"PerfectlyAble" <jrhw@kol.co.nz> wrote

Belief isn't rational. You can know rationally something is
true yet out of religious belief do the contrary. How many
scientist know religion is wrong, can prove it yet still
claim to be religious. How many judges pass sentances
on people they thought innocent, or watched why those
that they thought guilty were found innocent. We live in
a world where we all routinely lie to ourselves to some degree.
You'd have to be really delusional openly admit otherwise.
Nobody is that perfect.

The problem, I think, is with how people think they understand "God."

Scriptures, myths, folk tales, swear words, curses...all tend to bestow
anthropomorphic qualities to "God." "God the father," "God the son," "the
right hand of God" (which, if it were accurate, would require "God" have an
elbow, an earlobe, and an *****). I'm not aware of any man-made religion
that claims its adherents will someday sit at the ***** of God for
eternity.

As I've contributed to many of these fora before, I think religion was
created to explain the inexplicable. From Abraham to L. Ron Hubbard, the
"prophets" are simply trying to come up with answers most people have
difficulty even conjuring up questions to. For the Egyptians, the Nile
River provided feast or famine, depending on the schedule of floods. For
the Aztecs, it was the sun that told people to plant beans and eat for a
year.

A bunch of intelligent, entertainment-minded, sheep-herding semi-nomadic
people who tended to be conquered by other cultures gave rise to a poet who
came up with "The Lord is my shepherd." The metaphor caught on.

Because God is bigger than any of us. Bigger than all of us. Bigger than
everything. And then some.

There comes a point in just about everyone's life where they just don't want
to learn anymore. My 93-year-old grandmother decided she couldn't figure
out the TV remote and struggled out of her chair to walk across the room to
change channels. Mostly, though, she sat through TV shows she hated because
it was too much trouble to walk across the room to change channels.

My grandmother was a people. People tend to get comfortable with answers;
to have faith in the answers that served them well (or reasonably so) most
of their lives. Why learn something new?

A long time ago -- say, 7,000 years ago for the Israelites, or 2,000 years
ago for the Christians, 1,300 years ago for the Moslems, or 175 years ago
for the Mormons, or 50 years ago for $cientologists -- certain factions of
people decided it was too much trouble to walk across the room and change
the channel to discover there might be another program that might better
explain the inexplicable.

So they imagine "God" with a right hand and a throne and totally limit to
human qualities the concept of infinity, omniscience,
omnipotence..."God-ness."

The Greeks thought there was a "Sun" god, and a "god" of the dead, and a
"god" of wine, etc. Apparently their head "god" was better at delegating
authority. It might turn out that "God" is the unifying theory of
relativity. But will that "God" explain why your ex-boyfriend was an
***** when he got drunk? Or why children get shot by assault weapons in
daycare centers? Probably not. There will always be things that are hard
to explain to people who are trying to function with a brain made out of
meat. So there will always be events, fates, tragedies, and boons
attributed to...."God."

If the Jesus metaphor works for you (and almost all of His teachings are, in
fact, metaphors), solid. If L. Ron Hubbard puts your mind at ease and helps
you get a grasp on life, fine. If cutting the hearts out of virgins and
offering it to the sun is the way you deal with everyday problems, well,
maybe we need to talk.

"Intelligent" Design's fatal flaw is that it is religion, not science.
Science long ago set up its rules: to explore *natural* explanations for
stuff we don't understand yet. Science has been pretty good at a lot of
things, and has come up short on other stuff. But the rules of science's
game is you can't cop out and say there's something *super*natural out their
to explain your experiments, calculations, postulations, theories, and
discoveries. "Intelligent" Design applied to science is as absurd as
calling a safety blitz in a baseball game. It just doesn't belong.

"Intelligent" Design advocates are like my poor grandmother who didn't want
to learn the TV remote. They'd rather sit and curse what they face than
take a few steps forward or learn new ways of looking at things.

On 5 Dec 2005 12:26:39 -0800, "PerfectlyAble" <jrhw@kol.co.nz> wrote:

Captain Compassion wrote:

On 5 Dec 2005 04:15:48 -0800, "PerfectlyAble" <jrhw@kol.co.nz> wrote:

Captain Compassion wrote:

On 4 Dec 2005 02:47:15 -0800, "PerfectlyAble" <jrhw@kol.co.nz> wrote:

Captain Compassion wrote:

On Sun, 04 Dec 2005 02:53:24 -0500, Christopher A. Lee
<calee@optonline.net> wrote:

On 3 Dec 2005 23:44:11 -0800,

So far, there is no reason for a non-religious person to conclude that
any gods exist.

