Theology

[whiterabbit]

I'd rather choose the third option of not believing in nothing and not being religious.

/doublehighfive

Ok, so yea, triple high five but if we don't believe in "nothing": nor believe in "religious connotations"... then just what the hell do we believe in?

That we are born? That we die? That there is a period between? That we have a measure of influence on that period? That we live among side people who similarly live and die, and whose continued happiness and quality of life are dependant on similar things that your own is? That it's in your best interest to make the time you know you have worth it, and that improving the world for yourself and others is the best way to do that?

This sounds almost religious!

It was totally meant too. Kind of boring sitting around and thinking about nothing and I surely thought someone would have said the force.

[KirklandSignature]

Not much longer until the dreaded winter solstice celebrations commence. Who else plans on protesting against the religionists desire to display their bullshit in our towns and cities?

[DoomRulz]

Not not longer until the dreaded winter solstice celebrations commence. Who else plans on protesting against the religionistsdesire to display their bullshit in our towns and cities?

Word of the day.

[KirklandSignature]

Not not longer until the dreaded winter solstice celebrations commence. Who else plans on protesting against the religionistsdesire to display their bullshit in our towns and cities?

Word of the day.

Do you raise skepticism of my proficiency in choice of wording?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religionist

[Sgt. Apone]

Not much longer until the dreaded winter solstice celebrations commence. Who else plans on protesting against the religionists desire to display their bullshit in our towns and cities?

Who cares.

[Darth Rinzler]

I am just jumping in here, reading the first page it appears I should announce what I am.  I am a devout devout Catholic.  The next question I guess would be why do I believe in God?  I got two extreme experiences that make me a person of Faith.

The first experience was a majorly bad haunting.  I was a half or fake believer at the time, I had strange things going on in my house, I was blamed for most of it which just ticked me off, which was what I was more focused on than the happening themselves.  We had towels just absolutely destroyed in the house similar to the degree a Wrestler would rip their shirts when they do that at WWF. 

Some time after that was happening I would see this pure blacker than black thing go across the ceiling over and over again, it kinda reminded of me a mishmash lightning bolt.  Some time later I had a game controller destroyed in my room, worse I almost sat down on a big pile of nails and screws that was on my bed where a sit and play games.  Some of these screws still had the female connecters on them like it had been ripped out of a plastic book shelf.  If I had not looked where I sat down I would have been hurt bad because I just flop down on my bed most the time.

I was still seeing this thing go across the ceiling even in daylight, worse now was it started getting on the bed with me when I would try and sleep, the bed would press down by my feet.  I tried to rationalize what was happening, but one thing that made it more real was when my cat was in my room with me.  She was on the bed and froze looking at the corner of my bed, her back arched and she let out a hiss, she kinda reminded me of the cat in the first Alien movie.  Nothing else was in the room I could see but she was very worried.

At night this black thing started too take on a more bipedal shape.  It would stand over me... I foolishly would keep a baseball bat by me in a vain effort to hit it.  It had sort of a almond shaped head but I could not see its face not that I would want to or think about seeing its face because I would just bury my head and try and ignore it.

It got worse because one day I woke up with a injury, my skin had been punctured, and it was deep enough to hurt for days.  To top it off some time later, I woke up and my glasses where gone.  I kept them by my bed and I could not find them before I went to work.  I came back home and looked for them.  I found them underneath my in the center.  In the way of that path, if it where to have just fallen off, was a 3 foot by 3/4th foot plastic container full of rain flys and some other equipment.  Their was only a half inch to an inch gap between the lid of the container and the bottom of my bed.  If it had just fallen with not assistance would have traveled in a diagonal line half a foot too a foot, then in this space of of a half inch went in a straight path, because the bed stuck out further than the container lid by a half inch to a 3rd of an inch, for 2 and a half feet maybe more.

I could not ignore or brush off the problem anymore, so we did a prayer demanding whatever it was in the name of Jesus Christ to leave me alone and it did.  I turned my life around after that and have become extremely devout in my Faith.  I now do support Prayers for Father Bob Baily and other Catholic paranormal specialist that fight malicious human and non human spirits.



The SECONDED reason I am a believer is because of a surprise healing.  I had slept wrong and my arm was screwed up for the day, I couldn't lift anything without being in pain, my arm kinda felt it wanted to stay in a bent position.  I had told a couple of my friends about it.  Later that day their was this guy with a snow cap on sitting with them, they called me over, I had know Idea what was going on, and the Man took my arm and asked Jesus to heal it, the pain and bent feeling was all but gone, it felt pretty great.  That guy turned out to be a roaming Priest I had never seen before.

