depends on your perspective, mine is being rightly related to God and others it is interesting how many Christians are getting divorced these days because 'it is God's will' relationship in itself can be an idol. the new commandment Jesus gave is the opposite. John's first epistle inspired what i posted... walking in the light (1:3-7), loving your brother (2:9-10), purity (2:15), humility (3:17), sincerity (4:20). by this shall all men know you are my disciples.... that's the relationship I spoke of, post-Acts 2 love for God and my neighbor my context as a Christian is the love of God poured out in your heart by the Holy Spirit. the genuine love of God includes the knowledge of God which is preferred to human intellect.
No but there are plenty of religious people who make it known that if you don't believe what they do you are going to hell. Sort of pushy don't ya think? DD
Sure, there are plenty of idiots everywhere...like the author of this study. I havent heard any religious person call themselves "enlightened" though.
Human virtues are as old as the day is long, paitience, fortitude, prudence, temperance. Try again. Why am I arguing with all the Christians and people who believe in God. I believe in God!
Again, I'm not saying religion doesn't have its uses - it certainly does. First off though, on the issue of animal life. I don't put that on equal par, but I do think an ape has a greater consciousness and awareness then a single egg - that's all i am saying. Where is that point? When does abortion translate into murder? It's definitely subjective. And it should be. I don't prepose eliminating religion, i propose why intelligent people aren't religious as an explanation. For me, I find religion to be useful from a cultural and traditional standpoint, but not ethical. My ethics were influenced by philosophy, discipline, and religion growing up - to be sure. But I reached a certain point where all three of these are no longer of value. Instead, my ethics are driven from internal understanding of who I am. In other words - religion has lost it's value beyond a cultural standpoint for me. The idea of a god or not existing has no impact on me. It has no affect on my behavior or how I think or feel. Thus, what is the value of believing in or disbelieving this. Religion is merely doctrine. And that's why I say religion doesn't teach introspection - because it hands down a set of laws. It defines right and wrong. It doesn't allow much for grey area does it? The pope, imams, and other figures of religion are pretty absolute...and doesn't that go against a world of so many places where and absolute application of morality fails? In a way you are making the point I am trying to make. That if you, as an intelligent person, is indeed introspective and open-minded - you are in fact breaking away from the religious dogma - a principal of nearly every religion. I think the more educated one is - the more one studies history, philosophy, humanity, law, politics, literature, and so on, the more a relgious person has to either try to adopt what they see into the religious framework they subscribe to or they must reject all that doesn't fit into their framework. Eventually for many this leads to the rejection of that framework. I know this will sound harsh, but I really think spirituality and religion is something for us to be weened off of - like the tooth fairy. We can enjoy the stories of religion but keep in mind they are historical and metaphorical in context - not meant to be taken literally. Abortion shouldn't be outlawed or prevented because the Bible says so. It should be because of an ethical awareness our society has - that there's a difference between disposing of an embryo and an 8 month fetus. We don't allow babies to be abandoned and left for dead because a baby is necessarily conscious or aware - we do it because it's such a repulsive idea and to tolerate would truly be destabalizing to a society. We don't need religion to tell us it's wrong. Or perhaps - not all of us do. And that's the point i'm trying to make here. Intelligent people aren't rejecting religion, they just may not need it anymore.
I will admit to a slight intent to harass; just keeping you sharp! As you know from previous conversations, I believe that the Faith once delivered to the saints is a gift of grace. It is a supernatural work of God or the Holy Spirit. The miracle of the "new birth" as Jesus called it is not through human agency as is the first birth (although that could be debated). Natural birth is of "water," while the second birth is of "Spirit." The "need" of the second birth is a conviction brought about by the Holy Spirit, it occurs through the agency of the Holy Spirit, and it is sustained by the Holy Spirit. If anyone is curious, call out to God, ask Him if He exists, ask Him to reveal Himself to you, and ask Him to clarify the truth of this mystery. But, brace yourself.