I suggest you broaden your horizons a bit, just for the sake of
understanding that you can have God without religion. Religion is just

How so, when the only reason people believe in deity is because
religious parents teach their religion's deity to their children
before they can think for themselves so it becomes axiomatic.

So it's impossible for atheistic parents to have theistic children?

a club that has something to do with a god, but it is not the only
vehicle. In fact, since we are individuals first, it makes perfect
sense to believe in a god (if that suits a person) without belonging to
a members-only club.

Only if you invent your own deity out of the blue, never having heard
of such a thing.

God(s) seem to be an invention of all societies and cultures as far
back as history goes.

That is not entirely true. Yes at present we see over exposed
to God(s), but you must consider first that they might filter the
social conscience to raise the prevalance of God(s).
i.e. Buddha never said he was God, never claimed to be the
son or any relative of any God, never even talked about God.
It is Christians that say Buddhists are mono-theists, because
the idea that religion can exist without God would mean they
would have to start accepting atheists have religion (there
goes the God in the oath, on the coinage, etc).

Facts are there are many non-god religions. Animalism is
an example. Aborigines Australia used animal spirit stories
to storeup knowledge about species and so be able to predict
and so harvest/utilise them.

Animalism is no less religious then Catholicism. It makes little
difference in the shape or the name of the logos at the center of the
belief. Communists believe in the State. Humanists the works of man.

The point was that Narnia is beign talkedup as a Christian
film, yet Lewis Carrol clearly robbed the bank on pre-christian
and non-christian imaginary. Whereas Kong is more purely
natural in its origins. Even the way Kong falls in Love with
the women seems more christian than a talking lion being
re-incarnated. But back to your point, God(s) are not the
first ideas that enter humankinds mind, in fact rather the
opposite is going on. Christians, especially, when confronted
with history, with foreign religions, and non-christianised myths,
are liable to plaguarise them as Christian. So even your view
that Gods are invented (which they are) goes back to the very
start of history is completely false. In fact ever since the first
Christian appeared they have been imposing themselves on
past history trying to eek out God's precense. As Narnia
proves quite hilariously! History shows that animalism
arrived first, then pantheism as the animal spirits were
godified, then in Egypt a Pharoah went one better and
claimed to be the sole God. He was overthrown and his
supporters rebelled at the resurrected pantheism and
retreated Eastwards, the rest is religious history (i.e.
madeup to suit the preachers efforts to get fed and a
nice shiny palace to store the artworks).

Its quite fasinating to watch Christian lie to themselves.
Two movies out, King Kong and Narnia. In one there are
talking animal spirits that undergo re-incarnation, along
with man-horses straight out of pagan pan-theism.
In the other you have a enlarged ape straight out of
a garden of eden. Yep, you guess it, King Knog is not
the Christian story, Narnia is!!!

If you are a true believer you can't lie to yourself.

What that a definition or something? Clearly people of
faith lie to themselves all the time. I pretty much convinced
Bush throught God told him to invade Iraq, and look what
a throwaway war that has turned out to be.

If you *believe* something is true how can you lie about it to
yourself? Others might perceive the lie but the author, even when
given overwhelming evidence to the contrary, persist in his belief.

Belief isn't rational.

Well Duh!

You can know rationally something is
true yet out of religious belief do the contrary. How many
scientist know religion is wrong, can prove it yet still
claim to be religious.

How do you prove religion is wrong or right?

How many judges pass sentances
on people they thought innocent, or watched why those
that they thought guilty were found innocent. We live in
a world where we all routinely lie to ourselves to some degree.
You'd have to be really delusional openly admit otherwise.
Nobody is that perfect.

It is not the duty of a judge to determine guilt or innocence.

I think we are just getting tangled in semantics, here.

--

--
"The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing
their memory, or their backbone, but we're not going to sit by and
let them rewrite history." -- ***** Cheney 11/16/2005

"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography" -- Ambrose Bierce

"America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy." -- John Updike

"Long term commitment in relationships is only necessary because it takes
so damn long to raise children. Marriage may well be some kind of trick
to keep the males around beyond sexual satiation." -- Captain Compassion

"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant

Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMverizon.net