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Atheism & Agnosticism VS Gnosticism
Dynagrip
Break me a million heartsHoustonRegistered User, ClubPA regular
Break me a million heartsHoustonRegistered User, ClubPA regular
If you give enough cash money, you can fly and more.Mad_Morlock wrote:However, if L. Ron Hubbard's words could teach me to fly, I'd believe he was the English Jesus.
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I think Joseph Smith has him beat by a good margin for the title of English prophet.
There's also dragons in all the major religions and cultures. I guess they exist too. Let's go hunting dragons! I'll grab my Great Sword of Dragon Slaying +3!!!
You are a fan of "What the #$*! Do We Know!?", weren't you?
what?
Don't question him, Loren. He's privy to special knowledge that we could never possibly hope to achieve because of our "laziness", so he could never truly explain it to us.
Shut it. Contribute or leave.
Given that the thread started with a statement little more than "There's more to the universe than you think, if you disagree, you're wrong", I don't think you can expect this to ever turn into a decent topic.
As well as overlooking the multitudes of languages who never found their 'prophet' before dieing off or finding Jesus or what have you.
I don't see this an oversight. There was no statement about that a language guarantees a prophet for that language.
The first sentence is an unsupported and arbitrary assumption. I THINK there might be one or two of the major half dozen world religions that have made a similar claim, in passing (and if we take everything any religion has said in passing as truth, there's a whole world of crap that needs dealing with before this).
The second and third are common sense, and not tied to the first. All religious prophets/cult leaders/forceful personalities use subtext and force of personality to convince others. It's like saying animals alive today are good at surviving, if they didn't fit the criteria they wouldn't have made it into the category at all.
None of this is especially relevant to language and religion, except as an argument against the validity of religion, ie if it takes a one in a billion charismatic person to sell a religion, it's that much less likely the religion has independent merit.
This is not only jibberish, it's jibberish that belies a vast lack of understanding about modern reality. The only people who say magic and science in the same breathe are those who have no grasp of science. I'm also a little confused as to why you bother to say this, unless you are trying to say religion isn't magic, as in actual mysticism.
I'm pretty sure this is not only untrue, but a wild distortion of most major religions. I'm pretty sure no Western, and few Eastern, religions equates religious enlightenment with reality altering abilities.
I'm no art historian, but I'm fairly sure the halo is a predominantly Western (specifically European) tradition in religious iconography. There way well have been bleed over after it's origin into other traditions, but it's traceable in purely mundane means. Even if it was universal, there is a great deal of natural commonality in human perception, and I'd assume the reason lies there.
Wow, that's the worst argument I've ever heard.
If the uneducated mass of human antiquity believes it, then it must be true! God DAMMIT, that means the Earth is flat and the sun orbits around it too! Damn you rational expansion of human knowledge, how could you have lead me so astray!!!1!
On a serious note, congratulations on failing the most basic step in any argument, not using your final conclusion as your starting premise.
I think we're back into last nights problem, your insistence on using words you clearly don't understand in an arguments. This paragraph goes: Wrong use of technobabble, false assertion, mystical claim about well documented brain chemistry imbalances and self-delusion.
The only thing worth rebutting here is altered states of consciousness and your assertion of their religious value. There is a vast body of work documenting exactly how and why one is able to effect their own perception through prolonged efforts, boiling down to fucking up your brain chemistry can lead to awesome seeming experiences. Not a whole lot there that argues, or even allows, for supernatural explanation.
And we come to the last, modern, rebuttal of religion. Hubbard, and Joseph Smith, both publicly stated religion was a fantastic and lucrative scam, and then proceeded to start religions indistinguishable from those of ancient history.
Congratulations, modern history has provided you with not one, but TWO, examples of the obvious ease in creating and manipulating humanity's craving for mysticism, and yet you still cling to it.
God
Religion
Agnosticism
Atheism
Gnosticism
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Native American tribes worshipped the Great Spirit. These beliefs are completely isolated from the European and Eastern traditions and developed independently. If one were to take their views literally, one has to see God in everything to percieve properly. Your most basic preawareness of reality is what we're talking about here. The place where you conscious and subconscious mind meets the world.
As for discussions of halos and reality altering...
This is Krishna.
Halo included.
This is Buddha.
Also with Halo.
Finally, this is Buddy Jesus.
Hey hey... what do you know? Another Halo.
As for reality altering... Buddy Jesus walked on water and healed the sick. Mohammad apparently split the Moon in two, and he never claimed to be God personally. Krishna... well shit. I don't even want to go there.
Ok....but what is your argument? You seem to be saying "this is what they believed, that God is present in the very reality all around you, and that is right because they believed it." Make a point or someone lock this thread, because we're only a page in and it's already looking hopeless.
