How do the non-spiritual explain it?

[sealybobo]

Of course that's my problem with believing in god(s). I don't think we will ever solve the argument "does god exist". In fact I'm sure we won't. And when muslims and christians continue killing in the name of ____ and you ask if that's my problem? Of course it is.

Human behavior is also why I firmly believe that we made god up. And unless you believe in one of the nutty religions I guess it doesn't matter if I believe because god never came here and told anyone that believing he visited is the main requirement to get into heaven. That is clearly man made bullshit. Could I be wrong? I'll take my chances based on the evidence I feel pretty safe.

From the looks of it when you learn psychology, cosmology, quantum physics, human history, geology and the history of religion that god is nothing but a fairy tale we came up with.

I don't sit around worrying about what's going to happen to me when I die. Seems pointless or wishful thinking to believe you are going to live forever after you die. I spend more time wondering how we can get the human race to live forever. This planet is doomed. We need to build spaceships so that the human race's existence doesn't die when our sun expires. I know I'll be long dead by then but I care. It would be a shame to have come all this way for nothing like the dinosaurs & trilobites who once ruled this planet.

In fact when I look at Republicans who claim to be very religious and then I see how they don't want to educate or feed the poor or heal the sick, I realize they believe in 2 gods. Their main god is the god of capitalism. Second is Jesus.

I guess I was lucky to be raised atheist. Religion was not a joke, it was the abomination of the world. God, angel of God I am sure, revealed his presence when I was about 12. From day on I knew there was something outside of scientific explanation. He would show up every few years, at least where it left no doubt that something just happened. One method I used to try and figure out what was going on is by using D&D logic; OK, magic user, levitation, invisibility, teleportation maybe. Works out to between a level 7 and level 12 magic user depending on exactly what just happened. Mind reading would have been required on a couple occasions. What I knew of God and what I knew of religion sure did not mess though. Like I have mentioned things just changed last spring. It was no longer, "Well, that was interesting." It was, "Oh shit! That made sense." I'm not saying it always made perfect sense. I do not know what is going on. I sure do not know why religion does not seem to understand God. One theory I have is that sometimes in the Bible God will be nice to someone whose ancestor did right by the LORD. I really do not know but I am here to tell you: God is real.

Why there is no god

1. I feel a personal relationship with god OR I experienced god.
   Argument from personal experience.
   
   A result of our naturally evolved neurology, made hypersensitive to purpose (an ‘unseen actor’) because of the large social groups humans have and the way the brain associates pattern with intent.
   
   Humans have evolved a variety of cognitive shortcuts to deal with the mass of information provided by our senses. In particular, we tend to filter sensory input according to a set of expectations built on prior beliefs and past experiences, impart meaning to ambiguous input even when there is no real meaning behind it and infer causal relationships where none exist.
   
   Personal revelation cannot be independently verified. So-called ‘revelations’ never include information a recipient could not have known beforehand, such as the time and location of a rare event or answers to any number of unsolved problems in science. They are usually emotional or perceptual in content and therefore unremarkable among the many cognitive processes brains exhibit, including dreams and hallucinations. These experiences may even be artificially induced by narcotics or magnetic fields. Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia or psychosis.
   
   Spiritual and religious experiences are not only inconsistent among individuals but are variably attributed to different gods, aliens, spirits, rituals, hallucinations, meditation etc. The fact that medical conditions and other natural processes can induce these experiences is evidence they are produced by our brain.
   
   See also: NPR Your brain on god?, Hardwired for religion?, Searching for God in the Brain, The Economist, BBC Doco, PBS Doco and Dawkins on the topic, Deconversion: Personal Relationship (a must watch), TED – How it feels to have a stroke (a must watch) and TED – Ramachandran on your mind.
   
   Papers: Religion and Hippocampal Atrophy.
   
   “You can tell you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott
   
   
   

You are attacking my evidence. How can you say you are open minded?

I remember my childhood friends who were also religious very much believed in ghosts. One of them shit their pants when we handcuffed him in the basement closed the lights and left. He swears he saw a ghost down there.

I attack your evidence the same way. Do I believe he saw a ghost? Nope. Does he? Yes.

RE: ghosts
I met someone at a Buddhist retreat who said that all her family witnessed the ghost of their father walk into the room after they were gathered for his funeral services.
The Buddhists teach that the soul is still on this plane after death but is outside the body.

You can question that until it is proven,
but "attacking" someone in a non-neutral fashion
biased AGAINST stories of ghosts being true, instead of open either way,
shows an emotional bias caused by not forgiving people in the past
and projecting this onto other people. How is that different from a religious bias
that judges and rejects people for having different beliefs?

If you reject people in a biased fashion against them, instead of being neutral,
they tend to respond to you in the same biased rejecting way. that is a natural
law. So if you don't like when religious people do this, why would you behave the same way?

Nonsense. But buddhists don't claim god told them this. They just believe it. Of course they do. If you just died and you believe the soul continues then of course they believe the spirit is present. Just wild speculation. Could it be true? Sure. As long as people

Why there is no god

1. I feel a personal relationship with god OR I experienced god.
   Argument from personal experience.
   
   A result of our naturally evolved neurology, made hypersensitive to purpose (an ‘unseen actor’) because of the large social groups humans have and the way the brain associates pattern with intent.
   
   Humans have evolved a variety of cognitive shortcuts to deal with the mass of information provided by our senses. In particular, we tend to filter sensory input according to a set of expectations built on prior beliefs and past experiences, impart meaning to ambiguous input even when there is no real meaning behind it and infer causal relationships where none exist.
   
   Personal revelation cannot be independently verified. So-called ‘revelations’ never include information a recipient could not have known beforehand, such as the time and location of a rare event or answers to any number of unsolved problems in science. They are usually emotional or perceptual in content and therefore unremarkable among the many cognitive processes brains exhibit, including dreams and hallucinations. These experiences may even be artificially induced by narcotics or magnetic fields. Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia or psychosis.
   
   Spiritual and religious experiences are not only inconsistent among individuals but are variably attributed to different gods, aliens, spirits, rituals, hallucinations, meditation etc. The fact that medical conditions and other natural processes can induce these experiences is evidence they are produced by our brain.
   
   See also: NPR Your brain on god?, Hardwired for religion?, Searching for God in the Brain, The Economist, BBC Doco, PBS Doco and Dawkins on the topic, Deconversion: Personal Relationship (a must watch), TED – How it feels to have a stroke (a must watch) and TED – Ramachandran on your mind.
   
   Papers: Religion and Hippocampal Atrophy.
   
   “You can tell you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott
   
   
   

You are attacking my evidence. How can you say you are open minded?

Joseph smith talked to god but this is not evidence for Jews Muslims and christians. They don't believe it.

The bible isn't real if you ask Jews. They don't believe Jesus was the son of god yet millions of christians believe it. And Muslims say god talked to Mohammed but this isn't proof for Jews christians or Mormons.

I attack your evidence the same way you doubt Joe and mos evidence.

sealybobo you are leaving out the forgiveness factor
1. the Jews who have received forgiveness can see that the Bible and Jesus as Christianity teaches is true
2. the secular gentiles who have received forgiveness do not reject Christians or Christianity
even if they don't believe the same things
3. the Christians who have forgiven Muslims and Muslims who have forgiven Christians
do see they worship the same God.

There is an explanation for the rejection besides just claiming "they don't exist"
and the difference is based on unforgiveness vs. forgiveness

They worship the same god? Not what the bible says.

Do you even know the Mormon story? Do you believe it? Then its a man made up religion. A lie.

You can teach how forgiveness is good for your health and prevents wars. No god needed.

sealybobo

If you are teaching there is more than one god that's you doing that here.

I am saying there is only one God or source of universal truths,
and all religions/laws are attempting to represent this in limited language.

Of course there are going to be flaws, biases and conflicts
because people aren't perfect.

As I pointed out before,
if there is any denial or bias going on, which you "unneutrally" call LYING,
it is because of fear and unforgiveness that skews people's judgments
including yours.

You do not mean to project out of denial, but you do.
If you are not intentionally lying, then neither are they.
If you call them "liars" that's why believers say you are "lying."

The reason I don't see this as intentional
is that I can forgive these biases and conflicts
so I can see they are not intentional.

Sorry that you do not forgive these so you see it as deliberately lying.

Why are you so sure there is only one god? You seem to me like the kind of person who would have really believed in the deep thought that came up with the Greek gods. One for every occasion. Why are you so sure there is only one god? It takes 2 to make a baby, right?

I don't think theists are lying. I believe they have been lied to by society that doesn't realize it's been lied to and forced to believe for so long they now believe the lie.

Why can't you realize that I'm truly trying to help people? Your trying to say, "forgive and forget that they are wrong, just focus on the good that can come of it and go along". Try to get them to focus on the good and not the fire and brimstone shit. And meanwhile we watch ISIS chop heads off for their god. Stop going along Emily for they know not what they are saying. Neither do you.

Facts are our country has the luxury of being the world super power and we were smart enough to make ourselves a secular nation. So we can handle radical theists and we don't have to worry about becoming a theist nation.

So stop being a completely bullshit artist. I know your intentions are good but you are just way off base. I know you know your truth is the best truth going on USMB but it is not. You're just another person who's still in the stone ages when our ancestors were superstitious wants to believe in god so bad no amount of information is going to get you to see your god is imaginary. And it is no good for you. And it is no good for me living in a society full of dopes either. Pretend you are living in 1940 Catholic Nazi Germany or Italy and those god fearing people are about to do the unthinkable. How did they justify this with their god? I don't know but they did. God is doing a horrible job running the show. Let us atheists take over.

 

[sealybobo]

Of course that's my problem with believing in god(s). I don't think we will ever solve the argument "does god exist". In fact I'm sure we won't. And when muslims and christians continue killing in the name of ____ and you ask if that's my problem? Of course it is.

