Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[origamiscienceguy]

Nobody knows everything about Christianity. I believe that there are some things that we won't know until we are dead, and a few things that we won't know until the end times.

[Shazbot]

You can judge a lot from a church library. My wife's assisted my mother-in-law for decades as church librarians. Its a fantastic church library not by what it has, but by what it keeps out. Although it does have a complete collection of works from the early church fathers and apologists ranging from Paul to Aquinas to the Renaissance. Early church history during the de-paganization of the Roman world and Aquinas' logical proofs are fascinating. You learn how priests of Zeus manipulated "lodestones", or magnets, to create miracles like an Ouija-board sword.

[Rolepgeek]

If your opinion isn't based on facts then what is there to argue about?

Interpretation.

[Graknorke]

If your opinion isn't based on facts then what is there to argue about?

Interpretation.

Then why would you need to pass it off to someone else? Surely you already know what your own thoughts are.

[origamiscienceguy]

If your opinion isn't based on facts then what is there to argue about?

Interpretation.

Then why would you need to pass it off to someone else? Surely you already know what your own thoughts are.

Some things are actually quite important. For example, if somebody misinterpreted Luke, and thought that you had to die on a cross to get to heaven, I would try to give him/her a better interpretation.

[Rolepgeek]

Arguing about the correct interpretation.

Also, people can't stand other people being wrong. Which is really to say, people can't stand being wrong, and other people interpreting it differently than you means that you might be wrong, and that's unacceptable. So you try to convince them that they were wrong, and you were right.

Also, there's plenty of stuff one could argue that isn't about facts. Moral philosophy, for example. What is versus what ought.

[Fenrir]

I think referring someone to a subject matter expert makes sense in this case. Internet research takes time and skill as well, and, if you’re convinced that the stakes are high, letting someone more knowledgable handle it seems like a valid approach.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

I like the term apatheist that was mentioned a little earlier in this thread. It describes me pretty well. Basically, my point of view is, while omnipotence and omniscience are more or less impossible, gods of the kind generally seen outside of monotheism probably exist in some capacity, although that's more of a "infinite number of alternate universi * minuscule chance of a god-like being occurring in a specific universe = infinite alternate universes where at least one god exists" sort of thing. But even if a god existed in such a way that it'd affect the observable universe, including me specifically, my general point of view kind of depends on if it actually has any connection to existing religions. If it has at some point claimed that it is good/omnibenevolent/"following this religion is the best thing for everyone", but not actually bothered to help people or even harmed them due to dogmatic thinking, demonization of normal human traits, etc., I'd be pretty damn angry at it for being irresponsible, and I'd definitely try to punish it if it hadn't realized that it shouldn't have done so. If it was powerful enough that there is no easy way to deal with it in a civilized manner, there's always good old hypergolic chemicals, or, in a pinch, monitors made to display sequences designed to invoke seizures even in those that do not have epilepsy. If it didn't do anything wrong in such a manner, I'd be fairly okay with it, on the basis that it's understandable for someone not to want to get sucked into the hellhole that is trying to stop humanity from having problems. For the rest, I have difficulty in understanding belief in things without evidence for their existence, and do not believe in supernatural entities of any kind existing in the world that we live in. Religion (or rather, religion-based assumptions) tends to make me slightly uncomfortable, although I'm comfortable with people being religious as long as it doesn't affect their decision-making regarding non-religious matters, on the basis that everyone has some irrational tendencies. I'm sorry if that came across as jerkish.

[Orange Wizard]

I'm sorry if that came across as jerkish.

Not even close. You should see the anti-theists in this thread when they get going

But, yeah. Apathy towards religion in general is fairly standard, around here, at least. Most (or a very large minority of) people seem to say something along the lines of "I don't really think about it too much".

[That Wolf]

You called?
Could I get the anti-theists to assemble??
We really need a signal light

[origamiscienceguy]

I'll just mention a chair. That usually starts something. 

CHAIR

[Rolan7]

The chair usually starts a committee meeting (;

You called?
Could I get the anti-theists to assemble??
We really need a signal light

For atheists I think the signal light would be blank...  Technically we're only united by not believing something.

A skeptic symbol would be...  Something representing the scientific method, I guess?  Maybe panel 2 of https://xkcd.com/242/
You antitheists could have the ghostbusters symbol
Unaligned theists having the ghostbusters symbol without the cross
While agnostics get a glowing green question mark

I sorta wonder if there's a word for people who believe in a god (theists) but specifically don't worship it.  I think some Satanists would count, but that's specific to Christianity, and also apparently most "Satanists" don't believe in Satan.  Just ideals based on his story, I guess *shrug*

When it comes to defying gods though, I like the Greek stories better.  If you ignore the endings the priests wrote, anyway.  There's a relatively short, and long completed, webcomic about Odysseus which retells the story as one of human defiance:
http://www.bigheadpress.com/otr
(Taking many liberties of course.  Also, NSFW)

[Graknorke]

Hoo boy D4E, you have just committed one of the biggest possible errors regarding thinking about infinity and probability. There's infinite real numbers between 1 and 10 but none of them are 11.

As to the salt about anti-theists, to my knowledge there haven't been any in this thread so far. Just because people know that your (and not even exclusively, as seen by the past few pages) holy book is wrong or immoral doesn't mean that they think the idea of any god at all is abhorrent.

[Orange Wizard]

Nah, there's definitely been a little anti-religious stuff from... Dwarfy? Maybe Descan? I dunno, I can't really remember. Not salty, just thought it was funny in contrast with D4E worried about coming across jerkish.

[Rolan7]

Well... I've attacked religion before.  Or, argued that it's dangerous in all forms.
(Sometimes I've argued that very harshly and in a rambling way)

Though I wasn't against the idea of believing in unproven things, or spirituality.  I believe in fairies for flip's sake.  Just organized religion.

And I try to keep a lid on it, but living in Southern USA I do really fear it a lot :/  I'm sure my perspective would be different if I was on the receiving end of missionary aid instead of legal oppression.  In other words, Christians here are incredibly political and I worry that that's innate and inevitable with organized religion.