by nicolaou 63 Replies latest watchtower medical
DD = your argument does not stand scrutiny!
For example 10 000 000 000 livestock in the USA alone will be bred to die for human consumption in this year alone!
So year on year worldwide they could be classed as survivors = become a speceis most humans love to eat in order to overpopulate the planet!
You get the idea?
Become the human most of the rich and powerful love to dine on....
RC
For example 10 000 000 000 livestock in the USA alone will be bred to die for human consumption in this year alone!
No I don't get it! Who's breeding who?
Burn, DD, look it's this simple. Whatever beliefs I might have I will offer evidence for - or at least a reasoned argument. Religious belief though is something different. There is no evidence, if it existed then faith would not be required.
Yes, I am an atheist but that is not a belief. I do not have the positive belief that god does not exist I simply have an absence of belief about god. [see here] The evidence for his existence is not in.
Mike
aka Nic'
We are stuck in a real world in a real universe with a mind that can "create" non-real worlds and non-real characters.
Belief is an admission there are no facts of proof.
Belief is a white flag surrendering one's rational mind.
Surrendering the rational mind is not an act of mental illness. It is an act of intellectual cowardice which results in moral disintegration.
Holding other people to a standard you yourself have invented is evidence of moral disintegration.
Assertions of belief are desperate things---not an illness---fear.
Playing the game of life deuces wild is abandonment of responsibility. This is the God game. "I'm not in charge---GOD is!"
Failure to take responsibility for your life and the world in which you live is the ultimate act of moral turpitude and intellectual dishonesty.
It isn't mental illness.
Belief is an admission there are no facts of proof.
I am going to disagree with this statement. Faith is an admission there are no facts of proof.
You can have a belief, which is an idea about a certain things whether it is substantiated or unsubstantiated. I carry a belief that when the sky is gray and I hear thunder it will most likely rain. I have a belief that if you put your hand in a flame, you will get burned. (Substantiated)
I have faith that while I can't see something, I think believe/think it exists. (Unsubstantiated)
Since I consider myself an amateur philosopher, I found this interesting:
The relationship between belief and knowledge is subtle. Believers in a claim typically say that they know that claim. For instance, those who believe that the Sun is a god will report that they know that the Sun is a god. However, the terms belief and knowledge are used differently by philosophers.
Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge and belief. A primary problem for epistemology is exactly what is needed in order for us to have knowledge. In a notion derived from Plato's dialogue Theaetetus, philosophy has traditionally defined knowledge as justified true belief. The relationship between belief and knowledge is that a belief is knowledge if the belief is true, and if the believer has a justification (reasonable and necessarily plausible assertions/evidence/guidance) for believing it is true.
A false belief is not considered to be knowledge, even if it is sincere. A sincere believer in the flat earth theory does not know that the Earth is flat. Similarly, a truth that nobody believes is not knowledge, because in order to be knowledge, there must be some person who knows it.
Later epistemologists have questioned the "justified true belief" definition, and some philosophers have questioned whether "belief" is a useful notion at all.
To know is to know something.
For something to exist it must have identity.
What we find ostensible is real. Discovery of reality is only through our senses, our link to the actual outside world.
Reality is ostensible to us by our senses.
The rest (what we do with our sensory input) is internal definitions of the concepts we form through our contact with reality.
When we lose touch with reality by conjecture, supposition, imagination and wishful thinking, we might try and bridge the_____gap_____through belief that a bridge is really there.
The real world is practical. The world of belief is imaginary.
Cause and effect are demonstrable in the real world. Cause and effect can be suspended in the imaginary world of belief.
God can cause the sun to stand still or a shadow to move backward or water can part and leave dry ground behind. That is the imaginary world of belief.
Reality always trumps imagination and belief because the actual ostensible world is impervious to DISbelief. The gun you believe is not loaded can shoot a real bullet through your head.
Faith and Belief. Twin bastards fathered by imagination.
Terry,
Again you are narrow minded.
Surrendering the rational mind is not an act of mental illness. It is an act of intellectual cowardice which results in moral disintegration.
Holding other people to a standard you yourself have invented is evidence of moral disintegration.
As a believer, I do not hold other people to a standard that I have invented. I hold myself to my own standards of morality.