Human behavior is also why I firmly believe that we made god up. And unless you believe in one of the nutty religions I guess it doesn't matter if I believe because god never came here and told anyone that believing he visited is the main requirement to get into heaven. That is clearly man made bullshit. Could I be wrong? I'll take my chances based on the evidence I feel pretty safe.

From the looks of it when you learn psychology, cosmology, quantum physics, human history, geology and the history of religion that god is nothing but a fairy tale we came up with.

I don't sit around worrying about what's going to happen to me when I die. Seems pointless or wishful thinking to believe you are going to live forever after you die. I spend more time wondering how we can get the human race to live forever. This planet is doomed. We need to build spaceships so that the human race's existence doesn't die when our sun expires. I know I'll be long dead by then but I care. It would be a shame to have come all this way for nothing like the dinosaurs & trilobites who once ruled this planet.

In fact when I look at Republicans who claim to be very religious and then I see how they don't want to educate or feed the poor or heal the sick, I realize they believe in 2 gods. Their main god is the god of capitalism. Second is Jesus.

I guess I was lucky to be raised atheist. Religion was not a joke, it was the abomination of the world. God, angel of God I am sure, revealed his presence when I was about 12. From day on I knew there was something outside of scientific explanation. He would show up every few years, at least where it left no doubt that something just happened. One method I used to try and figure out what was going on is by using D&D logic; OK, magic user, levitation, invisibility, teleportation maybe. Works out to between a level 7 and level 12 magic user depending on exactly what just happened. Mind reading would have been required on a couple occasions. What I knew of God and what I knew of religion sure did not mess though. Like I have mentioned things just changed last spring. It was no longer, "Well, that was interesting." It was, "Oh shit! That made sense." I'm not saying it always made perfect sense. I do not know what is going on. I sure do not know why religion does not seem to understand God. One theory I have is that sometimes in the Bible God will be nice to someone whose ancestor did right by the LORD. I really do not know but I am here to tell you: God is real.

Why there is no god

1. I feel a personal relationship with god OR I experienced god.
   Argument from personal experience.
   
   A result of our naturally evolved neurology, made hypersensitive to purpose (an ‘unseen actor’) because of the large social groups humans have and the way the brain associates pattern with intent.
   
   Humans have evolved a variety of cognitive shortcuts to deal with the mass of information provided by our senses. In particular, we tend to filter sensory input according to a set of expectations built on prior beliefs and past experiences, impart meaning to ambiguous input even when there is no real meaning behind it and infer causal relationships where none exist.
   
   Personal revelation cannot be independently verified. So-called ‘revelations’ never include information a recipient could not have known beforehand, such as the time and location of a rare event or answers to any number of unsolved problems in science. They are usually emotional or perceptual in content and therefore unremarkable among the many cognitive processes brains exhibit, including dreams and hallucinations. These experiences may even be artificially induced by narcotics or magnetic fields. Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia or psychosis.
   
   Spiritual and religious experiences are not only inconsistent among individuals but are variably attributed to different gods, aliens, spirits, rituals, hallucinations, meditation etc. The fact that medical conditions and other natural processes can induce these experiences is evidence they are produced by our brain.
   
   See also: NPR Your brain on god?, Hardwired for religion?, Searching for God in the Brain, The Economist, BBC Doco, PBS Doco and Dawkins on the topic, Deconversion: Personal Relationship (a must watch), TED – How it feels to have a stroke (a must watch) and TED – Ramachandran on your mind.
   
   Papers: Religion and Hippocampal Atrophy.
   
   “You can tell you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott
   
   
   

You are attacking my evidence. How can you say you are open minded?

I remember my childhood friends who were also religious very much believed in ghosts. One of them shit their pants when we handcuffed him in the basement closed the lights and left. He swears he saw a ghost down there.

I attack your evidence the same way. Do I believe he saw a ghost? Nope. Does he? Yes.

Do you believe you are better than God?

I don't believe god(s) exist and if something created the universe it cares about you as much as you care about a fly on a lions ass in Africa. Even smaller than that. You would be a single cell organism half way around the world.

It is you who thinks you are so special that a god built the universe for you and has a heaven awaiting where you will become a god essentially and live forever in paradise. Who's the arrogant one?

 

[sealybobo]

“Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.
But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

“One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.”

“Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham.


― Steven Weinberg

 

[emilynghiem]

I guess I was lucky to be raised atheist. Religion was not a joke, it was the abomination of the world. God, angel of God I am sure, revealed his presence when I was about 12. From day on I knew there was something outside of scientific explanation. He would show up every few years, at least where it left no doubt that something just happened. One method I used to try and figure out what was going on is by using D&D logic; OK, magic user, levitation, invisibility, teleportation maybe. Works out to between a level 7 and level 12 magic user depending on exactly what just happened. Mind reading would have been required on a couple occasions. What I knew of God and what I knew of religion sure did not mess though. Like I have mentioned things just changed last spring. It was no longer, "Well, that was interesting." It was, "Oh shit! That made sense." I'm not saying it always made perfect sense. I do not know what is going on. I sure do not know why religion does not seem to understand God. One theory I have is that sometimes in the Bible God will be nice to someone whose ancestor did right by the LORD. I really do not know but I am here to tell you: God is real.

Why there is no god

1. I feel a personal relationship with god OR I experienced god.
   Argument from personal experience.
   
   A result of our naturally evolved neurology, made hypersensitive to purpose (an ‘unseen actor’) because of the large social groups humans have and the way the brain associates pattern with intent.
   
   Humans have evolved a variety of cognitive shortcuts to deal with the mass of information provided by our senses. In particular, we tend to filter sensory input according to a set of expectations built on prior beliefs and past experiences, impart meaning to ambiguous input even when there is no real meaning behind it and infer causal relationships where none exist.
   
   Personal revelation cannot be independently verified. So-called ‘revelations’ never include information a recipient could not have known beforehand, such as the time and location of a rare event or answers to any number of unsolved problems in science. They are usually emotional or perceptual in content and therefore unremarkable among the many cognitive processes brains exhibit, including dreams and hallucinations. These experiences may even be artificially induced by narcotics or magnetic fields. Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia or psychosis.
   
   Spiritual and religious experiences are not only inconsistent among individuals but are variably attributed to different gods, aliens, spirits, rituals, hallucinations, meditation etc. The fact that medical conditions and other natural processes can induce these experiences is evidence they are produced by our brain.
   
   See also: NPR Your brain on god?, Hardwired for religion?, Searching for God in the Brain, The Economist, BBC Doco, PBS Doco and Dawkins on the topic, Deconversion: Personal Relationship (a must watch), TED – How it feels to have a stroke (a must watch) and TED – Ramachandran on your mind.
   
   Papers: Religion and Hippocampal Atrophy.
   
   “You can tell you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott
   
   
   

You are attacking my evidence. How can you say you are open minded?

I remember my childhood friends who were also religious very much believed in ghosts. One of them shit their pants when we handcuffed him in the basement closed the lights and left. He swears he saw a ghost down there.

I attack your evidence the same way. Do I believe he saw a ghost? Nope. Does he? Yes.

RE: ghosts
I met someone at a Buddhist retreat who said that all her family witnessed the ghost of their father walk into the room after they were gathered for his funeral services.
The Buddhists teach that the soul is still on this plane after death but is outside the body.

You can question that until it is proven,
but "attacking" someone in a non-neutral fashion
biased AGAINST stories of ghosts being true, instead of open either way,
shows an emotional bias caused by not forgiving people in the past
and projecting this onto other people. How is that different from a religious bias
that judges and rejects people for having different beliefs?

If you reject people in a biased fashion against them, instead of being neutral,
they tend to respond to you in the same biased rejecting way. that is a natural
law. So if you don't like when religious people do this, why would you behave the same way?

Nonsense. But buddhists don't claim god told them this. They just believe it. Of course they do. If you just died and you believe the soul continues then of course they believe the spirit is present. Just wild speculation. Could it be true? Sure. As long as people

You are attacking my evidence. How can you say you are open minded?

Joseph smith talked to god but this is not evidence for Jews Muslims and christians. They don't believe it.

The bible isn't real if you ask Jews. They don't believe Jesus was the son of god yet millions of christians believe it. And Muslims say god talked to Mohammed but this isn't proof for Jews christians or Mormons.

I attack your evidence the same way you doubt Joe and mos evidence.

sealybobo you are leaving out the forgiveness factor
1. the Jews who have received forgiveness can see that the Bible and Jesus as Christianity teaches is true
2. the secular gentiles who have received forgiveness do not reject Christians or Christianity
even if they don't believe the same things
3. the Christians who have forgiven Muslims and Muslims who have forgiven Christians
do see they worship the same God.

There is an explanation for the rejection besides just claiming "they don't exist"
and the difference is based on unforgiveness vs. forgiveness

They worship the same god? Not what the bible says.

Do you even know the Mormon story? Do you believe it? Then its a man made up religion. A lie.

You can teach how forgiveness is good for your health and prevents wars. No god needed.

sealybobo

If you are teaching there is more than one god that's you doing that here.

I am saying there is only one God or source of universal truths,
and all religions/laws are attempting to represent this in limited language.

Of course there are going to be flaws, biases and conflicts
because people aren't perfect.

As I pointed out before,
if there is any denial or bias going on, which you "unneutrally" call LYING,
it is because of fear and unforgiveness that skews people's judgments
including yours.

You do not mean to project out of denial, but you do.
If you are not intentionally lying, then neither are they.
If you call them "liars" that's why believers say you are "lying."

The reason I don't see this as intentional
is that I can forgive these biases and conflicts
so I can see they are not intentional.

Sorry that you do not forgive these so you see it as deliberately lying.

