Why did you choose your particular religion?

[High_Gravity]

To be honest I dont like organized religion because its too restrictive, the Muslims want you to give up *****, pork and beer, Catholics want you to be married to **** a girl, jeez, can't I just drink my 40s and have pre-marital sex in peace?

Enjoy life guilt free?

You Heathen!

sin and guilt over the sin is the conerstone of control! How can you expect to be controlled w/o sin, guilt and fear of consequences?

I mean I don't run around with no regard to the law and do what I want, but I find organized religion too restrictive, we only live once, I want to drink some beers and do some ******* before I leave this earth.

 

[syrenn]

I dont like to mock people on their realigious beleifes



but DAMM! ^^^^ that up there was just...

The funny part about your post?

Your ^^^^^ Were pointing at your first one.

Four up from my post.

 

[syrenn]

Why did you choose your particular religion?


That is 99% of the problem. People don't so much choose a religion as the are indoctrinated into one.

I choose to opt out.

I was indoctrinated into Roman Catholicism. I chose another path when RCC failed me.

So you are part of the 1% who choose.

 

[Truthmatters]

Trust me, pot and love will be far more fulfilling than booze and sex HG .

 

[syrenn]

Trust me, pot and love will be far more fulfilling than booze and sex HG .

and how is that working out for you?

I always called it stoned and horny. But spin it any way you want to.

 

[Anguille]

Why did you choose your particular religion?


That is 99% of the problem. People don't so much choose a religion as the are indoctrinated into one.

I choose to opt out.

I think that is true. I think the need for religon is something that is instilled in us at a young age and so for many of us, the non existance of higher beings it is inconceiveable.

I think I would stillm choose to be an atheist even if I had been raised in some religion but I don't know for sure. I still have trouble believing Santa Claus is a myth.

 

[Anguille]

I read somewhere that the percentage of people who join cults and who were raised in a religious home is much higher than those who join cults and were not raised in a religious home or were raised in a nominally religious home.

 

[Anguille]

THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING

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Brainiac
The mind of God

Recent highlights from the Ideas blog

By Joshua Rothman
February 13, 2011

Jesse Bering, a psychologist at Queen’s University in Northern Ireland and a blogger for Scientific American, has published an excerpt of his upcoming book, “The Belief Instinct,” in Slate. In the excerpt — “Are You There God? It’s Me, Brain” — Bering argues that belief in God is a near-inevitable result of the way our brains are built. We’ve evolved, he writes, to be “natural psychologists,” and so we see minds everywhere — even where none exist.

Bering’s argument starts from the fact that, as human beings, we’ve inherited incredibly powerful social brains. We intuit one another’s emotions and mental states with incredible speed and accuracy. Evolutionary psychologists say that we have a powerful, built-in “theory of mind,” which we use to guess what’s going on inside one another’s heads. Perhaps, Bering suggests, belief in God is only a kind of “flexing” of our social muscles — an overextension of theory of mind to the universe as a whole. “After all,” he writes, “once we scrub away all the theological bric-a-brac and pluck the exotic cross-cultural plumage of religious beliefs from all over the world, once we get under God’s skin, isn’t He really just another mind — one with emotions, beliefs, knowledge, understanding, and, perhaps, above all else, intentions?”

Bering’s idea is hardly new — Richard Dawkins, for instance, suggested something similar in a TED talk a few years ago. Color me unconvinced, though. If belief in God is instinctual, then how do atheists overcome that instinct? I don’t believe in God, but I don’t find myself fighting some built-in tendency to personify the universe. If Bering is right, then one would expect very religious people to have overactive theories of mind. But that hardly seems true: Religious people don’t, as a matter of habit, personify inanimate things.

More importantly, Bering misunderstands the value that religion provides. His idea is that all people are religious the way children are religious — that is, in a literal, animist way. Being religious, though, isn’t about having an imaginary friend; it’s about understanding the meaning of life. My guess? It’s the search for meaning, not the search for other minds, that makes religion part of the fabric of human life. Religion, if it’s driven by an instinct, is driven by a meaning instinct. Aristotle wrote that “all men by nature desire to understand.” That’s a desire we all share, atheist and religious alike.
The mind of God - The Boston Globe

 

[AVG-JOE]

I really love reading spiritual autobiographies. I'm hoping more of you will write your stories of how you found your path of religious or spiritual practice.

I'm hoping that we can see our common goodness and get beyond what divides us in religion.

