the *** sex & religion thread (gospel, Religious, cover, quote)

[cardboard adolescent]

a big part of the religious experience is fear, it has nothing to do
with scaring people into believing, but that belief is somewhat scary
if i told you, truly believing it
(which i never would)
that you should believe in God or he'll send you to hell,
I would tell you this for your own sake, because i believe it to be true
and because i don't want you to suffer,
not because i think the idea will scare you into believing.
but since i'm not saying that it doesn't really matter

as far as the whole emptiness thing goes...
i guess you have to be "sensitive" in some sense
to philosophical or religious issues for it to have any bearing
meaning isn't a problem for a lot of people

[Guybrush]

Religion are lots of ideas put together that form a greater whole. People can either believe or not believe in it and if they do, they can spread it to others, so religion is in a sense able to replicate. That means that there will be a selection towards having ideas that make people believe. The idea that you will suffer consequences for not believing fits right in and should raise the religions survivability and seriously, if you removed all religions and let them evolve over again, you would expect this idea to reappear in most.

If you think people without religious faith are more senseless than yourself or others who have faith, I expect it's because you have to extrapolate yourself to imagine people without faith. I'm guessing that when you try to imagine how it is to be an atheist, you think "what would my life be like if I had no faith?".

If it's so, then that would be faulty thinking. Where some people fill their lives with faith, I have filled it with something else. I'm not a person who has less of anything, but this seems to be a prevailing idea with many religious people.

[cardboard adolescent]

well what would be the purpose of a belief if it had no consequences? i guess that's the real difference between philosophy and religion

i don't think people without religious faith are more senseless
than those who have faith, which is not what i meant at all
by my "sensitivity" comment, what i was trying to say
is that some people are more concerned with living in
harmony with their beliefs and having a coherent position and such
whereas other people are more interested in 'life' than 'ideas'

i don't have to try to imagine what it's like to be an atheist,
i was an atheist most of my life, trying to make it a coherent
position eventually lead me to nihilism, which set me up
for some interesting religious experiences
truth for me is very personal,
i just like to encourage the idea that the scientific worldview
is a dead end

[Guybrush]

As you know, I'm doing biology and I find it explains so much about not just plants, fungi, animals and where they came from, but also where we come from, why we behave the way we do and why we think the things we think. It can even explain concepts like religion.

I do believe in the scientifically accepted truths. Science is not dogma, so of course I'm prepared for and expect that things I believe in will change in time as science advances. Being an atheist and not believing in anything at all would probably make me nihilistic too. So far, that hasn't been the case.

[cardboard adolescent]

To what extent do you believe in something if you accept that that belief could be nullified at some later date? To a completely indeterminate extent, really. You're better off saying you believe in the scientific method, rather than specific scientific truths. But in that regard science is somewhat dogmatic, in that it requires an unquestioned basis for validating or legitimizing scientific truths.

ultimately though, i think the scientific method is a
path of approaching reality, in the same way that
religion is a path of approaching reality.
religion worships mystery,
whereas science chases after it
the profound truths of biology are
basic insights into life that have
been phrased in a new language
things sustain themselves, they diversify,
they enter into conflict with other things
everything seems to run in parallel
on various levels, everything is interconnected,
everything unfolds from a source
these are scientific, philosophical and religious
truths and each handles them differently.

i think because science tends to avoid dealing with
purely subjective experiences, like love for instance,
that it is restricted to a certain sphere of reality
whereas religion or poetry or art relate to other spheres
but if you limit yourself to one of these approaches
you lose sight of the bigger picture, so to speak

[Guybrush]

I don't believe it will be nullified. Nullification is dramatic and hardly ever happens, it's more often modified. For example, the age of our planet can be modified if research reveals it should be a little bit older than what we thought. That's no hard mental adjustment. As for nullification, while I don't believe any of my core beliefs will be nullified, I accept that they can be and I hope I would welcome it, but again - nullification is only part of my belief when you're at the very fringes of the things I believe in where belief turns more into speculation. Physics for example, is lacking some crucial theory at the moment.