Why are you so sure there is only one god? You seem to me like the kind of person who would have really believed in the deep thought that came up with the Greek gods. One for every occasion. Why are you so sure there is only one god? It takes 2 to make a baby, right?

I don't think theists are lying. I believe they have been lied to by society that doesn't realize it's been lied to and forced to believe for so long they now believe the lie.

Why can't you realize that I'm truly trying to help people? Your trying to say, "forgive and forget that they are wrong, just focus on the good that can come of it and go along". Try to get them to focus on the good and not the fire and brimstone shit. And meanwhile we watch ISIS chop heads off for their god. Stop going along Emily for they know not what they are saying. Neither do you.

Facts are our country has the luxury of being the world super power and we were smart enough to make ourselves a secular nation. So we can handle radical theists and we don't have to worry about becoming a theist nation.

So stop being a completely bullshit artist. I know your intentions are good but you are just way off base. I know you know your truth is the best truth going on USMB but it is not. You're just another person who's still in the stone ages when our ancestors were superstitious wants to believe in god so bad no amount of information is going to get you to see your god is imaginary. And it is no good for you. And it is no good for me living in a society full of dopes either. Pretend you are living in 1940 Catholic Nazi Germany or Italy and those god fearing people are about to do the unthinkable. How did they justify this with their god? I don't know but they did. God is doing a horrible job running the show. Let us atheists take over.

Hi sealybobo
1. if "you atheists" were truly all inclusive by accepting ALL explanations as right for that person,
you might be objective and universal enough to cover ALL and protect equal "religious freedom for all"

But since you have shown contempt and bias AGAINST certain views
then you are not objective and all inclusive either. that's why you are not the default.

I would say the Buddhists are probably the closest to being neutral
and letting all people follow their own paths.

2. as for "one God"
it depends how you define this

a. if you mean the way Christians teach God is the only way to teach God
and you try to impose that on everyone else including nontheists, no, that
is not the best way. That still doesn't negate the concept of one God,
it just shows that teaching just one way is not enough to include everyone

b. if you teach that the one God can be EXPRESSED and experienced
in different ways, that MIGHT be closer to universal and including all ways:
God as Life or Source of Life
God as Nature or Creation or Universe
God as Truth or Wisdom, Universal Laws, Justice
God as love, divine forgiveness, spiritual peace

so if you teach that there is one God that all the different ways
describe or point to,
then you can include BOTH
the beliefs in "one God as absolute"
as well as the "relative expressions" of this one God or Source of all truth in life.

Since B. is closer to all inclusive
that is the way I recommend.
I believe in accommodating everyone's free exercise of religion
or their beliefs equally, including secular or political beliefs,
so I try to take the more inclusive approach
and then resolve any conflics from there.

I have never seen any form of conflict resolution
work by EXCLUDING one or both parties in the conflicts.

The first step in mediation is to set up a neutral ground that includes
the parties' views equally, and then letting them work it out between them.

So sealybobo if you want atheists or nontheists to be the
neutral starting ground, then you would have to ALLOW for
the beliefs of theists within that set and not verbally or
emotionally threaten such people to make them feel excluded
or discriminated against. When people are put on the defensive
it blocks the communication process to be skewed and not equally open and free.

If you cannot forgive theists or religionists for their beliefs,
that introduces a bias that makes your starting point NOT neutral and NOT objective.
So you will have difficulty proving anything from a biased starting point
that is already on the side of rejection.

What theist would step foot in a courtroom knowing the judge is already
biased against them? Mediation fails when the process is skewed against one side.

 

[sealybobo]

Why there is no god

1. I feel a personal relationship with god OR I experienced god.
   Argument from personal experience.
   
   A result of our naturally evolved neurology, made hypersensitive to purpose (an ‘unseen actor’) because of the large social groups humans have and the way the brain associates pattern with intent.
   
   Humans have evolved a variety of cognitive shortcuts to deal with the mass of information provided by our senses. In particular, we tend to filter sensory input according to a set of expectations built on prior beliefs and past experiences, impart meaning to ambiguous input even when there is no real meaning behind it and infer causal relationships where none exist.
   
   Personal revelation cannot be independently verified. So-called ‘revelations’ never include information a recipient could not have known beforehand, such as the time and location of a rare event or answers to any number of unsolved problems in science. They are usually emotional or perceptual in content and therefore unremarkable among the many cognitive processes brains exhibit, including dreams and hallucinations. These experiences may even be artificially induced by narcotics or magnetic fields. Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia or psychosis.
   
   Spiritual and religious experiences are not only inconsistent among individuals but are variably attributed to different gods, aliens, spirits, rituals, hallucinations, meditation etc. The fact that medical conditions and other natural processes can induce these experiences is evidence they are produced by our brain.
   
   See also: NPR Your brain on god?, Hardwired for religion?, Searching for God in the Brain, The Economist, BBC Doco, PBS Doco and Dawkins on the topic, Deconversion: Personal Relationship (a must watch), TED – How it feels to have a stroke (a must watch) and TED – Ramachandran on your mind.
   
   Papers: Religion and Hippocampal Atrophy.
   
   “You can tell you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott
   
   
   

You are attacking my evidence. How can you say you are open minded?

Joseph smith talked to god but this is not evidence for Jews Muslims and christians. They don't believe it.

The bible isn't real if you ask Jews. They don't believe Jesus was the son of god yet millions of christians believe it. And Muslims say god talked to Mohammed but this isn't proof for Jews christians or Mormons.

I attack your evidence the same way you doubt Joe and mos evidence.

sealybobo you are leaving out the forgiveness factor
1. the Jews who have received forgiveness can see that the Bible and Jesus as Christianity teaches is true
2. the secular gentiles who have received forgiveness do not reject Christians or Christianity
even if they don't believe the same things
3. the Christians who have forgiven Muslims and Muslims who have forgiven Christians
do see they worship the same God.

There is an explanation for the rejection besides just claiming "they don't exist"
and the difference is based on unforgiveness vs. forgiveness

They worship the same god? Not what the bible says.

Do you even know the Mormon story? Do you believe it? Then its a man made up religion. A lie.

You can teach how forgiveness is good for your health and prevents wars. No god needed.

sealybobo

If you are teaching there is more than one god that's you doing that here.

I am saying there is only one God or source of universal truths,
and all religions/laws are attempting to represent this in limited language.

Of course there are going to be flaws, biases and conflicts
because people aren't perfect.

As I pointed out before,
if there is any denial or bias going on, which you "unneutrally" call LYING,
it is because of fear and unforgiveness that skews people's judgments
including yours.

You do not mean to project out of denial, but you do.
If you are not intentionally lying, then neither are they.
If you call them "liars" that's why believers say you are "lying."

The reason I don't see this as intentional
is that I can forgive these biases and conflicts
so I can see they are not intentional.

Sorry that you do not forgive these so you see it as deliberately lying.

Thought of you when I read this:

“Many of the great world religions teach that God demands a particular faith and form of worship. It should not be surprising that SOME of the people who take these teachings seriously should sincerely regard these divine commands as incomparably more important than any merely secular virtues like tolerance or compassion or reason.

Across Asia and Africa the forces of religious enthusiasm are gathering strength, and reason and tolerance are not safe even in the secular states of the West. The historian Huge Trevor-Roper has said that it was the spread of the spirit of science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that finally ended the burning of the witches in Europe. We may need to rely again on the influence of science to preserve a sane world.

Seeing scientists change their minds again and again about the matters that can be studied directly in laboratory experiments, how can one take seriously the claims of religious traditions or sacred writings to certain knowledge about matters beyond human experience”
― Steven Weinberg

 

[sealybobo]

“It used to be obvious that the world was designed by some sort of intelligence. What else could account for fire and rain and lightning and earthquakes? Above all, the wonderful abilities of living things seemed to point to a creator who had a special interest in life. Today we understand most of these things in terms of physical forces acting under impersonal laws. We don't yet know the most fundamental laws, and we can't work out all the consequences of the laws we do know. The human mind remains extraordinarily difficult to understand, but so is the weather. We can't predict whether it will rain one month from today, but we do know the rules that govern the rain, even though we can't always calculate their consequences. I see nothing about the human mind any more than about the weather that stands out as beyond the hope of understanding as a consequence of impersonal laws acting over billions of years.”
― Steven Weinberg

 

[sealybobo]

Why there is no god

1. I feel a personal relationship with god OR I experienced god.
   Argument from personal experience.
   
   A result of our naturally evolved neurology, made hypersensitive to purpose (an ‘unseen actor’) because of the large social groups humans have and the way the brain associates pattern with intent.
   
   Humans have evolved a variety of cognitive shortcuts to deal with the mass of information provided by our senses. In particular, we tend to filter sensory input according to a set of expectations built on prior beliefs and past experiences, impart meaning to ambiguous input even when there is no real meaning behind it and infer causal relationships where none exist.
   
   Personal revelation cannot be independently verified. So-called ‘revelations’ never include information a recipient could not have known beforehand, such as the time and location of a rare event or answers to any number of unsolved problems in science. They are usually emotional or perceptual in content and therefore unremarkable among the many cognitive processes brains exhibit, including dreams and hallucinations. These experiences may even be artificially induced by narcotics or magnetic fields. Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia or psychosis.
   
   Spiritual and religious experiences are not only inconsistent among individuals but are variably attributed to different gods, aliens, spirits, rituals, hallucinations, meditation etc. The fact that medical conditions and other natural processes can induce these experiences is evidence they are produced by our brain.
   
   See also: NPR Your brain on god?, Hardwired for religion?, Searching for God in the Brain, The Economist, BBC Doco, PBS Doco and Dawkins on the topic, Deconversion: Personal Relationship (a must watch), TED – How it feels to have a stroke (a must watch) and TED – Ramachandran on your mind.
   
