Religions?

[Kasimir]

It's a worry about where goodness comes from in relation to God. If we go back to the monotheistic, Judeo-Christian-type god, then that god is all-knowing, all-powerful, and absolutely, perfectly good and benevolent. But then the question becomes: is there an objective standard of goodness that exists independent of God? Well, why would someone deny that there is one? Motivations might include: if God, too, is bound by an objective and external set of morals, then it seems as though God isn't really all-powerful or sovereign. So maybe we might (at first blush) want to evade this by committing to the view that there is no higher set of moral laws that exist above and beyond God and that bind him. But then: If you deny there is such a set of higher and (metaphysically) objective moral laws and suggest goodness must emanate from God (for instance, because God knows and commands what is good), then that's where you run into the worry I think Young Bard is suggesting:

 

Well, what about a universe in which God makes highly trivial commands that we find counterintuitive and not at all good? What about a universe in which God commanded someone to punch the person next to them in the face? Wouldn't that still be good because the Supremely Good being has decreed it?

 

As you can tell, Young Bard's worry makes the implicit assumption that theists subscribe to what we refer to as (the strong version of) the Divine Command Theory, where things are made ethical because God wills it (to put it very crudely.) Obviously, not all theists think of it that way. Of course, evading it presents the theist with some other difficulties. But that's for another discussion entirely

[Orlion Blight]

What's interesting when talking about morality is that it is based on our experiences, the world we live in... or a infinitismally small portion of Creation. Any of our systems of morality does not take into account responsibilities the creation and maintaining of a Universe would entail... just whatever petty squabbles we have. In other words, our moralities might work great in the immediate world, but applied more broadly they would fail much like Newtonian physics fails on the huge or small spectrum of the Universe. 

 

Trying to contemplate the motives of a God would be like an amoeba trying to contemplate the motives of a lumberjack. The world both inhabit are so different, the inherent hardware to observe and interact with the world so divergent, that the amoeba could not come even close to getting the size, shape, and personality of the lumberjack to be accurate.

 

That's how I view it, anyway. God would not necessarily be beyond Good and Evil, but it's certainly beyond human good and evil.

[Zas678]

There's been a lot of very interesting discussion here, and I've really enjoyed reading it.

 

I'm a Mormon, and I quite enjoy my lifestyle. I feel like when I do the things that helps me feel close to God, I feel better and I am a better person. I actually served as a missionary in Peru for two years, trying to help others to do the same (which many of you know). 

 

As for the morality and God, the way I personally see it is that there is a Good outside of God, but that God's commands will always end up aligning with that Good- it's a qualification in fact. There are some people that go into deeper mechanics on why that is, but that's another thing entirely. 

 

I guess another way of saying it is that "God wills what he wills because it is ethical." Now some people look at some things (especially the Old Testament in the Christian Bible) and say "How are those things ethical?" The truth is, we don't have the whole story. There's so many details and things missing- we don't know exactly what happened. 

 

For me, this is how my mind resolves the "God determining what is good." issue. 

 

 

 

As for hymns, I also love the traditional 4 part "classical" hymns. They're often associated with certain emotions for me- sometimes a memory. Some help me to feel respectful of Him and what he's done, others make me feel enthusiastic about being alive, and others are admittedly boring to me. But I can definitely see how someone who doesn't believe those things would feel uncomfortable singing. 

 

 

 

Also, TheYoungBard, there is a popular Primary song (Sunday School for kids 4-11) that has those lyrics. Here it is, if you're interested.  Once for a family reunion my family changed the words to the song so it talked about our grandpa, and so now the lyrics mesh and mingle with each other so I can't sing either way entirely correct.

[Kobold King]

No, because that's not how morals and opinions work. Just because someone exists, doesn't make them right. I'm not saying they're evil, or I outright hate them either, it's just that, for me, their good deeds don't add up to the things i think were wrong of them to do. No one is inherently evil, but few people are completely good, either. And so far, none of the gods I have ever heard of, read about, or been told about make that list of the few. I would say Jesus is in that few, but after 2,000 years, it's hard not to be critical of the story (and I don't mean just his, I'm critical of history in general (the farther back, the more critical.)) But even if I was convinced he was real, I'm not sure if worshiping is the proper way to uphold someone you idolize, someone you thought was great. The best way to remember that person is to try and do the good things that person did.

 

And you can see where this becomes a problem, because that may work well with someone who idolizes Jesus, but when it comes to certain other worshiped figures, if you actually tried to do the things they did, this would be a horrifying and chaotic world. People doing everything they can to corrupt language (God (see Tower of Babel lines in Genesis,)) warlords rampaging across multiple worlds, usually crazed in most descriptions (many Greek and Nordic gods,) or doing everything in your power to destroy other peoples' faiths (St. Patrick in Ireland.)

 

And now we come to my point. For the most part, the things these people did were not wholly good. In the case of St. Patrick, they were outright awful. These are things we as a globalized society condemn other people for doing today, because they are, widely agreed upon, pretty awful things to do to another human being. they're so awful, they hardly ever happen. But when they do, that person is called out almost instantly, because we all know that the acts of most of the people we idolize were not completely good. Instead, most people tend to pick out the good things (which is a healthy mindset to have) and try to emulate those acts, or at least uphold them as examples of what is good.

 

To answer your question: no. And everyone, including people who worship these figures, the people who are certain they existed, has that instinct, whether they realize it or not. Never in a million years would pillaging a town go over well in today's world, I doubt it went over well when it happened. It is, for most people, not even an act that would cross their minds. However, not only did it cross His, but He acted on it. Most people cut this out, and instead uphold the artistic stories of Him. People go on to create things. and again, this is a healthy mindset to have, because it's correct: no one is always in the right, but when they are those good traits are healthy ones to adopt, and you can do it without doing the bad stuff as well.

 

That's how morality and opinions work. When you believe a deity exists, you can choose the things you think were right. No one is evil, and when a good deed is done it is up to the individual to decide whether they think it amounts to what they believe were bad deeds. That is how morality and opinions work.

 

 

Nait, I totally understand your point of view. If I believed God were exactly how some Christians have depicted him over the years, I would not be a Christian. I believe there is an inherent morality to the universe, and an entity that is all-powerful but displays cruelty would be no more worthy of worship than Cthulhu.

 

I believe, wholeheartedly, that God epitomizes morality. That is why I worship him--because I choose to believe that the universe is not random but was formed by the Hand of an invisible but loving Creator. A Creator that was so kind, when His children rejected His utopian vision for the universe He instantly conceived of a plan to bring them back to paradise. A Creator who spent millennia guiding a tribe of people, despite the atrocities they committed. A Creator who ultimately took the tiny, frail form of one of His creations, solely so He could tell them to be nice to each other before they brutally murdered Him.

 

There are parts of the Bible I don't understand, but I fully believe God to be a moral entity. The Old Testament is an ancient but confusing work, and it's often hard to separate the will of God from the atrocious deeds the Israelites took it upon themselves to commit.

 

What I focus on is the New Testament, in which Jesus makes it clear what He expects from us: for us to treat our neighbors like we'd like to be treated ourselves. This, in my opinion, is the epitome of morality. A religion that demanded us to harm others or wallow in our own selfishness would be a travesty to be opposed by any means possible, but Christianity, at its core, is centered around caring for others.

 

It can be corrupted. I would never argue this point. More than a few of the preachers and saints throughout history have committed truly heinous acts with the claim that they were doing God's work. And the worst part is that those who have corrupted the faith have also created rather unsightly doctrines that present God as an unloving and callous being. In my experience, such as it is, many atheists and antitheists have been faced with this picture of God rather than the loving and all-embracing one that I grew up with. 

 

Whether this is the case with you or not, I hope I've successfully made a case for Christianity not as a crowd of sheep blindly following a cruel master, but as a herd following a kind shepherd to greener pastures, their only commandment to be as soft and gentle to their fellow sheep as the shepherd has been to them.

[Mistrunner]

 

Nait, I totally understand your point of view. If I believed God were exactly how some Christians have depicted him over the years, I would not be a Christian. I believe there is an inherent morality to the universe, and an entity that is all-powerful but displays cruelty would be no more worthy of worship than Cthulhu.

 

I believe, wholeheartedly, that God epitomizes morality. That is why I worship him--because I choose to believe that the universe is not random but was formed by the Hand of an invisible but loving Creator. A Creator that was so kind, when His children rejected His utopian vision for the universe He instantly conceived of a plan to bring them back to paradise. A Creator who spent millennia guiding a tribe of people, despite the atrocities they committed. A Creator who ultimately took the tiny, frail form of one of His creations, solely so He could tell them to be nice to each other before they brutally murdered Him.

