” and was taken by Tolstoy. “He didn’t have an easy time encountering himself,” she says, sympathetically. “I was reading my way from darkness into paradox.”

She also began reading theology. She’d never read anything written before 1835. She went back to Augustine (whose phrases show up in her lyrics) and the early church fathers. Denominationally, she went backward in time. She became Baptist, then Presbyterian, then Catholic: “I was ready to be an atheist. I was going to be a Catholic or an atheist. “

She came to feel the legacy of millions of people who had struggled with the same feelings for thousands of years. “I still have routine brushes with agnosticism,” she says. “I still brush against the feeling that I don’t believe any of this, but the church always brings me back. ...I don’t think Jesus wants to brush away the paradoxes and mysteries.”

Her lyrics dwell in the parts of Christianity she doesn’t understand. “I don’t want people to think I’ve had an easy time.” She still fights the tendency to go to extremes. “If I’d have been an atheist I’d have been the most obnoxious, Dawkins-loving atheist. I wouldn’t have been like Christopher Hitchens.”

Love that last line -- D1B just landed on the wrong side of the fence.

[Chizzang]

Her lyrics dwell in the parts of Christianity she doesn’t understand. “I don’t want people to think I’ve had an easy time.” She still fights the tendency to go to extremes. “If I’d have been an atheist I’d have been the most obnoxious, Dawkins-loving atheist. I wouldn’t have been like Christopher Hitchens.”[/b][/i]

But for every obnoxious Hitchens there's 30,000,000 religious fanatics
Islam alone has a projected 500 million fundamentalists

[D1B]

Her lyrics dwell in the parts of Christianity she doesn’t understand. “I don’t want people to think I’ve had an easy time.” She still fights the tendency to go to extremes. “If I’d have been an atheist I’d have been the most obnoxious, Dawkins-loving atheist. I wouldn’t have been like Christopher Hitchens.”[/b][/i]

But for every obnoxious Hitchens there's 30,000,000 religious fanatics
Islam alone has a projected 500 million fundamentalists

[D1B]

In a remarkable coincidence (see what I did there, ), a friend just posted this New York Times column on Facebook, published yesterday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/opini ... alone.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Audrey Assad is a Catholic songwriter with a crystalline voice and a sober intensity to her stage presence. (You can see her perform her song “I Shall Not Want” on YouTube.) She writes the sort of emotionally drenched music that helps people who are in crisis. A surprising number of women tell her they listened to her music while in labor.

She had an idyllic childhood in a Protestant sect prone to black-or-white dichotomies. But when she was in her 20s, life’s tragedies and complexities inevitably mounted, and she experienced a gradual erosion of certainty.

She began reading her way through the books on the Barnes & Noble Great Books shelf, trying to cover the ones she missed by not going to college. She loved George Eliot’s “Daniel Deronda” and was taken by Tolstoy. “He didn’t have an easy time encountering himself,” she says, sympathetically. “I was reading my way from darkness into paradox.”

She also began reading theology. She’d never read anything written before 1835. She went back to Augustine (whose phrases show up in her lyrics) and the early church fathers. Denominationally, she went backward in time. She became Baptist, then Presbyterian, then Catholic: “I was ready to be an atheist. I was going to be a Catholic or an atheist. “

She came to feel the legacy of millions of people who had struggled with the same feelings for thousands of years. “I still have routine brushes with agnosticism,” she says. “I still brush against the feeling that I don’t believe any of this, but the church always brings me back. ...I don’t think Jesus wants to brush away the paradoxes and mysteries.”

Her lyrics dwell in the parts of Christianity she doesn’t understand. “I don’t want people to think I’ve had an easy time.” She still fights the tendency to go to extremes. “If I’d have been an atheist I’d have been the most obnoxious, Dawkins-loving atheist. I wouldn’t have been like Christopher Hitchens.”

Love that last line -- D1B just landed on the wrong side of the fence.

Only religious fundamentalists, like you Joe and the dumb/scared person above, think Hitchens is obnoxious.

To you, anyone who challenged the church is obnoxious. The more intelligent, the more obnoxious.

[dbackjon]

He's been hacked by Jon, Klam and D in the space of two days

Whether he's right or wrong, it was a thoughtful, provocative 5 minutes. I agree with Cleetus, it's truly an exciting topic. Why are you afraid of it?

Agree with Kalm and Chizzug

[CID1990]

Whether he's right or wrong, it was a thoughtful, provocative 5 minutes. I agree with Cleetus, it's truly an exciting topic. Why are you afraid of it?

Agree with Kalm and Chizzug

Of course you do

[dbackjon]

That's why I put both ideologies in quotes. You made the point in another thread that there were very few true conservatives around. I agree.

True, but that depends on what makes a true conservative. Consistency?

I mentioned earlier that I could possibly vote for Jerry Brown for President. He's a flaming liberal with a twist: he's fiscally conservative

thats an oxymoron

Let's all say it together: a liberal fiscal conservative

But because fiscal conservatism and domestic manufacturing as a strategic asset are my #1 and #2 priorities (and #3 is so distant as to not bear mentioning), I am willing to overlook Brown's space alien liberalism for someone who might bring some fiscal sanity to the federal government. We'll see who the GOP puts up.