   Papers: Religion and Hippocampal Atrophy.
   
   “You can tell you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott
   
   
   

You are attacking my evidence. How can you say you are open minded?

I remember my childhood friends who were also religious very much believed in ghosts. One of them shit their pants when we handcuffed him in the basement closed the lights and left. He swears he saw a ghost down there.

I attack your evidence the same way. Do I believe he saw a ghost? Nope. Does he? Yes.

RE: ghosts
I met someone at a Buddhist retreat who said that all her family witnessed the ghost of their father walk into the room after they were gathered for his funeral services.
The Buddhists teach that the soul is still on this plane after death but is outside the body.

You can question that until it is proven,
but "attacking" someone in a non-neutral fashion
biased AGAINST stories of ghosts being true, instead of open either way,
shows an emotional bias caused by not forgiving people in the past
and projecting this onto other people. How is that different from a religious bias
that judges and rejects people for having different beliefs?

If you reject people in a biased fashion against them, instead of being neutral,
they tend to respond to you in the same biased rejecting way. that is a natural
law. So if you don't like when religious people do this, why would you behave the same way?

Nonsense. But buddhists don't claim god told them this. They just believe it. Of course they do. If you just died and you believe the soul continues then of course they believe the spirit is present. Just wild speculation. Could it be true? Sure. As long as people

Joseph smith talked to god but this is not evidence for Jews Muslims and christians. They don't believe it.

The bible isn't real if you ask Jews. They don't believe Jesus was the son of god yet millions of christians believe it. And Muslims say god talked to Mohammed but this isn't proof for Jews christians or Mormons.

I attack your evidence the same way you doubt Joe and mos evidence.

sealybobo you are leaving out the forgiveness factor
1. the Jews who have received forgiveness can see that the Bible and Jesus as Christianity teaches is true
2. the secular gentiles who have received forgiveness do not reject Christians or Christianity
even if they don't believe the same things
3. the Christians who have forgiven Muslims and Muslims who have forgiven Christians
do see they worship the same God.

There is an explanation for the rejection besides just claiming "they don't exist"
and the difference is based on unforgiveness vs. forgiveness

They worship the same god? Not what the bible says.

Do you even know the Mormon story? Do you believe it? Then its a man made up religion. A lie.

You can teach how forgiveness is good for your health and prevents wars. No god needed.

sealybobo

If you are teaching there is more than one god that's you doing that here.

I am saying there is only one God or source of universal truths,
and all religions/laws are attempting to represent this in limited language.

Of course there are going to be flaws, biases and conflicts
because people aren't perfect.

As I pointed out before,
if there is any denial or bias going on, which you "unneutrally" call LYING,
it is because of fear and unforgiveness that skews people's judgments
including yours.

You do not mean to project out of denial, but you do.
If you are not intentionally lying, then neither are they.
If you call them "liars" that's why believers say you are "lying."

The reason I don't see this as intentional
is that I can forgive these biases and conflicts
so I can see they are not intentional.

Sorry that you do not forgive these so you see it as deliberately lying.

Why are you so sure there is only one god? You seem to me like the kind of person who would have really believed in the deep thought that came up with the Greek gods. One for every occasion. Why are you so sure there is only one god? It takes 2 to make a baby, right?

I don't think theists are lying. I believe they have been lied to by society that doesn't realize it's been lied to and forced to believe for so long they now believe the lie.

Why can't you realize that I'm truly trying to help people? Your trying to say, "forgive and forget that they are wrong, just focus on the good that can come of it and go along". Try to get them to focus on the good and not the fire and brimstone shit. And meanwhile we watch ISIS chop heads off for their god. Stop going along Emily for they know not what they are saying. Neither do you.

Facts are our country has the luxury of being the world super power and we were smart enough to make ourselves a secular nation. So we can handle radical theists and we don't have to worry about becoming a theist nation.

So stop being a completely bullshit artist. I know your intentions are good but you are just way off base. I know you know your truth is the best truth going on USMB but it is not. You're just another person who's still in the stone ages when our ancestors were superstitious wants to believe in god so bad no amount of information is going to get you to see your god is imaginary. And it is no good for you. And it is no good for me living in a society full of dopes either. Pretend you are living in 1940 Catholic Nazi Germany or Italy and those god fearing people are about to do the unthinkable. How did they justify this with their god? I don't know but they did. God is doing a horrible job running the show. Let us atheists take over.

Hi sealybobo
1. if "you atheists" were truly all inclusive by accepting ALL explanations as right for that person,
you might be objective and universal enough to cover ALL and protect equal "religious freedom for all"

But since you have shown contempt and bias AGAINST certain views
then you are not objective and all inclusive either. that's why you are not the default.

I would say the Buddhists are probably the closest to being neutral
and letting all people follow their own paths.

2. as for "one God"
it depends how you define this

a. if you mean the way Christians teach God is the only way to teach God
and you try to impose that on everyone else including nontheists, no, that
is not the best way. That still doesn't negate the concept of one God,
it just shows that teaching just one way is not enough to include everyone

b. if you teach that the one God can be EXPRESSED and experienced
in different ways, that MIGHT be closer to universal and including all ways:
God as Life or Source of Life
God as Nature or Creation or Universe
God as Truth or Wisdom, Universal Laws, Justice
God as love, divine forgiveness, spiritual peace

so if you teach that there is one God that all the different ways
describe or point to,
then you can include BOTH
the beliefs in "one God as absolute"
as well as the "relative expressions" of this one God or Source of all truth in life.

Since B. is closer to all inclusive
that is the way I recommend.
I believe in accommodating everyone's free exercise of religion
or their beliefs equally, including secular or political beliefs,
so I try to take the more inclusive approach
and then resolve any conflics from there.

I have never seen any form of conflict resolution
work by EXCLUDING one or both parties in the conflicts.

The first step in mediation is to set up a neutral ground that includes
the parties' views equally, and then letting them work it out between them.

So sealybobo if you want atheists or nontheists to be the
neutral starting ground, then you would have to ALLOW for
the beliefs of theists within that set and not verbally or
emotionally threaten such people to make them feel excluded
or discriminated against. When people are put on the defensive
it blocks the communication process to be skewed and not equally open and free.

If you cannot forgive theists or religionists for their beliefs,
that introduces a bias that makes your starting point NOT neutral and NOT objective.
So you will have difficulty proving anything from a biased starting point
that is already on the side of rejection.

What theist would step foot in a courtroom knowing the judge is already
biased against them? Mediation fails when the process is skewed against one side.

“There are those whose views about religion are not very different from my own, but who nevertheless feel that we should try to damp down the conflict, that we should compromise it. … I respect their views and I understand their motives, and I don't condemn them, but I'm not having it. To me, the conflict between science and religion is more important than these issues of science education or even environmentalism. I think the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief; and anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.”
― Steven Weinberg

 

[emilynghiem]

I guess I was lucky to be raised atheist. Religion was not a joke, it was the abomination of the world. God, angel of God I am sure, revealed his presence when I was about 12. From day on I knew there was something outside of scientific explanation. He would show up every few years, at least where it left no doubt that something just happened. One method I used to try and figure out what was going on is by using D&D logic; OK, magic user, levitation, invisibility, teleportation maybe. Works out to between a level 7 and level 12 magic user depending on exactly what just happened. Mind reading would have been required on a couple occasions. What I knew of God and what I knew of religion sure did not mess though. Like I have mentioned things just changed last spring. It was no longer, "Well, that was interesting." It was, "Oh shit! That made sense." I'm not saying it always made perfect sense. I do not know what is going on. I sure do not know why religion does not seem to understand God. One theory I have is that sometimes in the Bible God will be nice to someone whose ancestor did right by the LORD. I really do not know but I am here to tell you: God is real.

Why there is no god

1. I feel a personal relationship with god OR I experienced god.
   Argument from personal experience.
   
   A result of our naturally evolved neurology, made hypersensitive to purpose (an ‘unseen actor’) because of the large social groups humans have and the way the brain associates pattern with intent.
   
   Humans have evolved a variety of cognitive shortcuts to deal with the mass of information provided by our senses. In particular, we tend to filter sensory input according to a set of expectations built on prior beliefs and past experiences, impart meaning to ambiguous input even when there is no real meaning behind it and infer causal relationships where none exist.
   
   Personal revelation cannot be independently verified. So-called ‘revelations’ never include information a recipient could not have known beforehand, such as the time and location of a rare event or answers to any number of unsolved problems in science. They are usually emotional or perceptual in content and therefore unremarkable among the many cognitive processes brains exhibit, including dreams and hallucinations. These experiences may even be artificially induced by narcotics or magnetic fields. Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia or psychosis.
   
   Spiritual and religious experiences are not only inconsistent among individuals but are variably attributed to different gods, aliens, spirits, rituals, hallucinations, meditation etc. The fact that medical conditions and other natural processes can induce these experiences is evidence they are produced by our brain.
   
   See also: NPR Your brain on god?, Hardwired for religion?, Searching for God in the Brain, The Economist, BBC Doco, PBS Doco and Dawkins on the topic, Deconversion: Personal Relationship (a must watch), TED – How it feels to have a stroke (a must watch) and TED – Ramachandran on your mind.
   
   Papers: Religion and Hippocampal Atrophy.
   
   “You can tell you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott
   
   
   

You are attacking my evidence. How can you say you are open minded?

I remember my childhood friends who were also religious very much believed in ghosts. One of them shit their pants when we handcuffed him in the basement closed the lights and left. He swears he saw a ghost down there.

I attack your evidence the same way. Do I believe he saw a ghost? Nope. Does he? Yes.

Do you believe you are better than God?

I don't believe god(s) exist and if something created the universe it cares about you as much as you care about a fly on a lions ass in Africa. Even smaller than that. You would be a single cell organism half way around the world.