 

There are parts of the Bible I don't understand, but I fully believe God to be a moral entity. The Old Testament is an ancient but confusing work, and it's often hard to separate the will of God from the atrocious deeds the Israelites took it upon themselves to commit.

 

What I focus on is the New Testament, in which Jesus makes it clear what He expects from us: for us to treat our neighbors like we'd like to be treated ourselves. This, in my opinion, is the epitome of morality. A religion that demanded us to harm others or wallow in our own selfishness would be a travesty to be opposed by any means possible, but Christianity, at its core, is centered around caring for others.

 

It can be corrupted. I would never argue this point. More than a few of the preachers and saints throughout history have committed truly heinous acts with the claim that they were doing God's work. And the worst part is that those who have corrupted the faith have also created rather unsightly doctrines that present God as an unloving and callous being. In my experience, such as it is, many atheists and antitheists have been faced with this picture of God rather than the loving and all-embracing one that I grew up with.

 

Whether this is the case with you or not, I hope I've successfully made a case for Christianity not as a crowd of sheep blindly following a cruel master, but as a herd following a kind shepherd to greener pastures, their only commandment to be as soft and gentle to their fellow sheep as the shepherd has been to them.

 

Aw, Kobold, that's sweet. 

 

I'd like to add here my response to people who say things like "How could He let infants die and people kill each other in wars?" Well, as always, we have agency, which means we can choose to be good and do good things or we can choose to try and take over the world like Hitler did. And in my church, we believe that infants who die what seems like much too soon were too pure and too holy to go through this world that has so many bad things in it and were called home early. And it can be really really hard to push through, but we will see them again. It's just so wonderful to know that all the people we love we will see again.

 

So, that's what I believe. I'd like to say again... it's absolutely amazing that a thread on religion- normally a very heated topic- can be this civil. I love all of you people. You're awesome.

[Chaos]

I can't say about any "goodness" outside of gods, but that would be more because I don't think "good" or "evil" are even useful concepts.

However, there's certainly truth totally independent of any divinity. Mathematics is a purely human constructed set of things that will always be true (and it is constructed. Mathematicians make up definitions, and from those, derive truth).

The fact that religious texts, the divine inspired truths, lacks mathematics, which will be forever true, regardless of religion, regardless of if we are all dead... It bothers me a lot. These books should contain these eternal truths, and they don't.

And the best part is that mathematical proof is the strongest way humans have to be totally and completely sure of anything No faith required. It is true, and will be forever, and everyone can read the true steps to derive such conclusions. I frankly find it much more powerful that humanity can come up with such rigor, such knowledge, with purely our own mental fortitude.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles]

I can't say about any "goodness" outside of gods, but that would be more because I don't think "good" or "evil" are even useful concepts.

However, there's certainly truth totally independent of any divinity. Mathematics is a purely human constructed set of things that will always be true (and it is constructed. Mathematicians make up definitions, and from those, derive truth).

The fact that religious texts, the divine inspired truths, lacks mathematics, which will be forever true, regardless of religion, regardless of if we are all dead... It bothers me a lot. These books should contain these eternal truths, and they don't.

And the best part is that mathematical proof is the strongest way humans have to be totally and completely sure of anything No faith required. It is true, and will be forever, and everyone can read the true steps to derive such conclusions. I frankly find it much more powerful that humanity can come up with such rigor, such knowledge, with purely our own mental fortitude.

 

Maybe math isn't found in religious texts because it's one of those things a divine being would simply expect humans to take as a given? There's nothing about the sky being blue, or grass being green, or the sun being warm in the Bible at least, and I think it's because that's one of those things God thought we were smart enough to figure out on our own. I think religious texts aim to teach adherents about morals and the history of their religion. Math, like the color of the sky, is one thing that doesn't need to be factored into a religion, because it is true apart from religion. It's a part of our world. 

 

Anyway, I think that leaving math out of the Bible was one way God showed he thought we were smart—he left it out, so we could figure it out on our own. That's how I choose to look at it, anyway.  

[The One Who Reads]

First of all well done to the people of this forum for probably the most polite conversation about religion I have seen online (and more pleasant than some I have had the misfourtune to hear in real life).
 
I do have one point to make however about the poll, Buddhism unlike many other religions is not exclusive and does not deal directly with the notion of God(s) and/or Goddess(es). I for example fall into both the Athiest and Buddhist catagories but I have know many Christians who after hearing the five precepts have begun identifying as Buddhist. I don't want people to think I am complaining about the poll however, it is a pleasant suprise to see Buddhism get its own option.

 

 

 

I wanted to see whether Brandon's books were more likely to be read by a certain religion.

 

Well I don't think we make up a large portion of his reader base, but Brandon's very self-reflective characters like Elend, Hrathren, Hoid and curiously Dalinar and Szeth resonate very strongly with a Buddhist. I don't suggest I agree with their choices, as all of them subscibe to the belief that killing can be justified. But in Buddhism 'breaking' the precepts isn't a 'sin' to be judged, the solution we believe in is not to ask for forgiveness for causing harm but to think on how to prevent further harm occuring. (sorry I know that sounds like I think non-buddhists would simply pray and keep commiting harm, it is not what I mean or think) These characters all care very deeply about something they did, thinking on that event or deciscion changes them on a vey deep level. I think a lot of Buddhists would enjoy Brandon's work if the they were not predjudiced against the fantasy genre as 'glorifying violence'.

[Kaymyth]

My mom actually made a series of half-hearted attempts to raise me Christian.  When I was a kid, we never went to church, but she'd send me to these day-long camps with the kids of friends of hers that taught Bible stuff.  Only I had no real context for what was going on, so I didn't really grok any of it.  I remember feeling like I was the only kid who didn't already know everything the teachers were talking about as we bounced from station to station doing craft stuff based on different stories.  I was annoyed, too, that nobody seemed to think that it was important to explain what the different characters in the stories had to do with each other.  Where did this Moses guy figure in that Joseph dude with the crazy-colored coat?  Was that the same Joseph as the Jesus story?  If not, what kind of author uses the same name for multiple characters?

 

In other words, my 8-year-old self was convinced that it was all some sort of weird, excerpt-happy book club for a book that nobody had given me to read or offered any context to understand.  I hadn't even grasped the concept of it all being a religion, or that the Bible was supposed to cover thousands of years of religious history.  And at that age, I was painfully shy; actually asking questions of people was right out, so I just went along with it in a general miasma of annoyed confusion.

[maxal]

I will admit I did not read the whole thread: it is HUGE!

 

I am from Montreal, in Quebec which is a relatively religion-free place. Our roots are Catholic but nowadays the vast majority of our people do not attend Church outside Christmas Eve, marriages and funerals, worst many of us choose not to marry within the Church at all (such as myself). I believe we have the highest non-married unions with children rate in all North-America and probably Europe as well. 

 

Over here, religion went into the sewer about 50 years ago and I seriously doubt it will come back. However it does not mean most people are non-believers, it simply means they chose to practice their religion in privacy. As for other religions, nobody cares around here as long as you do not bother the public place with it.

 

I could write an entire essay as to what happened in Quebec specifically to make us so wary of religion. We have... reasons. Very valid ones at that. And I am rather glad this is the case as I am not personally found of religion, any religion as it is too often use as a means to control people's behavior, to retrograde women into outdated position, to shun on different people, etc. Therefore, I would say it is the believes in itself that bothers me more than the control certain religious figures have over their community.

 

Again, I live in a very particular place in the world... We were the first city (or one of the first) where gay couples were allowed to legally marry, probably one of the few places in the world where men can walk hand in hand in the street and nobody looks at them twice. I am not saying there is no racism, sexism or intolerance towards certain religions, but from what I gathered there is much less over here than in many other places in the world. 

[spencer12347]

I selected Protestant, cause I go to a Methodist Church, but I believe in everything a Christian believes except that everyone goes to Heaven and it is based more on actions than on belief. I don't usually get to talk about people about religion because I live in a part of Florida where people are very passionate and controlling on their ideas. My mother leans on the side of a old controlling christian when it comes to christian views. She is openly against same sex marriage and doesn't believe in any science topics that I try to share with her. When I try to discuss religious topics with her she yells at me, for our views are different, and tells me to go read the bible some more to truly understand christianity. 