Like Two Thumbs, I was self educating with PBS and came across a NOVA special called "The Journey of Man" that traced the first conquest of this world through DNA as humanity poured out of Africa 10,000 years ago. Imagining the lives those humans lived and the struggles they endured to get us to Western Civilization and how we, the survivors of the most recent conquest are all so closely related that it's scary. The technology we enjoy today and the infrastructure, both hard and soft, that the last 6,000 years has brought to us has almost been worth the cost. Survival of the most fit is an incredible tool for Evolution to wield. That show was a turning point... It marks a point in my history where I could believe in the infallibility claims of The Bible no longer and was forced to give up a relationship with Jesus because I found it silly.

The story that best fits the evidence in the mind of this average Joe is that Evolution is about to deliver a Sentient World on a random wet rock circling a common star and I'm one lucky bastard to get to be part of the chain of history, as long as Mother Earth is up to the task of cleaning up after her toddlers.

To All her little bastards and to Mom - May the Children of Earth reach the stars one day.

 

[AllieBaba]

Still, in the end someone will be right and someone will be wrong.

There may not be a God in Buddhism, in fact, I know there's not.

That doesn't mean there's no God, however.

Is it possible that both can be right? I think it is. Please re-read my post. I don't think you understand what I meant.

God to you means savior and creator. God to others means something else. See Madeline's post.

To me, God means what is described in the Prajnaparamita--which is NOT a creator or a savior but is 'Indescribable, Inconceivable and Inexpressible, the Perfection of Sublime Knowing, unborn and unceasing, the very nature of space. The realm of your own self-knowing timeless awareness, the Mother of the Buddhas of the three times."

A Christian cannot become God, but a Buddhist can eventually become a Buddha.

I know what you meant. You mean the same thing you always do when you start these threads. Everything is relative, God is defined by belief alone, nobody (except Christians) can be *wrong* in their belief. You feel compelled to point out how there might not be a God so you can justify your defiance of Him and your compulsion to challenge and silence Christians.

Just because you don't believe doesn't mean something doesn't exist. We've had this convo before. I don't know if you're diminished capacity or what, but you seem incapable of grasping (or acknowledging) that you might be wrong. Instead you insist on comfortable fuzziness (when you aren't advocating for the silencing of Christianity) and the sugar pill of "oh we're ALL right".

No, we aren't all right. Everyone can't be right. Just because YOU don't have a god doesn't mean one doesn't exist. And if one exists, he's not going to walk up to you and say, "Hey, I'm God...but if you want to go ahead and not believe in me you can come to heaven anyway". Isn't going to happen.

BTW, I'm taking a Critical Thinking class now and every time we look at what defines non-critical thinkers and discuss logical fallacies, I think of you (and others). I have even used you as an example in my homework, lol.

 

[Truthmatters]

Trust me, pot and love will be far more fulfilling than booze and sex HG .

and how is that working out for you?

I always called it stoned and horny. But spin it any way you want to.

Pot allows your mind to wander.

Booze shuts down your brain.


Sex feels good but is mostly an empty experience.

Love is awsome and makes you feel centered and belonging to something.


Maybe you dont really understand what real love is.

 

[AVG-JOE]

What divides us the most in religion, IMO, is intolerance of other religions. The nature of God is that there is only one God. By necessity, we're all worshiping the same God, it is only the religion and practice that differs.

Many people strengthen their own faith simply by attacking the faith of others.

Those are the ones who are truly lost....the ones whose "faith" is nothing more than a facade for their fears.

You're right, but.....

Religions that attempt to legislate morality NEED to be attacked.

In discussion of course, not in the streets.

 

[Truthmatters]

THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING

• Home /
• Globe /
• Ideas

Brainiac
The mind of God

Recent highlights from the Ideas blog

By Joshua Rothman
February 13, 2011

Jesse Bering, a psychologist at Queen’s University in Northern Ireland and a blogger for Scientific American, has published an excerpt of his upcoming book, “The Belief Instinct,” in Slate. In the excerpt — “Are You There God? It’s Me, Brain” — Bering argues that belief in God is a near-inevitable result of the way our brains are built. We’ve evolved, he writes, to be “natural psychologists,” and so we see minds everywhere — even where none exist.

