Faith

Is faith the same thing as being "cock sure "? I'm sure about a few things in life, but religious idea's almost have to be faith based don't you think ? I'm always fascinated when I'm around someone that is convinced beyond reason of some religious concept that is so esoteric that only a true believer could buy into it. I'm almost jealous of that kind of innocent faith with spiritual belief.
A lose of innocense ruins all the fun.

Originally posted by buckky
Is faith the same thing as being "cock sure "? I'm sure about a few things in life, but religious idea's almost have to be faith based don't you think ? I'm always fascinated when I'm around someone that is convinced beyond reason of some religious concept that is so esoteric that only a true believer could buy into it. I'm almost jealous of that kind of innocent faith with spiritual belief.
A lose of innocense ruins all the fun.

Without doubt there is no reason

Originally posted by divegeester
Without doubt there is no reason

"If a god showed up every time you put a quarter in the prayer slot it wouldn't be God, it would be a puppet that you could control by doing that...that would make the deity subservient to you. So it wouldn't be a deity would it?"
--Margaret Atwood

"The opposite of religious belief is not secularism or atheism. It's the independence of mind — where you do your thinking alone."
--Martin Amis

"Augustine recognized that [the Bible] wasn't a scientific textbook. John Calvin said, 'If you want to learn about astronomy, go to the astronomers. Don't go to the Bible.' It's not a scientific textbook. They understood that."
--Sir John Houghton

Originally posted by buckky
Is faith the same thing as being "cock sure "? I'm sure about a few things in life, but religious idea's almost have to be faith based don't you think ? I'm always fascinated when I'm around someone that is convinced beyond reason of some religious concept that is so esoteric that only a true believer could buy into it. I'm almost jealous of that kind of innocent faith with spiritual belief.
A lose of innocense ruins all the fun.

Without faith, one cannot please God. Work (doing good) without faith do not lead to heaven. No one should be "cock sure" about anything relating to God; however, Christians have the promise of eternal life by believing that God sent His only Son to die on the cross for the remission of our sins. That, my friend, we can be sure of.

Israeli author David Grossman on the influence of religion on Israeli politics:

"A very basic problem of us as a state today [is] that there is too much connection between religion and the state. For the last 60 years almost, Israel prioritized the political goals of religion over the political goals of the state. For example, many things that have happened to us since the Six-Day War, the '67 War, [things] that drove the occupation of the occupied territories, were highly dominated by religious aspirations. And the religious are so much involved now in politics in Israel today. It's so much dominant in our politics. And it's dangerous because also on the other side, on the Palestinian side, we see the same phenomenon. They are now ruled by not only religious people, which I can respect, but they are ruled by fundamentalists, by fanatics."

Martin Amis, author of a recent book on the Soviet Union, KORBA THE DREAD: LAUGHTER AND THE TWENTY MILLION, on the U.S.S.R's attempt to completely eliminate religion:

"But it seemed that ideology was going to take over from religion. Ideology was a kind of Methadone that would get you off heroin, you know. And it was far more virulent than religion."

Margaret Atwood:

"The Bolsheviks got rid of their nearest ideological neighbors, the Mencheviks, as soon as they had the power. They killed the lot. You know? Too close to them. They got rid of any other socialists. They wanted to be the only true church brand of socialists. So any theocracy in [the United States] would immediately eliminate all other competing religions if they could … [that] is exactly how they would operate, because that's what happens under those kinds of arrangements. You want to be the power, the only power, and anybody who could be a rival power, you'd get rid of them."

Salman Rushdie on the triumph of secularism over sectarianism in India's history:

"The great founding fathers like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were absolutely convinced that to secularize India was the only way of keeping various [religious] communities safe. But in order to avoid a repetition of the bloodshed of partitioning, you had to not allow any religious community to dominate any other. And therefore India was given a secular constitution.

Originally posted by dystoniac
Without faith, one cannot please God. Work (doing good) without faith do not lead to heaven. No one should be "cock sure" about anything relating to God; however, Christians have the promise of eternal life by believing that God sent His only Son to die on the cross for the remission of our sins. That, my friend, we can be sure of.

are you really this delusional?

"If there were no God," English author G.K. Chesterton wrote, "there would be no atheists." Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel quipped that his epitaph should read, "Thank God I died an atheist." Arguments, and bon mots, over God's existence, non-existence, and possible existence have consumed writers and philosophers for centuries.