 

My Dad is the exact opposite with he is an Atheist and is very anti-religious. We were talking about a documentary on Scientology that we both watched and I was talking about the terrifying, basically mind controlling techniques that they perform on people, and he constantly has said since then that all churches are mind control money making machines run by smart rich guys working off the weak. Also If you haven't seen the Scientology documentary on HBO it is very reveling and you should go watch. 

 

My Mom showed me the good about Christianity while ignoring the bad and I believe that is from her upbringing where she lived in a bad experiences at home and her only help was religion. My Dad showed my the corruption that religion can give and how it can affect people and society while ignoring the good it has done and I think that has to do with his upbringing in his West Virginian home town where he said he was an Atheist and the coaches gave him a hard time and tried to forcefully convert him and he didn't want him that. Both of their views have let me balance both the good and the bad that religion can give and affect society. I'm happy for having that type of balance and respect them for that. 

 

The only religious domination that I think I am against is the West Boro Baptist Church, which if you don't know who those monsters are they are terrible. Seriously when your official website is called godhatesfags.com and they say thank God for 9/11 it just makes me sad to think about. 

 

I accept all other religions and the only way that someone can get me angry, and I don't get angry every except if this happens, is when someone makes fun of someone else's religion and say that person is going to hell especially in someone's face. I love the topics of religion and their origins and I started looking into religions when I read The Mistborn Trilogy, specifically Alloy of Law, where we saw the origins of four different religions and how they grow and change. Thank you, Brandon Sanderson for this because I want to research religions and study them when I grow older and go to College. 

 

@kaymyth How did you convert over to your religion (if your already stated this I'm sorry I might have missed it). I find it really interesting cause I have never met anyone that follows Ancient Egypt's gods. 

 

Lastly, I want to thank all of you on this site for I couldn't have said this anywhere else with out getting some backlash and knowing that this is a free space is a very heart warming idea. 

[Kaymyth]

The only religious domination that I think I am against is the West Boro Baptist Church, which if you don't know who those monsters are they are terrible. Seriously when your official website is called godhatesfags.com and they say thank God for 9/11 it just makes me sad to think about.

 

Yeeeahhh, that lot.  I'm pretty sure that no religion (organized or not) is actually willing to claim them.  Speaking as someone who lives in the general geographic area that they infest, I can pretty accurately say that their primary purpose in life is to make people angry enough to try to assault them and/or violate their rights so that they can then make money with a lawsuit.  I sincerely doubt that they believe half of the drivel that they spew, and the younger family members have been steadily deserting as they grow up and realize that life is better when you act like a halfway decent human being.

 

@kaymyth How did you convert over to your religion (if your already stated this I'm sorry I might have missed it). I find it really interesting cause I have never met anyone that follows Ancient Egypt's gods.

 

I have not actually told this story yet.

 

After I made it out of childhood being mildly annoyed that everyone seemed to know more about that odd Bible book than I did, my mom started actually going back to church.  I was a teenager and expected to go along.  Which was cool enough by me at that point; I started playing my flute and oboe for various things, so it gave me a venue.  But the whole Christianity thing always felt to me like I was wearing shoes that were too sizes too big.

 

I hit college, and drifted into agnosticism.  I had no idea what I believed, and I wasn't all that bothered by it at the time.  I spent some time as a music major at a Methodist college that had the best band program in the state.  Being a religiously-affiliated college, there was a required religion course that went over all of the major world religions, as well as some of the more obscure ones.  It was taught by a Methodist minister.  He spent one day on Earth-based pagan religions.  I found the ideas fascinating.

 

Yep.  That's right.  At the age of 19, I got converted to Wicca by a Methodist minister.  The poor man - he realized what he'd done, and I think he was slightly horrified. 

 

I spent over a decade as a (rather lazy) Solitary Wiccan.  After I moved to KC, I started going to the local pagan Unitarian Universalist church, and started getting more familiar with various pantheons.  I'm not going to go into too much detail (because down that path lies copious amounts of Weird, and I'm really not sure you want me to inflict that upon you all), but one of my first rituals there I got "claimed" by Bast.  I'm actually at the end of several years of transition from the familiar Wiccan structure into a more Kemetic practice, and I'm still learning things.  It's a process.

[Chaos]

Maybe math isn't found in religious texts because it's one of those things a divine being would simply expect humans to take as a given? There's nothing about the sky being blue, or grass being green, or the sun being warm in the Bible at least, and I think it's because that's one of those things God thought we were smart enough to figure out on our own. I think religious texts aim to teach adherents about morals and the history of their religion. Math, like the color of the sky, is one thing that doesn't need to be factored into a religion, because it is true apart from religion. It's a part of our world. 

 

Anyway, I think that leaving math out of the Bible was one way God showed he thought we were smart—he left it out, so we could figure it out on our own. That's how I choose to look at it, anyway.

I'm going to be honest: this reply is incredibly frustrating to me as a nonbeliever. I see what you're saying, and evidently, a lot of people think the same way, given how much the post has been upvoted. Perhaps I need to explain better why I find this so bothersome, because I know people are going to say that it is supposed to be about faith.

Faith, it seems, is not for me, then.

I feel like I need to go into detail on why I believe what I believe for this to make sense, so bear with me.

I see the world as totally logical. Yes, everything in the world has a logic to it. That leaf fell off of that tree for a reason. It's never going to be a philosophically enlightening reason why (the bonds between the leaf and branch broke, etc.), but there is always a reason. I'd say basically every event does not have some metaphysical meaning behind it. I grabbed the blanket because I'm cold, or I'm thirsty right now. These are reasons for actions. People, once you get to know them, are also logical, but this does require understanding of emotion for it to truly make sense.

Everything is logical. Even the finest, craziest of art has logic to it. Art techniques have logic to it. If there weren't, no one could ever learn it. Absolutely everything in the universe has reasons for how they happen. And there are certainly things we don't understand, but simply because we haven't discovered the logic for things does not mean it does not exist.

There is a critical difference, however. I actually don't care why things happen.

But Eric, you just said everything happens for a reason. There's a logic to it. Yes, to how it occurs. Why is an entirely different question. Why did this person I know get in a car crash? I can't answer that, but how it happened is because that guy was drunk driving. Does there need to even be a "why" to things? I would say not. Not considering that in any reasonable definition of the word "event," most events have no significance whatsoever. I go through my day and feel no metaphysical significance whatsoever, and I generally don't feel that most events that occur have some metaphysical significance. Maybe you guys do feel that way; that's fine. I would say that it is weird how humans tend to focus on the events important to them, requiring there be some powerful reason why it happened, when most events don't have that significance at all.

So I actually never think about that question. I can't say I've ever worried about the meaning of life. Or, more to my interest, why does math exist? Why does light work the way it does? Why is the speed of light this? I'm sure some could give answers, but at the end of the day, I'd say most physical phenomena have this question chain end with "because it does." If you can describe exactly how something works--like, say, electronics--I am not going to concern myself with metaphysical meaning. It doesn't have to mean anything.

Since I feel so incredibly strongly that the universe is logical and can be understood, I ascribe no supernatural causes for things. I can't think of any phenomena that require an explanation that is not natural. So when some have tried to convert me, saying that there is this creator who is omniscient and omnipotent... I don't know, that's kind of a powerful claim right there, and it makes me uncomfortable to make exotic claims like that.

Mathematics isn't like that. Mathematical proof is very simple: given these certain things that people are true, and these definitions, if every step you make after that is true, then your result is true. Thing is, the truths you start with--mathematical axioms--are designed to be so simple that yeah, they seem incredibly reasonable. To me, religion seems to go the opposite direction, starting with a very strong and unobvious axiom--that there exists something that can actually be all powerful and all knowing--and drawing truth from there. To me, the stronger the claim--and I do think saying that something is literally all powerful is basically the strongest claim that can even exist--the stronger the evidence should be. The evidence should be everywhere. It should be shouted from all the mountaintops, from my bones, to the crazy disarray of laundry I really need to do. It should be obvious as gravity, as measurable and understood as any fundamental force.

I don't see it. I see natural causes for everything. No god is required.

The best I can get is that yeah, we'll probably never observe what happened prior to the Big Bang, or why that exactly occurred, but I'd say that if I can't measure or observe it, it is philosophy, and philosophy has nothing against the cold, numerical accuracy of data.