God - Your experience of the world, stemming from the moment of birth. Your first experience of God is that of your parents, or whoever raised and took care of your during your infancy. (aka: God is Love.)
Religion - Your method of reconnecting with the world you experience. (Taoist refer to this as being within the flow of Tao.)
Agnosticism - A fence sitter.
Atheism - An individual who denies or accepts the reality of their own existence by seperating everything into a subjective and objective reality.
Gnosticism - A non-fence sitter.
Feel free to take offence at any of these.
Take offense? Perish the thought! There's certainly nothing even remotely biased about these definitions.
Why does that sound like "the one" from the matrix?
Here's a clue: Words don't get redefined multiple times in the span of an internet debate. Posting an incorrect definition of a word, only to be corrected, is not "redefining".
Ah, so you don't use the words properly, then.
Didn't you have a "proof of god" or something typed up before? Why isn't that in the OP, instead of the standard all-encompassing metaphysical bull?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
ZOMG NEO IS JEBUS!
Anyway, as someone with gnostic and buddhist sympathies, I think it's important for materialists (I think that's what we're arguing about here, not the presence or absence of a specific conception of deity) to recognize that there are substantial limitations in their viewpoint. The only mechanisms we have for perceiving the universe are our brains and affiliated sensory organs. These brains are largely built to carry out hunting and gathering tasks, which means they are good at reasoning about physical behavior on a macroscale. At the limit, however, they break down. At very small levels our current models of the universe suggest that particles exist probabalistically or that matter is equivalent to compressed energy. Neither of these models is fully accurate, nor can I really, really understand what either of them means by thinking about it logically. For bonus credit, I don't really think that we can say what energy *is*, either. We can model its effects as alternately particle or wave.
What I often see from strongly professed atheists is a need for certainty and a belief that science will allow them to fully get a grip on their reality, somehow letting them transcend it. It's a marginally less pathological approach than those who try to do so through rigid belief systems. Think string theory will be a solution to physics? It posits 11-dimensional strings against a fixed metric space. No explanation for why the strings exist, or why there's a metric space for them to exist in. Think neuroscience will eventually explain consciousness? Despite the enthusiasm of many of my colleagues in the neuroscientific field, I doubt it. Neuroscience is likely to explain why the brain produces the outputs it does, why the content of experience is a certain way. It's unlikely to explain what amounts to billions of minute electronic motions give rise to an experience rather than functioning as a computer.
I object to nearly all of your definitions.
Gnostic means someone with special knowledge, not just a believer. You're looking for "Theist," probably.
Your definition of God is sentimental, nebulous. It's dumb and useless for a discussion on religion.
Ditto your definition of religion.
Your definition of Atheism is meaningless and obtuse.
The only reason I probably don't have strong fault with your definition of "Agnosticism" is because of its paucity.
......... and?
If we're making a list of every baseless and inane thing a religion anywhere in the world has claimed, we'll be here all day. Just because something/one holy somewhere at sometime has claimed something doesn't give it any validity what so ever in a rational discussion.
So everything here is worthless pop-mysticism and babble, with the exception of "native american beliefs developed in isolation," on which point I'll add they may have developed in isolation, but they didn't originate that way. There is archealogical evidence of religious activity predating the migration to the Americas, so they can be said to share a common origin with other religions, explaining any similarities.
You seem awfully pleased with yourself here, but I'm confused as to what exactly you think you've proved. Congratulations, you found three pieces of religious art that share a similar stylistic choice. Do any or all of them predate all contact between the three regions where they originated (ie can you show they are independent, or is this just a case of artists imitating other artists)?
Even if they are independent, what exactly does that show? We see religious leaders in the same light? Not only aren't you making anything resembling a case here, I'm at a lose to see what your point could even possibly be.
So, you're claiming that these religious figures performed their miracles through their understanding of the one true religion you claim to champion? I can't speak for Krishna, but this interpretation is in direct contradiction with regards to Jesus and Mohammad, so you aren't even beign internally consistent with your institutionalized irrationality.
Even if we allowed that ANYTHING in a religious text in any way shape or form represents anything that is remotely associated with actual history and reality, those events were caused by an external god and were in no way derived from the religious figures innate understanding/acceptance of religion. In fact, the Bible goes so far as to condemn one figure for taking credit for causing one of those miracles (Moses and the spring).
So, in a nut shell, this time around you went with Inane religious rambling, random assertion with no point or proof, and heretical interpretation of dubious mythology as if it were fact.
You don't seem to be making a lot of progress here.
