News:

Endorsement: "I could go so far as to say they simply use Discordianism as a mechanism for causing havoc, and an excuse for mischief."

Main Menu

The Faith of a 21C Maintenance Monkey

Started by The Good Reverend Roger, April 10, 2014, 03:49:50 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

The Good Reverend Roger

I spend a fair amount of time arguing with atheists and my fellow theists.  Mostly with the latter, because they have some fucked up ideas on God and on the physical universe.

First, to deny that evidence (fossil record, radio telescope data, etc) clearly placed in front of you is blasphemous.  You are in fact calling God a liar.  And to claim that these things were placed there by the devil is nothing more than Manichaeism...And as we all know, ALL of the religions based on Abraham consider Manichaeism the worst of all heresies, as it calls into question the omnipotence of God.

Second, to claim that biblical accounts outweigh objective evidence is ALSO Manichaeism. An Earth-centric view of the world, based on the biblical claim of the sun standing still in the sky, assumes that God is bound to operate inside the rules framework that have been established for the rest of us.  If God is all powerful, then stopping the rotation of the Earth without flinging everyone into space should be as easy as me hitting the backspace key on my keyboard when I make an error.

Logically, God HAS to operate outside the universe's restrictions, or God isn't a god after all, but rather just an immensely powerful natural creature.  Therefore, the contradiction of the physical evidence and the bible is the result of humans not being able to see - or not being perceptive enough to see - that there really aren't any contradictions; it's just that lots of shit goes on that we aren't told about. 

From this point of view, obtaining hard physical evidence of how the universe actually operates - the rule book, so to speak - isn't just religiously permissable; it's a religious DUTY.  A requirement.  "Faith" means "Belief without proof or in the face of contradictory proof".  Therefore, to have faith in a modern society, a person must examine the evidence, accept the evidence that is valid, accept that God isn't actually necessary, and believe anyway.

After all, one of the perks of being omnipotent is that you get to exist even if your presence isn't actually required.

Another issue, an important one, is that God isn't required to hate anybody.  Sorry, WBC, you're just plain wrong.  If a God was that hateful and mean, it would be morally wrong to worship said god.  And any good determinist (Calvinists, Lutherans, etc) knows that people are the way they are because God obviously intended them to be what they are (Gay, Jewish, etc), and just who the hell are YOU to say God is wrong?

The short and skinny is this:  We don't tell God what to do.  We are not his continuity editors.  If the evidence is there, it's there, and scriptural interpretations have to be adjusted to accomodate that evidence, no matter how much that may make your butt ache.  If you have a personal dislike of someone's religious views, sexual orientation, whatever, you just be a caveman and leave God out of it.  After all, the commandment "Thou shalt not take The Lord's name in vain" doesn't mean cussing, it means "putting words in God's mouth"...And it's one of the Big Ten.

Or Kill Me.



" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Nigel on April 10, 2014, 04:17:13 PM
:mittens:

My town is full of weirdos that believe an omnipotent being would care who you sleep with.  It's very strange.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

The Good Reverend Roger

It occurs to me that the bible is the ultimate proof of Grant Morrison's idea that we become the stories we tell.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Nephew Twiddleton

Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

Reginald Ret

...
STOP MAKING ME LIKE AND RESPECT THE RELIGIOUS POSITION!  :argh!:
Lord Byron: "Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves."

Nigel saying the wisest words ever uttered: "It's just a suffix."

"The worst forum ever" "The most mediocre forum on the internet" "The dumbest forum on the internet" "The most retarded forum on the internet" "The lamest forum on the internet" "The coolest forum on the internet"

hooplala

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 10, 2014, 03:49:50 PM
After all, one of the perks of being omnipotent is that you get to exist even if your presence isn't actually required.

That is fucking brilliant.
"Soon all of us will have special names" — Professor Brian O'Blivion

"Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns." — Bob Dylan?

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Regret on April 10, 2014, 05:05:35 PM
...
STOP MAKING ME LIKE AND RESPECT THE RELIGIOUS POSITION!  :argh!:

This exact thing has to be beaten into my head every 3 months by LMNO and Nigel:  It is entirely too easy to create The Other and then dehumanize them.

The next installment of this is about a conversation I had IRL with two Calvinists, a Jesuit, and a Jew concerning Gay marriage.  Which sounds like a set up for a joke, but isn't.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Hoopla on April 10, 2014, 05:40:01 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 10, 2014, 03:49:50 PM
After all, one of the perks of being omnipotent is that you get to exist even if your presence isn't actually required.

