Religion

  On 4/15/2012 at 6:24 AM, sheatheman said:

Will you be satisfied dying with just a hunch?

This is what we're all going to have to settle for.

We know very well what is fantasy. Reality is the tough stuff. Superstitions of the past won't help us get there.

I push my boundaries as much as I possibly can, moral, sexual, creative, everything. By doing this I have become quite an unpredictable person to know, my opinions and beliefs change at a very rapid rate depending on my experiences and conclusions. You're thinking WTF does this have to do with god? I guess I'm just saying come at me bro to whatever may be out there. The more I experience the better. If I end up dying without knowing, so be it. I don't know if I've explained myself clearly but that's all I got at 6am.

you WILL end up dying without knowing. Like everyone else.

I think "faith" literally just means "belief" in many places in the Bible (although I'd have to look this up again; I think that's what I discovered when looking through a concordance, although it was awhile ago).

Also, "blind faith" is not what many people mean when they say "faith". I think many times they mean trusting God because you know that what he wants for you is good and his plans will work out; the knowledge of this should come from rationality and past experiences where things worked out. You can know that a thin bridge will hold your weight but actually crossing it takes faith. You can know in your head that a plane is almost definitely not going to crash, but you might be too afraid to fly in one anyway.

I think it's often something like that, which is totally different from that absurd "blind faith" people talk about. Not saying that people have good logical reasons behind their faith, but it's still not necessarily "blind".

that's true, I have faith in god because one time he gave me candy

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  On 4/15/2012 at 12:01 AM, doorjamb said:

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arrg this trackpad is making it impossible to type<br />

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while it's illogical to claim to <em>know for a fact</em> that there is no reason for the universe's existence, the knowledge our species has accumulated through millenia of experience offers no solid evidence to the contrary. One can indeed posit that underlying meaning or purpose might well exist but be, as you say, incomprehensible to modern humans, but that idea only has merit in the arena of speculation. The scientific method is designed to keep one's feet in touch with the known as one "gropes the unknown. <img src='http://forum.watmm.com/public/style_emoticons/default/spiteful.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />"<br />

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what's that with you and "purpose" and "meaning", how exactly do you connect logic to those ?

anyway, the most scientific thing about science is that it never stops and constantly develops, what's a millenia towards understanding something as universe ? it's nothing, we have no scientific grasp on much more basic things than universe.

  On 4/15/2012 at 6:42 PM, lumpenprol said:

that's true, I have faith in god because one time he gave me candy

Actually, I think it should be based on logic, but it helps to have past experience because you've actually seen it work out. This is, of course, very idealistic; I don't think that many people think like this.

  On 4/15/2012 at 6:47 PM, eugene said:

what's that with you and "purpose" and "meaning", how exactly do you connect logic to those ?

It's no accident that the word "reason" can be defined in both the sense of logic (a reasonable person) AND the sense of purpose or meaning (the reason something is as it is). These concepts are directly connected.

  On 4/15/2012 at 5:31 AM, sheatheman said:

@doorjamb

 

When I say whole, I mean perfection. The bible is about the fall from perfection and the path back. If something is whole, why does it want to be more than what it is? If we were complete, we wouldn't need scientific advancement. We wouldn't need to understand the universe. We seek that knowledge because we think it will improve us. I don't mean any offense, but this scientific growth, something that is "whole" that seeks to transcend, isn't that the heart of what destroys?

No. Growth does not imply re-growth. You are mistaking the desire to transcend oneself, be it spiritual expansion or increase in scientific knowledge, for a feeling of incompleteness when it's really just an awareness that one could be more (more knowledgable, more spiritually connected to one's reality, etc).

The concept "perfection" exists only in the mind. All my experience and all I have learned from the experiences of my ancestors leads me to believe that the universe (all that exists) is glorious, intricate, infinitely complex imperfection, and my struggle for growth is toward appreciation and comprehension of that imperfection, not away from it to some imaginary ideal.

oh, well by saying that there might be logic behind universe/existence of things im implying that it's susceptible to logical explanation, not that it has any purpose or anything. so basically i don't see anything illogical about universe existing for no reason or purpose, it just exists. i do understand how this concept is softened by religion of course..

