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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

[TheBiggerFish]

Magnets, man.
How do they even work.

(is joke, I understand magnets, sorta.)

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

I see the universe as being somewhat like a computer: given a set of laws and a beginning situation, the rest of history is computed. (A random number generator, of course, would be needed; perhaps include it in deity-main?)

First, Logical Reverse Reasoning
A person is certainly free to decide whether the Bible has any value or not. A central issue in that matter is usually regarding whether God "Inspired" the Bible's human authors. Consider the possibilities.

IF a person does NOT think that God Inspired the Bible, or that God doesn't even actually Exist, then the Book would seem to have very limited value, and it would certainly not deserve to be the central focus of Faith.

On the other hand, if one accepts the idea that God participated in Inspiring the Bible, it becomes an important Book. Technically, there would still be three possibilities to consider.

    If God Inspired the Bible, and it is all absolutely and precisely true (at least when it was still in its Original language and the Original Manuscripts) and accurate, then we should carefully pay attention to every detail of it. Traditionally, this has always been the case for both Christians and Jews.

    If God Inspired the Bible, but He is Evil, then it is likely to nearly all be untrue and deceptive. However, no accepted concept of God would see that as possible of Him.

    If God Inspired the Bible, but it Originally contained both Truths and untruths, and it contained inaccuracies or distortions, this appears to be the only possible assumption of those Christians who feel they can freely select the parts of the Bible they want to obey. (Many thousands of researchers have compared the more than 20,000 existing Scribe-written Manuscripts to ensure that we accurately know the Original text.) If God is even remotely as Powerful and Considerate and Compassionate as we believe Him to be, would He intentionally include such faults in the Book He provided us as a Guide? Or, could He be so sloppy as to unintentionally include such flaws in it?

For this last matter, it seems impossible that the God we know and Worship would be either intentionally deceptive or incompetent. For, if He was, then the consistency and reliability of our Universe would be an unexpected and unintentional effort of His. When you step out the door of your house, you might fall into a bottomless pit, rather than stepping out on the sidewalk that you know is there.

For these reasons, it seems inappropriate to feel that a person could pick and choose various parts of the Bible to accept and obey. If you accept ANY of it as being valid and valuable, then you are implicitly accepting that God participated in its creation. And if God participated in the Bible being composed, that seems to necessarily imply that ALL of it was Originally precisely correct and accurate, in its Original language.

These observations do not make such claims regarding any specific modern Bible translation. Given that we see the inconsistencies between various translated Versions, we should certainly be somewhat cautious at totally accepting any one of them. Either use two or more different Bible Versions in your studies, or have a Strongs Concordance handy, or both! As long as you can get to an understanding of what the Original texts said and meant, you will have the true meaning!

The problem with this is that a book can be partially correct, having been made up by people, and still contain falsehoods. It's the same bloody circular reasoning argument all over again.

[Frumple]

Why would a phenomena that "is caused by itself" require any form of sentience, omnipotence or be anything even remotely approximating the idea of a god?

The normal argument is that something greater cannot come from something lesser, iirc, though I'm definitely mangling that and probably misremembering it to some degree. You have to have the potential for the consequence in the precedent for things to function, or something along those lines. So in order for the creation of all things, whatever creates it must have the capability to do so; i.e. must have sentience to create sentience, must have sufficient power to bring forth all that is, etc., etc., etc. There's significantly more to it, of course, because they've been talking about that stuff for centuries, and pretty much every casual issue with the stance has been considered and addressed at some point, but that's a rough sketch of one of the arguments as near as I can remember it at the moment.

Honestly, for a long, long time, it made a fair amount of sense, and it still makes a relatively decent amount of sense (or at least about as much as anything else :V) if you believe in YEC or whathaveyou. It's just that we have fairly conclusive experimental proof at this point (as in, the last handful of decades) that building up to sentience or whatev' from nonsentience is entirely possible, and several of the initial premises are just kinda'... flawed.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Why would a phenomena that "is caused by itself" require any form of sentience, omnipotence or be anything even remotely approximating the idea of a god?

The normal argument is that something greater cannot come from something lesser, iirc, though I'm definitely mangling that and probably misremembering it to some degree. You have to have the potential for the consequence in the precedent for things to function, or something along those lines. So in order for the creation of all things, whatever creates it must have the capability to do so; i.e. must have sentience to create sentience, must have sufficient power to bring forth all that is, etc., etc., etc. There's significantly more to it, of course, because they've been talking about that stuff for centuries, and pretty much every casual issue with the stance has been considered and addressed at some point, but that's a rough sketch of one of the arguments as near as I can remember it at the moment.