That is fucking brilliant.

Thanks.  As a Holy Man™, I am going to claim that as divinely inspired.

SO EVERYONE ACT IMPRESSED.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.

Weevil-Infested Badfun Wrongsex Referee From The 9th Earth
Slick and Deranged Wombat of Manhood Questioning
Hulking Dormouse of Lust and DESPAIR™
Gatling Geyser of Rainbow AIDS

"The only way we can ever change anything is to look in the mirror and find no enemy." - Akala  'Find No Enemy'.

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on April 10, 2014, 07:07:46 PM
*acts impressed*

Love the post.

Okay, scratching your name off of The List, you lucky heathen, you.

You know what actually solidified my belief?  The sudden conviction that God won't send me to hell for not believing in God.  This happened probably 15 years ago.  My problem prior to that was that the idea of a God who would send you to hell for disbelief struck me as particularly repugnant.  Then I asked myself, "where did I get that idea?"

Oh, yeah.  From going to a Jesuit school.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 10, 2014, 07:13:07 PM
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on April 10, 2014, 07:07:46 PM
*acts impressed*

Love the post.

Okay, scratching your name off of The List, you lucky heathen, you.

You know what actually solidified my belief?  The sudden conviction that God won't send me to hell for not believing in God.  This happened probably 15 years ago.  My problem prior to that was that the idea of a God who would send you to hell for disbelief struck me as particularly repugnant.  Then I asked myself, "where did I get that idea?"

Oh, yeah.  From going to a Jesuit school.

Yep. Don't believe? Go to hell. Don't live up to His expectations, that we the Church will arbitrarily change as needed? Go to hell. Don't tithe that 10%? Go to hell.

Fear everything, listen only to us, don't think for yourself, that's SATAN's path.
Weevil-Infested Badfun Wrongsex Referee From The 9th Earth
Slick and Deranged Wombat of Manhood Questioning
Hulking Dormouse of Lust and DESPAIR™
Gatling Geyser of Rainbow AIDS

"The only way we can ever change anything is to look in the mirror and find no enemy." - Akala  'Find No Enemy'.

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on April 10, 2014, 07:28:50 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 10, 2014, 07:13:07 PM
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on April 10, 2014, 07:07:46 PM
*acts impressed*

Love the post.

Okay, scratching your name off of The List, you lucky heathen, you.

You know what actually solidified my belief?  The sudden conviction that God won't send me to hell for not believing in God.  This happened probably 15 years ago.  My problem prior to that was that the idea of a God who would send you to hell for disbelief struck me as particularly repugnant.  Then I asked myself, "where did I get that idea?"

Oh, yeah.  From going to a Jesuit school.

Yep. Don't believe? Go to hell. Don't live up to His expectations, that we the Church will arbitrarily change as needed? Go to hell. Don't tithe that 10%? Go to hell.

Fear everything, listen only to us, don't think for yourself, that's SATAN's path.

My person image of God is sort of a cross between Angela Davis and P3ntagram.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.

Weevil-Infested Badfun Wrongsex Referee From The 9th Earth
Slick and Deranged Wombat of Manhood Questioning
Hulking Dormouse of Lust and DESPAIR™
Gatling Geyser of Rainbow AIDS

"The only way we can ever change anything is to look in the mirror and find no enemy." - Akala  'Find No Enemy'.

P3nT4gR4m

I tend to not believe things without evidence. However, the possibility of there being some kind of intelligent creator behind this "simulation" or whatever the hell you'd call it are non zero. Very non-zero, in fact, if you do the math, so I'm not dumb enough to say there is no god. However, I do not believe there is a god because the possibility of no god is also non-zero (albeit significantly less, statistically speaking) and there is absolutely and equivocally zero evidence of such an entity.

In my mind concrete evidence trumps statistical probability, regardless of what the statistical probability has to say about it.

So my faith is thus constrained - I don't believe and God is just going to have to learn to deal with that. I'm confident an omnipotent being won't be too psychologically scarred by the disbelief of one sceptical Scotsman.

For the record, while I'm willing to entertain the overwhelming statistical probability that God exists, I am willing to go right out on a limb and state, categorically, that he's absolutely nothing like any of the characters described in various prehistoric literature. If the best scientists and philosophers of the twenty first century can barely get a handle on the phenomenon. I find the notion that the ancients did about as likely as them also having a great handle on server load balancing or particle physics.

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark