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#GodLivesMatter

The thought did cross my mind...

There's my new go-to joke:

A Vegan, a cross-fitter and an atheist walk into a bar.

I know, because they each told me within the first 5 minutes.


Atheists are just below the jehovah witness when it comes to professing their own brand of faith.

That's not opinion.

Well.... I think we got up to victor843 or something like that.

But funny enough, I don't usually tell anyone I'm an atheist. Religion doesn't come up in any of my conversations anywhere with anyone.... Except for with religious people... (Usually on cbid). Perhaps the reason religious people complain that atheists are always stating they're atheists is because the religious people brought up a god?

But ... To bring up another point. Statistically speaking we can all (even the religious) be 99.999999999999% confident that all people of faith are wrong. The staggering possible number of permutations relating to a being which exists outside known laws of physics and understood science ensures with as close to 100% confidence that you're wrong if you believe one of the permutations.

It's like guessing a number between 1 and infinity.... Go ahead and guess. I'm willing to bet you chose the wrong number.

I think you need to throw a few more 9s on that number.

Ya, religion don't come up often in my circles either. Like you, most of my discussions on it happen on these boards.


Edit (forgot to guess):

My guess is 42.

I've yet to have an atheist knock on my door to convert me. You should move!

But seriously folks, weird that my experience in life with believers vs atheists is I've literally never known some one was an atheist early in the relationship, if ever, but 98.2% of the time I know the new believer friend is a believer very early on...

Your attempt to NOT disprove the existence of god has failed.
Miserably.
Again.

Carry on.

Critical thinkers? No. Not when I'm conversing with you.

As for the rest?
It's like you haven't read anything prior to my last post calling you out.
(which supports my comment about your critical "thinking")

Didn't mean to overwhelm you.

But feel free to share your thought.
Someday we'll use the plural.

So is a critical thinker then one who blindly accepts somebody else's interpretation of 2000 year old texts written at a time that most people believed the world was flat?

As far as overwhelming me, psssh, you don't have the processing power to do that.

All you've given me is a weak azz attempt at an insult and a decent joke that you claimed as yours that's been on the net for years.

You can't hang with me, don't even know why you try.

I'm sure that we would get along just fine in person frank :D

That's just the nature of these boards... might be on the same side in one thread, then complete opposite in another.

Wouldn't want to invite opel though, I have a feeling he would try to R word me.

At morrow Bay we called Opel the cabin kavanaugh....

Pshh... A house full of people, only one of whom was nicknamed kavanaugh and you ask who had the roofies?

Poor drafter got cuddled so hard ...



...in the azz..

Ok. But I have a couple of problems pondering that....
1. If the god doesn't wield its power to influence man or anything else...then what purpose is served by faith in it?
2. Can belief be sustained without religion? If nobody tells you there is a god....is it really possible to conceive, of and believe in one during one's life?
I feel that the faith is a perpetuated superstition that was borne out of a desire to explain hard stuff....and blind faith relieves one of a host of challenges: such as the idea that this life is finite; or why chit happens, without always having to consider motive and conscience and as yet incomprehensible environmental factors. The tired old expression that religion is a crutch seems pretty close to truth to me.

I know you were going for Yoda there... but no matter how many times I read it, it comes out sounding like Cosby.

Ok, again I follow your points, but I think there is a certain linkage to organized religion. Let's assume I get up every morning and walk through the wood communing with nature. This is when I feel closest to the Goddess. During that walk every day I say "Thank you Gaia!". Yet my ethical philosophy is driven by humanistic principles. I do what I can for the earth, for animals, for plant life, and for humans. Simply guided by my moral compass. Though I enjoy the company of other pagans I do not involve myself in rituals because I know in my heart that fate controls nothing, and I was placed here to decide my own destiny. So it is enough for me to thank the Goddess.

Ya, opel goin to...

lube da jello for puddin da pee pee in da poo poo.

I have been thinking about this a bit so let me see if I can put it to words. First a little background. I was not raised in a religious home. My family considered themselves to be of the denomination of Baptist but yet they never practiced or even stood by the rituals of the religion. I was not made to go to church and never was really taught about Jesus,God etc. The Bible was just a coffee table ornament in my childhood home. It was put there basically I think as a display to give visitors the impression that my family was "Religious people".

In my young adulthood I started to notice little things like how everything follows the rule of thirds so to speak. I started noticing it in people, plants, animals this is what got me to really paying attention to nature and such. Questioning so to speak with "how? and why?" Then digging into some science ex the human brain the surface area alone is enough to cover 1 to 2 pages of news paper. Not just one folded side but the whole paper and that is just the surface its not counting the inside stuff. Then later my first child was born. This got me into studying life and how we have consciousness, awareness, how all of our brains are basically the same but yet we are all so different from each other and how each and every one has such a vast different output from behavior, beliefs, postures etc.

Any how in a nut shell, one day I just got this overwhelming feeling (and that is putting it very very mildly) of peace and that everything no matter how good or how bad it turns out it will be ok. That feeling has been with me ever since that is when I came to the conclusion that God does exist and that is where my blind faith comes from.