Hook us up yeah, I want some of that godly confectionery

  On 4/15/2012 at 6:35 AM, kaen said:

I push my boundaries as much as I possibly can, moral, sexual, creative, everything. By doing this I have become quite an unpredictable person to know, my opinions and beliefs change at a very rapid rate depending on my experiences and conclusions. You're thinking WTF does this have to do with god? I guess I'm just saying come at me bro to whatever may be out there. The more I experience the better. If I end up dying without knowing, so be it. I don't know if I've explained myself clearly but that's all I got at 6am.

  On 4/15/2012 at 5:28 PM, marf said:

you WILL end up dying without knowing. Like everyone else.

and even if you did know whether or not a creator existed, it would be irrelevant to your life. disproving/proving your belief does not affect the nature of reality. if we proved that god did not exist and that the universe sprung from something else, people would still follow religion. if we proved that god existed, i'm pretty sure most atheists would be scientifically critical but eventually accepting.

i think religion is stupid now and i would still think it's stupid. it's not the god part that bothers me so much as the "blindly follow this hierarchical organization where people ignore logic and reason in favor of supposedly divine proclamations."

  On 4/15/2012 at 6:37 PM, gmanyo said:

I think "faith" literally just means "belief" in many places in the Bible (although I'd have to look this up again; I think that's what I discovered when looking through a concordance, although it was awhile ago).

 

Also, "blind faith" is not what many people mean when they say "faith". I think many times they mean trusting God because you know that what he wants for you is good and his plans will work out; the knowledge of this should come from rationality and past experiences where things worked out. You can know that a thin bridge will hold your weight but actually crossing it takes faith. You can know in your head that a plane is almost definitely not going to crash, but you might be too afraid to fly in one anyway.

 

I think it's often something like that, which is totally different from that absurd "blind faith" people talk about. Not saying that people have good logical reasons behind their faith, but it's still not necessarily "blind".

the definition of faith is belief without evidence. that is about as blind as you can get. what you are describing with the bridge is trust, and trust can only be earned, and earning trust is done via evidence of actions that create trust.

  On 4/15/2012 at 8:34 PM, Hoodie said:

  On 4/15/2012 at 5:28 PM, marf said:

you WILL end up dying without knowing. Like everyone else.

 

and even if you did know whether or not a creator existed, it would be irrelevant to your life. disproving/proving your belief does not affect the nature of reality. if we proved that god did not exist and that the universe sprung from something else, people would still follow religion. if we proved that god existed, i'm pretty sure most atheists would be scientifically critical but eventually accepting.

 

i think religion is stupid now and i would still think it's stupid. it's not the god part that bothers me so much as the "blindly follow this hierarchical organization where people ignore logic and reason in favor of supposedly divine proclamations."

this

  On 4/15/2012 at 6:42 PM, lumpenprol said:

that's true, I have faith in god because one time he gave me candy

Oh, was that her name.

  On 4/15/2012 at 8:16 PM, kaen said:

Hook us up yeah, I want some of that godly confectionery

no, sorry. It's now covered in lint from being in my pocket for so long, but the point is it's mine, not yours.

RadarJammer once said

I think that repetitive synchronicity is the #1 cause for *legitimate* and *honest* religious and spiritual conclusions (like you know it instead of just think it or regurgitate it). For some people it crosses the line at some point from being a silly coincidence to being something that their minds can't handle unless they wrap it up with a neat little bow of some kind and how can you blame or argue with them?

In that case one might say that god is a: auto-adjusting-feedbacking-algorithm-of-some-kind and be happy that it wasn't ghost tits and spontaneous cumbustion.