I open a religious text and see nothing about the glory of the natural world. I see nothing on the true, genuine beauty I feel from the fact that humans--apparently our sinful selves--can determine so much about the universe, using the power of logical deduction and careful observation. That this truth can be discovered, and can be made ours. There's nothing that even sets us on this path of self-enlightenment. Oh, there's certainly enlightenment to be had, but it always must be derived from some divine source. But there's so much truth and power to be had that requires nothing of gods.

This omniscient being (or beings) that made this, they would know how I feel. They would know the truth of the universe. They know all the truths. And instead of giving me that beauty, I read platitudes on how to live life. Just words. I expected more from something omniscient and omnipotent, that maybe they would actually know this power and wonder I feel purely from the natural world. Maybe they could lead people to this source of awe. But there is nothing there for me. It made me start to wonder about this, and I came to a core problem that I think will always bother me.

Nothing in religious texts couldn't have simply be a fabrication that some people wrote.

They certainly might be true. But it seems very strange to me how they focus on platitudes, and not knowledge that literally no one on the planet could possibly know. Anyone can write platitudes and can moralize on how to live life. Humans happen to be very good at that. We read fantasy. It's very easy to make up religions. No doubt there exists truth in there, or else no one would follow such things, but it feels off to me. This omniscient, omnipotent being would know all about numbers and how powerful they are. Couldn't there just be a commandment to use his language, and give us proper numerals? In my mind, math is the real language of the divine, but no religious text wants to speak it. It is very curious indeed.

And when I hear this logic of "he wanted us to discover it ourselves," I find it ludicrously strange. If that's actually God's intent, he literally constructed a universe and religious books in such a way that I can never, ever believe in him. He gives such an amazing natural world that can be known, and mentions nothing about it himself. The messages that I receive from self-discovery that have done such amazing things are too different from what God--apparently--found worthwhile to talk about.

It really does make me automatically disbelieve religions, because none of them have math in it. It makes me think that these are not written by the divine at all, and may just be stories that have nice morals in them instead.

That, at least, is one reason why I do not believe. The realization of all this really drove me from simply being agnostic to atheism.

I hope you found this interesting to read at least! I'm going to bed now

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles]

I'll be honest here: I don't have the definitive proof you're looking for that the Bible and other sacred texts are more than stories. I can point to strong archaeological evidence that many of those stories actually happened, though I cannot tell you for certain that the divine or miraculous component was present. I don't have definitive answers, and I don't have authoritative proof. What I know of the Bible, combined with what I know of archaeology, has strengthened my faith rather than weakened it, and that's all I can say on that. 

 

I don't think there is a mysterious, metaphysical "reason" for everything. When a family cussed me out because I told them the store was closed and they couldn't continue shopping, I believe that happened because those people were self-centered jerks who didn't bother to read the sign naming our hours—not because God wanted me to learn some sort of lesson. I know there are some people who would say otherwise—I once had a woman tell a friend of mine that his preference for brown soda was evidence of a cosmic war seeking to balance light and dark—but I don't buy completely into that. I believe God exists, and I believe he wants to be involved in the lives of his people, but I don't think he's involved in every little thing that happens on Planet Earth. If a branch falls, it's because of physics and not because of some Great Soda War. 

 

However, I do believe that God allows some things to happen, or guides them to happen in certain ways. Perhaps that sounds contradictory, given what I just said, but I believe God's involvement is usually on more of a "big picture" than "all the small things" scale. And I think one of the "big picture" things is the way the Bible is written. 

 

I read it for years as a rulebook. "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth," is the acronym I was taught. And yes, there are morals in that book. Whole letters of morals, and a whole book of rules. But there are thousands of stories. The Old Testament is overwhelmingly stories, with meta-stories involving prophecies for Israel, and a good bit of poetry mixed in. There are some rules, yes—the Ten Commandments and the Levitical Law come to mind. But those rules are part of a story—the story of how Israel came to freedom and how God set them apart from other nations. In the overwhelming majority of Old Testament stories, there are no morals tacked on at the end. We humans like to do that to those stories, and honestly, there's a lot of truth to be gleaned from the triumphs and failures of Old Testament men and women. But I think that by reducing those stories to a set of three bullet points in a Sunday morning sermon, we're doing many of them—and those who would read them—a disservice. 

 

What I see in Bible stories—what I'm learning to see—is truth and beauty. I see truth and beauty given in story form, with no discussion guides or sermon points for understanding them. I think God knew that stories speak to humans on a deep and personal level, and so spoke his truth through story. Many stories in the Old Testament especially can be appreciated and interpreted on multiple levels—the story of David and Bathsheba is simultaneously the story of a king allowing his base desires to rule the day, the lengths to which people will go to cover up their wrongdoing, how innocent people are harmed when the powerful do wrong. When the prophet Nathan confronts him, we see David's righteous anger toward this metaphorical rich man who took the poor man's only lamb, we see how he's deluded himself when he doesn't grasp the meaning immediately—and we see him humble himself and admit he did wrong when it's pointed out to him. But aside from the multiple themes that can be gleaned from that story, it's also a good story. It's the sordid, tragic tale of a man who used his authority to get what he wanted, never mind the harm he did. 

 

I don't claim to understand why God set it up that way. I have theories, one of those theories being that not everyone understands math (I'm one of those who doesn't) but everyone can understand a story. I think God knew more people would understand stories than would understand math, and so chose to tell his truth through a collection of stories. It was an accessibility issue—an accessibility issue faced by all religions, and solved the same way. 

 

I know all this probably isn't enough to convince you, or others. And that's all right with me. I have my perspective on all this—a perspective as incomplete as any human's will ever be—and I know I won't ever have all the answers. I enjoy seeking them out. I enjoy learning things I didn't know before. And I know the human race, as a whole, wants to learn what it doesn't know. I think that's a good thing. I don't think it's wrong to seek out knowledge and to find answers…but I don't think it's wrong to not have all the answers, either.  

Edited June 11, 2015 by TwiLyghtSansSparkles

[Haelbarde]

I love mathematics and science - I'm studying pure mathematics and physics at university at the moment. I love to understand how the world works. If I could study for the sake of it, I'd do further study, and do stuff like Biology, Psychology, and maybe Philosophy, 'cos I'd love to know more about how people work, and such like. I would agree you, Chaos, in that everything has a natural explanation. There are fundamental ways in which matter and energy interacts, and these govern everything we see around us. How I would see God affect the world would be through use of the natural world, perhaps manipulating chance and understanding human psychology. It might be affect the way certain events play out which could send the world in a particular direction. Does he necessarily do a lot at an individual level? Perhaps not.

 

What gives me confidence in a God is two things - The first is that I am satisfied that the Bible is a historically accurate text, and that what we have today is accurate to the source texts from 2000+ years ago, barring some minor transcription and translation errors. The second is the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. There are quite a number of prophecies that give specific timescales for particular events to continue for, until coming to an end. The way I understand it, Revelation has predicted events that have happened over the last 2000 years - the fall of the Roman empire to the various 'barbarian' tribes. The rise of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Catholic church. Napoleon, and then later the World Wars. Sometimes it includes some fairly particular details. I've not been very specific (this isn't the place for detail. Happy to have PM conversations if people wanted to discuss it more), but I'm satisfied that Revelation has accurately predicted world history for the last 2000 years. 

 

So for me, Bible prophecy provides sufficient evidence for me to believe in a God.

[skaa]

@Chaos: Interesting thoughts. You are correct that any person can form his own philosophy and ethics, which is why I tend to distrust religions that offer a philosophy (often a simplistic one) and nothing else, like Larstaism. Similarly, I distrust religions that only teach a particular cosmology and nothing else, like Trelagism, because human beings have proved capable of discovering the workings of objects on their own.

Why don't I trust religions that only offer things that can be gained some other way (I mean, aside from their tendency to be very blatantly wrong)? Suppose someone received a book of 100% correct mathematical truths from a self-proclaimed omniscient god who suddenly stood before him one day. Such knowledge would certainly help humanity, so should I worship this being? My problem with that is I do not feel the need to worship sources of knowledge. If that "god" freely gives his mathematical knowledge to everyone, then I will respect and admire him, but I won't worship him. If his religion will not share his secrets unless I worship him, then so be it; I shall content myself to learning math the hard way, or gain the information some other way.

Don't get me wrong. As a geek, I think it would be totally awesome if I could obtain useful Math or Science knowledge easily, if it was conveniently spoon-fed to me with minimal effort on my part. But in the end my eternal devotion is not bought by knowledge, and I would find absolutely no motivation to acknowledge that hypothetical being as my "god".