I am with Martin Amis, who said:

"I wouldn't call myself an atheist anymore. An agnostic is the only respectable position, simply because our ignorance of the universe is so vast that [atheism] would be premature. We're about eight Einsteins away from getting any kind of handle on the universe ... Why is the universe so incredibly complicated? Why is it so over our heads? That worries me and sort of makes me delay my vote on the existence of some intelligence. "

Margaret Atwood:

"Atheism is a religion … it makes an absolute stand about something that cannot be proven. A strict agnostic says you cannot pronounce as knowledge anything you cannot demonstrate. In other words, if you're gonna call it knowledge you have to be able to run an experiment on it that's repeatable. You can't run an experiment on whether God exists or not, therefore you can't say anything about it is knowledge. You can have a belief [in God] if you want to, if that is what grabs you, if you were called in that direction, if you have a subjective experience of that kind, that would be your belief system. You just can't call it knowledge."

Originally posted by Scriabin
Margaret Atwood:

"Atheism is a religion … it makes an absolute stand about something that cannot be proven.

The love of ones own opinion and the cruel satifaction gained from the crushing another persons vewpoint is often the opiate of the extremeist fundamentalist athiest.

Originally posted by Scriabin
"Atheism is a religion … it makes an absolute stand about something that cannot be proven. A strict agnostic says you cannot pronounce as knowledge anything you cannot demonstrate. In other words, if you're gonna call it knowledge you have to be able to run an experiment on it that's repeatable. You can't run an experiment on whether God exists or not, ther ...[text shortened]... rience of that kind, that would be your belief system. You just can't call it knowledge."

But that God is not the one Knightmeister and CS Lewis believe in. Most people who claim to believe in God believe in a God for which you can run an experiment on that is repeatable. Too many people pretend that God is some phantom capable of disappearing or changing whenever a test is devised. I would have no problem with such a claim (and would be agnostic to such a God) except that they are not consistent with it and do not actually believe in such a God.

This reminds me of Kelly who argued that ID points towards an intelligent designer, but simultaneously claimed that God does not leave any evidence whatsoever. So the intelligent designer being pointed to was not his God, or he was being incoherent.

Originally posted by divegeester
The love of ones own opinion and the cruel satifaction gained from the crushing another persons vewpoint is often the opiate of the extremeist fundamentalist athiest.

Luckily that is not quite as bad as the extremist fundamentalist theists who prefer to blow up other peoples view points with high explosives - presumably because they lack any sufficiently reasonable argument to crush others viewpoints with mere reasoning.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Most people who claim to believe in God believe in a God for which you can run an experiment on that is repeatable.

what experiment would that be?

Originally posted by Scriabin
what experiment would that be?

There are many, depending on the claimed properties of God. If someone claims that his God heals him when he prays, one can test that. If someone claims his God flooded the world 6000 years ago, one can check for evidence etc.
Most often though one doesn't even need to get as far as testing because the claimed properties usually turn out to be incoherent anyway.

I do not believe that being agnostic about an incoherent God is a reasonable position. Atheism makes more sense for such Gods.
Are you for example agnostic about a God that is not a God?

Originally posted by Scriabin
are you really this delusional?

Always a fun question.

Originally posted by buckky
Is faith the same thing as being "cock sure "? I'm sure about a few things in life, but religious idea's almost have to be faith based don't you think ? I'm always fascinated when I'm around someone that is convinced beyond reason of some religious concept that is so esoteric that only a true believer could buy into it. I'm almost jealous of that kind of innocent faith with spiritual belief.
A lose of innocense ruins all the fun.

Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical?

Originally posted by twhitehead
There are many, depending on the claimed properties of God. If someone claims that his God heals him when he prays, one can test that. If someone claims his God flooded the world 6000 years ago, one can check for evidence etc.
Most often though one doesn't even need to get as far as testing because the claimed properties usually turn out to be incoherent ...[text shortened]... sm makes more sense for such Gods.
Are you for example agnostic about a God that is not a God?

If someone claims that his God heals him when he prays, one can test that.

really? so I claim that God took out the diseased portion of my intestine, and since x-rays, sonograms, etc. confirm that all I got in there is a semi-colon, God punctuated me?

Evidence that "God" flooded the Earth? One is keen to know what would count as evidence of that ... perhaps His signature in some sedimentary rock? An autographed piece of the true Ark? What?

I do mean to be flip -- after all, you appear to mean to be glib.

Atheism makes no more sense than belief, as it amounts to the same thing.

what might be a "God that is not a God?" Perhaps that is just idol curiosity?