Have your religious/spiritual beliefs changed in the past year?

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Good post CAIRATH...yet again!

 

[Ender Rises]

But science doesn't need to be used to believe in something, infact the whole of human history has been based on belief in something in the absence of evidence.

And it has lead to amazing works of art, literature, music, architecture, etc.

If humanity were a species that were strictly logical and rational and scientific, I'd really not want to be alive most likely.

I agree with this, but even if humanity had never invented God (if they did, blah blah blah) or believed in things without the existence of evidence art and such would still exist. Look at all of the purely fictional works of art, books, music, etc. Humanity would still have it's imagination.

 

[Matt]

By liberal he means he's close to ditching god, but still doesn't want to burn in hell. It's like when your 25 and still live with your parents.

Yeah ok, dicksuck

I'm not going to debate this, because as I've learned in the many other religious discussions I've taken part in, it's really just a waste of time. There's no way to prove the existence of a God and no way to disprove it. I can't win and neither can anyone else.

They are fun though, like Andy said

 

[The Ozzman]

By liberal he means he's close to ditching god, but still doesn't want to burn in hell. It's like when your 25 and still live with your parents.

Yet you're probably not even 20 yet.

 

[Rabid Headbanger]

So what did this have to do with my comment again?

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

That part of your post was stupid tbh

 

[CAIRATH]

I agree with this, but even if humanity had never invented God (if they did, blah blah blah) or believed in things without the existence of evidence art and such would still exist. Look at all of the purely fictional works of art, books, music, etc. Humanity would still have it's imagination.

Yeah.

The incomprehensible vastness of the cosmos and the beauty of nature here on earth with its intricacies and diversity are awe inspiring when you really sit down and look at and ponder them. I feel sorry for anyone who, given all that, still needs to invent some fantastical faux-reality around that just to feel inspired. There are literally more things in existence, real and wondrous things, than you could possibly hope to know in your entire life.

This weird notion that atheists or science-minded people go through life as emotionless automatons with no creative drive or imagination and no appreciation for what is out there really couldn't be further from the truth.

 

[Ender Rises]

Amen to that.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

True dat son.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Okay, I think I got my shit straightened out as far as standards for belief. My standards for theism and atheism were definitely too high.

If I saw any reproducible evidence whatsoever for the existence of a god, I would certainly believe in one. And that would be be an observational standard, not a logical one. If I used that same standard against the nonexistence of a god, the observational evidence would be irrefutable since it all points to there being no god.

There's still something bugging me though: According to observation, matter cannot be created or destroyed. That means the universe has always existed. However, according to observation, every event has a cause, which means (I think) that the existence of the universe had to have a cause.

Thus, observation produces contradictory evidence regarding the existence of the universe. And that calls into question the use of it as a standard for belief.

 

[Valerie]

According to observation, matter cannot be created or destroyed. That means the universe has always existed.

There's matter inside the universe, but the universe itself is empty space, it's not "made of" anything. I think.

 

[cookiecutter]

Saying the universe has always existed is a little misleading. It has existed for ~14 billion years, but that is the only time that has ever existed. There was never a time before that when there was no universe.

 

[Ender Rises]

There's still something bugging me though: According to observation, matter cannot be created or destroyed. That means the universe has always existed. However, according to observation, every event has a cause, which means (I think) that the existence of the universe had to have a cause.

This is why I believe humans may never be able to understand the universe. What if it doesn't have a cause? It's always existed and always will exist. No beginning, no end.

To quote Orson Scott Card (who interestingly enough is Mormon... easily best Mormon ever.)

I'm skipping a bit into the conversation because I'm lazy. Go buy Xenocide if you wanna read the whole thing.

"Think of it as if now was on the surface of a sphere (talking about time and space as dimensions, and now is a point on a graph or whatever.) Time is moving forward through the chaos of Outside like the surface of an inflating sphere, a balloon inflating. On the outside, chaos. On the inside, reality. Always growing, popping up new universes all the time. Now think of the sphere as having an infinite radius."
"The surface would be completely flat"
"Exactly."
"And you could never go all the way around it."
That's right, too. Infinitely large. Impossible even to count all the universes on the reality side. Now starting from the edge, you get on a starship and start heading in toward the center. The farther in you go, the older everything is. When do you get to the first one?"
"You don't. Not if you're traveling at a finite rate."
"You don't reach the center of a sphere of infinite radius, if you're starting at the surface, because no matter how far you go, no matter how quickly, the center, the beginning, is always infinitely far away."
"And that's where the universe began."

