never talk about politics or...

Religeon.

I was hoping to start this thread as a way to explore others people opinions about how the world works. Usually these views are expressed as religeous philosophy or doctrine... or lack thereof. This is a heated subject that strikes at the very core of many. Realizing that.. I want to lay down some ground rules before I begin.


1. Respect. - If you are found to be disrespectful to your fellow Cherubim, as in any other forum on these boards.. you will be asked to leave. If you do not comply.. you will be forcibly thrown out by your ankles. If you return.. you will be beaten with a tree, soaked with Ogre stout.. and set aflame.. You've been warned.

2. a. Questioning. - If you have questions about some other belief or philosophy..ask. Do not however ask biased or rhetorical questions. For example.. One should not ask "What kind of stupid people are atheist?" as this is biased with the opinion that atheist are stupid, and is not a specific question.. it is rhetorical and is not meant to be answered but is intstead an insult... see # 1 above. "please phrase it similar to "Why are some people Atheist?"

2. b. Debating. - If you wish to dispute a topic, please do so by providing information to support your opinion, or providing ideas, thoughts, or evidence that would logically disprove the opposing point of view. In no case may you attack the PERSON you are debating with, or attack a Generalization of the person you are debating.. for instance , you may not use "Religeous people are crazy anyway" as it generalizes a group of people and amounts to no value added to the argument.

3. Voice your beliefs! Feel free to voice your opinions and beliefs, but be prepared to defend and stand by anything you voice, as they WILL be attacked, even if only by the devil's advocate.

4. Keep an open mind. There are alot of different ideas and viewpoints in this world.. hopefully we will get to talk about some of the more interesting ones. You may learn something here.. but only if you keep an open mind to thoughts that are not your own.

Finally, if it turns out that we are unable to have this type of discussion on our boards without it turning into a flame war.. then this thread will be deleted.


Good luck, and happy debating.

James

A couple questions :



1. What if as an atheist you are wrong?

2. Is there a creator? What proof of this is there?


Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
James

James, I would love to have this debate, however; the one thing I've learned in my 27 years is to never talk about religion or politics with friends. Unfortunately, it's the quickest way I've found to lose said friend. And honestly, I don't even talk about religion or politics with my hubby, as we have very different views on both subjects. Like I said, I would love to start the debate on this, but I honestly just can't. Thank you for the very interesting post, though.

Ditto ...



Nicolette
(Game Nurse)

Well, I'll bite. But, I'm not trying to espouse any views. I'll simply work with the questions given. As my extended family is very diverse, we do discuss religion often. With the exception of one member who is an alcoholic with other mental impairments, we all do so without undue rancor. My European friends keep telling me that we Americans (yes, I know we have more than Americans in the guild) should discuss politics more - we might get better at it with practice. However, these questions are strictly religious.

1. This question has a clearly stated premise. The atheist is wrong. Now, opening any discussion up with a premise is not usually good form. However, I'll grant the premise for the point of argument. I think the only response, granting the premise is "Oopsie!" =P

2. Yay! at least it has no stated bias, so is a better opener for discussion. Unfortunately, its HUGE! And, ultimately the answer can only be personal. Where are you in reading historically on the previous approaches? You can start with Plato & Aristotle. Move on to Augustine of Hippo (continuing Plato) and Thomas Aquinas (continuing Aristotle) in western Christianity. For a middle eastern view you can also check out al-Kindi and al-Ghazali. The second is Sufi, and for a trivia item tied to the game, thats the branch of Islam where the dervishes were lifted. From the names of a few dervs in the guild I see that much didn't get past some of you. Going further east, you could also touch on Guru Nanak, who covers less the nature of God, more the nature of religion. I'm not well enough informed to know who would be proper reading on far eastern views. Were you limiting it to just one religion? The hugeness of this question is one reason why Hitchhiker's "The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything" being 42 .. is just so funny!

I have a "higher education" and am a good reader, but reading even summaries of the "basic" religious philosophers starts to make my head hurt! Trying to distill any of that into an answer that would fit into an internet message board post to an unknown audience .. just makes me start giggling at the absurdity of attempting the feat! So, in the absence of limiting guidelines ... I'll go with the "simple answer" of 42.

You did bite, for that I will award points.. you have courage! Kudos to you.

Your reply to question 1 states that there is a premise of the atheist being wrong. Yes I did include that premise, but I do not see how it in any way should affect anyone's ability to answer the question. To answer as a christian I could simply state the idea of what happens to any soul that does not come to know Jesus and repent their sins.