So, there are probably LOTS of conservatives who would say I am not a true conservative. But I would argue that CONSERVATIVE is a label that applies ONLY to fiscal conservatives and rule of law strict contructionists, of which I am both.

All the other attributes that get people labeled as conservative- the social conservatives are just parasites on the ass of conservative principles, which are first and foremost fiscal and 'rule of law' in nature.

On another sports website I frequent, there is a far-right religious nut job that argues that ONLY social conservatives are truly conservative, and that anyone that tolerates gay rights, etc is a fraud if they call themselves a conservative.

[dbackjon]

Agree with Kalm and Chizzug

Of course you do

And of course you posted that

[Grizalltheway]

Of course you do

And of course you posted that

He has a bigger crush on you than Ursus.

[CID1990]

And of course you posted that

He has a bigger crush on you than Ursus.

Hell guys, I just like pie.

you all know that

[Grizalltheway]

He has a bigger crush on you than Ursus.

Hell guys, I just like pie.

you all know that

Does that include chocolate pie?

[CAA Flagship]

Hell guys, I just like pie.

you all know that

Does that include chocolate pie?

White cream you huckleberry.

[CID1990]

Hell guys, I just like pie.

you all know that

Does that include chocolate pie?

Especially chocolate pie

[D1B]

I like Joe's notion of god here. But it's not the focal point of most religions is it?

It is the focal point of some religions, studied more deeply, such as Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, and many of the more closely related Christian religions, such as Episcopalian, Anglican, Methodist, which share a form of apostolic succession with the first century Church. Granted, there are a number of Christian churches outside of this shared succession which demand an unthinking acceptance of Biblical literalism in all respects.

You see, I was at best a cultural Catholic when I went off to college. I stopped attending Church regularly when I was on my own, and didn't really believe in what I had been taught over the years. When I did attend Church in my early college days, it was principally to meet girls at the social hour after the 10 p.m. mass.

But (take notice Cleets & D1B), I became persuaded in the truth of Christianity, and more comfortable with Catholicism (given its more rational acceptance of science, evolution, etc.; its willingness to accept that others outside the Church were saved through the mercy of God, i.e., the faithful act uncharitably when the seek to limit the boundless mercy of God, or to hoard it for themselves) through study of philosophy and world theology. You see, I've already and long ago had the debate Julia suggests in your video, and I conceded I was wrong.

Without going on and on, here is an outline of my process.

I became convinced through my philosophy courses that there had to be a "First Cause" of creation, what Cleets has called the "I Am," which coincidentally (actually, not coincidentally, since there are no coincidences) is the name of God claimed in the Hebrew bible.

Given the existence of the "First Cause," the "I Am", or "God," the question becomes, is God an impersonal force, or a personal force, i.e. more like a being. Now here is where the issue of faith comes in, but I ultimately concluded God had to be a personal force, a being.

Why? Well, first of all, an impersonal force would mean nothing to me. If God was an impersonal force, why would I give a rat's ass about it? And for that matter, why would I even care how the universe was created? After all, I'm just a biological accident, so live it up while I can before I inevitably die. Who cares how I got here, I'm going to die anyway. Who cares about family or other people? I guessed I could feign interest in them in order to promote my own enjoyment, but any expression of affection or love would only be to dupe people into helping me promote my own enjoyment. I guess you can see where this is going. I was genuinely interested into how and why I was here. I genuinely loved and had affection for others; it wasn't a ruse to promote my enjoyment. It seemed to me that I was biologically drawn into being a part of the community of mankind; programmed that way, and that convinced me that God was a personal being.

Next, if a personal being, then how does God manifest himself to us. To make a long story short, I came to believe that a personal God would be the most perfect personal God, and that this suggested that, at some point he would become incarnate. What some writers, most notably Anselm, have called "the necessity of the incarnation." I think you guys would find the writing on this subject very moving and very reassuring. No subject I have ever read about made me feel more happy. You can get a pretty good foundational overview just by googling "the necessity of the incarnation."

So I wound up back in the Catholic Church, for some reasons cited above.

I resisted a lot of this initially. After a few sessions of Introductory Metaphysics, I declared in class that "Metaphysics is bunk." But I ultimately was drawn into the subject more and more, and by the end of the semester I was asking my professor for additional readings. "So, Joe, do you still think metaphysics is bunk?" she asked. And my interest in metaphysics drew me to applications of metaphysics in theology and philosophy, and I took 27 credits in each (three more in either, and I would have doubled majored in one of them).

So I've had the debate and lost.

But I'll concede D1B's point that parents often try to indoctrinate their children with childish explanations of God, and then wonder when they reach the age of reason why they reject these stories. I try to explain to my kids that, whatever they are taught in religion class, the subject of God and his existence is more complicated and these stories are taught to them to help them understand, and nothing more. God is not like Santa Claus sitting on a cloud.

Thanks for tale of your heroic spiritual struggle, but you're putting lipstick on a pig.

Bottom line, you were born into the Catholic Church. If you were born in Saudi Arabia you'd be a Muslim. This alone accounts for 99% of the reason why you're a Christian.