[BANE]

But I don't believe that anyone can simply say X and have X be true, or that if enough people were to believe X is right and moral, that would make X right and moral.

Of course it does! That's what morality is!

[maledoro]

Not much longer until the dreaded winter solstice celebrations commence. Who else plans on protesting against the religionists desire to display their bullshit in our towns and cities?

You may be alone here.

I am just jumping in here, reading the first page it appears I should announce what I am.  I am a devout devout Catholic.  The next question I guess would be why do I believe in God?  I got two extreme experiences that make me a person of Faith.

The first experience was a majorly bad haunting.  I was a half or fake believer at the time, I had strange things going on in my house, I was blamed for most of it which just ticked me off, which was what I was more focused on than the happening themselves.  We had towels just absolutely destroyed in the house similar to the degree a Wrestler would rip their shirts when they do that at WWF. 

Some time after that was happening I would see this pure blacker than black thing go across the ceiling over and over again, it kinda reminded of me a mishmash lightning bolt.  Some time later I had a game controller destroyed in my room, worse I almost sat down on a big pile of nails and screws that was on my bed where a sit and play games.  Some of these screws still had the female connecters on them like it had been ripped out of a plastic book shelf.  If I had not looked where I sat down I would have been hurt bad because I just flop down on my bed most the time.

I was still seeing this thing go across the ceiling even in daylight, worse now was it started getting on the bed with me when I would try and sleep, the bed would press down by my feet.  I tried to rationalize what was happening, but one thing that made it more real was when my cat was in my room with me.  She was on the bed and froze looking at the corner of my bed, her back arched and she let out a hiss, she kinda reminded me of the cat in the first Alien movie.  Nothing else was in the room I could see but she was very worried.

At night this black thing started too take on a more bipedal shape.  It would stand over me... I foolishly would keep a baseball bat by me in a vain effort to hit it.  It had sort of a almond shaped head but I could not see its face not that I would want to or think about seeing its face because I would just bury my head and try and ignore it.

It got worse because one day I woke up with a injury, my skin had been punctured, and it was deep enough to hurt for days.  To top it off some time later, I woke up and my glasses where gone.  I kept them by my bed and I could not find them before I went to work.  I came back home and looked for them.  I found them underneath my in the center.  In the way of that path, if it where to have just fallen off, was a 3 foot by 3/4th foot plastic container full of rain flys and some other equipment.  Their was only a half inch to an inch gap between the lid of the container and the bottom of my bed.  If it had just fallen with not assistance would have traveled in a diagonal line half a foot too a foot, then in this space of of a half inch went in a straight path, because the bed stuck out further than the container lid by a half inch to a 3rd of an inch, for 2 and a half feet maybe more.

I could not ignore or brush off the problem anymore, so we did a prayer demanding whatever it was in the name of Jesus Christ to leave me alone and it did.  I turned my life around after that and have become extremely devout in my Faith.  I now do support Prayers for Father Bob Baily and other Catholic paranormal specialist that fight malicious human and non human spirits.



The SECONDED reason I am a believer is because of a surprise healing.  I had slept wrong and my arm was screwed up for the day, I couldn't lift anything without being in pain, my arm kinda felt it wanted to stay in a bent position.  I had told a couple of my friends about it.  Later that day their was this guy with a snow cap on sitting with them, they called me over, I had know Idea what was going on, and the Man took my arm and asked Jesus to heal it, the pain and bent feeling was all but gone, it felt pretty great.

How do you know it was actually God or Jesus that was responsible and not some other entity acting in their name(s) or something else that you attribute to the Abrahamic god?

That guy turned out to be a roaming Priest I had never seen before.

All of him, or just his hands?

[Sabby]

Not much longer until the dreaded winter solstice celebrations commence. Who else plans on protesting against the religionists desire to display their bullshit in our towns and cities?

I support freedom of speech. 'Religionists' are free to peddle whatever nonsense they want, as long as they do so through the proper channels. They have the same rights as everyone else to have their say, the problem is that they think they are somehow entitled to more then that.

But I don't believe that anyone can simply say X and have X be true, or that if enough people were to believe X is right and moral, that would make X right and moral.

Of course it does! That's what morality is!