Well for those who remember what I wrote circa octobre on here, this is totally what happened to me. Let me refresh to your minds what my situation is. I'm French and am extremely proud we hang clercs highly and shortly during the revolution. My parents were convinced troskists and the reject of religions dates from a while in our family (since generations actually). In October I beneficied/suffered from a series of "synchronicities" that, by making me believe language is highly related to quantum logics, lead me to believe in God. It was rather easy for me since I already had this notion, acquired during several, identical "mystical" experiences, of some kind of ultimate fractal, ie, the fractal that encompass all fractals (or set of all sets). Back in these times I could totally link this idea to that of God, but it remained a rather distant link since the word fractal seemed to fit better what I had in mind : something geometrical, logic that has no real, volutive implication in real life.

Then the synchronicities started. It's pretty hard to explain. The only person who understands me is a friend who has experienced the same fractal mystical experience. Basically, I figured out I had had ideas throughout my life, each independently from the others, and that these ideas converged to some kind of theory I labelled "quantum linguistics" before realizing it already existed, and that the people who are crafting it often share my own views on life/mind/the cosmos/whatever name you choose. This is just one "synchronicity" among many others. I'll list the more significant ones beneath, then will go on on the psychopathological side of this/these experiences :

- So what got me kicked into this is a friends philosophical's method : in a sentence, you switch the subject and the object around the verb. I wash my hands = the hands wash me. I'm watching a movie = the movie is watching me (because the movie needs to be created so that I can understand it and deem it as A movie rather than a series of random footages).

- I discovered some kind of strange attractor, then 3 years later had as a teacher the guy who institutionnaly discovered them.

- The last synchronicity I've had (they don't feel like synchronicities anymore, this is almost banal to me now) is that Ferdinand de Saussure, father of "structuralism" went into some kind of similar trip after having gone through some sort of nervous breakdown. Saussure is the most quoted man in european linguistics. He's some kind of Jesus. He never wrote anything, the only book we have from him is the Cours de Linguistique Generale, which has been written by his students, from the notes they wrote down during his lectures. Saussure has been reevaluated in the 60s when the linguistic community found out about his manuscripts, and around ten years ago, when people started to see in the cours de linguistique generale elements that are closely related to dynamical systems.

During several years he wrapped his head around the phonological/rhythmic aspect of ancient poetry. He thought poets from yore crafted their poems by following a certain rule : a word referring to the poem's theme had to be encrypted in some anagrammatic way into the poem. He was always able to find the word among the poem. It's a bit more varied than just anagrams. I don't have any example under my hand (the notebooks concerning these studies have not been published yet, are almost unreadable and are conserved in some remote safe in Geneva, probably by illuminati that enjoy sacrificing virgins at night), but this goes like

A word is ABxxCxxxD => ABCD is the theme-word.

I read some of Saussure's letters from that era and he's like "Is it by chance that ..", "Is x the product of randomness .. ". And one of his pals replies "In a very surprising coincidental way I found this verse of author X that confirms your theory". You know what I think ? these anagrammatic operations (Saussure called them paragrams) induce synchronicities. And I'm eager to call my synchronicities life-paragrams. They don't really connect two causally different events in the same moment, but rather events(ideas) separated by long distance. I totally recognize the structure of my "synchronicities" in the ABCD example I wrote above.

Anyway, Saussure complained about the impossibility of studying language by using language itself, he kept changing of taxonomy every 15th of the month and eventually resigned : in one letter he wrote that is greatest talent was to stay silent about it.

Now back to the psychological side of my experience : remember when I was saying I was a messiah/prophet ? Personally, I remembered hardcore scientist members (and by scientist, I mean science-ist) made fun of me. They thought I was crazy because I was stating I was like Jesus. This is paradoxical. On one hand they think prophets are nuts who talk out of their ass, on the other hand I cannot be like Jesus because deep down they still consider Jesus to be a hero/genius/great-man etc.

Not "I am mad because I think I am Jesus"

But "I think I am Jesus because I am mad"

Just look around : Jesus muhammad, Buddha. They all experienced hardcore hallucinations. They were mad. Like me, like many people who think they are the sons, nthe reincarnation, whatever morphism link them to Jesus, Muhammad or any other prophet.

