Posts by unshackled

81

Belief in God: What were the difficult aspects and questions you had.

by designs in

two main one's for me were god being capricious and serendipitous..

unshackled

Actually Sab...forget the data question. Pointless.

I'm just curious...what, if any, conclusions did you come to about your poker experience? Coincidence, "something" reaching out to you, or...? PM me if you'd prefer.

81

Belief in God: What were the difficult aspects and questions you had.

by designs in

two main one's for me were god being capricious and serendipitous..

Invoking a god is a positive claim...the add-on. Two guys on a deserted island, amnesia...no idea how they got there. First one says "I think spirit goblins delivered us here". Second guy "Um okay...what proof do you have of that?"....First guy "You can't prove I'm wrong!"...Second guy "Fine...I don't accept that without evidence so I'll wait until more is in to come to conclusions."

The hypothesis stands and is inconclusive, but the data keeps rolling in.

What data?

59

How important are God and Jesus to you?

by Nickolas in

i ask this question because it goes to:.

- how disposed to objectively considering contrarian evidence you are, and.

- how much i might be messing with your life and happiness by helping you see things the way i do.. i read the posts of many people on this board who are apparently happy, even deliriously happy, with their theism.

unshackled

Nickolas...I was a born-in JW and 28+/- years in before fading. So, they were once very real but no longer important to me in how I live my life.

59

How important are God and Jesus to you?

by Nickolas in

i ask this question because it goes to:.

- how disposed to objectively considering contrarian evidence you are, and.

- how much i might be messing with your life and happiness by helping you see things the way i do.. i read the posts of many people on this board who are apparently happy, even deliriously happy, with their theism.

unshackled

At this time though, I just don't think its possible to conclude that there isn't a God. - Miz

This is true, but inversely, I don't think it is possible to conclude that there is a god. Seems to me the reason people adopt a god belief is because it answers all the scary unknowns of life for them. It is comforting and hence not easily dislodged. But is it logical to build your life around something you can't possibly know exists?

For example, we all need money to survive in this world. For most, money is a big source of stress in their lives. What if I told you I believe in an invisible money tree in my backyard, and when I need it most, will reveal itself to me and all will be taken care of? Comforting thought isn't it? But would you say:
"I just don't think its possible to conclude that there isn't an invisible money tree in your backyard?"

To answer the OP...the bible characters of God and Jesus are not important to me.

81

Belief in God: What were the difficult aspects and questions you had.

by designs in

two main one's for me were god being capricious and serendipitous..

unshackled

I guess what I am trying to say in a nutshell is that I think the atheist position is a weak position to take and I am genuinely baffled by anyone's choice to settle in that philosophy on life. – Sab

Again, to reiterate...belief that we are here because a god did it is an ADD-ON. We don't know how we're here. God is an invention of humans to answer the unknowns. Atheism is not a philosophy on life...it is a non-position, it is the state you are in before choosing to belief in a god. And choosing to believe in a god is based on wanting to believe because it comforts the mind from the unknown. Believers have a hard time understanding the non-believers because they don't need to believe to gain comfort, and are okay with waiting until all the evidence is in.

14

APB for SBC: anyone seen Cheez?

by unshackled in

jw
friends

mr. falcon and i noticed the other day that sweetbabycheezits hasn't been around lately.

perhaps he's laying low for a while in a safe house after an unfortunate incident with a trident.... .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbssttjszoc.

unshackled

Bumping this to say that now Mr. Falcon has gone AWOL. The nerve. He's probably sitting in a convention somewhere...sweating with a sour look on his face from all the brain-numbing babble, while his mind is elsewhere...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWN5Chp1Hyg

81

Belief in God: What were the difficult aspects and questions you had.

by designs in

two main one's for me were god being capricious and serendipitous..

unshackled

I highly recommend "Demon Haunted World" by Carl Sagan.

Entirely...I was just typing "Sab, if you haven't read the Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan yet..." and noticed your comment.

I see atheism as simply the absence of belief that any deities exist. I can't prove deities don't exist, same as anyone else can't prove there isn't an invisible aardvark named Eddy in my attic (which there is and he's a mean bugger).

Belief in a god is an add-on, a sign-up to a club with a hypothesis. Choosing to not sign-up to a god belief club, to me, is atheism.

"Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in." - Carl Sagan

27

"Philosophy is disfunctional" - Hallq

by bohm in

jw
friends

philosophy is disfunctional.

http://www.uncrediblehallq.net/2011/07/05/philosophy-is-dysfunctiona/.

im now convinced that, as an academic discipline, philosophy is dysfunctional.

unshackled

Not to spin your thread off topic bohm...but thought I'd add that Stephen Hawking says philosophy is dead...in fact, those are the first words in his book The Grand Design. He goes on to say:

"Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge."

81

Belief in God: What were the difficult aspects and questions you had.

by designs in

two main one's for me were god being capricious and serendipitous..

unshackled

Being a born-in, my belief in a God was the God of the Bible. Once I started to question the Bible and the God described therein, the house of cards collapsed. The questioning began for me with wondering why the God of the Bible was such a collosal f*ck up. How many times does a loving, all powerful creator need to wipe out his creation and start over? Why even once?

Zeus, Ra and Yahweh are all one in the same...human inventions. After that I had no need or desire to take up another flavor of belief in a god. As for the why and how questions of our existence and the universe, to invoke a god doesn't answer anything. It just leads to - what are the why's and how's of that god? Ah, magic.

49

More on Saturday's drama: Endo-symbiotic theory mentioned not once but twice

by sir82 in

jw
friends

i don't want to give a full synopsis of saturday's drama, for fear of inducing stupor among this thread's readers, but.... .

the drama deals with a jw family with 3 kids, 2 of whom are in various stages of rebellion against all things jw.. the older brother is one of the "rebels", while the younger brother is a thoroughly annoying piece of brown-nosing crapola, completely buying into the jw mindset.. anyways, the younger brother is asking the older brother about why he doesn't want to attend the family study any more.. the older kid's rambling answer touches on something along the lines of "i'm learning things in school about how life really came here.

it's not as simple as you think!".

unshackled

WTF? They never had any arguing in the dramas I went to. This is irritating!

Irritating to say the least serenity. That father sounds like a whiny bitch. Suck up it, pops...your kids don't want The Truth...they're smarter than you.