Interesting thread and Invisible Fan has already posted a lot of what I was going to say. Just to add my two ducats I think there is a problem with looking at faith and intelligence as being two seperate things. In many ways our intelligence leads to faith since as thinking beings it is our nature to question. One can say that as we get more intelligent we become understand empiracal reality more and square that with rationality so that it might seem silly or delusional to believe in what cannot be empiracally proven. The problem is that we come to the limits of empiracism fairly quickly but as thinking beings we are still going to be asking for more. Empiracal observation and logical reasoning will never answer the questions of: Where do we come from? Why are we here? What happens when we die? In anything more than the most shallow ways. Being self aware and more importantly aware of our own mortality we are going to aks those questions and if logic and empiracism can't provide those answers we are going to invent our own.
Agree with this, the problem I have is that most major religions were created centuries ago, when there was even less empirical data on hand then there is today. And I find it hard to believe in any religion that was based upon cultures that made up stories to answer things they didn't understand. I think the message of some of them is good, but the stories to me are just mythological in nature to support the message. DD
as somebody stated earlier, God has ALWAYS existed. There was no beginning to God. He is the beginning. The Alpha and the Omega. Just like our human minds can't comprehend the idea of an "eternal life" because EVERYTHING we know and understand has an end - we also cannot comprehend something with no beginning. logic fails all the time, maybe it isn't all as complicated as these discussions end up being.
Religion is more than a set of laws. Your preconceived notions of religion only sees dogma and what its figureheads command. More foregone conclusions. I came to the exact opposite conclusion. By religion, you mean Judeo-Christian values? I don't know for sure the extent of where metaphor and literalism begins. You admitted our lack of knowledge on where consciousness begins. Now how can you claim a definitive difference between an embryo and an 8 month fetus? And you bring up a weird tangent on how monkeys are more conscious than infants. Do you want laws on monkey murder stricter than infanticide? What was your point? You first started by saying that stances against abortion "looks ridiculous from a scientific viewpoint". Now you're saying society will catch on that abortion should be outlawed from some "ethical awareness". Then you say that religion should be held to a higher and consistent standard wrt animal treatment because of fundamentalist Christians' notoriously zealous pursuit on the sanctity of life, yet you don't offer any non-religious alternative that has had successes in influencing the debate on respecting all forms of life. What you have left is a void and wishful assumption that humanity knows better. It sounds like you just don't want religion telling you what to do because you're good enough, smart enough, and gosh darnit people like you. Despite the tone of seriousness in your replies, I find them intellectually inconsistent and lacking. I'm not going to be drawn in a repetitive debate. Intelligent people don't have to spend the time to read and open their minds to challenging questions. They can still consider themselves intelligent. That's far safer than being wrong and a fool.
Absolutely. We cant ultimately prove what is the truth of our creation. We can't UN-prove what indeed might be religious themed invention. It ends up being in simple terms "whatver works for ya". Mormons realized this long ago And Mormons don't seem to appear as unintelligent (naive maybe?) But they're living and dying happy and fulfilled.
Sometimes faith goes against reflexive intelligence. Just because you bring out a helping hand to all strangers doesn't mean you'll be rewarded or have neutral consequence. There'll be times where you get stomped on and exploited. It's logical to wisen up to protect their hides, but those with faith might continue doing it again and again. The question of empirical reality goes beyond the three questions you mentioned. Obviously they're themes that attract the most attention, but there are day to day things that are beyond the public's realm of control, like the stock market or gas prices. There's a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb called "The Black Swan" that goes into the logical assumptions and models we use in order to make the world more predictable only to suffer even worse from rare and improbable events. The title comes from the assumption that all swans were white only to discover that there are black swans in New Zealand. After large events, people rush in to paint a logical sequence of why it happened, presumably so they could factor it in their models for the next time. Doing so sets up the stage for an even greater catastrophe. The danger of empiricism is thinking that the conclusions is all that there is. With it, you kill a decent amount of imagination in a reality that's heavily dependent upon it's people's ideas and passions. You're living in a political system and breathing in a core of philosophies thought up by dead dudes some 2000 years ago. The ancient times weren't that far off socially. We just have more toys and gadgets to inflate our egos.
Totally co-signed. Especially the second paragraph. I think socially, we may of even regressed because of these toys and gadgets. It irks me when I see people more addicted to their phones and plasma Tv's than their relationships (or at least, so it seems) ....but this topic is probably for another thread...
"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget." - Pharaoh Khufu, on building the Great Pyramid
