what is your definition of 'God'?
- Thread starter max_freakout
- Start date
I am replying to a post that simply states 'Cobblers'. 'Cobblers' is not a theological argument.
revol68
what, fucking what?
snouty warthog said:
I'm happy taking the piss out of your cretinous beleifs.
but the very question you pose is one i find idiotic?
Why would we assume "happiness" the goal of life?
Only a moron can be happy all the time.
infact happiness makes no sense without pain or anger.
frogwoman
Let them eat newts
snouty warthog said:
as an observant religious person, i can perfectly understand why someone would feel sick at that particular phrase, tbh .
g-d loves us, yeah, but he is also the all powerful creator of the universe , we are at his mercy at every time ... he has the power of life and death over us. at any time he could choose to kill us. he can choose to create new species or to perform miracles .
love is an emotion, it obviously can't do any of these things .
none of us is gonna live for ever, and for a religious person as much as anyone else, the world is a hard place, life can be tough sometimes, it can be shit. the idea that g-d will make it so nobody will come to any harm ever is just stupid, and it lends credence to the idea that he doesn't exist, since this is not how we experience things in real life.
it's also something that puts a lot of people off of religion, coz a lot of the time people who say this kind of shit are seriously fucked up and hypocritical in their ideas and beliefs . G-d is love - yeah sure, unless you're gay, or a woman , or an atheist .
its also just ... so ... mushy, and the kind of thing everyone says but doesn't have a clue what it really means ... reminds me of valentines day ...
snadge
metal alchemist
revol68 said:
humph.
I'm happy quite a bit. does that make me a bit of a moron?
If you want a goal in life, go to church, take a career up
, piss people off.
life is for living.....
beliefs are constructs for dealing with situations, they are interchageable, peoples beliefs will change throughout their lives, doesn't make 'em less true though.
nothing is true, everything is permitted.
frogwoman
Let them eat newts
I'm happy 
under a lot of stress at the moment but i'm managing to remain calm and not let it get to me to much ... at the end of the day i know i'm a nice person and that's what matters.
of course, nobody is happy all the time, but happiness is really important, and a worthwhile thing to aspire to, for yourself and other people .
anger isn't necessarily a bad thing either, many of the people who did the most good in the world did so because they were angry about something and wanted to change it ...
it's when anger takes over your life and becomes directed into acts of violence / hurting yourself or other people in various ways that it becomes bad, and when happiness turns into complacency and feeling that because you're all right it means you don't have to care about the world beyond the edge of youre nose ...
under a lot of stress at the moment but i'm managing to remain calm and not let it get to me to much ... at the end of the day i know i'm a nice person and that's what matters.
of course, nobody is happy all the time, but happiness is really important, and a worthwhile thing to aspire to, for yourself and other people .
anger isn't necessarily a bad thing either, many of the people who did the most good in the world did so because they were angry about something and wanted to change it ...
it's when anger takes over your life and becomes directed into acts of violence / hurting yourself or other people in various ways that it becomes bad, and when happiness turns into complacency and feeling that because you're all right it means you don't have to care about the world beyond the edge of youre nose ...
revol68
what, fucking what?
oh deary me, look whose been reading post modernism for muppets.
truth is not a transcendental objective form, but it not the less exists within given contexts.
for example if me and you both saw a car accident and you thought it was the fault of the driver and i thought it was the fault of the cyclist, there is a disagreement, we couldn't hold our contradictary views and yet think that both of us held the truth.
I can accept that you might really believe you are true, but I can't accept that you actually are, without giving up my own belief.
truth is certainly up for contestion but it is not something that can be packaged away into a nice liberal private sphere were each person can hold there own without conflict.
truth is not a transcendental objective form, but it not the less exists within given contexts.
for example if me and you both saw a car accident and you thought it was the fault of the driver and i thought it was the fault of the cyclist, there is a disagreement, we couldn't hold our contradictary views and yet think that both of us held the truth.
I can accept that you might really believe you are true, but I can't accept that you actually are, without giving up my own belief.
truth is certainly up for contestion but it is not something that can be packaged away into a nice liberal private sphere were each person can hold there own without conflict.
By the way, could one of the people here who appear to converse with God on such a regular basis ask him what he was playing at with that whole crazy jape with that huge cyst on my left nut?
I know humour is a part of any loving relationship, but that wasn't funny, that hurt
I know humour is a part of any loving relationship, but that wasn't funny, that hurt
snadge
metal alchemist
revol68 said:
Naughty
revol68 said:
truth can only be percieved, even then it isn't truth, just part of a belief system
revol68 said:
by stating it was a car accident you are expressing your own bias, the truth is non existent by that bias, the only truth that would be assertained would be through the forensic investigation, even then there would be ambiguos areas that couldn't assert blame on either, due to our way of investigation though, blame would have to be appropiated, but it may not be the truth.
revol68 said:
Of course you can, try it...
revol68 said:
that is a contradiction on your last paragraph.
revol68
what, fucking what?
you miss the central point.
that in any given situation, in the witnessing of an event, i cannot hold two contradictory "beliefs" to be true at the same time. Hence the "Road Accident" involving a cyclist and a motorist, can be to your mind the fault of the cyclist and to mine the fault of motorist, both of these can be "true" within our beleif systems, but I can not maintain my belief system if I was to accept your "truth" too.