If I were an Atheist I could state that the premise is designed to raise awareness of the risk that the atheist takes by disputing the existance of god. In essence.. an argument from fear. He could then go on to state that he need fear only real risks, and that fearing gods wrath is somewhat akin to fearing Thor's thunder.

Both sides are equally capable of explaining their view of the question, and no bias for either side is implied. You declined to answer the question , which may have been a misunderstanding of the question, or you preferred not to disclose how you would answer the question, for more on that, lets look at your answer to number 2 which holds a remarkable similarity.

2. Yes the topic is huge, there are literally thousands of different opinions on this, and your answer may very well be decided based upon the definition of "creator" Notice the question is purposefully vague so that you can take liberty to voice more of your opinion of the whole universe. Instead of taking that opportunity, you have decided to give us an overview of religeon and its different champions for each viewpoint and philosophy.. carefully selecting the one for yourself as the only one we could not really take seriously.

Well I suppose you could take it seriously.. maybe in another post.

In the meantime, I could try to sum up your beliefs and perhaps you could tell me if I got it right or not.

from the first post, I gathered you didn't like the idea of the built in premise, If you were christian, you may still (based on the rules of argument) have not wanted to answer the question, but I find it is more likely that you chose not to answer a question that seemed to place your views at a disadvantage. SO .. If I had to guess I would think you were either Atheist, Agnostic, or some form of hybrid in between, or just plain unsure. I think that if you were a christian, you would have seized the opportunity to "go forth and spread the word."

The answer to the second question yields similar results, You were non commital which leads me to believe that you are unsure of what you believe.. or you were very hesitant to describe it and explain it to people.. not very characteristic of christians in fact.. almost downright against the bibles teachings, the very notion of accepting 42 as the answer to everything would contradict almost all christian faiths beliefs.

With those two answers back to back I would guess you anopen minded Atheist, or Agnostic..
Am I right?

You dont have to answer.. that's just my personal opinion of your replies.

If you have any doubt at this point.. I am a strong Atheist, I believe there is Not a God, as opposed to weak Atheism that simply lacks a belief in god. My position is somewhat harder to defend in that I hold the burden of proving my posit, where a weak atheist holds no such burden of proof.. he simply thinks there is no proof of the existance of god. I hold that there is proof that God does not exist. A very fine distinction between the two, but one that is essential to understand when asking me about my beliefs.

Thank you for taking the time to reply Ahou, I look forward to your respone.

James

@ Marie & Nurse

I think that your suffering from PTAD Post traumatic Argument Disorder.. this happens when people are exposed to debates with other people where the other person was not forced to respect the opinion of the other side. This causes the person to avoid those types of situations where it may occur again. Unfortunately they should be avoiding those types of people.. not the arguments themselves. It takes some people years to successfully learn the distinction and return to open minded discussion

Marie, You stated that these conversations were with friends..and that it was a quick way to lose them... It is my position that if talking about religeon or politics with them caused them to think differently of you, they were never a true friend to begin with.. they were at best associates. You won't lose any friends here for voicing an opinion, We love you!

James

The subject of religion and politics has always, and will always, be a slippery slope. Someone will say something that will offend another and it will just go down hill from there.

I've always believed in freedom of religion, and freedom from religion. I've never had a problem with trying to "support" their cause, but it's a total turn off to me when someone tries to persuade me to their beliefs, or preaches to me. It also irritates me that some people use others emotions to convince them into a certain belief. That emotion being fear.

I'm not a religious man, and I never looked down on those who are religious. But I've noticed that devote "whatever" do tend to think less of those who hold no strong belief, or so they think. At least, those are my personal experiences with living in a state like Iowa and being in the military for a relatively short time.

Aeternalia, I First would like to say
1- never assume someone's religion (that's just asking for it)
Future tips(not accusing you of anything here)-
1- never ask about religion with a closed mind
2- never criticize someone based on their religion

and Aternallia not trying to be mean or criticize you but be helpful.

on a slightly different topic-

Last thing I would like to say some of my friends are devout Muslim i will not specify what branch,some of my friends are devout conservative Christians and some like me are just not very religious Christians. We ALL get along with each other we are actually very good friends and the trick religious tolerance. Just thought you might find that interesting.