Lets take for example my wife. As it stands today no one can or will ever convince me that she does not love me. I get this overwhelming felling from what I see and what I feel, The same when it comes to God. I do not get it from what she says or what the Bible reads or says. Is it possible that she really don't love me yes it is possible just like it is possible that God might not exist but I will never believe that or even lean towards that thought. It is strictly through my free will that I chose to acknowledge these strong emotional feelings and act on the feelings I have towards both my wife and with God. On both counts I could very well be wrong I have to admit that and this is where my blind faith comes into play.

I do not consider my self a religious man by no means in the typical terms of a person that pushes faith or religion. I do not have a denomination. The bible I view as a book of cool stories in the beginning and that in the end becomes a guide on how people should be and how to treat one another and in that aspect I fully agree with it. It is kind of a rights right and wrong is wrong kind of thing for me. As far as organised religions, Denominations etc I just view those as if all of us trying to get to the same place but using other means of transportation. Me personally I don't care if you are walking, driving a Riding Lawnmower or a Mercedes Benz.

Another thing I notice people tend to view folks that have blind faith or are religious in nature as un-educated or foolishly blind etc. I personally think that it has nothing to do with one another. For me it is strictly a feeling. It would be like if you said Ewok I truly love you as a brother and I say "Prove IT" No matter if you are beside me through thick and thin that could be an act. Just like with my wife. what she does and what I see could be an act. It is through my blind faith that I refuse to accept that because of the overwhelming emotional feelings I get.

Now off to work in the garage. Peace phuggers.

My father's side were Catholic though they didn't really practice (I don't remember any of them going to church... edit: I guess my Grandma went all the time... I didn't know this till I asked). Never really did get more than a couple generations of history as both my great grandparents on my father's side came off the boat.

(disclaimer, I have to look some of this stuff up as I tell it because I forget some of the names).

My mother's side were Episcopalian where the backstory is a bit more interesting. Back in the mid 1800's my I don't know how many greats grandfather Tasagye (Cane) was the chief of the Wahpekute Dakota people. He was killed by the infamous Inkpaduta over some inner tribal political crap (don't remember why, the source I'm referring to now doesn't go into that great of detail, just using it for the names). If you get a chance, Inkpaduta was a pretty fierce warrior, the stories are worth reading... but not the point of this post.

Anyway, at some point further down the road, Hushasha (Red Legs) became chief, and around that time the Episcopalian church were doing missionary work, where the Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple befriended and baptized him. Later he took on the English name Thomas "Red Legs" Whipple in honor of the bishop and also took on the faith of the Episcopalian religion. Henry Whipple was a great advocate for the Native people (also worth reading about).

I don't know if all the descendants of Hushasha carried on with the Episcopal faith, but I do know that my Grandmother's best friend in this world was an Episcopal priest and he was a good man. He was the one who baptized me.

As far as my home life, neither of my parents were really church goers, though my mother went from time to time. As I grew older, my mom started going more and she seemed to get into it. I'm not sure if she's been going much since Father Bill died, she hasn't told me one way or the other.

Anyway, this is just a shortly summed up story with a lot of gaps missing, but much of this stuff is well documented and can be found pretty easily.

When I was younger, I was a believer mainly just because all my family talked about religion as if it was fact. I started losing my faith at the tail end of high school, where once I started taking crazy math and science classes in college it started dwindling quickly. Then I actually started studying the history of various religions on my own time and that's when I completed my transition to being one of the faithless.

I was raised Catholic. Went through the first communion crap. Had to go to weekly Bible study. Fortunately for me my father is an atheist. He allowed my mother to take me to church and all that. But when I was being sent to the hall during Bible study for being difficult, and somewhere around 4th or 5th grade I realized I didn't believe any of it. It just didn't make any sense. I told my parents and was allowed to stop going.

Meh, this conversation was so two days ago... ready for a new topic :P

Seriously... I still wanna know where poop is stored and excreted from when one has a flatulant cranium...

So that's why I sleep so much.

Ya... that's how normal people react. Opel can't tell if it's brain farts or just from smoking weed all the time. So he just sits around all day saying stupid sh*t while he procrastinates on that nap he thought about an hour ago.

Sorry to disappoint....but, I do fully acknowledge that a lot of very intelligent people believe in god....and many are extremely religious....seems a bit paradoxical to me....and I'm not trying to defend my reaction....just stating it....I really do have trouble understanding how truly contemplative, thoughtful people come to different conclusions sometimes





LOL....Is that a criticism?
Could it be restated? Maybe as:

On top of that, it seems to say you believe that you know far more than is possible to know... You have no idea and zero proof of how life came to be from any form of intelligent design, but you're certain it couldn't have been from absolutely nothing

Opel, there are soup Nazi's on both sides of the debate. I have zero respect for someone who argues God's exist and because their religion says he does. I also have zero respect for someone who says God does not exist because Madeline Murray O'hare says he doesn't. On the other hand I respect someone who has logically thought out their belief system, or lack of belief system.

Since this has become an interesting conversation I will throw this out here. If God exists why is God male, and not male/female, or female? Or is there a God and a Goddess. Or is God amorphous.