Think about it. If a highly advanced alien appeared in front of you and demonstrated his absolute intellectual mastery over you, would you kneel down before him and worship? No? Neither would I. Such a being would be no different from Tanavast, Rayse and all the other powerful being in Brandon's books. The vastly intelligent alien may or may not be a fine fellow, but as Hoid would say, he is not God.

 

---

I personally won't trust a religion unless it has (among other things) specific doctrines about salvation. Even doctrines about the afterlife are not necessarily useful to me unless they involve me being saved from an unpleasant afterlife (e.g. Tartarus, Hell, etc.). Specifically, I want my religion to teach me that I am in danger of having a very miserable life after death unless I do certain things that I am truly capable of doing.

I'm aware of how silly, selfish, even cowardly that sounds to a lot of people both non-believers and believers (even people of my own religion, I'd bet), but I will stand by it. If I am to believe in any religion at all, it must be one that teaches at least these three things:

• You are in danger of eternal misery.
• You can escape this fate if you do certain acts X, Y, and Z.
• You are capable of doing X, Y, and Z; it is not yet too late to be saved.

I have other personal requirements for a religion (which I won't elaborate here because they are emotional in nature and therefore not useful for rational discussion), but those three things are the absolute bare minimum. They imply various things, but most importantly, they imply that I will NOT join a religion that has any of these following tenets:

• That everyone (no matter what they do) will have a happy afterlife.
• That everyone (no matter what they do) will have a miserable afterlife, or no afterlife at all.
• That I, because of my nature, can never be saved no matter what I do.
• That I, because of something I've done in the past, can no longer be saved no matter what I do in the future.
• That one does not need to bother with thoughts of the afterlife.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that those things aren't valid beliefs or that they must be false. For example, it would be awesome if I could do anything and still be sure of entering Paradise when I die. But even if I truly believed that, why can't I just live with that belief without joining any particular religion?

Similarly, if God did not create a good afterlife for humans, then it wouldn't matter whether or not I joined a religion that teaches that. I would still end up like everyone else, anyway.

And if I am destined to go to Hell, then what's the point in joining a religion that tells me I'm destined to go to Hell? If I am certainly doomed, I'd spend my life doing what I desired, not what religious leaders tell me to.

---

Of course, there are plenty of religions who fit my bare minimum requirements. My minor rant above is about my views on what religion in general could be good for in theory (i.e. salvation), not about which particular religion is correct (a topic that would probably endanger the relative peace in this thread!).

For what it's worth, I'm Catholic. I know many devout Catholics who'd read what I wrote above and nervously cross themselves before running away, but I rather enjoy thinking of un-devout thought experiments on religion. I got that habit from reading St. Thomas Aquinas and G.K. Chesterton. I also like Science and hate pseudo-science, unlike many "devout" Catholics who've forgotten that Fides et Ratio is a thing, or that Mendel, Lemaitre, and many other notable scientists were Catholic priests. (Not that having cleric scientists makes a religion "better"; it's just that it's silly for a person to claim he's anti-Science on religious grounds when he's in church listening to the religious sermon of a world-renowned scientist!)

 

(And before you even mention Galileo, please read this entertaining, well-referenced, but very long analysis on the development of heliocentrism by sci-fi author Michael Flynn.)

Edited June 11, 2015 by skaa

[little wilson]

I believe God's involvement is usually on more of a "big picture" than "all the small things" scale.

How I would see God affect the world would be through use of the natural world, perhaps manipulating chance and understanding human psychology. It might be affect the way certain events play out which could send the world in a particular direction. Does he necessarily do a lot at an individual level? Perhaps not.

 

I agree that the bigger things matter more to the grand scheme of things, but I absolutely believe that God (as I believe He exists) cares about us and wants the best for us. If we care deeply about something that isn't a "big picture" type of thing or we ask His help with something, I believe He'll provide it. I believe that because I've seen it in my own life. Just little things, here and there.

 

One of the biggest examples that I can think of was this night when I was in college. I'd gone out with a couple roommates for an activity on campus, and I ended up falling down some stairs and hitting my tailbone really hard. I could barely walk for ten feet, let alone across the entire campus, uphill, to get back to my apartment. The one roommate I could find was busy doing other things so I told her I was heading back. Didn't tell her why, and she didn't ask. I left the building, but I wasn't even 20 feet away before I knew I was going to pass out from the pain if I kept going. Then I saw this group of 5 girls walking toward me, about to cut through the building on their own path back to their apartment. I knew one of them. She was from my hometown. She's my sisters' age (so 3 years younger than me). She saw me and knew something was wrong (apparently I was white which tells me just how close I was to passing out right then), and when she found out what, she ran back to her apartment, got her car, and drove me to my place. She told me that she goes out on walks every night with that same set of roommates and they always cut through that building, but they've never used that door before. They've always entered from a different one. But they changed their path that night. For some unknown reason.

 

To continue with that story, that happened on a Wednesday night. I was going on a mandatory field trip for my Geology class the very next morning. Thursday through Saturday. Sleeping in tents, traveling for hours on end in a van over bumpy roads. Hiking up hills. Everything you can imagine that would be necessary on a geology field trip out to the Middle of Nowhere Utah (my school was in southeastern Idaho, so that alone was a 6-7 hour drive there). And I've just injured my tailbone horribly. Now, when I got back to my apartment and this occurred to me, I was dreading the next three days. I couldn't get out of the field trip without failing the class, but my physical state prevented me from going on the field trip. The LDS church believes in priesthood blessings, and that's the only thing I could think of that might help. So one of my roommates ran over to the guy's apartments and found two guys to come over at 11pm to give me a blessing. I didn't take many pain killers on that trip, and while the pain was always kind of there in the background, it wasn't ever terrible. I could do everything I needed to. Sleeping in a tent on sand dunes with no sleeping pad? Not a problem (normally that would be a problem even without a heavily bruised/almost fractured coccyx). Hiking straight up half a mountain? Hardly a twinge. Rummaging through a rock quarry for trilobite fossils? Done. Sitting in a van for 4-5 hours on average per day? That's a bit of an issue, but even then nothing terrible. After returning, on Sunday, I was sitting on my couch, and I shifted and the pain was excruciating. I'd even taken a pain killer and the pain was still overwhelming. So why didn't it affect me the past three days when I was doing all those other far more physically-exerting activities? No idea.

 

Does it really matter on a grand scale that I could've passed out walking across the campus that night? No, not really. Nothing would've happened to me. It's a church-owned school, so someone would've found me eventually and helped me out. Does my grade in geology matter to the world? Nope. I changed my minor to something that made far more sense to me so that class didn't end up mattering at all. But it mattered to me then. All I really know is that, to my knowledge, there's no logical, scientific reason for how those experiences unfolded the way they did. I suppose one could say that those girls wanted to try a different path, but human beings are creatures of habit, and this was 2 months into the semester. Those girls had taken that path for 2 months, for at least 5 nights a week. Seems a little strange to choose that night of all nights to try something new when the old path had worked so well and there was nothing preventing them from using it again. And I suppose adrenaline could be used to explain the lack of pain on the field trip. I don't really have much to say about that since I don't know what my adrenaline levels were then, but I do know that my adrenaline level the night it happened was off the charts and the pain still found its way in. The only explanation I can see is that I needed help and I was crying out for God to help me so He did. He nudged those girls to take a different path. He lessened my pain so I could do what I needed to on that field trip.

 

While I know that worldwide (or at least national) events have a far greater impact on people so God is more likely to get involved with those, it's the little things that stick out the most to me, those "tender mercies" as I sometimes hear them called. Those have the most impact for me because it's a lot easier to see His hand when it's affected my life in a direct manner.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles]

I agree that the bigger things matter more to the grand scheme of things, but I absolutely believe that God (as I believe He exists) cares about us and wants the best for us. If we care deeply about something that isn't a "big picture" type of thing or we ask His help with something, I believe He'll provide it. I believe that because I've seen it in my own life. Just little things, here and there.

One of the biggest examples that I can think of was this night when I was in college. I'd gone out with a couple roommates for an activity on campus, and I ended up falling down some stairs and hitting my tailbone really hard. I could barely walk for ten feet, let alone across the entire campus, uphill, to get back to my apartment. The one roommate I could find was busy doing other things so I told her I was heading back. Didn't tell her why, and she didn't ask. I left the building, but I wasn't even 20 feet away before I knew I was going to pass out from the pain if I kept going. Then I saw this group of 5 girls walking toward me, about to cut through the building on their own path back to their apartment. I knew one of them. She was from my hometown. She's my sisters' age (so 3 years younger than me). She saw me and knew something was wrong (apparently I was white which tells me just how close I was to passing out right then), and when she found out what, she ran back to her apartment, got her car, and drove me to my place. She told me that she goes out on walks every night with that same set of roommates and they always cut through that building, but they've never used that door before. They've always entered from a different one. But they changed their path that night. For some unknown reason.