I have to admit my delirium is somehow special. I listened to a radio webcast about synchronicities. One of the interviewee was a specialist of Jungian psychology (ie a guy who has not invented anything and parads around in the media since tv has made the likes of sartres bourdieu etc disappear from the French intellectual scene). To him, synchronicities are natural. But when you start experiencing synchronicities on a daily basis, you're deeply insane and need psychological help. Further more, he added that these pathologies were not based on hallucinations but on interpretative bias.

Fair enough. It fits pretty well what I experienced : a delirium whose modality relies on interpretation. But what was my delirium's object ? Interpretation itself. To put it simply : if your delirium is to think you're mad, are you mad ?

scientism :

Science is a religion. I remembered the physics/computer-science centered members said I had no clue about what quantum mechanics are. They read books, majored in physics, did assignments they had to do, but actually they haven't done anything on their own. They don't know much they just parrot around what they ingurgitated. Because before being science-ist they are schoolists.

This series of synchronicities delivered me from several years of mental suffering. I entered a programming school, and as a consequence I'm at the top.My average note in math jump from 9/20 to 18/20 and I'm the only person in my class able to enter a top-rated engineering school. And I won't. I seriously don't want to be with ultra competitive kids who enter this kind of school because they are the "best schools" around and want to be rich in order to propel their fat in a Porsche before laying it over some overcrowded cosy beach of the cote d'azur. I don't want to be with people who conforms to what values expect from them in the hope to get as much freedom as they can, before realizing being an engineer often consists in working 60 hours a week and that's not what they want since they prefer to party, fuck and feel superior.

We often forget what school is. It's not a chance that is offered to you, it's a machinery driven by the State in order to kick the ass of people who are lazy-at-heart. They present you knowledge through a hierarchy. You need to learn the basics before learning what's next. Actually it's all bullshit. I'm far from being a genius and my algorithmic skills seriously suck, but this month, as I'm planning to create a domain specific language meant to ease he creation of domain specific languages ( meta-loop-fractals-barbarism he ), I came across two master thesis and my conclusion is that I totally have the level. Actually I had been beyond what one of them proposed before entering that school. And you know why ? Because I'm passionated.

One of my professor is a kind of hippie wearing cowboy boots. He's definitely atypical almost marginal : he got his phd when he was forty something. He's the only professor who has criticized what we are taught. Some teachers consider him as their guru. And well, at some point I showed him what I coded for a stupid assignment where I decided to use blocks (functions passed as arguments to other functions). So he got interested in what I was doing besides school. Told him about what I was doing, learnt I was programming some kind of MOP then he asked me : are you enjoying it ?

He's the only one to have asked this question. Apart from him it's the good old suffer-to-succes and ingurgitate-the-so-called-perfection-of-the-theory-I-m-teaching you. In short, bear your cross and shut up. like Jesus. This is mainly what western science is about. Bearing a cross while whipping yourself, bring Jesus and Longinus at the same time.

So you can quote philosophes or the holy bilble, state that you're a monist (whatever that means), invoke complex theorems whose main advantage is that nobody, including yourself, understand them, work hard the Americans-protestant way (I'm pretty sure I work more than 60 hours a week and never feel like I have worked hard, that would kill me) that won't help you understand what god is for god is what one find in himself before finding out others have found the same thing.

Now I'll go sodomize my girlfriend, otherwise she'll try to put her fingers in my butthole, and I don't quite like that since she has long nails. Hopefully she likes to read articles giving advices about sexuality in general (since our newly consumed virginity is regularly tainted with fails which induce some fear or,anxiety in her) so I'm optimist and think I'll manage to have her nails cut. That would allow me to enjoy a perfectly heterosexual fingerfuck pretty soon.

Thank you.

Or you could watch Monty Phyton's Life of Brian.

hey babar, just wanna let you know I skipped to the end but it was worth it, hope only one of you ended up with a sore butthole

but...which one?

Sorry Babar, but long obscure language does not innately prove a God.

Science is not a religion.

There is one thing common to people arguing for or against the existence of God. "God"' the word. I hope you don't think I'm t the same level as normal believers. I'm like kaen, my ass is between two chairs. When my Muslim friends tell me they think god as created Earth and what's around I think "these guys don't believe in god, they believe in crap."