-ternnel

Similar situation to Jebus. But replace "military life" with "having gone to a Christian school from the age of 5 to age 17" for me. Turned me off to practicing religion to a degree, i.e.: I'm non-devout. People can believe what they want, I will tolerate it. But mostly everyone can agree in one way or another that Scientology is a crock of bull. My reasons for being non-devout is that I was raised in a non-devout household. The only time we prayed was on holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. As I've mentioned, I was sent to a Christian school. I'm not a big fan of the place, since it is ran by 2 generations of the same family. But I won't go into why I don't like the place right now.

As for politics, I'm independent and really don't care. Both sides have good points, but try to tear each other a new bunghole over their bad points. I'll stop here since the "me on politics" topic can get me in some DEEP trouble, one way or another.

On the subject of all-knowing deities and an afterlife, it is meant to be the greatest unknown to mankind. Even more so than intelligent life on alien planets. If there is a god or a group of gods, they make their presence completely unknown to us. If they do, we can try to comprehend it, but mostly fail to do so. There is some form of an afterlife, since there are some unexplained phenomenon in the world. One case in particular that I can think of right now is the handprint on the wall of an old jail cell. You can Google that, since it takes a while to type out; entire story and shortened version.

This is my take on things in a nutshell. Well, as close of a nutshell as I can get it right now.

(PS: How is it that I can ASK for a post to be removed and it isn't, but I start stepping on people's toes with something I said, they choose remove it unless I edit it? Sorry, but I have to ask this.)

@ Jebus - thanks for the comments and experiences! Ihave some thoughts about the whole fear thing and its role in development of religeon.. maybe we can get to those after everyone settles into the debate.

@ Terrnel - 1) did I assume someone's religeon? I had to go back re-read my post to make sure I did not.. I was just stating an opinion of what I thought was likely .. based off of Ahou's comments. I could be completely wrong.. and have no idea what actual religeon Ahou is or is not. The whole post was intended to try to get her to actually comment on what she thought of it all .. her opinions on it. (other than the whole 42 thing ). I cant argue with Religeon exists in many forms.. (she's right). I can argue with ..I am an Atheist (Take a stand )

2) I agree with number 2.. Im not sure if your saying I was being closed minded or not.. but I will take it one step further.. never do anything with a closed mind! Having an opinon and being closed minded are two different things, I wonder if you have them confused there? I would love to hear it if you believe I was being closed minded.

3) Never criticize someone based on their religeon.. I have a different opinion there. While this might be correct in the domain of etiquette, I have to disagree that a persons religeon and the religeon by extension, should not be criticized. How else are we to discuss and decide about the hard issues in life? They must be exposed to the light, and critiqued for their shortcomings as well as praised for their merits, then the two weighed against each other. I feel that religeon falls into the same category as every other topic and must be scrutinized just the same.. now if you meant to say "You should not discriminate based on religeon" .. thats a different story.

I too have many friends that are Christian, some attend church 3 times a week and try to get me to go with them.. others rarely attend.. (easter and christmas) I dont know any muslims , but would like to.. and we all get along very well. Tolerance is a good thing to a certain degree. Thanks for putting up your comments !


@ Andrew - The idea of generalizing a specific group of people or an organization and insulting them as a group is simply unacceptable behavior. Rule # 2 (A and B) above
clearly states that this type of attack is not allowed. Please edit your post Or I will remove your post from the forum. You have 24 hours.

Other than the comment about scientology.. I would love to hear about your view of how it all works.. how we came to be.. you have rejected organized religeon, but you fail to state whether you believe in a god, or whether we are spiritual in nature. What do you think on these questions?



James

Bah, I play this game to GET AWAY from reality.

In my profession you get used to respecting and understanding everyone's belief system. You never offer your own personal morality, even when asked, and you certainly never debate.

Usually when matters such as these come up, it is when the family is in the middle of a serious crisis and need non judgemental, non critical, completely open unconditional regard.

My job is to be a conduit between the family and every single other health professional out there, most especially the physicians. I am in my patient's court no matter what I believe or personally wish. And that leads to a LOT of ethical dilemmas each and every day. SO for me, this thread just looks like more work *grin*.

So no, I am not afraid of voicing my opinion... I am merely not interested in voicing it.

NOW if you wish to talk things like: The importance of vaccines, or the benefits of needle exchange, or palliative care and pain medications, or where health care dollars should be spent, or even horse slaughter... I am all over it...but not religion or politics....EVER.



