Religion: Real or Fake

[Robert]

You can discuss this here, or you could read some of the better philosophical works or writings on the subject. You will gain more by the latter.

I'm studying theology. What do you think that I'm doing
some things aren't either / or but and/ and.

[MOBIUS]

At least I'm consistent in my believes

No. You're not.

A couple of posts later you say you have constant doubts in your believe in god, so right there you've contradicted yourself!

I OTOH am consistent in my belief that all the many thousands of made up gods that people believe in today are all completely false and based on at best zero proof and at worst a tissue of lies...

[Robert]

Uh, what exactly did I contradict regarding consistent believes, comparing my faith and my story about Provost posting during business hours?
And why is a faith with doubts contradicting and inconsistent?

Your 'belief' is btw indeed consistent, it's pretty simplistic as well though and based on ignorance and refusal of understanding as well though. (not the fact that you don't believe there are gods, that can be a well tought through belief. But the belief that every belief is based on zero proof and a tissue of lies. It's a silly generalization based on insufficient knowledge)

[MOBIUS]

If your belief is consistent, you can have no doubts. The fact that you yourself admit to doubts proves that your belief is inconsistent - end of argument!

No. I said based EITHER on zero proof, OR a tissue of lies...

Take Christianity and Scientology: To be honest, I can't even be sure which of these is based on zero proof and which is an utter tissue of lies...

You can't throw 'ignorance and refusal of understanding' at me either, because from my POV, the more I find out about all the various major religions and their respective (and often contradictory) beliefs, the more I understand what a load of utter tripe the whole thing is...

[MikeH]

The concept of a Sun God - ie. Sun being responsible for all life and similar things, does seem fairly reasonable though. Although worshipping it/making offerings, not so much.

[MOBIUS]

Or a Gaia type Mother Earth concept.

Just none of this fire and brimstone crap about commandments or other such bombastic and arrogant orders on how to live your life in whatever passed for a moral code at the time when whoever came up with them for whatever religion...

You only have to look at the physical world to realise that if some great being created it, that he/she/it/they (delete as appropriate) doesn't/don't give a flying **** about morals or how to live a good life or whether you've prayed five times in the right direction - it's survival of the fittest, dude - the eye of the ****ing tiger!

[MikeH]

Some of the things in the moral codes are good things that help societies run well, like not murdering or stealing. So are beneficial to societies.

[MOBIUS]

Exactly. Once you have a bunch of people living together in one place for any length of time, you have to have things like moral and ethical codes, that's just common sense.

It has **** all to do with religion.

[MikeH]

It's a great way of getting people to conform to rules before you've invented police forces, or more importantly before you have developed sufficiently to have enough spare manpower to afford police forces.

So maybe religion is an evolutionary advantage. Hence why it's still so popular, even though it's been obsoleted.

[MOBIUS]

True, although I have been known to keep the organised religion or theology civics well into the modern era...

[Provost Harrison]

I never use theology but I do use organised religion...

[rah]

So everything that goes without proof is 'blind'.
That's ridiculous. There's a lot of space between following something 'blindly' and knowing something full proof.

Please feel free to list any kind of proof.

I have a lot of doubts about my believe in God. I am in a continuing debate with myself. There are strong reasons for me to not believe it and there are strong reasons for me to do believe it. Both rationally and emotionally. Sometimes I'm very skeptic about and sometimes I'm impressed by the Bible.

You have doubts because you have no proof. And being impressed by the bible isn't exactly what I would toss out in terms of proof.

And then you come by hardly knowing me, but able to judge that I'm having blind faith. Well, that's not very impressing. It's quite ridiculous though.

Hardly knowing you has no impact on the general OPINION that I stated "I've always equated faith with "follow blindly". You're the one taking it personally.

And to be honest, I have a lot of trusts and opinions in life. About liberty and capitalism, about trusting friends doing business. Most of them are without 100% proof. So am I having blind political ideas, blind friendly relationships and am I doing business and my job blindly as well?

Yes, maybe you don't have 100% proof but you're basing it on a track record with your friends. If they've never screwed you, you're more likely to trust them. I think track record should be taken into account since it's better than just randomly deciding if you you should trust them. And believing things like democracy is better than tyranny is something that you can rationally determine from looking at examples in history. Others may come up with different conclusions. And yes, I realize that the winners write the history so you have to be skeptical. So yes, if you trust blindly, it's likely you're not doing your job.

I do agree that religion had one positive aspect, which is providing a moral code, but a moral code need not be the product of religion to be good.

[Robert]

If your belief is consistent, you can have no doubts. The fact that you yourself admit to doubts proves that your belief is inconsistent - end of argument!

Why can a consistent belief have no doubts?
Do you know what 'inconsistency' means?

No. I said based EITHER on zero proof, OR a tissue of lies...

Now it's better!

Take Christianity and Scientology: To be honest, I can't even be sure which of these is based on zero proof and which is an utter tissue of lies...

That's then b/c you're completely ignorant apparently.

You can't throw 'ignorance and refusal of understanding' at me either, because from my POV, the more I find out about all the various major religions and their respective (and often contradictory) beliefs, the more I understand what a load of utter tripe the whole thing is...

The more I study it, the more my opinion gets splitted up.
One side b/c of how amazing things are and how well thought through they are.
The other side b/c of how obviously forged it seems and how clearly made-up.

You can only see the 'other side' b/c that's all you want to see.
It's as simple as that.
You maintain the post-modern arrogant 'my atheistic believe is superior' attitude.
It's being maintained by a lot of well educated and uneducated people. I have heard it from people who seriously know nothing. So it's not something that belongs to the 'well educated'.

I do not think that your atheistic 'belief' is ridiculous. I'd say there's a lot to say for such an opinion.
It's often a well structured opinions, despite that I see some flaws in it.
what I do consider ridiculous is the superior feeling among many of you that those who do believe in God must be stupid blind dumb ignorant people who base their faith on nothing but lies OR and fairy tales.

It's in fact not even ridiculous. It's as a matter of fact a quite silly position.
There's so much to say about the subject of religion that such a one-liner is as dumb as it can be.

[Robert]

It's a great way of getting people to conform to rules before you've invented police forces, or more importantly before you have developed sufficiently to have enough spare manpower to afford police forces.

So maybe religion is an evolutionary advantage. Hence why it's still so popular, even though it's been obsoleted.

Christianity is not about conforming to rules. (though it has evolved into that way through the ages).
If you read the New Testament, it's most of the time about Jesus saying that the rules are too tight (made up rules of the pharisees) and Paul who says that we should not live by the laws anymore.

In general I agree with you that religious systems have something in it to maintain some morality amongst a certain group of people. But it's not as if that can be applied to all religions.
Take Buddhism. It's certainly not applicable to Buddhism either. Buddhism has quite a brilliant (and negative) philosophy. In it's core it gives a pretty good answer to the biggest question of life. (why do we suffer).
Buddhism has nothing to do with morals or laws.

[Lorizael]

If your belief is consistent, you can have no doubts. The fact that you yourself admit to doubts proves that your belief is inconsistent - end of argument!

That's an awful argument. If you believe that something is 70% likely to be true, then you can doubt that it actually is true while still firmly believing that the odds are 70%. That's not inconsistent at all.

Plomp: You should make logic courses a requirement for posting here.