To continue with that story, that happened on a Wednesday night. I was going on a mandatory field trip for my Geology class the very next morning. Thursday through Saturday. Sleeping in tents, traveling for hours on end in a van over bumpy roads. Hiking up hills. Everything you can imagine that would be necessary on a geology field trip out to the Middle of Nowhere Utah (my school was in southeastern Idaho, so that alone was a 6-7 hour drive there). And I've just injured my tailbone horribly. Now, when I got back to my apartment and this occurred to me, I was dreading the next three days. I couldn't get out of the field trip without failing the class, but my physical state prevented me from going on the field trip. The LDS church believes in priesthood blessings, and that's the only thing I could think of that might help. So one of my roommates ran over to the guy's apartments and found two guys to come over at 11pm to give me a blessing. I didn't take many pain killers on that trip, and while the pain was always kind of there in the background, it wasn't ever terrible. I could do everything I needed to. Sleeping in a tent on sand dunes with no sleeping pad? Not a problem (normally that would be a problem even without a heavily bruised/almost fractured coccyx). Hiking straight up half a mountain? Hardly a twinge. Rummaging through a rock quarry for trilobite fossils? Done. Sitting in a van for 4-5 hours on average per day? That's a bit of an issue, but even then nothing terrible. After returning, on Sunday, I was sitting on my couch, and I shifted and the pain was excruciating. I'd even taken a pain killer and the pain was still overwhelming. So why didn't it affect me the past three days when I was doing all those other far more physically-exerting activities? No idea.

Does it really matter on a grand scale that I could've passed out walking across the campus that night? No, not really. Nothing would've happened to me. It's a church-owned school, so someone would've found me eventually and helped me out. Does my grade in geology matter to the world? Nope. I changed my minor to something that made far more sense to me so that class didn't end up mattering at all. But it mattered to me then. All I really know is that, to my knowledge, there's no logical, scientific reason for how those experiences unfolded the way they did. I suppose one could say that those girls wanted to try a different path, but human beings are creatures of habit, and this was 2 months into the semester. Those girls had taken that path for 2 months, for at least 5 nights a week. Seems a little strange to choose that night of all nights to try something new when the old path had worked so well and there was nothing preventing them from using it again. And I suppose adrenaline could be used to explain the lack of pain on the field trip. I don't really have much to say about that since I don't know what my adrenaline levels were then, but I do know that my adrenaline level the night it happened was off the charts and the pain still found its way in. The only explanation I can see is that I needed help and I was crying out for God to help me so He did. He nudged those girls to take a different path. He lessened my pain so I could do what I needed to on that field trip.

While I know that worldwide (or at least national) events have a far greater impact on people so God is more likely to get involved with those, it's the little things that stick out the most to me, those "tender mercies" as I sometimes hear them called. Those have the most impact for me because it's a lot easier to see His hand when it's affected my life in a direct manner.

I definitely agree that God wants to be, and is, involved in the lives of his people. I could share stories about little things that kept me going, little things that probably couldn't be proven. I don't remember the term Kaymyth used, but I know Unverifiable was one of the words. Unverifiable, but also unexplainable any other way, for me at least. I was more referring to, and disagreeing with, the way some people ascribe deeper meaning to every stick and stone. Can a stick or stone illustrate a deeper truth? Certainly. My pastor at my old church was a big fan of "trail parables," where we'd find something along the path that illustrated something about God, or reminded us of something in the Bible. But do I think my preference for Dry Vanilla Bean Soda is part of a Great Cosmic War seeking to balance light and dark? No. I like Dry Vanilla Bean Soda because it's tasty.

[Kaymyth]

I'm going to be honest: this reply is incredibly frustrating to me as a nonbeliever. I see what you're saying, and evidently, a lot of people think the same way, given how much the post has been upvoted. Perhaps I need to explain better why I find this so bothersome, because I know people are going to say that it is supposed to be about faith.

Faith, it seems, is not for me, then.

I feel like I need to go into detail on why I believe what I believe for this to make sense, so bear with me.

I see the world as totally logical. Yes, everything in the world has a logic to it. That leaf fell off of that tree for a reason. It's never going to be a philosophically enlightening reason why (the bonds between the leaf and branch broke, etc.), but there is always a reason. I'd say basically every event does not have some metaphysical meaning behind it. I grabbed the blanket because I'm cold, or I'm thirsty right now. These are reasons for actions. People, once you get to know them, are also logical, but this does require understanding of emotion for it to truly make sense.

 

I can't make up my mind whether Discordianism would drive you crazy or appeal to you just out of sheer hilarity.  (Followers of Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos.  You know that whole golden apple mess that wound up kicking off the Trojan War?  Yeah, that was a practical joke on her part.)

 

But this is familiar, because this is more or less how my husband thinks.  Everything has to make sense for him to believe it.  I'm pretty sure at this point that a god, any god, could pop into being in front of him and say, "Yo, I exist!" and he'd say, "No, you don't," and go looking for whoever drugged his drink.  Or possibly check himself in for psychological evaluation.

 

Some people just don't need that sort of faith-thinking to be fulfilled; they'd rather know how the world works than worry about whether anyone built it.  There's a reason we have Nova on our regular DVR recording list.   And at the end of the day, I have a religious faith structure that I follow and he doesn't....and guess which one of us is the baseline gentler, nicer person?  I'll give you a hint:  it ain't me.

 

 

I personally won't trust a religion unless it has (among other things) specific doctrines about salvation. Even doctrines about the afterlife are not necessarily useful to me unless they involve me being saved from an unpleasant afterlife (e.g. Tartarus, Hell, etc.). Specifically, I want my religion to teach me that I am in danger of having a very miserable life after death unless I do certain things that I am truly capable of doing.

I'm aware of how silly, selfish, even cowardly that sounds to a lot of people both non-believers and believers (even people of my own religion, I'd bet), but I will stand by it. If I am to believe in any religion at all, it must be one that teaches at least these three things:

• You are in danger of eternal misery.
• You can escape this fate if you do certain acts X, Y, and Z.
• You are capable of doing X, Y, and Z; it is not yet too late to be saved. 

 

This has actually been a huge sticking point for me when it came to my final break from Christianity, probably mostly because I was taught that included in parts 2 & 3 were "You have to believe W."  I thought, well, that's kind of mean, isn't it?  There are billions of people on this planet who by default don't believe W, and most of them are probably perfectly nice people, even nicer than certain other people that do believe W.  So these people who don't believe W are just up a creek, even though they were raised in R, Q, or E and W is some weird foreign thing to them?  Why do they have to believe W?  How is this at all fair? 

 

And that's when the most important piece of my puzzle fell into place:  Whatever (G)god is or isn't, he/she/it/they have to be just.

 

Part of what appeals to me about Kemeticism is the idea that believing in the gods is not a requirement for making it into the Good Place.  The ceremony of the weighing the heart against the Feather of Truth objectively judges whether a person is worthy or not.  And it's not as harsh as it sounds, for the feather weighs exactly what it should weigh - is the heart exactly as heavy as it ought to be, given the deeds that this person has done?  Because people aren't perfect - we screw up.  And then we feel guilty about it, and hopefully, that guilt drives us to do better next time. 

 

And let's face it - the most important person in my life is an atheist.  I have zero interest in getting into any paradise that he's locked out of just because he doesn't believe.

 

I definitely agree that God wants to be, and is, involved in the lives of his people. I could share stories about little things that kept me going, little things that probably couldn't be proven. I don't remember the term Kaymyth used, but I know Unverifiable was one of the words. Unverifiable, but also unexplainable any other way, for me at least. I was more referring to, and disagreeing with, the way some people ascribe deeper meaning to every stick and stone. Can a stick or stone illustrate a deeper truth? Certainly. My pastor at my old church was a big fan of "trail parables," where we'd find something along the path that illustrated something about God, or reminded us of something in the Bible. But do I think my preference for Dry Vanilla Bean Soda is part of a Great Cosmic War seeking to balance light and dark? No. I like Dry Vanilla Bean Soda because it's tasty.

