Why do/don't you believe in God

by LouBelle 153 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  tetrapod.sapien

  Tetra:
  

  
  
  You partially quoted me. Please don't do that! My comments were to the following highlighted text:
  

  ...all the nagging unanswerable questions of how did we get here, how should we live our lives and where do we go, questions that each religion tries to answer, some more successfully than others... Science has answered many of these questions for us

  
  

  
  
  Science has described some of the processes about how we eventually took on human form, and the process of decay of the deceased physical human body, but it doesn't truly address any of the questions vaunted.

  LT,
  i was replying to your whole comment. if you re-read my reply, you'll see it is touching on what you write here:

  Science has described some of the processes about how we eventually took on human form, and the process of decay of the deceased physical human body, but it doesn't truly address any of the questions vaunted.

  and so again: errmmm...yes it has touched on these questions, whether the answer interests anyone or not. here is my reply again:

  extrapolation on scientific knowledge via parsimony, shows us why we are here, and where we are going, in the most natural sense. if it's blind and pitiless, then perhaps it's because that's what nature is.
• 

  Spook

  LT,

  I migh add my big assumption: That truth and reality are not absurd.

  There are more ways of tackling the assumptions. For example, that the bible isn't clear and uncomplicated. I for one think it is clear and uncomplicated and is exactly what it is, as mentioned above. Also, there was a collective "we" used. One could say that even if we assume all of the rest, it may be that the bible doesn't apply to everyone even if it claims within its contents that it does.

  At any rate, I'd invite you to tell me your other thought. It's a pretty basic proposition

  If X is A and B, then X should be C and D, not E.

  You can pick on...

  1. The definition of X.

  2. Qualities A and B.

  3. The nature of should.

  4. Qualities C and D.

  5. The contradiction between union C-D and opposite E.

  I suppose that last one is an additional dimension. Who says C-D and E are exclusive? What if it were clearly and uncomplicatedly concealed in metaphor?

  Anything beyond this seems to beg linguistics to me. As much as I love Chomsky, I realive that beyond language, all logic is tautalogical.
• 

  tetrapod.sapien

  I also have no doubt that there is a creator and the essence of his policies is revealed in the Bible, it's just not credible that man was made by evolution with an inbuilt instinct for believing in the divine and with a desire for a spiritual life interestingly enough in the human brain there are centres that enable spirituality in man. Mother nature (evolution) simply doesn't believe in the existence of the divine.

  greendawn,

  • if you have no doubt about such an extraordinary miracle, then you should be of a real minority among humanity. however, unfortunately, you are right in there with all the rest of the majority that have "no doubt".
  • if you don't think evolution is credible, then you obviously have an ulterior motive for ignoring the evidence.
  • man evolved the desire for a spiritual life. it was not inbuilt.
  • i think there should be a period between "life" and "interestingly". i thought you were a chemistry teacher? i have noticed this sort of thing in the posts of yours that i have attempted to respond to. it makes it difficult. i don't mean to be rude, but thought i would point it out. i don't have perfect grammar either, but periods and commas seem to go a long way.
  • the fact that there are "centres" in the brain for spirituality, is more a testament to evolution than it is creation, frankly. i know that a major centre is the temporal lobe. and i also know that in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, many experience a profound sense of spirituality during seizures, with hallucinations, and sometimes "heavenly" music.
  • mother nature (evolution) is not a conscious entity. why the need to project animation on inanimate objects? LOL
• 

  Pole

  LT,
  No problem ;-). I'm sure I'll get a chance to voice some of my lost point again. LOL.
  Spook,
  

  Anything beyond this seems to beg linguistics to me. As much as I love Chomsky, I realive that beyond language, all logic is tautalogical.

  
  
  I think Chomskian linguistics is useless when it comes to the Bible. I'd rather go for the cognitive paradigm which recognizes the metaphor as the engine of language. There is almost no abstract reasoning outside the metaphor, and there are no "context-free" meanings or grammars in real language use.
  Pole
• 

  LittleToe

  Mtbatoon:

  In part many of my views are shaped by my upbringing and there may well be an echo of JW ideology in my statement. I do however stand by it.

  Sure, and believe me, I'm ok with that. It's your paradigm

  is a proposition not an assumption.

  It's a proposition that contains assumptions, and these are what I refer to.

  Another assumption but if the bible is a clear as some people claim then why after millenniumis it still being studied and debated?

  Maybe it's not as clear as they claim - they are working under their own assumptions

  So are you assuming that he has?

  I never made such a statement. Whether I believe that to be true, or not, would be for me to know, and for you to find out
• 

  LittleToe

  Legolas:

  Ok I see I have been outwitted today...

  That wasn't my intention.

  Tetra:I let you away with it, first time around, but this time around I shall jump on it: Parsimony is ultimately based on statistical probability, not certain fact

  Spook:

  The assumption that it's a manual at all - big JW/Fundamentalist score on that one!!!
• 

  tetrapod.sapien

  he he,

  LT,

  Tetra:I let you away with it, first time around, but this time around I shall jump on it: Parsimony is ultimately based on statistical probability, not certain fact

  i'm glad you brought it up, since i am in complete agreement. do you honestly think that i can say with honesty that there is a certain fact that god does not exist? of course i can't. however, i can say that the probability for god's existence, is much lower than the probability for his non-existence. filter your probability through the following, even just roughly, and tell me if the probability that it/he exists, is still more than 50%:

  • human suffering
  • human credulity
  • scientific method
  • theory of evolution by natural selection (biology)
  • cosmology
  • astrophysics
  • neurobiology
  • anthropology
  • secular bible history

  IMO, at a certain point, it becomes rather obvious that the probability that god does not exist is higher than should be ignored.

  TS (note the full quote )
• 

  LittleToe

  I love going round and round with ya, bud

  Which "God"? BibleGodTM?

  Filter a Deist "God" through that, and tell me how it reduces the percentage
• 

  zen nudist

  when I first left JWs and started studying psychology, I notced a lot of mind games being placed in the bible as originating from God.

  it made me think that honest beings do not play head games with people, they give them all the facts and let them decide to join or not, buy or not etc. Con artists on the other hand must set up their marks to believe in something unreal and unprovable to get them to buy sight un seen and give the con artists time to escape with their illl gotten gain.

  so, I had to ask myself would a real honest, loving father resemble a con artist or an honest dealer?

  the bible God and all that is associated with it seem way to close to a con artist to me.

  and what better symbol of con artistry is there besides the loving shepherd.... his sheep can feel the love and caring right up until they are fleeced and slaughtered... the shepherd is really a predator who cares for his sheep for his own benefit and not that of the sheep. TO SERVE MAN -twilight zone comes to mind
• 

  tetrapod.sapien

  LT,

  so true. the deist's god is much less touchable by parsimony, indeed. and as far as pantheists and deists are concerned, i really don't mind them that much, as they seem to be the most honest theists around. it's the christian bubble that i delight in bursting. he he.

  but i will say something regarding deism:

  the God of the Gaps argument still applies to the deist's god. based on what we know so far about nature, universe included, this god would have been nothing more really than a very, very, very, very brilliant programmer. but like all programmers, quite lazy, as Evolution would be one of his major pieces of code, and evolution is the lazy gods way of creation. i mean, why draw a blueprint, when you can simply write some algorithms, and execute the program? (in the beginning was the command line ).

  and should this god be responsible for suffering if he has not interfered with the program since execution of it? i don't think so. but if that is the case, then we should also frankly admit that he has not interacted with man, or else he would be guilty of human suffering. and i don't think people, apart from deists and non-theists, are willing to go there.

  i always enjoy the go-around too,

  cheers,

  TS