Honestly, for a long, long time, it made a fair amount of sense, and it still makes a relatively decent amount of sense (or at least about as much as anything else :V) if you believe in YEC or whathaveyou. It's just that we have fairly conclusive experimental proof at this point (as in, the last handful of decades) that building up to sentience or whatev' from nonsentience is entirely possible, and several of the initial premises are just kinda'... flawed.

You're totally right.

(Addressed to the BOBI

You know what? A bunch of humans can make a supercomputer that can compute things faster than any human - than all the humans together throughout all of history! If that's not "better," AI is soon on its way. How about this: can't an evil person give birth to a saint? Wouldn't a saint be "better" than an evil person? If none of these things are "better" or "greater", then you're not using the standard definition - thus you cannot draw any conclusions.)

Spoiler: huge (click to show/hide)

Each person must decide for himself/herself regarding a variety of religious subjects. Churches and religions and "experts" can give opinions, but that is really what they are, opinions.

It seems to me that it is reasonable to ask several logical questions in the pursuit of Truth.

The first is, does God exist?
    If your answer is no, then the subject is pretty much closed!

    If your answer is yes, He exists, or I think so, then a follow-up question seems logical:

Does God have Principles, Ethics, Morals, Logic?
    If your answer is no, then we are all in a horrible situation, where God could choose to be irrational, unfair, capricious. There are people who believe this. But I look at the history of everything that is known. As far as is known, the Sun has risen at the proper time each day, gravity has worked consistently, no buildings or fields or cities just disappear or reappear illogically. Based on this rather massive evidence of all history and all experience, I am tempted to think that the Universe appears to be consistent and logical. That suggests that God does not apply irrational actions or motives. I take that to suggest that He has at least several positive characteristics. If we grant Him "several" admirable traits, I am willing to accept that He has additional admirable traits which we cannot confirm or deny.

    So, if your answer is yes, He is ethical and moral and logical, then a follow-up question seems logical:

Did He participate in the composition of the Bible?
    If your answer is no, then you need to explain the specific sequence of events listed in Genesis 1. It has only been in the past hundred years or so that science has begun to establish just when those several events occurred. Even skeptics agree that the Bible has said that Light came first, for at least 3300 years! That statement must have seemed odd to many people. Why Light first? Why not Man, to witness everything? Why not the Earth, to stand on? But Genesis 1 starts by saying that Light was first. It is only in the past hundred years that science has discovered that stars are older than anything else we know, and therefore that their light existed before anything else. Prior to a hundred years ago, how could anyone have known that? Or even guessed it? So, if God was NOT involved in composing Genesis 1, how could any ancient human have known to write down that Light came first? (more on this theme below)

    So, if your answer is yes, God is ethical and moral and He participated in the composition of the Bible, then a follow-up question seems logical:

Would such an ethical, moral, honorable God have either intentionally put falsehoods or misleading statements in His Book or even permitted the human authors to do such?
    This represents the INTERESTING part! Given these seemingly logical questions and conclusions, it would seem that He would have assured that the (Original) Manuscripts of the Bible would have been precisely accurate and Truthful.

    This seems to imply that, for an absolute fact, the Flood occurred, David slew Goliath, Moses received the Ten Commandments, and all the rest, EXACTLY as it was presented in those Original Manuscripts.

Now, it is well established that Scribes, in copying the roughly three million characters of the text of the Bible, have occasionally made minor errors (which are now found and have been corrected, through a comparison of many thousands of early Manuscripts). Amazingly, that (ongoing) research has also discovered that a few Scribes had (in the first few centuries after Christ) even added some text that was intended as clarifying statements, and those modifications, too, have been largely recognized and corrected.

But the point is, all of the central Teachings of the Bible have NOT been altered or mis-copied. That means that, even without ANY (current) scientific documentation, we can confidently say that the Flood of Noah actually occurred. More than that: If God told us that He took Six Days to create the Universe, that statement MUST be the Truth. Otherwise, He was either intentionally telling us a falsehood, or He made an error, or He permitted a central error to exist in the Bible.

