Nicker on 2/11/2022 at 05:10
Perhaps some people think I am an intellectual bully on the spiritual playground but maybe I am just tired of religion stealing my lunch money and pooping in the sand-box.
I am not insistent upon these points just to win an argument. I am insistent because it's important that spirituality be honest, robust and credible, not steeped in absurdities, languishing in daydreams and perforated with demonstrable lies.
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And to Nicker, I don't think I moved the goal posts at all. This thread is about religious beliefs, and the creation story is a fundamental myth of every major religion except buddhism.
Yeah. You did. You compared actual cosmology, using observation, experimentation and rigorous criticism, to mythical speculations which may not be questioned, on pain of punishment. You compared anthrocentric magic, performed by immaculately conceived wizards, to the great mystery of existence.
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So I thought it fair to point out that science's best explanation for creation still requires a couple of miracles of its own."
This is a category error, a false equivalent. It is moving the goalposts on a cosmological scale. It sure as not-hell isn't fair.
1 - The Big Bang is not the moment when existence began. It was a moment of transition between one state of existence (the singularity) into a different state (expansion). This is called a phase transition, not creation.
2 - As far as we know, The Big Bang is a local event. We do not know what states existed locally prior to it, how many phase transitions might have "preceded" it or whether it exists within a greater matrix of many similar local events. Our universe may not in fact be "The Universe", only a tiny part of it.
It's a mystery. And it's perfectly OK if it remains that way.
Spirituality is about integration, bringing the fractured pieces of our being and our situation into a cohesive whole. It's far too important to leave it in the hands of religion.
Myths are a fertile way to illustrate and explore this process but like any fertilizer, they should not be consumed directly. It is far healthier to partake of the actualities they help to produce.
Medlar on 2/11/2022 at 13:37
I would say the same as Stephen Fry
Actor-comedian Stephen Fry, an outspoken atheist, had an answer ready this week when asked what he’d say if “confronted by God.”
“Suppose it’s all true, and you walk up to the pearly gates, and you are confronted by God,” asked Gay Byrne, host of RTÉ One’s The Meaning of Life. “What will Stephen Fry say to him, her, or it?”
“I’d say, Bone cancer in children? What’s that about?” answered the 57-year-old Brit. “How dare you? How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault? It’s not right, it’s utterly, utterly evil.”
“Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain?” Fry said. “That’s what I would say.”
Qooper on 4/11/2022 at 10:25
Quote Posted by Tocky
For instance, about ten years ago a CD came flying at me from off a shelf about five feet away and struck me in the chest.
Was it a good CD? I'd freak out too if my original System Shock 2 was about to get scratches on it.
denkmal on 4/11/2022 at 11:46
If it was Johnny Cash's 'god is gonna cut you down' then it was definitely an omen.
Tocky on 4/11/2022 at 13:45
If it was SS2 I wouldn't have placed it on the shelf that way. It was The Suffering which is about a guy who goes to prison and has to fight... ah shit.. demons.
Sulphur on 4/11/2022 at 15:55
The Suffering had its demons at least in part designed by Stan Winston Studios, so at the very least your surprise poltergeist haunting would have had great production values.