 

Unverifiable Personal Gnosis   Basically meaning that our experiences are ours and by their nature unprovable.  But they bring meaning to us, so that's what's important.

[little wilson]

I definitely agree that God wants to be, and is, involved in the lives of his people. I could share stories about little things that kept me going, little things that probably couldn't be proven. I don't remember the term Kaymyth used, but I know Unverifiable was one of the words. Unverifiable, but also unexplainable any other way, for me at least. I was more referring to, and disagreeing with, the way some people ascribe deeper meaning to every stick and stone. Can a stick or stone illustrate a deeper truth? Certainly. My pastor at my old church was a big fan of "trail parables," where we'd find something along the path that illustrated something about God, or reminded us of something in the Bible. But do I think my preference for Dry Vanilla Bean Soda is part of a Great Cosmic War seeking to balance light and dark? No. I like Dry Vanilla Bean Soda because it's tasty.

 

Ah. Yes. Some people go to extremes in finding God's hand in things that there's literally no reason for Him to be involved in whatsoever. My chocolate addiction has nothing to do with God, even if I occasionally joke that heaven surely has chocolate fountains and God loves chocolate too (and while I have nothing to back it up with, I actually believe that God does love chocolate, because it's chocolate. Who doesn't like chocolate?!) Anyway, though. Yes. There are things that have nothing to do with God, but then there are others that if we're looking, we can see God's hand in them. Though, admittedly, a lot of those could be explained as coincidences or just a fact of life. My not getting that job at Ancestry in January could've just been because I simply wasn't good enough. I personally believe it was God's way of telling me that I'm in Utah for more than just a career, and I can't forget those other reasons I'm here to focus on a job (if I'd gotten that job, it would've taken up a lot of my time between work and the commute, and I would've stopped doing things with my friends because my focus was on work).

 

I guess it's about finding that distinction between what's you and what's God, if that makes sense. For me, I don't normally bother with it unless something pretty nasty has happened in my life, and I'm like "Okay, why did that happen. This trial freaking sucks and I'm clearly supposed to learn something from it, but what?" And then I go trying to see God's hand in it--not to blame him but to figure out what the reason is, because oftentimes just knowing that can help me get through it. 1 Corinthians 10:13 - "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." I think that goes for trials too.

[Kipper]

@Chaos

I disagree that math is a human construct. Our math system is built around physical constants, correct?

And the Big Bang and the origin of life are two of my sticking points that helped convert me to Christianity. I've never been convinced (not even by Stephen Hawking) that something could come from nothing. Scientists cannot explain it. It won't work.

And before someone says, "But wait, one guy did an experiment where he put all the elements of primordial Earth in a bottle and got life," just don't please. That experiment was messed up and manhandled in so many ways, it ain't even funny.

As for faith, it's definitely a hard lump to swallow. Our pride as humans is often big, yes? I had to be convinced of the Bible's truth and scientific evidence for its events before I would even listen to the salvation story.

Edited June 11, 2015 by Kipper

[+Slowswift]

I agree wholeheartedly with Twi (all respect to your beliefs, of course, Chaos) when she says that stories make a really really really good way to get a point across. I'm a writer type. I like stories. A lot. On the other hand, if a religion was full of mathematical equations, I'd be more likely not to join. Math isn't exactly my strong suit. 

 

I guess I also disagree with the idea that everything needs to be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt for me to believe in it. (I disagree with Hermione on this count, thought I'm not quite on Luna's level either ) I believe that without faith, we wouldn't be able to grow. For example if God were to give us everything we needed right when we needed it, we'd grow complacent and take it for granted. No answer is still an answer -- it's God saying, "Not yet. You need this experience." 

 

Again, as others have stated, if I'm crossing a line here, or if I'm getting incoherent, go ahead and fling me a PM.

[Comatose]

What I love about discourse on this topic is my tendency to agree and disagree with portions of what everyone is saying, no matter what their viewpoint or background is.  

 

In general, I'm a fairly logical person, and I like things to make sense.  I'll say it up front that, for me, my faith does NOT necessarily make sense, at least not to me.  It's actually been a good way of challenging myself to think about things differently.  The whole purpose of faith, in my mind, is that I trust that even if not everything makes sense to me, somehow it does make sense (sorry Chaos if that drives you crazy, haha).  

 

When it comes to religious debate, I try not to get bogged down in the details.  As others here have pointed out, it is easy to use history to prove or disprove or debate the existence of many things.  The same goes for science.  For me, I believe in God because, when I let myself, I feel a strong personal connection to something bigger than myself.  This 'feeling' mentality certainly doesn't come naturally to me.  In fact, I think it is against my nature, and usually I'm pretty good at ignoring it when I don't force myself not to.  For me, church, hymns, the bible, and a religious community are all ways for me to challenge myself and rise above my natural inclinations and try to challenge myself to grow.  

 

"The Egg," by Andy Weir was one, among many other works, that really changed how I view faith, religion, and trust.  Human beings, for all the amazing things we are capable of doing and understanding, still have a limited viewpoint.  Our perspective of the universe is limited by cultural, social, economic, etc. factors that inform how we think about and do things.  For me, God is sum of everything.  She/he/it/they is/are the bigger whole that every living and non-living thing are a part of.  God is something I definitely do NOT understand (again, sorry for the frustration Chaos, believe me, it frustrates me too), but I believe the bigger picture does come together in some way.  I think the science of the world, and the metaphysical reasons for things is a large part of that picture, but that they are not the only part.  What I try to challenge myself with when it comes to faith is to sit with my lack of information, and find comfort in my lack of understanding.  

 

So, some of you might be wondering where the Bible and my Mennonite heritage come into this.  I've accepted the Christian bible and the Mennonite Church as the lens through which I view and interact with the God I understand as a higher power.  I acknowledge that my lens has flaws, and might be more flawed by some of the other lenses out there, but it is the lens I am the most comfortable with, so I am sticking with it for the time being.  I think that there is truth in all religions, but that's a part of my greater belief in a bigger picture that I can't see, so don't ask me to point to objective evidence of those truths.  

 

I think that's what this debate comes down to for me.  I can't offer objective reasons or proofs to support why I choose to believe what I do, because my reasons or based on subjective faith.  If I could prove and explain everything, I wouldn't need faith in my life.  Indeed, I'm a fairly independent person, so there have been many times in my life when I have drifted away from my faith, feeling like I no longer needed a relationship with a higher power in my life.  These periods usually end with me ending up in a place I don't like being, and so I've basically found that faith is a necessary part of my life.  It helps keep my on the track I have chosen, makes me feel more like myself, and pushes me to be better than I am.  Some people don't need religion in their lives to do this, and I admire them for it, but I do.  Unless someone offers me another way to fulfill this need in my life, I doubt that will be changing any time soon.  

 

As for the comments on the afterlife, for me, the standard heaven vs hell or good vs evil afterlife scenario has never made sense to me.  Before I proceed, I'd like to make it clear that I mean no offence to anyone who does ascribe to this vision of the afterlife.  All I'm trying to do is present my own opinion.  To me, the heaven and hell scenario seems like an all too human construction.  It makes too much sense.  The good get rewarded, the bad get punished, clean lines are drawn, and everyone gets what they deserve.  People though, are more complex than that, and in life can't be categorized as easily as might be thought on paper.  The God or higher being that I know is better than that.  For me, it has always been important that my faith and service be based on love, not fear.  Believing in any sort of hell or eternal punishment takes choice out of the equation for me, because then my faith would be based on the fact that someone more powerful than I could exert that power to punish me should I fail to meet certain standards.  I don't know what life after death looks like, if such a thing exists, but I do believe that it is entirely different than anything I can possibly imagine, so I just try to trust that it will be good.  

 

Again, to those who DO believe in a heaven/hell or similar afterlife model, I think that is a fine viewpoint to have, and don't think your faith is any lesser for having it.  As I reread the above paragraph I can see how some might be challenged or offended by what I have said, but I'd like to emphasize that those are merely the reasons I believe what I do.  Obviously, my perspective is limited, so I have no capacity to objectively determine that another point of view on the subject of religion is false or 'bad'..  

 

Anyways, I think I've blabbed on long enough.  Hope it was interesting.  To sum things up for those who just scrolled down to the bottom, I basically believe that I'm incapable of ever fully understanding the why of things, and that faith is based on trust when no proof is present.  This is why I don't think you can ever convince someone to believe one thing or another, they have to choose it for themselves.  No one by arguing, could convince me to be an atheist, just as I can't convince anyone to believe in God.  To me, that choice is the most important thing.  