And yes, the scientific method is flawed. Let's say there are people who can heal others by laying hands, but they're only an average of 10% better at it than people who don't have this gift. Science would have a hard time figuring that out because the trend is so slight. However, it could get there eventually, maybe not by testing healers but perhaps by discovering new capabilities of the human body or mind. As you say, there are many ways to peel an onion.

Science not dealing with subjective experiences like love is not something I agree with (of course, biology deals with it). Maybe your knowledge of how science has approached those kinds of experiences is limited. However, I can accept that science as a whole may seem as a kind of cold, emotionless thinking machine to people outside it. That is, of course, because science has it's own ethics that want to exclude human weaknesses from corrupting it. You don't want a new medicine on the market based on fabricated test-results because professor Hamill was feeling impatient.

You're writing about different spheres of reality. Of course science deals mostly with finding the truth that is true for everyone. Other spheres of reality should be things that are true for you and perhaps you only. Take for example communication on different levels, like the feeling of connection or understanding you can feel with an artist when you look at his or her painting (you use art and poetry as examples). Although very few scientists are religious (at least here), I'm sure many appreciate art for the same reasons you do. You don't have to shut out everything else just because you're a scientist.



As a digression, some think that science can be something to fall back on for atheists or if you lose your faith. That's part true, but just like people are not born knowing who Jesus is, people are not born knowing science either. You need to study it. Before, people didn't have the choice to learn science .. there was religion or nothing.

[iksosept]

Originally Posted by cardboard adolescent

if i told you, truly believing it
(which i never would)
that you should believe in God or he'll send you to hell,
I would tell you this for your own sake, because i believe it to be true

I never really understood that part of religion. As Toretorden says (I think he did) I think that's just one those parts, that help a religion to survive.

I could never live my life believing in God, something that seems logical to me as an idea people invented to feel secure and better (especially with things, we as human will probably never understand. see below), and therefore forget that this is the only life we have. We should live it to the fullest. And that doesn't mean we don't follow moral ideas - as said in the ethics topic, living by the golden rule is something good.

Now the thing I don't understand. Why would god in all his greatness and justice, only reward those after death, that believed in him. Sounds really selfish to me. Wouldn't he just reward those, that lived a good life in general regarless of their beliefs?


on a side note: concerning the things we'll never understand
I just read in some philosophy book:

Men are ony capable of percieving, what their device of recognition, that has emerged from evolutionary competition, permits them to be able to recognise. Like any other animal, humans shape the world, based on the insights that their senses and their conciousness allow them. Even the most abstract things we have to see or read as signs to conceive them.
There have been eternities in which there were no human beings. When they're gone again, nothing will really have changed. Because there is no further mission for the human intellect than within the lives of human. The intellect is just human, and only his owner and creator sees it so declamatory, as if the world turns around himself.

In an unaware and arrogant way a human being judges the world he lives in, following the logic and trueness of the human species. But as an animal his thoughts are also determined by his instincts, his primitive volition and his limited capability of perception.

The human being and his actions aren't the purpose of evolution. the term "purpose" itself is suspect - Goals are human categories of thinking, they're bound to typically human notion of time, like "meaning" or "progress". But nature is a matter of Chemistry, Physics and Biology.


so yeah, I found those parts interesting.
I thinks that supports the concept of human beings being limited, but with an urge to understand everything. And as soon as you don't understand, there comes God.

[The Robot Hunter]

Faith > Religion AND Faith =/= Religion. There are things that Christianity (the religion) sometimes teach that have nothing to do with Christian faith because faith is an indefinable sense or feeling and religion is like taking a machete to it. People gain faith or an insight or understanding and then spend most of the rest of their time trying to prove it right, or putting rules and limitations on it so that we can understand it and so we can make other people agree with us.

Jesus didn't want people to go to hell, he wanted us to have a relationship with Him. Again, I'm not pretending to be a theologian but from what I've read of the New Testament Jesus very rarely mentions hell. He mostly dealt with problems that we have as being humans keeping us from a relationship with Him. One of the problems he talked about was that in the Old Testament people thought: "I have to do A, B, and C, or I am going to hell," and He tried to change that perception, but now a majority of Christians think "I have to believe A, B, and C, or I am going to hell," or even worse evangelicals: "You have to believe A, B, and C or you are going to hell."