It is you who thinks you are so special that a god built the universe for you and has a heaven awaiting where you will become a god essentially and live forever in paradise. Who's the arrogant one?

sealybobo that's fine if you don't believe
but don't let your bias get in the way of discussion and debate either way
or you will find mutual frustration with people biased towards God
and refusing to be open minded and being closed to the same degree you admit.

If you really want to be universal and objective, then you would have to stay NEUTRAL.
Like agreeing your view is biased and being equally open to people with the opposite bias.
If you keep judging them for their bias, who are you to complain given your bias. Do you see how this deadlocks?

If you and I are equally biased, but AWARE of our biases,
and can forgive the opposite bias, we could work as a team to balance out the bias
and try to be open that way. people who are more atheistic can feel safe with you
on the team overseeing the proof, and people who are more theistic can relate to me.
We can still go through the steps of proving scientifically that effective forms of spiritual healing
are based on forgiveness, and that this forgiveness is the factor that correlated with
reconciling religious or political differences. So it isn't the person's beliefs that is the
determining factor, it is whether the people forgive each other, or to what degree they can or cannot,
which determines if they can reconcile conflicts or not. We can demonstrate this scientifically
using statistics, while also the same process of studying spiritual healing can be applied to curing
physical and mental illness as well.

 

[sealybobo]

“Many people do simply awful things out of sincere religious belief, not using religion as a cover the way that Saddam Hussein may have done, but really because they believe that this is what God wants them to do, going all the way back to Abraham being willing to sacrifice Issac because God told him to do that. Putting God ahead of humanity is a terrible thing.”
― Steven Weinberg

 

[emilynghiem]

“It used to be obvious that the world was designed by some sort of intelligence. What else could account for fire and rain and lightning and earthquakes? Above all, the wonderful abilities of living things seemed to point to a creator who had a special interest in life. Today we understand most of these things in terms of physical forces acting under impersonal laws. We don't yet know the most fundamental laws, and we can't work out all the consequences of the laws we do know. The human mind remains extraordinarily difficult to understand, but so is the weather. We can't predict whether it will rain one month from today, but we do know the rules that govern the rain, even though we can't always calculate their consequences. I see nothing about the human mind any more than about the weather that stands out as beyond the hope of understanding as a consequence of impersonal laws acting over billions of years.”
― Steven Weinberg

sealybobo
again, it is not necessary to believe in a personified intelligence to reach agreement on how laws of nature work.

We can pinpoint and study the correlated effects of forgiveness and unforgiveness
and prove the same process taught in religions is demonstrated through natural science of how the mind/body works.

Why not focus on what CAN be proven?

 

[emilynghiem]

You are attacking my evidence. How can you say you are open minded?

I remember my childhood friends who were also religious very much believed in ghosts. One of them shit their pants when we handcuffed him in the basement closed the lights and left. He swears he saw a ghost down there.

I attack your evidence the same way. Do I believe he saw a ghost? Nope. Does he? Yes.

RE: ghosts
I met someone at a Buddhist retreat who said that all her family witnessed the ghost of their father walk into the room after they were gathered for his funeral services.
The Buddhists teach that the soul is still on this plane after death but is outside the body.

You can question that until it is proven,
but "attacking" someone in a non-neutral fashion
biased AGAINST stories of ghosts being true, instead of open either way,
shows an emotional bias caused by not forgiving people in the past
and projecting this onto other people. How is that different from a religious bias
that judges and rejects people for having different beliefs?

If you reject people in a biased fashion against them, instead of being neutral,
they tend to respond to you in the same biased rejecting way. that is a natural
law. So if you don't like when religious people do this, why would you behave the same way?

Nonsense. But buddhists don't claim god told them this. They just believe it. Of course they do. If you just died and you believe the soul continues then of course they believe the spirit is present. Just wild speculation. Could it be true? Sure. As long as people

sealybobo you are leaving out the forgiveness factor
1. the Jews who have received forgiveness can see that the Bible and Jesus as Christianity teaches is true
2. the secular gentiles who have received forgiveness do not reject Christians or Christianity
even if they don't believe the same things
3. the Christians who have forgiven Muslims and Muslims who have forgiven Christians
do see they worship the same God.

There is an explanation for the rejection besides just claiming "they don't exist"
and the difference is based on unforgiveness vs. forgiveness

They worship the same god? Not what the bible says.

Do you even know the Mormon story? Do you believe it? Then its a man made up religion. A lie.

You can teach how forgiveness is good for your health and prevents wars. No god needed.

sealybobo

If you are teaching there is more than one god that's you doing that here.

I am saying there is only one God or source of universal truths,
and all religions/laws are attempting to represent this in limited language.

Of course there are going to be flaws, biases and conflicts
because people aren't perfect.

As I pointed out before,
if there is any denial or bias going on, which you "unneutrally" call LYING,
it is because of fear and unforgiveness that skews people's judgments
including yours.

You do not mean to project out of denial, but you do.
If you are not intentionally lying, then neither are they.
If you call them "liars" that's why believers say you are "lying."

The reason I don't see this as intentional
is that I can forgive these biases and conflicts
so I can see they are not intentional.

Sorry that you do not forgive these so you see it as deliberately lying.

Why are you so sure there is only one god? You seem to me like the kind of person who would have really believed in the deep thought that came up with the Greek gods. One for every occasion. Why are you so sure there is only one god? It takes 2 to make a baby, right?

I don't think theists are lying. I believe they have been lied to by society that doesn't realize it's been lied to and forced to believe for so long they now believe the lie.

Why can't you realize that I'm truly trying to help people? Your trying to say, "forgive and forget that they are wrong, just focus on the good that can come of it and go along". Try to get them to focus on the good and not the fire and brimstone shit. And meanwhile we watch ISIS chop heads off for their god. Stop going along Emily for they know not what they are saying. Neither do you.

Facts are our country has the luxury of being the world super power and we were smart enough to make ourselves a secular nation. So we can handle radical theists and we don't have to worry about becoming a theist nation.

So stop being a completely bullshit artist. I know your intentions are good but you are just way off base. I know you know your truth is the best truth going on USMB but it is not. You're just another person who's still in the stone ages when our ancestors were superstitious wants to believe in god so bad no amount of information is going to get you to see your god is imaginary. And it is no good for you. And it is no good for me living in a society full of dopes either. Pretend you are living in 1940 Catholic Nazi Germany or Italy and those god fearing people are about to do the unthinkable. How did they justify this with their god? I don't know but they did. God is doing a horrible job running the show. Let us atheists take over.

Hi sealybobo
1. if "you atheists" were truly all inclusive by accepting ALL explanations as right for that person,
you might be objective and universal enough to cover ALL and protect equal "religious freedom for all"

But since you have shown contempt and bias AGAINST certain views
then you are not objective and all inclusive either. that's why you are not the default.

I would say the Buddhists are probably the closest to being neutral
and letting all people follow their own paths.

2. as for "one God"
it depends how you define this

a. if you mean the way Christians teach God is the only way to teach God
and you try to impose that on everyone else including nontheists, no, that
is not the best way. That still doesn't negate the concept of one God,
it just shows that teaching just one way is not enough to include everyone

b. if you teach that the one God can be EXPRESSED and experienced
in different ways, that MIGHT be closer to universal and including all ways:
God as Life or Source of Life
God as Nature or Creation or Universe
God as Truth or Wisdom, Universal Laws, Justice
God as love, divine forgiveness, spiritual peace

so if you teach that there is one God that all the different ways
describe or point to,
then you can include BOTH
the beliefs in "one God as absolute"
as well as the "relative expressions" of this one God or Source of all truth in life.

Since B. is closer to all inclusive
that is the way I recommend.
I believe in accommodating everyone's free exercise of religion
or their beliefs equally, including secular or political beliefs,
so I try to take the more inclusive approach
and then resolve any conflics from there.

I have never seen any form of conflict resolution
work by EXCLUDING one or both parties in the conflicts.

The first step in mediation is to set up a neutral ground that includes
the parties' views equally, and then letting them work it out between them.

So sealybobo if you want atheists or nontheists to be the
neutral starting ground, then you would have to ALLOW for
the beliefs of theists within that set and not verbally or
emotionally threaten such people to make them feel excluded
or discriminated against. When people are put on the defensive
it blocks the communication process to be skewed and not equally open and free.

If you cannot forgive theists or religionists for their beliefs,
that introduces a bias that makes your starting point NOT neutral and NOT objective.
So you will have difficulty proving anything from a biased starting point
that is already on the side of rejection.

What theist would step foot in a courtroom knowing the judge is already
biased against them? Mediation fails when the process is skewed against one side.

“There are those whose views about religion are not very different from my own, but who nevertheless feel that we should try to damp down the conflict, that we should compromise it. … I respect their views and I understand their motives, and I don't condemn them, but I'm not having it. To me, the conflict between science and religion is more important than these issues of science education or even environmentalism. I think the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief; and anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.”
― Steven Weinberg

Re: False division between science and religion
Dear sealybobo
doesn't it make sense that whatever is true about human nature
would have to be consistent with science if it is true
and also consistent with what religions teach in order for them to be true.

Well, studies on spiritual healing can bridge this gap in understanding
between science and religion. The doctors who have studied it all recognized this
and support medical studies to establish this more publicly.

Curiously enough, both Dr. Peck and Dr. MacNutt BLAME the false
division between science and religion as obstructing this research.

Makes sense that if these two groups are segregated and enforced in society
as incompatible, there won't be motivation or collaboration to do scientific studies on spiritual healing.
If people like you are too busy preaching against any such proof instead of pursuing it.

As more people realize this will solve multiple problems,
then it will finally get support it needs for formal research to go public with it.

 

[sealybobo]

I remember my childhood friends who were also religious very much believed in ghosts. One of them shit their pants when we handcuffed him in the basement closed the lights and left. He swears he saw a ghost down there.

