Lady Rarity Pony

Hey I remember you! Happy 2 two years.

Don't worry bro, you're not stupid to me.

0/10

Probably the best argument against the existence of God to be posted in a blog on these forums. Good job.

Evidently it makes you stupid, too.

What worries me is that this blog post probably wasn't intended to be stupid.

I think that being stuck, for the present at least, in a world in which there is a great deal of boredom and anxiousness can make your fear/detest the idea of enduring through time for very long periods (forever in the conception of an afterlife you have in mind).

That said, I think this is a purely emotional issue people struggle with (myself included), and not an actual reason to disbelieve or disapprove of an afterlife.

Presumably, if there is an afterlife, it won't just be this world on a larger scale. That's not how most conceptions of the afterlife conceive it, at least.

There's a lot of issues posterior to this one that, if answered, would bring clarity to the question of an afterlife. Such issues would be, for example, the precise nature of happiness, personal identity, morality, and value itself, of course.

MRS. TWEEDY THE CHICKENS ARE REVOLTING!!!

Hold up. Let me go get my magnifying glass so I can see what of yours is coming in.

I am sorry to hear of this. I wish you the best.

I don't like dying. D:

Hey, if you have any Total War games, you should do a naval battle and name the ships after who you want! o:

I tried that once. I'm pretty sure the one named Feld0 caught on fire and blew up after destroying an enemy ship. >->

Do I count as a friend?

of course I do.

NO, HASBROS IS DESTROYING THE FABRIC OF REALITY AND WE CAN'T LET THEM. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Anyone could have come to that conclusion.

Jupiter has got nothing on Uranus.

Uranus is mine. All mine.

if you know what I mean...

-snip-

[Note: I should have corrected your terminology. We may lack 'absolute' certainty in the sense I defined above, but it does not follow that we lack 'knowledge'.

You can 'know' the earth is spherical even though it's logically possible that the earth is flat and we're all just delusional about modern science.]

Well I'd honestly suggest reading up on epistemology, and induction, perhaps.

Most of what you're saying makes it seem like you don't have a good grasp on the issues involved.

And you sure seem to think you have knowledge of the fact that we can't/don't have knowledge, don't you think? :Y

I say it's the only way you can believe in God.  Evidence or reasons do not provide absolute knowledge, and if you do not have absolute knowledge to know something is true then you must have belief, or faith, or blind faith, or whatever you wanna call it.

It looks to me like you've gotten yourself stuck in epistemological skepticism!

We may not have "absolute" knowledge in the sense that it's logically impossible for us to be mistaken, but from there it simply does not follow that we have no knowledge of the world, or that we lack good reasons to believe or disbelieve in certain things.

Saying we have reasons and evidence and then saying we must rely on "blind faith" pretty much contradicts itself. We don't rely on "blind faith"; we make inferrences based on what we know. And if you want to get down to the very basics of our knowledge you could say that what we know is ultimately based on self-evident or just blatantly obvious facts.

No where does "blind faith" need to come into the picture.

@@Lady Rarity Pony,

 

it takes just as much blind faith to believe there is a God as it does to not believe in one.

Are you saying blind faith is the only reason to believe in God? :V

I think your biggest mistake is that you're trying to use generic (and somewhat superficial) definitions to build up an idea of 'religion' in a way that encompasses atheism.

This sort of approach is going to end up with silly results. Everything from capitalism to your kitchen sink is going to end up as 'religion' if you go down this path, which only adds confusion to the issues.

Instead, you should begin with the clear examples of religion (Hinduism, Christianity, Jainism, etc.) and try to build up an idea of religion around that, which you can then use to judge less certain systems.

Although, if you go down this road, 'atheism' as such probably isn't going to be included as a religion. Atheism isn't really a 'system' or 'set' of beliefs and it lacks everything obvious cases of religion have (belief in the supernatural, primarily).

If you wanted to be picky you could argue that certain instances of atheistic ideologies are 'secular religions' [such as the atheistic Cult of Reason] or 'political religions' [such as atheistic N. Korean Jucheism] but, again, atheism as such really just fails to meet any serious criteria for being a religion.

but if we're going to get the philosophical, then we can't know anything at all. All we perceive is just our brain translating series' of electrical impulses, we don't know if the brain does it correctly, or if said impulses are caused by interactions with reality, or something else. Hell, we don't know if we even have brains. We could be in the Matrix, or be the sentient dreams of some guy who has sentient beings in his dreams. There could be no God, one God, or 65,348,190 Gods. The God(s) could've created us, and maybe they were created by other God(s), ad infinitum. We don't know.

I think that's more hyperbolically skeptical than philosophical!

Allied tanks are so tiny. They come off as more cute than intimidating. :3

I am an expert on gay and this makes you somewhat gay.

Tich has spoken. You are thus officially a homosexual.

Secular morality.

 

That is all. 

The irony is that this is what every argument for non-theistic foundations of morality reduces to. Simply a concept with no substance and no credibility.

Unless anyone is willing to provide a defense of the ontological foundations of morality compatible with an atheistic worldview then talk of who's being moral seems quite pointless.

Honestly, Christians also say Jesus opposed Gays, he never even mention Homosexuality.

 

He mentioned divorce, and said it was sinful.

 

99% of Americans portray Jesus as white, muscular, and long haired.

 

Long haired might be right, but he would look more like Osama Bin Laden than David Hasselhoff or Arnold Schwartznagger.

 

Sad an atheist knows more about Jesus than a Christian.

1. He addressed marriage and declared it was between a man and woman and indissoluble.

2. 99%? Where's your source? And since when do Americans automatically equate to Christians?

3. He'd look more like a Jew of Hebrew descent, not an Arab.

Sad people give lip service to positions on matters they don't understand. :V

Laws are there to protect people, not to restrict their choices.

I'm pretty sure we wouldn't call them laws if they didn't restrict choices!

There is also the consumption of pork....The mixing of fabrics....Where are the protesters of these things as well?

I think you missed his point. He seems to be getting at the fact that Christians will oppose gay marriage based off the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament but (apparently) wont oppose divorce despite the fact that it's also clearly condemned in the New Testament.

What you're getting at is a separate issue that you clearly do not understand which has to do with ritual purity laws and the difference between the Old and New Covenants.

Christianity has been around for two thousand years. Do you really think that for all that time no one has ever offered an explanation as to why the Jewish ritual purity laws are not followed by Christians?

Come on, really?

Now, so far as the main topic is concerned, I think Fizzy's post illustrates an inconsistency in the beliefs of certain Christian denominations. At the same time I don't think we should oversimplify a matter and mash it with another.

As a Catholic I do not believe a valid marriage can be dissolved. So in that sense I oppose divorce (so far as I'm aware I do so consistently with my views on gay marriage; albeit the latter topic simply comes up more often). This shouldn't be oversimplified, again. There are situations (such as abusive relationships) where a married couple needs to separate and have the legal connections between their spouse severed by the government. Yet even if that's done I do not believe they are truly unmarried. So 'divorce' is only tolerated by me as a legal recourse and not as a serious attempt to end marriages.

I hope that distinction clears up my views.

But getting back to what I said above, I do think that many (pretty much all) non-Catholic groups are in error and hold to inconsistent doctrines (such as permitting divorce [in the stronger sense] yet forbidding gay marriage).

So I'm right with you on that one, but so far as I can see, I hold to no inconsistent views.