How so? If you found an isolated community of 10,000 people, and each of these people believed that it was moral to bury anyone older then 45 up to the neck and let them die of exposure, would this be moral? Morality is not an argumentum ad populus, it's something built around the concept of human suffering and group dynamics. So, yes, there can be very differing ideas of what is moral, but there absolutely are immoral beliefs.

Once again, not black and white, but it ain't a rainbow either.

I am just jumping in here, reading the first page it appears I should announce what I am.  I am a devout devout Catholic.  The next question I guess would be why do I believe in God?  I got two extreme experiences that make me a person of Faith.

The first experience was a majorly bad haunting. I could not ignore or brush off the problem anymore, so we did a prayer demanding whatever it was in the name of Jesus Christ to leave me alone and it did.

The SECONDED reason I am a believer is because of a surprise healing.  I had slept wrong and my arm was screwed up for the day, I couldn't lift anything without being in pain, my arm kinda felt it wanted to stay in a bent position. the Man took my arm and asked Jesus to heal it, the pain and bent feeling was all but gone, it felt pretty great.  That guy turned out to be a roaming Priest I had never seen before.

Question. What about these events leads you to believe that Yahweh spoke the world into existence and continues to watch over the humans he condemned with the Forbidden Fruit? Is it that both mysterious events were solved by a Catholic priest specifically? The things you claim they did are by no means unique to them. Holy men of pretty much every faith claim to be able to caste out evil spirits and perform miracle healing. Are your assertions correct and all other assertions of divine intervention from other faiths incorrect?

If so, and God is the only power by which evil spirits are fought and ailments healed, then why are these wonderful services performed so sparingly? Why are they the product of 'a friend of a friends' stories? Anyone who could heal with the laying of hands, or demonstrate that a bipedal, immaterial black creature exists would be laughing all the way to the bank with James Randi's million dollar check.

[BANE]

How so? If you found an isolated community of 10,000 people, and each of these people believed that it was moral to bury anyone older then 45 up to the neck and let them die of exposure, would this be moral?

For them it sure would be.

To you, no.

Opinions opinions.

[Sabby]

So morals are a matter of opinion? It has nothing to do with human suffering and group dynamics?

Okay, would you accept that some forms of morality were constructed with poor reasoning? For instance, the 45 year old death sentence being enacted because a crop went bad on someones 46th birthday. Let's pretend this is morally sound. Would this morality be built on poor reasoning? If so, does this also make it poor morality?

EDIT:

How so? If you found an isolated community of 10,000 people, and each of these people believed that it was moral to bury anyone older then 45 up to the neck and let them die of exposure, would this be moral?

For them it sure would be.

To you, no.

Opinions opinions.

Now this get's me thinking... Was it wrong to not chart new courses across the ocean for fear they would fall off the Earth? No, because at the time, the best answer they had was that the world was flat. When they learned it was round, they adjusted their actions to accommodate that new information.

Let's say that this tribe learns that a mans age has no effect on the crops. 50 years later, someone buries their grandfather because they're afraid for their crops. 50 years ago, this would have been deemed moral, but because the population now has a better understanding of the world, they have deemed the action immoral.

I'd say morality is directly linked to a populations understanding of the world, and that systems of morality we deem as immoral may have been proportionate to their populations understanding at the time.

[Darth Rinzler]

Not much longer until the dreaded winter solstice celebrations commence. Who else plans on protesting against the religionists desire to display their bullshit in our towns and cities?

You may be alone here.

I am just jumping in here, reading the first page it appears I should announce what I am.  I am a devout devout Catholic.  The next question I guess would be why do I believe in God?  I got two extreme experiences that make me a person of Faith.

The first experience was a majorly bad haunting.  I was a half or fake believer at the time, I had strange things going on in my house, I was blamed for most of it which just ticked me off, which was what I was more focused on than the happening themselves.  We had towels just absolutely destroyed in the house similar to the degree a Wrestler would rip their shirts when they do that at WWF. 

Some time after that was happening I would see this pure blacker than black thing go across the ceiling over and over again, it kinda reminded of me a mishmash lightning bolt.  Some time later I had a game controller destroyed in my room, worse I almost sat down on a big pile of nails and screws that was on my bed where a sit and play games.  Some of these screws still had the female connecters on them like it had been ripped out of a plastic book shelf.  If I had not looked where I sat down I would have been hurt bad because I just flop down on my bed most the time.

I was still seeing this thing go across the ceiling even in daylight, worse now was it started getting on the bed with me when I would try and sleep, the bed would press down by my feet.  I tried to rationalize what was happening, but one thing that made it more real was when my cat was in my room with me.  She was on the bed and froze looking at the corner of my bed, her back arched and she let out a hiss, she kinda reminded me of the cat in the first Alien movie.  Nothing else was in the room I could see but she was very worried.