I attack your evidence the same way. Do I believe he saw a ghost? Nope. Does he? Yes.

RE: ghosts
I met someone at a Buddhist retreat who said that all her family witnessed the ghost of their father walk into the room after they were gathered for his funeral services.
The Buddhists teach that the soul is still on this plane after death but is outside the body.

You can question that until it is proven,
but "attacking" someone in a non-neutral fashion
biased AGAINST stories of ghosts being true, instead of open either way,
shows an emotional bias caused by not forgiving people in the past
and projecting this onto other people. How is that different from a religious bias
that judges and rejects people for having different beliefs?

If you reject people in a biased fashion against them, instead of being neutral,
they tend to respond to you in the same biased rejecting way. that is a natural
law. So if you don't like when religious people do this, why would you behave the same way?

Nonsense. But buddhists don't claim god told them this. They just believe it. Of course they do. If you just died and you believe the soul continues then of course they believe the spirit is present. Just wild speculation. Could it be true? Sure. As long as people

They worship the same god? Not what the bible says.

Do you even know the Mormon story? Do you believe it? Then its a man made up religion. A lie.

You can teach how forgiveness is good for your health and prevents wars. No god needed.

sealybobo

If you are teaching there is more than one god that's you doing that here.

I am saying there is only one God or source of universal truths,
and all religions/laws are attempting to represent this in limited language.

Of course there are going to be flaws, biases and conflicts
because people aren't perfect.

As I pointed out before,
if there is any denial or bias going on, which you "unneutrally" call LYING,
it is because of fear and unforgiveness that skews people's judgments
including yours.

You do not mean to project out of denial, but you do.
If you are not intentionally lying, then neither are they.
If you call them "liars" that's why believers say you are "lying."

The reason I don't see this as intentional
is that I can forgive these biases and conflicts
so I can see they are not intentional.

Sorry that you do not forgive these so you see it as deliberately lying.

Why are you so sure there is only one god? You seem to me like the kind of person who would have really believed in the deep thought that came up with the Greek gods. One for every occasion. Why are you so sure there is only one god? It takes 2 to make a baby, right?

I don't think theists are lying. I believe they have been lied to by society that doesn't realize it's been lied to and forced to believe for so long they now believe the lie.

Why can't you realize that I'm truly trying to help people? Your trying to say, "forgive and forget that they are wrong, just focus on the good that can come of it and go along". Try to get them to focus on the good and not the fire and brimstone shit. And meanwhile we watch ISIS chop heads off for their god. Stop going along Emily for they know not what they are saying. Neither do you.

Facts are our country has the luxury of being the world super power and we were smart enough to make ourselves a secular nation. So we can handle radical theists and we don't have to worry about becoming a theist nation.

So stop being a completely bullshit artist. I know your intentions are good but you are just way off base. I know you know your truth is the best truth going on USMB but it is not. You're just another person who's still in the stone ages when our ancestors were superstitious wants to believe in god so bad no amount of information is going to get you to see your god is imaginary. And it is no good for you. And it is no good for me living in a society full of dopes either. Pretend you are living in 1940 Catholic Nazi Germany or Italy and those god fearing people are about to do the unthinkable. How did they justify this with their god? I don't know but they did. God is doing a horrible job running the show. Let us atheists take over.

Hi sealybobo
1. if "you atheists" were truly all inclusive by accepting ALL explanations as right for that person,
you might be objective and universal enough to cover ALL and protect equal "religious freedom for all"

But since you have shown contempt and bias AGAINST certain views
then you are not objective and all inclusive either. that's why you are not the default.

I would say the Buddhists are probably the closest to being neutral
and letting all people follow their own paths.

2. as for "one God"
it depends how you define this

a. if you mean the way Christians teach God is the only way to teach God
and you try to impose that on everyone else including nontheists, no, that
is not the best way. That still doesn't negate the concept of one God,
it just shows that teaching just one way is not enough to include everyone

b. if you teach that the one God can be EXPRESSED and experienced
in different ways, that MIGHT be closer to universal and including all ways:
God as Life or Source of Life
God as Nature or Creation or Universe
God as Truth or Wisdom, Universal Laws, Justice
God as love, divine forgiveness, spiritual peace

so if you teach that there is one God that all the different ways
describe or point to,
then you can include BOTH
the beliefs in "one God as absolute"
as well as the "relative expressions" of this one God or Source of all truth in life.

Since B. is closer to all inclusive
that is the way I recommend.
I believe in accommodating everyone's free exercise of religion
or their beliefs equally, including secular or political beliefs,
so I try to take the more inclusive approach
and then resolve any conflics from there.

I have never seen any form of conflict resolution
work by EXCLUDING one or both parties in the conflicts.

The first step in mediation is to set up a neutral ground that includes
the parties' views equally, and then letting them work it out between them.

So sealybobo if you want atheists or nontheists to be the
neutral starting ground, then you would have to ALLOW for
the beliefs of theists within that set and not verbally or
emotionally threaten such people to make them feel excluded
or discriminated against. When people are put on the defensive
it blocks the communication process to be skewed and not equally open and free.

If you cannot forgive theists or religionists for their beliefs,
that introduces a bias that makes your starting point NOT neutral and NOT objective.
So you will have difficulty proving anything from a biased starting point
that is already on the side of rejection.

What theist would step foot in a courtroom knowing the judge is already
biased against them? Mediation fails when the process is skewed against one side.

“There are those whose views about religion are not very different from my own, but who nevertheless feel that we should try to damp down the conflict, that we should compromise it. … I respect their views and I understand their motives, and I don't condemn them, but I'm not having it. To me, the conflict between science and religion is more important than these issues of science education or even environmentalism. I think the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief; and anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.”
― Steven Weinberg

Re: False division between science and religion
Dear sealybobo
doesn't it make sense that whatever is true about human nature
would have to be consistent with science if it is true
and also consistent with what religions teach in order for them to be true.

Well, studies on spiritual healing can bridge this gap in understanding
between science and religion. The doctors who have studied it all recognized this
and support medical studies to establish this more publicly.

Curiously enough, both Dr. Peck and Dr. MacNutt BLAME the false
division between science and religion as obstructing this research.

Makes sense that if these two groups are segregated and enforced in society
as incompatible, there won't be motivation or collaboration to do scientific studies on spiritual healing.
If people like you are too busy preaching against any such proof instead of pursuing it.

As more people realize this will solve multiple problems,
then it will finally get support it needs for formal research to go public with it.

Nothing helps keep the poor in a state of poverty quite like religion and that is by design. You think Constantine decided Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire because he believed? That’s funny. Religion keeps people in intellectual shackles and chains them to subservience.

 

[RandomVariable]

I guess I was lucky to be raised atheist. Religion was not a joke, it was the abomination of the world. God, angel of God I am sure, revealed his presence when I was about 12. From day on I knew there was something outside of scientific explanation. He would show up every few years, at least where it left no doubt that something just happened. One method I used to try and figure out what was going on is by using D&D logic; OK, magic user, levitation, invisibility, teleportation maybe. Works out to between a level 7 and level 12 magic user depending on exactly what just happened. Mind reading would have been required on a couple occasions. What I knew of God and what I knew of religion sure did not mess though. Like I have mentioned things just changed last spring. It was no longer, "Well, that was interesting." It was, "Oh shit! That made sense." I'm not saying it always made perfect sense. I do not know what is going on. I sure do not know why religion does not seem to understand God. One theory I have is that sometimes in the Bible God will be nice to someone whose ancestor did right by the LORD. I really do not know but I am here to tell you: God is real.

Why there is no god

1. I feel a personal relationship with god OR I experienced god.
   Argument from personal experience.
   
   A result of our naturally evolved neurology, made hypersensitive to purpose (an ‘unseen actor’) because of the large social groups humans have and the way the brain associates pattern with intent.
   
   Humans have evolved a variety of cognitive shortcuts to deal with the mass of information provided by our senses. In particular, we tend to filter sensory input according to a set of expectations built on prior beliefs and past experiences, impart meaning to ambiguous input even when there is no real meaning behind it and infer causal relationships where none exist.
   
   Personal revelation cannot be independently verified. So-called ‘revelations’ never include information a recipient could not have known beforehand, such as the time and location of a rare event or answers to any number of unsolved problems in science. They are usually emotional or perceptual in content and therefore unremarkable among the many cognitive processes brains exhibit, including dreams and hallucinations. These experiences may even be artificially induced by narcotics or magnetic fields. Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia or psychosis.
   
   Spiritual and religious experiences are not only inconsistent among individuals but are variably attributed to different gods, aliens, spirits, rituals, hallucinations, meditation etc. The fact that medical conditions and other natural processes can induce these experiences is evidence they are produced by our brain.
   
   See also: NPR Your brain on god?, Hardwired for religion?, Searching for God in the Brain, The Economist, BBC Doco, PBS Doco and Dawkins on the topic, Deconversion: Personal Relationship (a must watch), TED – How it feels to have a stroke (a must watch) and TED – Ramachandran on your mind.
   
   Papers: Religion and Hippocampal Atrophy.
   
   “You can tell you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott
   
   
   

You are attacking my evidence. How can you say you are open minded?

I remember my childhood friends who were also religious very much believed in ghosts. One of them shit their pants when we handcuffed him in the basement closed the lights and left. He swears he saw a ghost down there.

I attack your evidence the same way. Do I believe he saw a ghost? Nope. Does he? Yes.

Do you believe you are better than God?

I don't believe god(s) exist and if something created the universe it cares about you as much as you care about a fly on a lions ass in Africa. Even smaller than that. You would be a single cell organism half way around the world.

It is you who thinks you are so special that a god built the universe for you and has a heaven awaiting where you will become a god essentially and live forever in paradise. Who's the arrogant one?