A completely unprovable view of the universe that is barely comprehensible, yet makes sense in a way. Think about it, try to visualize a sphere infinitely large... you can't. It baffles human understanding to think that you can never see the cause of something, that something has no cause. I think that the universe has no cause and humans can never truly grasp that concept and take it as truth, since everything we've ever had experience with has a beginning and an end.

I dunno. It makes sense to me and it's a fun concept to think about, and it arises a great question. If the universe has no cause, no beginning, and no end, what then?

 

[CAIRATH]

Okay, I think I got my shit straightened out as far as standards for belief. My standards for theism and atheism were definitely too high.

If I saw any reproducible evidence whatsoever for the existence of a god, I would certainly believe in one. And that would be be an observational standard, not a logical one. If I used that same standard against the nonexistence of a god, the observational evidence would be irrefutable since it all points to there being no god.

There's still something bugging me though: According to observation, matter cannot be created or destroyed. That means the universe has always existed. However, according to observation, every event has a cause, which means (I think) that the existence of the universe had to have a cause.

Thus, observation produces contradictory evidence regarding the existence of the universe. And that calls into question the use of it as a standard for belief.

Actually, following the commonly accepted theory of the big bang being the starting point of our universe it isn't really contradictory at all. The big bang theory states that it was the moment when all dimensions came into being. Time is one of those dimensions. That means effectively that trying to say anything about what happened before then would simply be both pointless and impossible (which completely undermines any first-cause argument). I believe that is Stephen Hawking's view on the matter (atleast it was at the time of writing his books) but I imagine it probably requires his immense insight and knowledge of the subject to not see it as sort of a cop-out answer from your point of view.

But as I stated earlier there are still plenty of scientists who are looking into alternate theories. But without the guidance of applicable laws of nature it is difficult to formulate anything other than pure speculation (which is why none of those theories are commonly presented as being anything more than pure theories).

 

[cookiecutter]

That is what I was trying to get at

 

[CAIRATH]

I think expecting a definite answer to the creation of the universe problem that can be grasped by current human constructs (which I think is what vihris-gari is after) is just not very likely to happen. The way I see it, in the end you're either going to have to accept a universe that just sprung into existence from nowhere (a concept we are obviously uncomfortable with because it has no precedent in our world model) or a universe that simply has always been (again a concept we are uncomfortable with because our linear concept of time doesn't really allow for that). The quest for an easily digestible answer to the creation of the universe just seems kind of naive. In all likelihood there just isn't any.

Contrary to what religious apologists say, evoking a divine creator does absolutely nothing to solve this dilemma whatsoever. Sure, we've explained the creation of the universe now, but then where did that creator come from? Again either he always existed or he just sprung into being. You are still required to accept the same uncomfortable concepts that you are if you leave a god out of the equation altogether. All you did is defer the question one step further and you are still left with the first cause problem. Infact many atheists (including myself) would argue that the "creation" or infinite presence of a divine being that has the power to ability to create the entire cosmos and all species in it out of nowhere is far more far fetched than accepting the scenarios I listed above (where gradual change rather than instant creation is key).

 

[CAIRATH]

And look I did exactly what I said I wasn't going to do and stayed up late arguing this nonsense instead of sleeping like a normal person. I hate you all and I hope you all burn in your respective Hells, rot in your respective graves or reincarnate as tiny bugs so that I may gleefully squash you under my boots.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

I knew you were gonna realize it eventually. Great posts...now get some rest.

 

[Hubster]

Fuck, it took like, less than half of the first page of this thread for people to start telling each other to fuck off.

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My spiritual leanings have not changed much in the last 10 or so years. I still loosely believe in aspects of Wicca, and strains of other pagan faiths, as well as aspects of Buddhism, and my own religion by birth, Sikhism. At this time, I have not devoted myself to a path and will wait until I do more research into it. Fuck atheism though, what a load of shallow, capitalist unthinking and disconnected shit.

 

[Manic Ferocity]

Fuck, it took like, less than half of the first page of this thread for people to start telling each other to fuck off.

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My spiritual leanings have not changed much in the last 10 or so years. I still loosely believe in aspects of Wicca, and strains of other pagan faiths, as well as aspects of Buddhism, and my own religion by birth, Sikhism. At this time, I have not devoted myself to a path and will wait until I do more research into it. Fuck atheism though, what a load of shallow, capitalist unthinking and disconnected shit.

Um...no...there can be philosophy without a religion necessarily tied to it.