There is seriously a word dilemma around the notion of God and both sides rarely point it because they are not really talking about the Great carrot (yeah from now on, I won't use the word god anymore since it trigger almost Pavlovian reactions in people). In a less jackassy fashion, I could have used the word Great Fractal, and you wouldn't have reacted this way. But really this is just the same. Except that using the word God implies the idea of a will that is imposed onto your life. And nowadays, people don't like that, they like to think they have a free will and don't like the idea of something that could willingly control them. This is mainly why rational science-ist people don't believe intelligent extraterrestrial life exist. They feel forced to accept other forms of life exist in the universe, because they are conscious they'll otherwise adopt an antigallilean stance on the matter (we cannot be the center of the universe anymore). Yet they can't accept the idea of an intelligent form of life. One of their main argument is "if they exist why haven't they already contacted us ?". I can't answer to this question but this shows that if an intelligent form of life exist we expect it to consider us as equals. Because people who are leading science, those great men with great mustaches and a magnificent gravity at each phrase corner, want to be the best. Just look at the way they argue with each other, from book to book. Dog fights, that's all. You can ask for proof, for truth, you can elevate it as high as you want and place it above any other value, the. t r u t h. Is that politics comes in play before. Max planck once said something like : "Truth never triumphs. His opponents eventually vanish". That's what I mean.

I could also elaborate on the idea that, to acquire truth you have to work hard and have a strong will (that would echo what I wrote about school) but I prefer to put an end to this already tl;dr

So you told me science is not religion. Yes/No. But there clearly is deep relationship when you look at it with politics in mind rather than truth.

Here is what I wrote a few months ago about them.

We currently live in an era where knowing and researching is one of if not the highest moral value. Hence, researchers and science (the former merging themselves with the latter when they use expressions such as "science discovered X") enjoy a very comfortable situation that sets them atop the throne of ethics from which they can look down on the situation. They can do so only because they promise us wonderful things to come. They are trusted, respected, nobelized ; science is a perfectly neutral embodiment of knowledge which cannot be corrupted since any "sold" or "ill-funded" science is not science anymore. In other words, science is not responsible for the vice of the society, it only brings data, discoveries, enlightenments about the world. Thus, citizens should not interfere with the autofecund train of science. And if they still insist in doing so, they'd better have a concise knowing of the concepts involved in scientific discussions.

A few centuries ago, among the three main functions a society needs to fulfill – protection, nourishment and giving meaning to things – (Estates of the realm etc), the latter was supported by clerics. They were standing on the highest moral promontory of their times, promising marvels to people, were beatified and listened to. The speeches they gave dealt with God's universal knowledge, and anyone that dared question its absoluteness, i.e. this absolute merged with their own, was deemed as heretic (from the greek hairesis, "choice"). They presented themselves as being out of the flow of time, pursuing some immortal truth, and denied being tied to the Politic side of their era even though they were financed and sanctioned by their political leaders ; this supposed autofecundity being watered by numerous myths, like the Virgin Mary. Finally, their discussions were hardly accessible since their texts were encrypted into difficult and obscure languages - Greek, Latin - and those who remained in the ignorance of these linguistic tools were kept away from the debate. With these arguments in their hands, they presented themselves as the recipient that should receive all the faith of humanity, and were able to reorient humanity's forces into illusory programs - to mention one of them : Crusades.

  Quote

name='Smettingham Rutherford IV' timestamp='1334522798' post='1800075']

the definition of faith is belief without evidence. that is about as blind as you can get. what you are describing with the bridge is trust, and trust can only be earned, and earning trust is done via evidence of actions that create trust.[/b]

Not always:

  Quote

faith

noun

1.

confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another'sability.

2.

belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that thehypothesis would be substantiated by fact.

3.

belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: thefirm faith of the Pilgrims.

4.

belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit,etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.