[Chaos]

I can't make up my mind whether Discordianism would drive you crazy or appeal to you just out of sheer hilarity.  (Followers of Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos.  You know that whole golden apple mess that wound up kicking off the Trojan War?  Yeah, that was a practical joke on her part.)

 

But this is familiar, because this is more or less how my husband thinks.  Everything has to make sense for him to believe it.  I'm pretty sure at this point that a god, any god, could pop into being in front of him and say, "Yo, I exist!" and he'd say, "No, you don't," and go looking for whoever drugged his drink.  Or possibly check himself in for psychological evaluation.

 

Some people just don't need that sort of faith-thinking to be fulfilled; they'd rather know how the world works than worry about whether anyone built it.  There's a reason we have Nova on our regular DVR recording list.   And at the end of the day, I have a religious faith structure that I follow and he doesn't....and guess which one of us is the baseline gentler, nicer person?  I'll give you a hint:  it ain't me.

I'm familiar with Discordianism. That is what Will (Shivertongue), our graphic monkey, believes in.

But yeah, this. I don't need faith to be happy. It's just kind of how it is. Skaa's points are interesting, as he made me think, "what would be a religion I could actually believe in?" I wasn't saying that knowledge should be it, but it felt off to me that it lacked that entirely. But what could I believe in? I don't think anything. Worship isn't for me. I'm just not spiritual at all.

That said, if aliens came and said "hey do this, here's evidence why you should do these things," I would listen. But spiritual belief? Not for me.

@Chaos

I disagree that math is a human construct. Our math system is built around physical constants, correct?

And the Big Bang and the origin of life are two of my sticking points that helped convert me to Christianity. I've never been convinced (not even by Stephen Hawking) that something could come from nothing. Scientists cannot explain it. It won't work.

And before someone says, "But wait, one guy did an experiment where he put all the elements of primordial Earth in a bottle and got life," just don't please. That experiment was messed up and manhandled in so many ways, it ain't even funny.

As for faith, it's definitely a hard lump to swallow. Our pride as humans is often big, yes? I had to be convinced of the Bible's truth and scientific evidence for its events before I would even listen to the salvation story.

Incoming math ahead, because I have been summoned! (I'm sorry. Eh, not really. I'm a math professor, so I love talking about it.)

This is actually inaccurate. Pure math is independent from the world and its physical constants. You're merging science and mathematics, and while science does use mathematics, math itself is different. Physicists concern themselves with such things as physicality of the universe, while math is a pure distillation of logic, that humanity creates.

Mathematics actually has very little to do with numbers. It is pure logic, and the numbers take the backseat. Mathematicians do invent totally new definitions. They are not likely to be things most people would care about, admittedly, but it's very easy to invent new definitions or operations. The definitions that lead to useful results are the ones that stick, but ultimately, they are invented.

Calculus was created by Newton and Leibniz in the 1600s, and it worked, but the rigorous definition of the limit--the core of calculus--didn't even exist until Cauchy created it in the 1800s. It wasn't until then that calculus was rigorously proven from the ground up, so people were certain forever that it was true. But the definition is simply words. Let me show you what it is.

One says that the limit of f(x) = L as x approaches c if and only if:

For all ε > 0, there exists δ > 0 such that if |x - c| < δ, then |f(x) - L| < ε

Yeah. That's kind of gobbleygook if you don't read very carefully, but that was how Cauchy defined what it means for a function to get "really close" to a number. There are very few numbers in the definition, but the way the definition operates has nothing to do with the numbers. The actual numbers that are represented by each letter there are meaningless, it is the relationships that matter. It also is worth noting that such a definition is effectively worthless on its own; it's just something that someone defined. But as it turns out, that definition allowed all the results of calculus to be proven with total rigor, so that there can never be any doubt ever again that calculus is true.

Another example I really like is something called "uniform convergence." It's an example that exemplifies that math is created, not discovered.

Basically, it involved the question of what it means when you add up a bunch of functions together. Does it "converge"--in other words, approach some "limiting function"? So people created a definition of what it meant for a series of functions to converge, and called pointwise convergence. It was the most natural definition, but it turned out functions that had this pointwise convergence did not behave nicely. They didn't have the nice properties one would like. If you had a series of functions, each of which were continuous, the limiting function under pointwise convergence was not continuous.

This sucked, and was a definition that sucked for all purposes.

So mathematicians thought of an entirely different, unobvious way for a series of functions to converge to a limiting function. They had to do this because the first definition just wasn't nice or useful. And they did! They came up with the idea of a series of functions "uniformly converging" to a limit. Series that satisfied this condition were the nice things that had the properties that really should have been there. That is where the results came into play.

By the way, every word that you might not understand here has a specific, concrete definition. And they are just words on paper. There's no data collection or experiments here, unlike science. Mathematics is thought and logic. There are some observations, but they are more like "how can I generalize properties of real numbers to more than just numbers?" That's abstract algebra. The subject of topology is even stranger, because it starts at such bizarre definitions, but then you work your way through it and you get to results about the real numbers and more.

The definitions that lead to results? Created. Created by humanity.

That's frankly amazing. (On this religious discussion, it's why I can't really accept the concept of sin. Humanity is incredible that we can do all this solely with our brains. Humans are awesome.)

Math is the most powerful of all truths. Its definitions are not designed to be easy to read, which sucks, but rather, they are designed to never be misunderstood. They are concrete. Specific. Limited. And from there, you use true steps to prove a theorem. Then the theorem is true forever, for all eternity. When our planet is absorbed by the sun and our civilization is eradicated, our mathematical truths will still be true.

That's why I like math so much. It really is capital-T Truth. Science quantifies uncertainty, and gets within some error bars of the truth. People feel differently about religion.

But at the end of the day, mathematical proofs are done. They cannot be argued. You took true steps, and if every step of your proof is true, then the result is true, and is now true forever. Whether you should care about these truths? Eh, maybe not, but don't let anyone tell you that there's no truth that exists. Math is always there for anyone who wishes to learn how to read it.

Also, regarding science and the Big Bang and origin of life? Just because we can't figure it out now doesn't mean it lacks a natural explanation. We've discovered so much purely with natural causes and effects, such an astounding body of facts, that I see no reason to give up and say that it can never be known. It might take a while, but the answer and method exists, and is surely natural.

That said, why the Big Bang occurred will be difficult as there's literally no way to observe it. But maybe someday we can come up with some experimental strategy. But science relishes in unanswered questions. Science is less about answers and much more about asking just the right question.

 

I agree wholeheartedly with Twi (all respect to your beliefs, of course, Chaos) when she says that stories make a really really really good way to get a point across. I'm a writer type. I like stories. A lot. On the other hand, if a religion was full of mathematical equations, I'd be more likely not to join. Math isn't exactly my strong suit. 

I'm just saying that hey, if divinities want to convert everyone, maybe they should appeal to both. One half without the other is useless. Stories are certainly compelling to make people think about things, but I think something truly divine could do better than an author, frankly.

(But again, faith really just isn't for me.)

[skaa]

This has actually been a huge sticking point for me when it came to my final break from Christianity, probably mostly because I was taught that included in parts 2 & 3 were "You have to believe W."  I thought, well, that's kind of mean, isn't it?  There are billions of people on this planet who by default don't believe W, and most of them are probably perfectly nice people, even nicer than certain other people that do believe W.

 

Well, I know there are unfortunately some Christian denominations whose "W" (i.e. the thing that people must do in order to be saved) includes some doctrine that would immediately exclude billions of people (e.g. a doctrine requiring official entry to the church). Those denominations contradict St. Paul:

 

When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

There is also the problem of Abraham, Moses, and all the prophets in the Old Testament living before Christianity, so obviously a denomination that excludes all non-members are excluding those holy people as well (likely inadvertently).

 

As for my religion, well, yeah, our "W" does include conversion (so it's quite possible not everyone will enter heaven), because conversion is necessary to receive Christ's offer of salvation, but it is more of a conversion of the heart (metanoia), a commitment to turn away from evil and live a life that conforms to God's will... which a person can do even if he is honestly and without fault of his own ignorant of the Church.

 

The role of the Church (i.e. the reason to become a baptized Christian) is to participate in Christ's act of salvation. This is done in various ways (some of which are a bit weird for non-believers, so I won't mention them here), though one obvious way is by setting a good example of holiness, so that others will see and wish to live a similar life. This is something that I still have trouble doing, so I guess I'm not a very good Catholic.

Edited June 12, 2015 by skaa