Where was the contradiction in my last line btw?
Oh you mean my assertion that truth is always up for contestion and that it is not possible to pack it away in a nice little liberal private sphere?
So you think because I beleive the truth is something produced and contested that I cannot make assertions about it being incompatiable with a liberal private sphere?
That is the height of post modernist absurdism, it's akin to never pitching a tent because you'll only have to bring it down again.
that in any given situation, in the witnessing of an event, i cannot hold two contradictory "beliefs" to be true at the same time. Hence the "Road Accident" involving a cyclist and a motorist, can be to your mind the fault of the cyclist and to mine the fault of motorist, both of these can be "true" within our beleif systems, but I can not maintain my belief system if I was to accept your "truth" too.
Where was the contradiction in my last line btw?
Oh you mean my assertion that truth is always up for contestion and that it is not possible to pack it away in a nice little liberal private sphere?
So you think because I beleive the truth is something produced and contested that I cannot make assertions about it being incompatiable with a liberal private sphere?
That is the height of post modernist absurdism, it's akin to never pitching a tent because you'll only have to bring it down again.
Shippou-Sensei
4:1:2.5
if god exists then god must exist on some level we are not yet able to comprehend. for a start they are not giving us any evidence of their existance. yes inteligent design people make claims but the wathmaker argument is old hat. and to be honest if god did do these things he is powerfull enough to be able to do them undetected. more importantly that that if god created the universe as it is then how the hell are we supposed to know what he wants? because i am fairly certian most religious books are pants and have nothing to do with the universe and god but every thing to do about humanity.
in this, we agree. good answer.revol68 said:
actually, one slight qualification- an awakened person could also be happy all the time, according to the Buddha, but obviously this state is arrived at through suffering, so the dialectic still applies...
hmmm, I am into an area where my knowledge is sketchy- discussing the nature of God is not for me to do. I have felt 'God is love', and know it to be true, and, as an answer to the thread topic, that is how I conceptualise Hir (Him/Her). to suggest that that is all that God is, would be foolish. I cannot conceive of the true nature of God, the Alpha and the Omega, much less put it into simple language...frogwoman said:
snouty warthog said:
Yea, but that's in breach of the 11th commandment "Thou shalt not exclude possibility".
"Knowing" you're right regardless of any evidence, is the root of all evil. Take a look at the news on TV this evening. It will be filled with atrocities perpetrated by (often well-meaning) people who think they "know what's true".
If people would have a bit more humility and give the benefit of the doubt to the possibility that they might be (and probably are) completely wrong, the world would be a much better place. Sure, people would still make mistakes, but they wouldn't make the endlessly repetetive, banging-heads-against-brick-walls types of mistakes that "people of faith" seem to excel in.
On TV last night was a news interview with some Israelli spokesperson going on about victory etc, head tilted slightly forward, eyebrows knitted... meanwhile in the background were all these shades of blue with lights sparkling in the distance - it was a beautiful, beautiful night in Israel, and meantime all these suicidally blind people were arguing and fighting like some Heironomous Bosch nighmare, just like they've always fucking done.
And where is religion in all this? This "love" we keep hearing about? Sorry, I don't see that much love, what I do see is an awful lot of religion and an awful lot of hate.
The Buddha said a lot of things, doesn't make any of them right.snouty warthog said:
Happiness is defined by the existence of suffering. Being happy all the time without ever feeling pain, misery or even ambivialence about one's happiness is about as meaningful as feeling nothing at all.
In Bloom said:
Cobblers. You've just superimposed a duality over it and proclaimed it as though it's some sort of deep mystic truth.
Of course you can be happy without having suffered. Babies can be happy - suffering (or "meaning" for that matter) doesn't come into it.
Saying you need to be suffering to give meaning to happiness assumes happiness needs meaning. It doesn't.
merlin wood
mind traveller 3rd class
revol68 said:
...and look what a mess human beings have made of it. So we only succeed in making life have less purpose than if we didn't exist.
Religion isn't good enough because human beings are creatures who reason from the facts about the world.
So just maybe we lack a sufficient knowledge of facts about life and the universe that includes ourselves to get us out of this mess.
revol68
what, fucking what?
merlin wood said:
Oh well that's some profound shit right there!
Tell me do you tour Hospitals, offering your inspired insights to the ill?
I look forward to the publication of your thoughts in the British Medical Journal, "Circling Square's, Curing Cancer and Collective Suicide".
merlin wood
mind traveller 3rd class
revol68 said:
...or maybe there is just more to the world than is dreamt of in your philosophy.
Structaural
in Chatsubo
revol68 said:
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
I don't believe in 'belief' but knowledge. Belief is silly and relied upon when the evidence is lacking. You keep saying you 'believe' it's the cyclist or the motorist, surely there's evidence to prove it one way or the other, it nothing to do with beliefs.
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