| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"sharon" |
| Date: |
29 Nov 2003 06:54:51 AM |
| Object: |
don't put words in my mouth! |
"Baba Dadá" <penny_lane_nospam@hotbox.ru> wrote in message
news:bq9v1j$20cnek$1@ID-206257.news.uni-berlin.de...
You feel guilty because you were programmed by the WWC and you turned
into
an atheist. You're no Deist
Okay .. a theist who rejects the Bible.
Well, on second thought Baba Dada it's just not that simple.
Anyone who's a true Truth Seeker, will give the Bible (any thing for that
matter) the benefit of the doubt... always keeping an open mind and
welcoming new information or knowledge. So, in this manner, I've not
rejected the Bible altogether. Do I believe it's the inerrant word of God?
No.
I hope that answers your question about my spirituality. I'm tickled you
were so interested. I'm a freethinker... a deist... one who believes in a
higher power.
.
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| User: "theBeaver" |
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| Title: Re: don't put words in my mouth! |
29 Nov 2003 08:32:31 AM |
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sharon wrote:
Anyone who's a true Truth Seeker, will give the Bible (any thing for that
matter) the benefit of the doubt... always keeping an open mind and
welcoming new information or knowledge. So, in this manner, I've not
rejected the Bible altogether. Do I believe it's the inerrant word of God?
No.
I hope that answers your question about my spirituality. I'm tickled you
were so interested. I'm a freethinker... a deist... one who believes in a
higher power.
Logic is about how you think, not about the real world. Don't you at
least believe you should have no "open mind" about logic? It provides a
way of evaluating "truth", of clarifying your thinking. For instance,
if Socrates is a man, and all men are mortal, then Socrates is mortal.
Do you have any doubt about this conclusion, assuming the premises are
true? If you find that Socrates is still alive, you can then proceed to
correct your definition of "Socrates", "man", or "mortal" to abide the
facts. Whenever I am surprised by something I was sure was not
possible, I discover a faulty premise. By this means, I not only refine
my premises, but find better ways of avoiding bad premises in the
future. Logic is therefore a useful means of seeing through deception
and error.
If someone says to you that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and good,
I guess you would keep an "open mind" about this, thinking it could be
true, right? But if you feel any need to be logical in your thinking,
you might be a bit uncomfortable with the fact that bad things
(non-"good" things that could be avoided by an OOG God -- Omnipotent,
Omniscient, and Good) happen in this world. Logic shows you how to
resolve this discomfort. Very commonly, people imagine that the nature
of the world is such that some bad is unavoidable, even by God, so in
fact there may in fact be a net "good" resulting from any evil that
appears avoidable. For instance, stop a man from burning his child
alive, and you interfere with his free will, right? You prevent him
from ever feeling remorse, and prevent others learning from his bad
behavior, and his finding absolution in God. Or you can imagine that
pain on this earth is a small thing compared to an eternity in Heaven or
Hell, and think that there is of course a net good when you compare
eternity in Heaven to 10 minutes of the most horrific pain and betrayal.
Some people reconcile the apparent contradiction of God by imagining
that the apparent pain is an illusion, or that God is vengeful (and
vengeance is good) and those people who suffered pain really deserved
it, perhaps because of Original Sin.
The simplest solution is to not to worry about contradiction, to have
faith that if you just keep your nose clean, everything will work out in
the end. "Faith" means ignoring contradiction, but it also implies that
you should avoid searching for contradictions: If contradiction is to
be ignored (through faith), what is the point in looking for it?
Searching for or worrying about logical issues about God, itself implies
a lack of faith, since it implies a usefulness to new information that
contradicts God (why search for something useless?), and of course if
you found it, keeping the faith would require that you ignore it.
Some faithful people are still often bothered by logic. Why else would
they invent theories about why evil exists on this Earth? They are
compelled to resolve contradiction, to make things clear in their heads,
to understand. They try one thing, but it doesn't quite fit the facts.
They try another one of the available explanations for Evil. They're
uncomfortable with that one, because it has certain logical
implications. Eventually, they may try to find comfort in an
environment in which they can totally avoid confrontation, or they
discover some mental trick that fills them with pious and blissful
feelings when their faith is challenged by logic.
By keeping an "open mind", I guess you mean that there is nothing that
could ever convince you of anything, that logic is not even certain,
that you have no means of validating truth. The "existence of evil"
argument against an OOG god is meaningless to you. You have adopted the
brainless and passive approach of the faithful, but you still like to
pretend that you are some kind of highly evolved thinker. Bertrand
Russell was on to something when he said a mind perpetually open is a
mind perpetually empty. He was on to people like you.
.
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| User: "sharon" |
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| Title: Re: don't put words in my mouth! |
29 Nov 2003 12:51:44 PM |
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"theBeaver" <dmanjacobs@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:362yb.8353$a54.214@nwrddc03.gnilink.net...
By keeping an "open mind", I guess you mean that there is nothing that
could ever convince you of anything, that logic is not even certain,
that you have no means of validating truth. The "existence of evil"
argument against an OOG god is meaningless to you. You have adopted the
brainless and passive approach of the faithful, but you still like to
pretend that you are some kind of highly evolved thinker. Bertrand
Russell was on to something when he said a mind perpetually open is a
mind perpetually empty. He was on to people like you.
Nah... *laughs*... it doesn't pay to believe too firmly in any_thing, that
too is a type of blind faith. I don't pretend to be a highly evolved
thinker, I've often admitted, I'm just beginning to learn and I've been
asking myself 100,000 questions.
Meanwhile.. too much certainty can be a bad thing. Quoting my buddy Ed :
"..lastly I've just read about the discovery of OMEGA numbers. Unpredictible
numbers, and their discovery has thrown a further wrench in the belief that
mathematics and/or logic are somehow "proven" disciplines. It's always been
a matter of discovering things, like biologists discover new species. Or
like discovering that the sun rises again and again in very similar
fashion. Timothy Leary once put it, "I don't believe that the truth will set
you free, because we all have such a tremendous ability to rationalize the
truth."
http://www.honors.umd.edu/HONR228A/generalinfo.html
"The researchers are certainly competent, and no one has yet found a
definitive flaw in the experiment. None the less, most of the scientific
community remains skeptical. For the moment, I am perfectly comfortable
saying "I don't know," while I wait for further investigation and
independent replication.".........
Isn't that how the scientific community feels about "spiritual/paranormal
issues"? Being skeptical but with an open mind... and being content to
sometimes say I don't know... or at least, if saying I don't believe... but
I'm open to new evidence.
My life doesn't center around spiritual issues, most of my interest lies in
my books, which I've been studying, i.e., church history (that's a huge
subject), and about creation/evolution issues (another huge debate),
Biblical Errancy is always of interest to learn a new thing, etc etc etc...
it pays to stay open-minded, but always skeptical.
.
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