So say you think you are better than God. Since it matters not.

 

[sealybobo]

I remember my childhood friends who were also religious very much believed in ghosts. One of them shit their pants when we handcuffed him in the basement closed the lights and left. He swears he saw a ghost down there.

I attack your evidence the same way. Do I believe he saw a ghost? Nope. Does he? Yes.

RE: ghosts
I met someone at a Buddhist retreat who said that all her family witnessed the ghost of their father walk into the room after they were gathered for his funeral services.
The Buddhists teach that the soul is still on this plane after death but is outside the body.

You can question that until it is proven,
but "attacking" someone in a non-neutral fashion
biased AGAINST stories of ghosts being true, instead of open either way,
shows an emotional bias caused by not forgiving people in the past
and projecting this onto other people. How is that different from a religious bias
that judges and rejects people for having different beliefs?

If you reject people in a biased fashion against them, instead of being neutral,
they tend to respond to you in the same biased rejecting way. that is a natural
law. So if you don't like when religious people do this, why would you behave the same way?

Nonsense. But buddhists don't claim god told them this. They just believe it. Of course they do. If you just died and you believe the soul continues then of course they believe the spirit is present. Just wild speculation. Could it be true? Sure. As long as people

They worship the same god? Not what the bible says.

Do you even know the Mormon story? Do you believe it? Then its a man made up religion. A lie.

You can teach how forgiveness is good for your health and prevents wars. No god needed.

sealybobo

If you are teaching there is more than one god that's you doing that here.

I am saying there is only one God or source of universal truths,
and all religions/laws are attempting to represent this in limited language.

Of course there are going to be flaws, biases and conflicts
because people aren't perfect.

As I pointed out before,
if there is any denial or bias going on, which you "unneutrally" call LYING,
it is because of fear and unforgiveness that skews people's judgments
including yours.

You do not mean to project out of denial, but you do.
If you are not intentionally lying, then neither are they.
If you call them "liars" that's why believers say you are "lying."

The reason I don't see this as intentional
is that I can forgive these biases and conflicts
so I can see they are not intentional.

Sorry that you do not forgive these so you see it as deliberately lying.

Why are you so sure there is only one god? You seem to me like the kind of person who would have really believed in the deep thought that came up with the Greek gods. One for every occasion. Why are you so sure there is only one god? It takes 2 to make a baby, right?

I don't think theists are lying. I believe they have been lied to by society that doesn't realize it's been lied to and forced to believe for so long they now believe the lie.

Why can't you realize that I'm truly trying to help people? Your trying to say, "forgive and forget that they are wrong, just focus on the good that can come of it and go along". Try to get them to focus on the good and not the fire and brimstone shit. And meanwhile we watch ISIS chop heads off for their god. Stop going along Emily for they know not what they are saying. Neither do you.

Facts are our country has the luxury of being the world super power and we were smart enough to make ourselves a secular nation. So we can handle radical theists and we don't have to worry about becoming a theist nation.

So stop being a completely bullshit artist. I know your intentions are good but you are just way off base. I know you know your truth is the best truth going on USMB but it is not. You're just another person who's still in the stone ages when our ancestors were superstitious wants to believe in god so bad no amount of information is going to get you to see your god is imaginary. And it is no good for you. And it is no good for me living in a society full of dopes either. Pretend you are living in 1940 Catholic Nazi Germany or Italy and those god fearing people are about to do the unthinkable. How did they justify this with their god? I don't know but they did. God is doing a horrible job running the show. Let us atheists take over.

Hi sealybobo
1. if "you atheists" were truly all inclusive by accepting ALL explanations as right for that person,
you might be objective and universal enough to cover ALL and protect equal "religious freedom for all"

But since you have shown contempt and bias AGAINST certain views
then you are not objective and all inclusive either. that's why you are not the default.

I would say the Buddhists are probably the closest to being neutral
and letting all people follow their own paths.

2. as for "one God"
it depends how you define this

a. if you mean the way Christians teach God is the only way to teach God
and you try to impose that on everyone else including nontheists, no, that
is not the best way. That still doesn't negate the concept of one God,
it just shows that teaching just one way is not enough to include everyone

b. if you teach that the one God can be EXPRESSED and experienced
in different ways, that MIGHT be closer to universal and including all ways:
God as Life or Source of Life
God as Nature or Creation or Universe
God as Truth or Wisdom, Universal Laws, Justice
God as love, divine forgiveness, spiritual peace

so if you teach that there is one God that all the different ways
describe or point to,
then you can include BOTH
the beliefs in "one God as absolute"
as well as the "relative expressions" of this one God or Source of all truth in life.

Since B. is closer to all inclusive
that is the way I recommend.
I believe in accommodating everyone's free exercise of religion
or their beliefs equally, including secular or political beliefs,
so I try to take the more inclusive approach
and then resolve any conflics from there.

I have never seen any form of conflict resolution
work by EXCLUDING one or both parties in the conflicts.

The first step in mediation is to set up a neutral ground that includes
the parties' views equally, and then letting them work it out between them.

So sealybobo if you want atheists or nontheists to be the
neutral starting ground, then you would have to ALLOW for
the beliefs of theists within that set and not verbally or
emotionally threaten such people to make them feel excluded
or discriminated against. When people are put on the defensive
it blocks the communication process to be skewed and not equally open and free.

If you cannot forgive theists or religionists for their beliefs,
that introduces a bias that makes your starting point NOT neutral and NOT objective.
So you will have difficulty proving anything from a biased starting point
that is already on the side of rejection.

What theist would step foot in a courtroom knowing the judge is already
biased against them? Mediation fails when the process is skewed against one side.

“There are those whose views about religion are not very different from my own, but who nevertheless feel that we should try to damp down the conflict, that we should compromise it. … I respect their views and I understand their motives, and I don't condemn them, but I'm not having it. To me, the conflict between science and religion is more important than these issues of science education or even environmentalism. I think the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief; and anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.”
― Steven Weinberg

Re: False division between science and religion
Dear sealybobo
doesn't it make sense that whatever is true about human nature
would have to be consistent with science if it is true
and also consistent with what religions teach in order for them to be true.

Well, studies on spiritual healing can bridge this gap in understanding
between science and religion. The doctors who have studied it all recognized this
and support medical studies to establish this more publicly.

Curiously enough, both Dr. Peck and Dr. MacNutt BLAME the false
division between science and religion as obstructing this research.

Makes sense that if these two groups are segregated and enforced in society
as incompatible, there won't be motivation or collaboration to do scientific studies on spiritual healing.
If people like you are too busy preaching against any such proof instead of pursuing it.

As more people realize this will solve multiple problems,
then it will finally get support it needs for formal research to go public with it.

When you learn stuff like this:

Around 1 in 5 Sun-like stars have an "Earth-sized" planet in the habitable zone. Assuming 200 billion stars in the Milky Way, that would be 11 billion potentially habitable Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way

Kind of makes it hard to believe we are anything special. Sort of humbling and makes me feel small. But that's ok. I like knowing. I also feel lucky to have been born. I don't have any kids. Imagine how many unlucky sperm of mine will never fertilize an egg and those humans will never be born. Seems to me a mosquito that lives for a month is luckier than them. No life for them and no heaven for those sperm either. What about all the potential brothers and sisters your parents didn't have. You were lucky not blessed to be born. Just dumb luck.

 

[sealybobo]

Why there is no god

1. I feel a personal relationship with god OR I experienced god.
   Argument from personal experience.
   
   A result of our naturally evolved neurology, made hypersensitive to purpose (an ‘unseen actor’) because of the large social groups humans have and the way the brain associates pattern with intent.
   
   Humans have evolved a variety of cognitive shortcuts to deal with the mass of information provided by our senses. In particular, we tend to filter sensory input according to a set of expectations built on prior beliefs and past experiences, impart meaning to ambiguous input even when there is no real meaning behind it and infer causal relationships where none exist.
   
   Personal revelation cannot be independently verified. So-called ‘revelations’ never include information a recipient could not have known beforehand, such as the time and location of a rare event or answers to any number of unsolved problems in science. They are usually emotional or perceptual in content and therefore unremarkable among the many cognitive processes brains exhibit, including dreams and hallucinations. These experiences may even be artificially induced by narcotics or magnetic fields. Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia or psychosis.
   
   Spiritual and religious experiences are not only inconsistent among individuals but are variably attributed to different gods, aliens, spirits, rituals, hallucinations, meditation etc. The fact that medical conditions and other natural processes can induce these experiences is evidence they are produced by our brain.
   
   See also: NPR Your brain on god?, Hardwired for religion?, Searching for God in the Brain, The Economist, BBC Doco, PBS Doco and Dawkins on the topic, Deconversion: Personal Relationship (a must watch), TED – How it feels to have a stroke (a must watch) and TED – Ramachandran on your mind.
   
   Papers: Religion and Hippocampal Atrophy.
   
   “You can tell you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott
   
   
   

You are attacking my evidence. How can you say you are open minded?

I remember my childhood friends who were also religious very much believed in ghosts. One of them shit their pants when we handcuffed him in the basement closed the lights and left. He swears he saw a ghost down there.

I attack your evidence the same way. Do I believe he saw a ghost? Nope. Does he? Yes.

Do you believe you are better than God?

I don't believe god(s) exist and if something created the universe it cares about you as much as you care about a fly on a lions ass in Africa. Even smaller than that. You would be a single cell organism half way around the world.

It is you who thinks you are so special that a god built the universe for you and has a heaven awaiting where you will become a god essentially and live forever in paradise. Who's the arrogant one?

So say you think you are better than God. Since it matters not.

There is no god so ok, here goes. I'm better than something that doesn't exist. I'm better than god! I am a god!!! Fuck god. Happy?

