Ulukai on 2/8/2009 at 17:21

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Will Smith, who is the clearly the wisest Black Man since President Obama or Snoop Dogg states in his song Just The Two of Us which isn't a cover or written by someone else obviously:

Always tell the truth
Say your prayers
Hold doors
Pull out chairs
Easy on the swears

Which works well as a lyric, only I have issues with saying prayers. Always tell the truth doesn't like a great idea either.

I held a door for a disabled person once and they gave me a glare as if to say, "I can do that myself!" So the next disabled person I was in a position to assist with I just let the door slam in their face.

Apparently this wasn't the correct behaviour either. Fuck.

Which, er, also rules out no swearing. Pull out chairs for your lady friends, or there is nothing.

Firefreak on 2/8/2009 at 19:23

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Years ago I (for my self) came to the conclusion, a religion serves two main purposes: standards for ethics (What to do and not to do in your life) and description of the afterlife (Where are we from, where are we going, 'Who' did this and so forth - I could also call it 'the strings behind the material world that we enjoy').

Regarding the morale I found that any religion would serve right. This is concentrated in the (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethic_of_reciprocity) "ethic of reciprocity, more commonly known as the Golden Rule".

Regarding the afterlife I found Hinduism to be most appealing to me; Especially the topic about fate.

AR Master on 2/8/2009 at 22:25

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i wish you were dead

Harvester on 3/8/2009 at 00:25

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I posted this recently on another forum. I'm posting it here unedited because I don't feel like editing it because it's time for me to go to sleep.


As for Squiddy calling Christians delusional, I'm not going to try to convince him or someone else of the truth of the bible and the Christian faith, because I'm not eloquent enough and not enough of a theologian for me to do that, and even if I was, I have a gut feeling Squiddy will never be convinced anyway because he has a beef with Christians because some of them don't agree with him being in a gay relationship.

All I will say on that matter is that the bible and the Christian belief system are much more internally consistent than most atheists think. People who know a lot of biology can often easily poke holes in creationism. Likewise, people who know a lot of theology can often easily refute many if not most arguments atheists have against the bible. Many atheists like a certain site called the Skeptics Annotated Bible, which supposedly points out many errors and inconsistencies in the bible. Let me tell you that for most of those supposed errors and inconsistencies that site points out, biblical scholars have perfectly reasonable explanations and they turn out not to be errors or inconsistencies at all.

I can totally understand someone not being convinced of the bible being true and the Christian God existing by reading the bible, but it's impossible for me to even consider entertaining a purely naturalistic world view, that means believing that there is absolutely nothing outside of the material world.

Far too many people (mostly Christians) have told me about their religious experiences and miracles happening to them and I've read or otherwise heard about many, many more. Should I believe they're all lying or deluding themselves? I know some of these people far too well to assume that. In the Netherlands, anyone can visit church services led by a man called Jan Zijlstra where they can see people getting healed from all kinds of diseases and afflictions (some people aren't healed though), my father went to one, sometimes you can see people get up from wheelchairs. Of course a lot of religious impostors are also faking such things, but it happens too often for me to believe that they're all fake.

I can take you to church services where people speak in tongues. Are they all just willingly producing those sounds to make other people believe they can really speak in tongues while they're just faking it? I don't buy it. I've read an article where Paul Verhoeven, the Dutch film director, who is a staunch atheist so he has nothing to prove by lying, admits to feeling the Holy Spirit wash over him in a powerful way during a church service that he once attended.

What about all the near death experiences that people have reported? Are they all just making it up? Some of them, sure, but all? And otherwise supernatural experiences? I've read long, long threads on other forums about supernatural experiences people have had, and most of those people were atheists or agnostics. Some of them might be lying or deluding themselves, but are they all? Why would they be? They have nothing to prove, they don't even believe in God. Again, I don't buy it.

My best friend (female) has a twin sister that she's very close with. Her twin sister can often sense when my friend is not feeling well, my friend suffers from depression and when she has a really bad episode, her twin sister can often sense it and gets stomach aches and such even if she didn't even know her sister was having a bad episode. And I've known people who were in love that could sense even from many miles away when the other person was ill. And my friend in turn, when her sister had a really bad scooter accident, felt at that exact moment an overwhelming surge go through her whole body even though she was miles away. All these things shouldn't be possible when there is only the material world. So am I to believe that my friend and all these other people are either lying or kidding themselves? I simply cannot believe that.

Now, I'm not saying that admitting or considering that there is more than just the material world, automatically leads to the Christian God existing and the bible being true. But I myself cannot even entertain the possibility that the material world is all there is. But call it delusional if you want, I don't care.

RavynousHunter on 3/8/2009 at 02:41

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Personally, I'm an atheist. If there is a god, it doesn't matter, its not like I'll get on my knees and grovel, because I grovel before no being, not even one that could blink me out of existence with a thought. To grovel is to lose one's dignity, and my dignity is something I value very highly.

Of course, you could also argue that I'm an antitheist, because I also hold the belief that organized religion is the bane of progress, and is, in fact, a negative force in the extreme. Just take a look at the Crusades and 9/11, those are extreme examples to be sure, but organized religion, despite its form, has the potential for extremism, and it is these extremists that cause such horrible atrocities.