5.

a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.

because they consider evidence to be what well could be hallucinatory experiences, hearing "voices" and "seeing miracles". This may have been considered rational in a day when most people believed there were Gods, it is no longer considered rational and for good reason.

For every single definition of faith you provided at the top, simply ask yourself what certifiable, demonstrable, and observable evidence you base that faith on. None? Good, that is blind faith.

  On 4/16/2012 at 12:08 PM, Babar said:

There is one thing common to people arguing for or against the existence of God. "God"' the word. I hope you don't think I'm t the same level as normal believers. I'm like kaen, my ass is between two chairs. When my Muslim friends tell me they think god as created Earth and what's around I think "these guys don't believe in god, they believe in crap."

There is seriously a word dilemma around the notion of God and both sides rarely point it because they are not really talking about the Great carrot (yeah from now on, I won't use the word god anymore since it trigger almost Pavlovian reactions in people). In a less jackassy fashion, I could have used the word Great Fractal, and you wouldn't have reacted this way. But really this is just the same. Except that using the word God implies the idea of a will that is imposed onto your life. And nowadays, people don't like that, they like to think they have a free will and don't like the idea of something that could willingly control them. This is mainly why rational science-ist people don't believe intelligent extraterrestrial life exist. They feel forced to accept other forms of life exist in the universe, because they are conscious they'll otherwise adopt an antigallilean stance on the matter (we cannot be the center of the universe anymore). Yet they can't accept the idea of an intelligent form of life. One of their main argument is "if they exist why haven't they already contacted us ?". I can't answer to this question but this shows that if an intelligent form of life exist we expect it to consider us as equals. Because people who are leading science, those great men with great mustaches and a magnificent gravity at each phrase corner, want to be the best. Just look at the way they argue with each other, from book to book. Dog fights, that's all. You can ask for proof, for truth, you can elevate it as high as you want and place it above any other value, the. t r u t h. Is that politics comes in play before. Max planck once said something like : "Truth never triumphs. His opponents eventually vanish". That's what I mean.

I could also elaborate on the idea that, to acquire truth you have to work hard and have a strong will (that would echo what I wrote about school) but I prefer to put an end to this already tl;dr

 

So you told me science is not religion. Yes/No. But there clearly is deep relationship when you look at it with politics in mind rather than truth.

Here is what I wrote a few months ago about them.

 

 

We currently live in an era where knowing and researching is one of if not the highest moral value. Hence, researchers and science (the former merging themselves with the latter when they use expressions such as "science discovered X") enjoy a very comfortable situation that sets them atop the throne of ethics from which they can look down on the situation. They can do so only because they promise us wonderful things to come. They are trusted, respected, nobelized ; science is a perfectly neutral embodiment of knowledge which cannot be corrupted since any "sold" or "ill-funded" science is not science anymore. In other words, science is not responsible for the vice of the society, it only brings data, discoveries, enlightenments about the world. Thus, citizens should not interfere with the autofecund train of science. And if they still insist in doing so, they'd better have a concise knowing of the concepts involved in scientific discussions.

 

A few centuries ago, among the three main functions a society needs to fulfill – protection, nourishment and giving meaning to things – (Estates of the realm etc), the latter was supported by clerics. They were standing on the highest moral promontory of their times, promising marvels to people, were beatified and listened to. The speeches they gave dealt with God's universal knowledge, and anyone that dared question its absoluteness, i.e. this absolute merged with their own, was deemed as heretic (from the greek hairesis, "choice"). They presented themselves as being out of the flow of time, pursuing some immortal truth, and denied being tied to the Politic side of their era even though they were financed and sanctioned by their political leaders ; this supposed autofecundity being watered by numerous myths, like the Virgin Mary. Finally, their discussions were hardly accessible since their texts were encrypted into difficult and obscure languages - Greek, Latin - and those who remained in the ignorance of these linguistic tools were kept away from the debate. With these arguments in their hands, they presented themselves as the recipient that should receive all the faith of humanity, and were able to reorient humanity's forces into illusory programs - to mention one of them : Crusades.