I could assert that constantly berating even the possibility of a higher power is intellectual cowardice, but you know what? I won't assert that because I am happy to allow you your opinions on the matter andI don't feel the need or desire to attack you (or those who think like you) in any way.
Playing the game of life deuces wild is abandonment of responsibility. This is the God game. "I'm not in charge---GOD is!"
Failure to take responsibility for your life and the world in which you live is the ultimate act of moral turpitude and intellectual dishonesty.
It isn't mental illness.
Again - you are wrong. I am a believer and I have always taken total responsibility for myself and my life. In fact, since I believe that whatever comes my way is of my own doing (ultimately) then I am even more conscious of my own responsibility for my life. I don't blame my bad luck on chance (or god or the devil), rather I ask myself how I may have invited this into my life (not in an obsessive way, but in a contemplative way which results in further learning.) Sirona
DeputyDog: You asserted that "religious belief" could be a sign of mental illness. I agreed that it could, if we could include atheism.
History and statistics seem to show that theist out number atheist by more than 10 to 1. So let me ask you, in the atheist world view, if survival of the fittest rules, who's the fittest? Who is doing the best job of surviving?
These comments show such obvious warped logic that it is laughable. Religious belief is the opposite of atheism. It cannot be included as if it were a branch of religion.
To equate survival of the fittest with religious belief is absurd. The process of survival on this planet has spanned millions of years and religion has played almost no part in terms of time.
Animals, which due to no conscious belief in a God we must consider to be atheists, have survived far longer than humans and continue to do so, out numbering humans. The recent arrival of humans is damaging the planet.
If by your reckoning 90% believe in a God, we must if we apply your logic, conclude that the world is safer in the hands, or paws, of athiests.
TG
nic,
Religious belief could be considered a sign of mental illness, of course. There is no reason why it should be, there is no basis for considering it such, but surely, it could be.
But then, there could be a teapot orbiting Uranus, too. There is equally no reason why there should be, no basis for considering that one would be, but surely, there could be.
An actual illness which is contagious and pandemic? Proofs, please.
If some went so far as to characterize religion as a contagious disease they will have proved to me that they are themselves delusive and will have given me an actual basis for severely discounting their opinions and exercising some caution in their company since they will have deemed me to be an ill person bearing a contagious disease. I would resist to the death any attempts to quarantine such an "illness" whether the attempt was leveled against my particular 'strain' or against someone else's.
Would you go so far as to characterize religious beliefs as a mental illness or as a contagious disease?
Curiously,
AuldSoul
Terry: We are stuck in a real world in a real universe with a mind that can "create" non-real worlds and non-real characters.
Remarkable. We agree.
Do any other species demonstrate this ability, or are humans unique in this?
What survival need was fulfilled by this trait such that we have done so well?
Is it really likely that a survival trait needed to get us here should be expected to be safely shed within a very short period of time, let's say, within 10 generations? Is that really a reasonable expectation? Should we attempt to forcibly expel this trait of worshipping the unseen from ourselves as an undesirable trait despite our ignorance of how it has apparently aided us to succeed, specially speaking?
Would you really call it stuck? If so, what utile purpose does such capacity of mind serve us in the arena of survival? If, as you and others suggest, there is actually a detrimental effect on the species produced by religion then it is a disease. However, how can you show that such a detriment to the species exists without knowing the potential outcomes both with and without religious beliefs so that an accurate cost to benefit analysis can be made?
Once again, you assert purely subjective conjectures as fact. What if we aren't "stuck" in such a world at all? What if we are liberated into such a world; distinctly differentiated from all other animals in this peculiar aspect of ability? In that case, would it be a disease or a boon to the species?
Again, we would have to have a means of prescience to fairly judge the merits of religious beliefs.
I believe I have personally experienced such a prescient source of foreknowledge. Many millions of others believe they have experienced such a source, as well. That is not evidence which can be tendered to a scientific rigor for verification. I admit I have no evidence beyond my person, but why should I need such? In order to convince you? I am not compelled to do so. I only feel compelled to inform others, not to convince them.
I do not believe science claims to be a prescient source of knowledge and I think history has proved them to be incredibly inept at their best attempts along those lines. Therefore, I do not credit science as such a source and cannot think why I should heavily weight my judgments about cost and benefit to the species according to what science merely believes to be true or likely about the future for our species.
Respectfully,
AuldSoul