The fact that we have limitations in our sensory organs, and in our perceptions of the world, does not mean there is a mystical voodoo mumbo-jumbo realm as real as the material world.
Way to put words in my mouth. Perhaps it's inevitable given the way this thread started.
All I'd say is that the vast majority of people have serious blockages in their ability to fully perceive reality, myself included. These blockages are largely responsible for the major problems of the world, as people seek to impose structures that validate their perceptions of reality (this is particularly true in the case of fundamentalist theists, who seek to impose an extremely rigid emotional structure on the world). These limitations can be slowly chipped away at if they are acknowledged. Being absent these limitations isn't particularly some super mumbo-jumbo state.
Alright, I'll grant that you weren't going in the direction I thought you were.
I got the impression you were heading in that direction because of how you started the post: "I think it's important that materialists... acknowledge the limitations on their viewpoint."
Materialists merely say that there is nothing supernatural. You have done absolutely nothing to convince me that the fact that my brain can't comprehend the subtleties and intricacies of reality on a subatomic level indicates some supernatural realm that I am denying.
The hunter-gather design of the brain was built around anything but a mundane existence. You could be eaten by anything at any time. You had to be aware of your own existence and the existence of everything else around you. It's holistic.
As for my definition of God... it's not just memory. It's on going. As you percieve the world around you, your pre-awareness of existence is the root of your own problems. The mundanity of modern existence has made it very difficult to accept anything beyond what we see... how much more difficult is it then to accept what we see and percieve as something else?
What we're all asking here is... what, exactly, are you saying? Are you contending anything?
On the plus side, I haven't had a chance to rip apart shoddy thinking like this in months.
Soooo, let me get this straight.
God - Jibberish. Complete and utter jibberish. God is apparently simultaneously sentience, unconditional approval, and human memory. With a definition like this, I don't even need to use logic to decide your beliefs aren't for me.
Religion - Yeah, I see words, but they don't make an idea. Why does one need to "re"connect to the world? What was, and what happened, to their first connection? God forbid we use a dictionary, common sense, or popular usage when we try and have a discussion.
Agnosticism - Hey, technically correct, I guess. When trying to have a discussion with other people, it tends to be a good rule of thumb to try and not pre-judge a whole school of thought in the definition, but this as close as you got to relevance to reality, so good job.
Athiesm - Wow. Besides the fact you included everyone in the definition (since deny or accept are mutually exclusive, having both is all inclusive) applying your definition of god apparently means you think all atheists are schizophrenic. We'll leave aside objective and subjective reality have nothing to do with either religion or atheism for now, because you've got bigger issues in your definitions.
Gnosticism - Now we finally get to the super-fun-awesome group! Yay! But wait, there's no actually meaning in your definition. Damn, you were so close!
Do even you know what exactly it is you're trying to say, or are you just regurgitating isolated snippets of pseudo-intellectualism you've heard elsewhere?
What exactly is this supposed to mean? Since no one necessarily buys the idea there is more to reality than the mundane, are you ever going to offer up anything of substance, or are we just in for more random assertions of irrationality?
This whole section is wrong effectively in its entirety. The vestigial, animialistic structures in the human brain allowed for nothing beyond the mundane, because they didn't allow for consciousness. At best we were animals of instinct and reaction, which is based firmly in the physical reality you seem to disdain so much.
The last bit of your claim is again unsupported and non-sensical tripe. Saying prehistoric man was "in one with nature" is the oldest and least respected type of hippy idiocy, and a poor foundation for any kind of belief structure.
And back to do you comprehend what you are actually saying? Does any of this actually make sense to you?
We'll leave aside the fact that you apparently are claiming god is different from memory solely in the fact god is "ongoing," as if memory is not. Let's focus on the pop-mysticism you seem to be selling.
1) What the hell is "pre-awareness" and why should I care?
2) As much as modern day, reality expanding, pseudo-religious cults love to argue that modern life is separating us from our super neato mystical roots, the modern person has nearly infinite free time in comparison to our ancestors, and a corresponding large amount of time to devote to non-necessity pursuits. So I can't really see how you can claim modern life is what's killed religion, when religion should flourish now if there was anything to it.
3) Maybe it's not the "mundanity" of modern life that makes us actually expect proof before we devote our lives to irrationalities, but the fact we are no longer uneducated and fearful savages huddling in caves. God forbid we expect actual reasons or proof before we listen to the nearest insane drivel that claims to run our lives.
I suspect he's high as a fucking kite, and everything is all the same, man - can't you see it, dude?
Embrace the oneness. Woah.
I dunno, being high never makes me that fucking stupid. I'm mostly just hungry and want to watch the Wall.
I'm euthanizing this thread for the good of you, this forum, and mankind in general.