I won't live forever. When I die that's it. Just like an ant or tiger or bird or maggot or trilobite or dinosaur. Enjoy your life because its over quick and you only live once. Everything only lives once. The cosmos is eternal but your soul isn't. No intelligent creator that cares about YOU made it happen.

I can't believe I have to explain this to adult people. No wonder this world is fucked up with so many dumb superstitious illogical irrational brainwashed people.

 

[sealybobo]

I remember my childhood friends who were also religious very much believed in ghosts. One of them shit their pants when we handcuffed him in the basement closed the lights and left. He swears he saw a ghost down there.

I attack your evidence the same way. Do I believe he saw a ghost? Nope. Does he? Yes.

RE: ghosts
I met someone at a Buddhist retreat who said that all her family witnessed the ghost of their father walk into the room after they were gathered for his funeral services.
The Buddhists teach that the soul is still on this plane after death but is outside the body.

You can question that until it is proven,
but "attacking" someone in a non-neutral fashion
biased AGAINST stories of ghosts being true, instead of open either way,
shows an emotional bias caused by not forgiving people in the past
and projecting this onto other people. How is that different from a religious bias
that judges and rejects people for having different beliefs?

If you reject people in a biased fashion against them, instead of being neutral,
they tend to respond to you in the same biased rejecting way. that is a natural
law. So if you don't like when religious people do this, why would you behave the same way?

Nonsense. But buddhists don't claim god told them this. They just believe it. Of course they do. If you just died and you believe the soul continues then of course they believe the spirit is present. Just wild speculation. Could it be true? Sure. As long as people

They worship the same god? Not what the bible says.

Do you even know the Mormon story? Do you believe it? Then its a man made up religion. A lie.

You can teach how forgiveness is good for your health and prevents wars. No god needed.

sealybobo

If you are teaching there is more than one god that's you doing that here.

I am saying there is only one God or source of universal truths,
and all religions/laws are attempting to represent this in limited language.

Of course there are going to be flaws, biases and conflicts
because people aren't perfect.

As I pointed out before,
if there is any denial or bias going on, which you "unneutrally" call LYING,
it is because of fear and unforgiveness that skews people's judgments
including yours.

You do not mean to project out of denial, but you do.
If you are not intentionally lying, then neither are they.
If you call them "liars" that's why believers say you are "lying."

The reason I don't see this as intentional
is that I can forgive these biases and conflicts
so I can see they are not intentional.

Sorry that you do not forgive these so you see it as deliberately lying.

Why are you so sure there is only one god? You seem to me like the kind of person who would have really believed in the deep thought that came up with the Greek gods. One for every occasion. Why are you so sure there is only one god? It takes 2 to make a baby, right?

I don't think theists are lying. I believe they have been lied to by society that doesn't realize it's been lied to and forced to believe for so long they now believe the lie.

Why can't you realize that I'm truly trying to help people? Your trying to say, "forgive and forget that they are wrong, just focus on the good that can come of it and go along". Try to get them to focus on the good and not the fire and brimstone shit. And meanwhile we watch ISIS chop heads off for their god. Stop going along Emily for they know not what they are saying. Neither do you.

Facts are our country has the luxury of being the world super power and we were smart enough to make ourselves a secular nation. So we can handle radical theists and we don't have to worry about becoming a theist nation.

So stop being a completely bullshit artist. I know your intentions are good but you are just way off base. I know you know your truth is the best truth going on USMB but it is not. You're just another person who's still in the stone ages when our ancestors were superstitious wants to believe in god so bad no amount of information is going to get you to see your god is imaginary. And it is no good for you. And it is no good for me living in a society full of dopes either. Pretend you are living in 1940 Catholic Nazi Germany or Italy and those god fearing people are about to do the unthinkable. How did they justify this with their god? I don't know but they did. God is doing a horrible job running the show. Let us atheists take over.

Hi sealybobo
1. if "you atheists" were truly all inclusive by accepting ALL explanations as right for that person,
you might be objective and universal enough to cover ALL and protect equal "religious freedom for all"

But since you have shown contempt and bias AGAINST certain views
then you are not objective and all inclusive either. that's why you are not the default.

I would say the Buddhists are probably the closest to being neutral
and letting all people follow their own paths.

2. as for "one God"
it depends how you define this

a. if you mean the way Christians teach God is the only way to teach God
and you try to impose that on everyone else including nontheists, no, that
is not the best way. That still doesn't negate the concept of one God,
it just shows that teaching just one way is not enough to include everyone

b. if you teach that the one God can be EXPRESSED and experienced
in different ways, that MIGHT be closer to universal and including all ways:
God as Life or Source of Life
God as Nature or Creation or Universe
God as Truth or Wisdom, Universal Laws, Justice
God as love, divine forgiveness, spiritual peace

so if you teach that there is one God that all the different ways
describe or point to,
then you can include BOTH
the beliefs in "one God as absolute"
as well as the "relative expressions" of this one God or Source of all truth in life.

Since B. is closer to all inclusive
that is the way I recommend.
I believe in accommodating everyone's free exercise of religion
or their beliefs equally, including secular or political beliefs,
so I try to take the more inclusive approach
and then resolve any conflics from there.

I have never seen any form of conflict resolution
work by EXCLUDING one or both parties in the conflicts.

The first step in mediation is to set up a neutral ground that includes
the parties' views equally, and then letting them work it out between them.

So sealybobo if you want atheists or nontheists to be the
neutral starting ground, then you would have to ALLOW for
the beliefs of theists within that set and not verbally or
emotionally threaten such people to make them feel excluded
or discriminated against. When people are put on the defensive
it blocks the communication process to be skewed and not equally open and free.

If you cannot forgive theists or religionists for their beliefs,
that introduces a bias that makes your starting point NOT neutral and NOT objective.
So you will have difficulty proving anything from a biased starting point
that is already on the side of rejection.

What theist would step foot in a courtroom knowing the judge is already
biased against them? Mediation fails when the process is skewed against one side.

“There are those whose views about religion are not very different from my own, but who nevertheless feel that we should try to damp down the conflict, that we should compromise it. … I respect their views and I understand their motives, and I don't condemn them, but I'm not having it. To me, the conflict between science and religion is more important than these issues of science education or even environmentalism. I think the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief; and anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.”
― Steven Weinberg

Re: False division between science and religion
Dear sealybobo
doesn't it make sense that whatever is true about human nature
would have to be consistent with science if it is true
and also consistent with what religions teach in order for them to be true.

Well, studies on spiritual healing can bridge this gap in understanding
between science and religion. The doctors who have studied it all recognized this
and support medical studies to establish this more publicly.

Curiously enough, both Dr. Peck and Dr. MacNutt BLAME the false
division between science and religion as obstructing this research.

Makes sense that if these two groups are segregated and enforced in society
as incompatible, there won't be motivation or collaboration to do scientific studies on spiritual healing.
If people like you are too busy preaching against any such proof instead of pursuing it.

As more people realize this will solve multiple problems,
then it will finally get support it needs for formal research to go public with it.

Most scientists are also atheists! They claim to have disproven Gods existence but in reality they are evil sinners who will all pay for their sins by ending up in hell. The bible clearly says that those who accepts Jesus Christ as their saviour shall be granted a place in heaven. Those who dont, however, will all be send to hell to burn for all eternity.

Psalm 9:17 The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.

 

[sealybobo]

A famous paedophile scientist named Stephen Hawkings claimed that God did not create the universe. In 1963, God answered Stephen Hawkings betrayal by cursing him with Down Syndrome.

 

[Boss]

Nothing helps keep the poor in a state of poverty quite like religion and that is by design. You think Constantine decided Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire because he believed? That’s funny. Religion keeps people in intellectual shackles and chains them to subservience.

You know, I realize the Anti-Christian Storm Trooper Zombies see threads like these and feel compelled to fill them full of their volatile diarrhea, but the OP is not a defense of Christianity and no one here is arguing Christianity. The topic of this thread is phenomenon beyond physical explanation. Ironically, you have previously stated you believe in "Karma" which fits into this category and is part of this topic.

Now the question is, can you control your inner Zombie Storm Trooper and rationally discuss the OP topic, or do we have to wade through 50 pages of your emotional diarrhea because you can't control yourself?

 

[RandomVariable]

You are attacking my evidence. How can you say you are open minded?

I remember my childhood friends who were also religious very much believed in ghosts. One of them shit their pants when we handcuffed him in the basement closed the lights and left. He swears he saw a ghost down there.

I attack your evidence the same way. Do I believe he saw a ghost? Nope. Does he? Yes.

Do you believe you are better than God?

I don't believe god(s) exist and if something created the universe it cares about you as much as you care about a fly on a lions ass in Africa. Even smaller than that. You would be a single cell organism half way around the world.

It is you who thinks you are so special that a god built the universe for you and has a heaven awaiting where you will become a god essentially and live forever in paradise. Who's the arrogant one?

So say you think you are better than God. Since it matters not.

There is no god so ok, here goes. I'm better than something that doesn't exist. I'm better than god! I am a god!!! Fuck god. Happy?

I won't live forever. When I die that's it. Just like an ant or tiger or bird or maggot or trilobite or dinosaur. Enjoy your life because its over quick and you only live once. Everything only lives once. The cosmos is eternal but your soul isn't. No intelligent creator that cares about YOU made it happen.

I can't believe I have to explain this to adult people. No wonder this world is fucked up with so many dumb superstitious illogical irrational brainwashed people.

Happy? No, not at all actually. It must be awful.

 

[sealybobo]

Are you sure you're right about something? Whether it is going to rain tomorrow; whether space aliens have visited Earth; whether God exists?

If so, you've got a religious attitude, even if you don't consider yourself to be religious. That's because science is never completely certain. Scientists always are open to having their ideas about reality disproved.