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Poll: What is your religion?

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Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#251

Post by DaveChild »

jswinghammer wrote: post #87
dannytatom wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason to believe in a god, and no evidence to support it. I'd like to know why people do believe in a god, as not believing in one is fairly easy. So, a question to your question, is there a good reason you believe in it (assuming you do)? Edit: petervandijck said it better above me.

Well there is evidence but it's not evidence that you're presently accepting. The Bible is a sort of evidence and people's testimony is as well. For my part I believe in God because he speaks to me regularly and I'm the last person you'd expect that to happen to. I was minding my own business when I started hearing from God. Everyone I knew at the time was totally shocked and it took me over two years to accept what…

How did you know it was god? How did you rule out being mad and hearing voices?

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#252

Post by blhack »

PostOnce wrote: post #149

I am not an adherent of any organized religion, but this question is puzzling: Where did stuff come from? There are two possibilities, either 1] it was put there, or 2] it was just there to begin with. God is an easy solution, but then where did he come from? Same problem. Maybe there are other possibilities that our brains just aren't able to process at this stage in our evolution. Anyway, before anyone says "the bi…

>God is an easy solution, but then where did he come from? Same problem.

God isn't made of matter and does not experience linear time.

(We can't comprehend the answer to this question).

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#253

Post by YuriNiyazov »

adamzap wrote: post #163
YuriNiyazov wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not solely, but mainly. The following is by no means a iron-clad tight argument, but here goes. When the concept of God is invoked, it is usually not precisely defined. In various interpretations, it is a life force permeating the universe itself, or a being that is benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient, or a being that has a "personal guiding light" relationship to every individual human, or a force that was "the pr…

Interesting. Thanks for the response. If one obtains answers to a number of questions (meaning, morality, afterlife, etc) by postulating the existence of God, is the nonbeliever exempt from having to answer those questions? In pursuit of the answers, the nonbeliever must make new assumptions outside of simple nonbelief because simple nonbelief doesn't provide answers. Doesn't Occam's Razor then side with belief in Go…

The nonbeliever is not exempt from having to answer those questions. The reason that Occam's razor is on the side of the nonbeliever is because the nonbeliever's answers to those questions are unrelated: on the standard humanist worldview, how the universe was created (stuff that we don't know anything about but we hope the LHC will tell us) has absolutely nothing to do with what moral choices one makes in life (utility maximization). In other words, those two answers are "simpler" because they are not linked as compared to an answer that links the two by saying "well, God is responsible for those".

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#254

Post by YuriNiyazov »

aik wrote: post #178
YuriNiyazov wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not solely, but mainly. The following is by no means a iron-clad tight argument, but here goes. When the concept of God is invoked, it is usually not precisely defined. In various interpretations, it is a life force permeating the universe itself, or a being that is benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient, or a being that has a "personal guiding light" relationship to every individual human, or a force that was "the pr…

How do you go about weighing assumptions? I imagine not all assumptions could be worth equally. What is that scale and how do you determine it? An interesting quandary also arises out of contemplating the weight placed on the assumption/belief whether Occam's razor is true in the first place.

The belief that Occam's razor is true is based on its explanatory power when it is used in scientific exploration. Assumptions are weighed positively when they have predictive power, and belief in God has notoriously low predictive power.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#255

Post by [deleted] »

indiefan wrote: post #124
Gormo wrote: post #105

It's fairly common for people to respond to this sort of question by saying something along the lines of "I disapprove of organized religion, but have spiritual faith." My own view is exactly the opposite. I see the value in the ritual, community, and psychological "anchor" that organized religion can provide. But spiritual faith seems absurd; why mix your emotional security and your sense of identity up with a bunch…

This is actually a faith claim In and of itself. Your basically saying you don't believe there is a God who desires (or worse, requires) anything from you. Otherwise it would be in your best interest to care. You're completely entitled to your own beliefs, but passing it off as a position of "non-belief" is illogical. It's the same paradox as "there is no truth" being a truth claim. You sound like a person of great d…

[deleted]

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#256

Post by philwelch »

protomyth wrote: post #222
philwelch wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could you? The idea of God by itself is just a weird metaphysical claim like "maybe we're all actually in the Matrix"--okay, I fully admit that possibility, but there's nothing I can do about it, by itself. Which is why theistic religions don't stop with God. They say things like, "God exists, and he says don't eat pork. Seriously. DON'T EAT PORK." That's actionable.