How about this:

4. The Bible was inspired by God but it wasn't personally written by him with lightning bolt in hand. That's not inspired, that's authored. Inspired means he put stuff into their hearts and they tried to write it. Other people could have hijacked it - you know what? The OT is pretty much "hey, we were conquered and now we're about to be assimilated - I don't like that! Let's have all these restrictions and all this history we'll write for ourselves to make us distinct from these other guys!" But there are many parts of it that were God-inspired, and those parts should be listened to. When I'm in a believing mood, I don't believe in a bearded skyguy, so if I decided to insert a few words into the Bible in the 6th century BC, I think God wouldn't strike me down via lightning bolt.

[Putnam]

(A random number generator, of course, would be needed; perhaps include it in deity-main?)

Not if you're only running it once.

[Orange Wizard]

I have yet to see a logical argument for the existence of God that isn't worthless, honestly. If you could prove God existed there'd be no need for faith, and that kinda defeats the purpose of having a religion in the first place.

[Putnam]

no?

[Orange Wizard]

If you remove the faith aspect, it's basically pointless? I mean, there's the who social group/ritual thing, but that's just playing make-believe with social pressure to join in.
Maybe I'm being overly pedantic. Dunno. I don't think you can call something a religion unless it involves spirituality (i.e. faith) in some way.

[Putnam]

Christianity lasted for, what, 1400 years or so of faith not really needing to be a thing? It was just the truth in a book. Not faith, more like history. But then, I wouldn't equate spirituality with faith.

[Frumple]

If you remove the faith aspect, it's basically pointless? I mean, there's the who social group/ritual thing, but that's just playing make-believe with social pressure to join in.

"Just". Playing make-believe is one of the most important things humans are able to do. Almost every aspect of human culture is some variation of that, and the same shtick is behind huge chunks of our scientific advancement, among great sopping heaps of other stuff. There's no "just" to make-believe, especially once people start convincing themselves it's true.

Beyond that, ritual and social group shenanigans are and have long been tremendous influences on basically everything humans do. And ritual in particular, you don't need faith at all to see benefit from that. Frankly, faith is arguably the least important part of religion -- religion can and often does function just as well with or without it.

... also, no, spirituality totally isn't equivalent to faith. It's how you address matters of, well. The spirit. Stuff that's not absolutely physical, and even then the consideration of that as being the only thing that is, is a position vis a vis spirituality. Buncha' shit tied up in that stuff, and there's not really a particular linchpin.

[Orange Wizard]

Never mind, I'm not sure what I'm talking about now either.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Yeah, the whole argument for "why we don't have to justify anything" is "God exists, and you can't prove anything about him, because that would spoil the mystery and keep us from true faith," unlike Thomas the Scientist who demanded to prove Jesus's resurrection through verifiable observations.

Kind of annoying, really. Mystery is not necessary for religion, IMHO. (See Frumple's post.) It's doing something you don't want to do because it (what you don't want to do) is the right thing to do while what you want to do is not the right thing to do.

...or denying that anyone else has a point while angrily screaming quote-picked bits from the Bible about how God Hates Fags but technically though he would also Hate Jewelry and Mixed Cloth Fabrics

Spoiler: kind of unrelated (click to show/hide)

And now I realize what NW_Kohaku was talking about (or was it that other person) in the Religion thread in the DF Suggestions board.

Spoiler: didn't anyone get the joke? (click to show/hide)

deity-main? debain-main?

[i2amroy]

...or denying that anyone else has a point while angrily screaming quote-picked bits from the Bible about how God Hates Fags but technically though he would also Hate Jewelry and Mixed Cloth Fabrics

This is a bit irreverent of the discussion (and I don't mean it as a comparison to anyone here), but all I can think of while reading this is this comic:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Quartz_Mace]

This isn't a serious addition to the discussion, but I heard 2 funny religion jokes recently.

1. I was at a Catholic class (getting confirmed. I consider myself a hopeful Christian in the sense that I believe God is possible and if he is I owe him a lot, so why not work under the assumption he exists? If I'm wrong, I'm not hurting anyone. And I agree with many of Jesus' teachings about love, peace, and forgiveness. Whether or not he was God/God's son he spread good messages. I don't agree 100% with any one religion, but my family is mostly Catholic, and I certainly don't have everything figured out, so I just try to coexist.) and my teacher asked a question (something about Jesus, I don't even remember what.) and one student answered correctly, so another commented "you hit the nail on the cross!"

2. A Buddhist goes to a Christian church service with his family. He enjoys it and when it's over the priest says "You should convert."
The Buddhist replies, "Maybe next time round."

[TheBiggerFish]

They are quite funny.