Nicolette
(Game Nurse)

Well, I suppose I'll bite at this topic a tad. Just to provide some "religious background," I'll mention that I was raised United Methodist Christian, but have friends from many different religious backgrounds. However, I consider myself a strongly scientific/logic-oriented individual. As such, I would describe my beliefs as an Agnostic Theist. I recognize that there is a lack of evidence to conclusively prove or disprove the existence of a God or Gods, but choose to believe that there is, knowing that it is merely a belief and not fact. Also, I believe if there is a "higher power," it is most likely outside of contemporary/scientific human understanding and thus all religious beliefs are equally plausible (they are all human opinion regarding an indescribable entity or entities, or in the case of atheism, the lack thereof).

So with that in mind, my opinions regarding the original questions:

1) Well, then I guess it depends on what this deity, or these deities, are like. Since there really is no way of conclusively knowing what any deity is like, this question simply remains an unknown. However, since it *is* an unknown, there really is no point dwelling on this thought in day-to-day life as it simply leads to needless fretting or doubt. If one is an atheist and it turns out they were wrong, then I guess they'd find out soon enough what God is really like. :p

2) It is my belief that the universe and the matter in it came from somewhere or something, but it is my opinion that it is impossible to truly know the nature of this "creator" and is equally impossible to prove it. However, It is difficult for me to imagine the universe simply "being". Modern scientific theory can calculate very nearly to a "beginning" of our universe, though quantum gravitational theory needs some further advancement to calculate the exact beginning prior to the Planck era (and it may end up that time is in fact infinite, though current general relativity theory can be used to calculate an approximate moment when time began). All sorts of theories describe the "laws" of the natural universe, but they don't explain why these laws apply. As such, it seems to me that there may well be unobservable phenomena outside of the natural universe responsible for the constants in this universe and the energy/matter within it, which to me is the definition if a supernatural force or entity, or what many call a "God" or "Creator". However, since we cannot observe or describe anything outside our natural universe, this again remains an "unknown".

So yeah, basically I think there's a lot of stuff humans will never really understand. :p

EDIT: I should mention that while I believe all religious beliefs regarding the unobservable universe (God, any afterlife, etc) are equally plausible, I still believe certain religious aspects regarding morality and views on the observable universe hold different amounts of merit. That is the main reason I do not subscribe to a form of organized religion, as I have personal views on morality and choose to allow science to describe the observable universe.

James,

I am very strong in my beliefs. I will never preach them or try to persuade anyone to agree with me, but there are many times that my beliefs (or lack there of) are frowned upon. This is not only by friends, but also by my family. I am a very vocal person, who usually says what I think. In this instance, I have to refreain from doing that. I am not much for debates, but when you get me started, it's hard to get me to stop. It's not out of fear that I do not post my beliefs; instead it's out of respect for the guild and for other peoples' beliefs, as well. Yes, I have lost very good friends debating (no raised voices, no argueing on my part) both religion and politics. Due to that fact, I keep my views to myself and avoid discussing them. And as I said in my last post, even my husband and I do not discuss them, as our views are very different and we have learned that it is much easier not to spend time focusing on them. I love the fact that you're posting this question, and i've loved the debate so far.

I thought at one point about not posting this thread to begin with.. I even hesitated before pressing the SEND button. In the end my love of debate and arguing got the best of me and may have overshadowed my ideas of what is best for the guild. It has been shown here that we CAN have a civilized debate, and that there are some very intelligent, well thought out ideas here in the minds of our guild. It took me a while to come to the conclusion that even though we can do something, it may not be the best idea to do it.

I would love to hear all about your personal beliefs, and will personally invite anyone to PM me with your thoughts about the way things are, but I think that this would be better acomplished in private, in between the people that are interested in investigating others ideas.

Thank you for your support in this debate. It was fun an enlightening to hear your thoughts...

@ marie -- I hope some day you will find the people that have the strength to accept you the way you are, not judge you, and love you still the same. I hope when you do , you have the strength to trust them, confide in them, and love them back.

@ Andrew -- thanks for posting the thoughts, and editing your post in a timely fashion.. Im not sure where you requested to have a post deleted.. but If I missed that it was not intentional. Thanks for contributing.

@ Ternnel -- Call me out anytime man, I appreciate you keeping me honest and upright.

@ Ahou -- Thanks for breaking the ice in the first place.. that took guts.

@ Jebus -- good thoughts man.. I still have more to say to you someday.

@ Nurse -- I think you were right. This isn't the place.


James