To be fair about the Biblical food and health mentions, it was more a health guide for the ancient world than anything else. Deuteronomy 23:9-14 are about cleanliness and Leviticus 11 covers the food.

Yes, but the whole God thing is just to motivate people not to eat pork. Apparently, people are more willing to do what they're told if you claim the instructions are of supernatural origin.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#257

Post by chanakya »

Gormo wrote: post #122
MikeCapone wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether or not God exists objectively isn't really something I think about or care about answering. I think that you could fairly be described as an agnostic, then.

Apathetist is a better description. An agnostic says he doesn't know the answer; I'm saying the question is meaningless.

Studies have been done on the effect of (other people's) prayers in curing a patient. They've all shown no effect, but let's say the experiment had shown convincingly that prayers of the followers of a specific religion result in major improvements to the patients' health.

Would you still say the question was meaningless? If not, how can a question be meaningless if it depends on the result of an experiment?

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#258

Post by klodolph »

cema wrote: post #109
timschwartz wrote: post #20

Apatheist

How is it different from "agnostic"?

Agnostic is, "I don't know whether god exists."

Apatheistic starts with, "I don't care whether god exists." But it often continues from there, and apatheists can also include as their beliefs "Questions of theology should not motivate morality." Some apatheists are strongly atheistic and not agnostic, saying "God doesn't exist, but this fact is irrelevant to human affairs." I find apatheist theists not inconceivable, "God exists but who cares?"

Kind of like when you ask, "How many feet are there in a mile?" and I say, "The answer to your question is irrelevant because you should switch to metric. It is wrong to use imperial units for any purpose. And there are 5,280 feet in a mile." I can honestly say that I don't care how many feet there are in a mile, and yet I know the correct number.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#259

Post by semanticist »

hugh3 wrote: post #34
semanticist wrote: post #4

Missed Paganism (or 'Paganism/Newage', as I frequently see it, much to my annoyance). Also, I bet there's at least 14 people here who would fill out 'Jedi' on their census form.

Is Paganism a religion, or a large collection of (now defunct and poorly-understood) religions? What are the ontological claims of paganism? Precisely which supernatural beings does paganism assert the existence of?

Modern Paganism (or 'neopaganism', but that's a mouthful and unnecessary when it's obvious from context you don't mean ancient paganism) is really an umbrella term that covers a pretty wide range of religious beliefs and practices.

There's Wicca, who believe in most of the things you see in the 'Idiots Guide' books to Witchcraft, there's various different breeds of reconstructionists who take archeological information about the ancient Pagan religions, fill in the many blanks to make it more appropriate for modern life, and have a go at that. They might believe in anything from the Norse pantheon to the Greek one.

There's Druids, who are proper nature-worshippers and really do perform ceremonies at Stonehenge, when they get a chance in between all the hippies.

There's technopagans, who believe in the spirit in the machine.

LeVay Satanists tend to get included under 'Paganism', although they might object. Same with Discordians.

It's an eclectic group.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#260

Post by philwelch »

alanh wrote: post #209
philwelch wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atheism and agnosticism are orthogonal: 1. If you believe in a god but don't claim to have knowledge, you are a theist agnostic. (This is not that silly. Many people believe things they do not claim to know. For instance, you can believe that P != NP while acknowledging the question as unproven and unknown.) 2. If you don't believe in a god but don't claim to have knowledge, you are an atheist agnostic. 3. If you cla…

For strict definitions of these words, you are right. In practice I find the following equivalent list of terms more common: 1. Deism 2. Atheism 3. Theism 4. Strong atheism

During the Enlightenment, which was the heyday of deism, philosophical proofs of God's existence were still taken seriously by most deists. So they weren't agnostic at all--they claimed to know, based upon reason, that God existed. A perfectly consistent Enlightenment-era viewpoint.

However, since they only go as far as "God exists" and never get to the more exotic beliefs, namely the beliefs which always were and always will be taken on faith (God had a human son, who was also God, died, and was resurrected; God chose a Middle Eastern ethnic group for a special purpose; God revealed prophecies to certain people; God is from outer space) they weren't religious.

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