At night this black thing started too take on a more bipedal shape.  It would stand over me... I foolishly would keep a baseball bat by me in a vain effort to hit it.  It had sort of a almond shaped head but I could not see its face not that I would want to or think about seeing its face because I would just bury my head and try and ignore it.

It got worse because one day I woke up with a injury, my skin had been punctured, and it was deep enough to hurt for days.  To top it off some time later, I woke up and my glasses where gone.  I kept them by my bed and I could not find them before I went to work.  I came back home and looked for them.  I found them underneath my in the center.  In the way of that path, if it where to have just fallen off, was a 3 foot by 3/4th foot plastic container full of rain flys and some other equipment.  Their was only a half inch to an inch gap between the lid of the container and the bottom of my bed.  If it had just fallen with not assistance would have traveled in a diagonal line half a foot too a foot, then in this space of of a half inch went in a straight path, because the bed stuck out further than the container lid by a half inch to a 3rd of an inch, for 2 and a half feet maybe more.

I could not ignore or brush off the problem anymore, so we did a prayer demanding whatever it was in the name of Jesus Christ to leave me alone and it did.  I turned my life around after that and have become extremely devout in my Faith.  I now do support Prayers for Father Bob Baily and other Catholic paranormal specialist that fight malicious human and non human spirits.



The SECONDED reason I am a believer is because of a surprise healing.  I had slept wrong and my arm was screwed up for the day, I couldn't lift anything without being in pain, my arm kinda felt it wanted to stay in a bent position.  I had told a couple of my friends about it.  Later that day their was this guy with a snow cap on sitting with them, they called me over, I had know Idea what was going on, and the Man took my arm and asked Jesus to heal it, the pain and bent feeling was all but gone, it felt pretty great.

How do you know it was actually God or Jesus that was responsible and not some other entity acting in their name(s) or something else that you attribute to the Abrahamic god?

That guy turned out to be a roaming Priest I had never seen before.

All of him, or just his hands?

When you call on something that is what will responded to your calls.

As for the Priest I has never seen him period until I walked up to the table.  Hands, feet, face, I had never seen before, and I had never heard his voice before ether.  He was pretty nice, after that day he was in my work place and always offered me jam and peanut butter gram crackers, or cream cheese and gram crackers.  Like two weeks later he was gone and I never saw him again.

[Sabby]

So if I called on Allah to cure me of an arm cramp, and a passing Sheikh touched me and my arm felt better, does this mean that Allah is real?

Many have made that very same claim. You can't both be right.

[BANE]

So morals are a matter of opinion? It has nothing to do with human suffering and group dynamics?

Okay, would you accept that some forms of morality were constructed with poor reasoning? For instance, the 45 year old death sentence being enacted because a crop went bad on someones 46th birthday. Let's pretend this is morally sound. Would this morality be built on poor reasoning? If so, does this also make it poor morality?

EDIT:

How so? If you found an isolated community of 10,000 people, and each of these people believed that it was moral to bury anyone older then 45 up to the neck and let them die of exposure, would this be moral?

For them it sure would be.

To you, no.

Opinions opinions.

Now this get's me thinking... Was it wrong to not chart new courses across the ocean for fear they would fall off the Earth? No, because at the time, the best answer they had was that the world was flat. When they learned it was round, they adjusted their actions to accommodate that new information.

Let's say that this tribe learns that a mans age has no effect on the crops. 50 years later, someone buries their grandfather because they're afraid for their crops. 50 years ago, this would have been deemed moral, but because the population now has a better understanding of the world, they have deemed the action immoral.

I'd say morality is directly linked to a populations understanding of the world, and that systems of morality we deem as immoral may have been proportionate to their populations understanding at the time.

Morality is, by definition, "the conformity to the rules of right conduct". Obviously, therefore, morality changes based on what we think is "right". Which is subjective, as is obvious both in terms of the numerous political and social debates nowadays, and in the changes in laws and social paradigms throughout history. So if right and wrong are subjective, and they are the foundations of Morality, then so is morality.

That's what I meant.

Obviously hindsight makes alot of things seem immoral to us that were moral back then, but it's all just opinions.

[Sabby]

Hmmm, interesting. On that we agree, but I still believe that a system of morality can be poorly conceived, even with a lack of knowledge.