I'm just trying to say that there are a lot of misconceptions about Christianity because (some) evangelical Christians preach what I call the "gospel of death" (believe this or you're going to hell) instead of the gospel of truth or love. If you look at Christian forums a good portion of it is talking about hell, but why should Christians be so concerned about hell? My guess it's that we are afraid of being wrong, and what religion teaches is if you're wrong you're going to hell. I think if people would believe in their faith more (a personal experience) than in religion (human's trying to define faith) Christianity would be a lot less... scary.

And to say that I'm a Christian and believe in God doesn't mean that I don't believe in science. I believe in God but I also believe in people and it's truly amazing what we've accomplished as a human race and it would be stupid to say that all science is wrong and demonic. I saw a guy on a local television station here trying to prove that God exists by disproving that science is valid, but again he's just one of the guys that has missed the point and the only reason he's on tv is because people love to see their beliefs reinforced by other people.

[Kamikazi Kat]

Originally Posted by The Robot Hunter

Faith > Religion AND Faith =/= Religion. There are things that Christianity (the religion) sometimes teach that have nothing to do with Christian faith because faith is an indefinable sense or feeling and religion is like taking a machete to it. People gain faith or an insight or understanding and then spend most of the rest of their time trying to prove it right, or putting rules and limitations on it so that we can understand it and so we can make other people agree with us.

Jesus didn't want people to go to hell, he wanted us to have a relationship with Him. Again, I'm not pretending to be a theologian but from what I've read of the New Testament Jesus very rarely mentions hell. He mostly dealt with problems that we have as being humans keeping us from a relationship with Him. One of the problems he talked about was that in the Old Testament people thought: "I have to do A, B, and C, or I am going to hell," and He tried to change that perception, but now a majority of Christians think "I have to believe A, B, and C, or I am going to hell," or even worse evangelicals: "You have to believe A, B, and C or you are going to hell."

I'm just trying to say that there are a lot of misconceptions about Christianity because (some) evangelical Christians preach what I call the "gospel of death" (believe this or you're going to hell) instead of the gospel of truth or love. If you look at Christian forums a good portion of it is talking about hell, but why should Christians be so concerned about hell? My guess it's that we are afraid of being wrong, and what religion teaches is if you're wrong you're going to hell. I think if people would believe in their faith more (a personal experience) than in religion (human's trying to define faith) Christianity would be a lot less... scary.

And to say that I'm a Christian and believe in God doesn't mean that I don't believe in science. I believe in God but I also believe in people and it's truly amazing what we've accomplished as a human race and it would be stupid to say that all science is wrong and demonic. I saw a guy on a local television station here trying to prove that God exists by disproving that science is valid, but again he's just one of the guys that has missed the point and the only reason he's on tv is because people love to see their beliefs reinforced by other people.

Exactly. I don't dislike the faith itself, but how people have used it to control and gain power. or Instead of being something that is personal like it should be, it seems to be something where people try to set these standards and rules, and try to force them on everybody else. Religion seems to be something where people are just trying to get more followers, gain power.

I hate the way religion has been used as an excuse to go into wars, a way to control people, something that has always blocked the free thought of those that try to make advances in human knowledge in areas such as science. It seems to me that religion was something with a good intention to unite communities, promote morals and many other things, but has been corrupted by those who take advantage of its power, and those who blindly follow every word they read in the Bible. I'm not saying that the Bible is just a bunch of bull, from the little I know about it, it seems to have a good intention of teaching lessons and morals, trying to make humanity better. People who blindly follow pretty much anything else also bother me, its not just religion. People that follow anything, choose an opinion, and then strike down anybody else to disagrees bothers me, that includes Science and pretty much everything else.

The individual is too rare. People are either not thinking and just following, or are leading the followers. Everything is just a big war between opposing sides where there a few leaders, with a bunch of blind followers preaching their beliefs every chance they get. Its a power struggle.