You have an incredibly loose interpretation of religion then. Science and research therein is held to an ethical standard BECAUSE THOSE ETHICAL STATEMENTS ARE ARRIVED AT THROUGH OBSERVABLE EVIDENCE. There is no observable evidence for God...if you consider abstract wordplay a proof for God, all you have "proved" is that the concept of God exists, which is the most fucking useless claim anyone could ever make (IIRC, goDEL addressed this a few pages back). If you wish to abide by solipsist doctrines, that's one thing, but I'll be damn sure you don't have a say in any rational body that makes up my life.

And your "Great Fractal" argument is likewise nonsense. When you use the word "fractal", I understand the concept and also the observable evidence of this concept actually existing independently of my own thought processes (fractals in art, mathematical equations, etc.). The word "Great" is simply a modifier suggesting its perceived superiority or importance of purpose vs. another of its kind. This modifier can be debated in of itself based on other observable evidence that would suggest there is either not a great fractal, or that the claim of a fractal being "great" is falsifiable.

And I agree to some extent with your claim towards "science" becoming institutionalized for the worse. Yes, this is in some cases true, just like absolutely any other social structure of communicative concept in human history. But just because it is abused does not inherently void any progress or corrections it has made. But this is very much a Frankfurt school/Foucaultian argument which has little to no bearing on some sort of logical evidence to the existence of a God. I would argue that the latter half of your post is far more a straw man than anything I have proposed thus far.

In stark contrast, the word "God" is absolutely and utterly nebulous because there is no self-existent manifestation of this in the observable world.

Again, this is where I take issue with ignostics (I used to be one myself), because they rely on God as a crutch to explain the unknown, whereas they could simply say unknown and detach themselves from this crutch of the God term. They contradict themselves on this same principle: why not say "I do not know whether green sleeping upside down exists"?

Also, I don't know where you get this idea that rationalists do not believe in the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe. There were quite a few in this very thread that expressed the belief in its possibility. Now, do they believe and posit they exist without evidence? That is something else entirely.

  On 4/16/2012 at 3:18 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

because they consider evidence to be what well could be hallucinatory experiences, hearing "voices" and "seeing miracles". This may have been considered rational in a day when most people believed there were Gods, it is no longer considered rational and for good reason.

 

For every single definition of faith you provided at the top, simply ask yourself what certifiable, demonstrable, and observable evidence you base that faith on. None? Good, that is blind faith.

I'm just saying that "faith" doesn't mean sans-evidence. It usually means trust, belief, or fidelity, at least in the Bible. Those definitions have nothing to do whether the faith is reasonable or not. From what I've seen, science works out really well and has a lot of evidence behind it, so I put faith in science. Doctors have years of training, so I put faith in them when they perform surgeries on me.

Again, faith can be blind, and it can be stupid. But it can also be rational.

  On 4/16/2012 at 3:24 PM, gmanyo said:

  On 4/16/2012 at 3:18 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

because they consider evidence to be what well could be hallucinatory experiences, hearing "voices" and "seeing miracles". This may have been considered rational in a day when most people believed there were Gods, it is no longer considered rational and for good reason.

 

For every single definition of faith you provided at the top, simply ask yourself what certifiable, demonstrable, and observable evidence you base that faith on. None? Good, that is blind faith.

 

I'm just saying that "faith" doesn't mean sans-evidence. It usually means trust, belief, or fidelity, at least in the Bible. Those definitions have nothing to do whether the faith is reasonable or not. From what I've seen, science works out really well and has a lot of evidence behind it, so I put faith in science. Doctors have years of training, so I put faith in them when they perform surgeries on me.

 

Again, faith can be blind, and it can be stupid. But it can also be rational.

You do not put faith in science, you have trust in science. You do not enter the world automatically believing that science is right in all ways; this trust is earned by observable proofs that such and such is correct or not. Its a constant evolution of thought; just because I trust science does not mean I am always completely in agreement.

If we are arguing over semantics, fair enough. But I think your use of "faith" is misleading, because it subconsciously suggests to the listener that "faith" in the Bible/Christianity and "faith" that is evidence based are similar in nature.