Bering’s argument starts from the fact that, as human beings, we’ve inherited incredibly powerful social brains. We intuit one another’s emotions and mental states with incredible speed and accuracy. Evolutionary psychologists say that we have a powerful, built-in “theory of mind,” which we use to guess what’s going on inside one another’s heads. Perhaps, Bering suggests, belief in God is only a kind of “flexing” of our social muscles — an overextension of theory of mind to the universe as a whole. “After all,” he writes, “once we scrub away all the theological bric-a-brac and pluck the exotic cross-cultural plumage of religious beliefs from all over the world, once we get under God’s skin, isn’t He really just another mind — one with emotions, beliefs, knowledge, understanding, and, perhaps, above all else, intentions?”

Bering’s idea is hardly new — Richard Dawkins, for instance, suggested something similar in a TED talk a few years ago. Color me unconvinced, though. If belief in God is instinctual, then how do atheists overcome that instinct? I don’t believe in God, but I don’t find myself fighting some built-in tendency to personify the universe. If Bering is right, then one would expect very religious people to have overactive theories of mind. But that hardly seems true: Religious people don’t, as a matter of habit, personify inanimate things.

More importantly, Bering misunderstands the value that religion provides. His idea is that all people are religious the way children are religious — that is, in a literal, animist way. Being religious, though, isn’t about having an imaginary friend; it’s about understanding the meaning of life. My guess? It’s the search for meaning, not the search for other minds, that makes religion part of the fabric of human life. Religion, if it’s driven by an instinct, is driven by a meaning instinct. Aristotle wrote that “all men by nature desire to understand.” That’s a desire we all share, atheist and religious alike.
The mind of God - The Boston Globe

The human mind seeks answers.

We lived millions of years without many real answers.

The human mind filled in what it didnt know with creativity.

Now its time to replace the made up answers with the real answers.

Man is getting there but some are just not ready and we should allow then what they feel ready for.

Irs their life.

 

[Anguille]

Still, in the end someone will be right and someone will be wrong.

There may not be a God in Buddhism, in fact, I know there's not.

That doesn't mean there's no God, however.

Is it possible that both can be right? I think it is. Please re-read my post. I don't think you understand what I meant.

God to you means savior and creator. God to others means something else. See Madeline's post.

To me, God means what is described in the Prajnaparamita--which is NOT a creator or a savior but is 'Indescribable, Inconceivable and Inexpressible, the Perfection of Sublime Knowing, unborn and unceasing, the very nature of space. The realm of your own self-knowing timeless awareness, the Mother of the Buddhas of the three times."

A Christian cannot become God, but a Buddhist can eventually become a Buddha.

I know what you meant. You mean the same thing you always do when you start these threads. Everything is relative, God is defined by belief alone, nobody (except Christians) can be *wrong* in their belief. You feel compelled to point out how there might not be a God so you can justify your defiance of Him and your compulsion to challenge and silence Christians.

Just because you don't believe doesn't mean something doesn't exist. We've had this convo before. I don't know if you're diminished capacity or what, but you seem incapable of grasping (or acknowledging) that you might be wrong. Instead you insist on comfortable fuzziness (when you aren't advocating for the silencing of Christianity) and the sugar pill of "oh we're ALL right".

No, we aren't all right. Everyone can't be right. Just because YOU don't have a god doesn't mean one doesn't exist. And if one exists, he's not going to walk up to you and say, "Hey, I'm God...but if you want to go ahead and not believe in me you can come to heaven anyway". Isn't going to happen.

BTW, I'm taking a Critical Thinking class now and every time we look at what defines non-critical thinkers and discuss logical fallacies, I think of you (and others). I have even used you as an example in my homework, lol.

A little defensive today, aren't you, Babs? Would you be able to practice what you preach and agree that there possibly not be any god? Before you demand that others agree that there might be one, how about setting a good example and admit that others might be right also.

 

[AllieBaba]

We've lived millions of years?

TM again proves her mental midgetdom.

 

[AVG-JOE]

Still, in the end someone will be right and someone will be wrong.

There may not be a God in Buddhism, in fact, I know there's not.

That doesn't mean there's no God, however.

Why?

Just because we disagree doesn't mean I won't defend your right to be wrong. Especially with regards to unprovable matters that must be taken on faith.

 

[AllieBaba]

What divides us the most in religion, IMO, is intolerance of other religions. The nature of God is that there is only one God. By necessity, we're all worshiping the same God, it is only the religion and practice that differs.

Many people strengthen their own faith simply by attacking the faith of others.

Those are the ones who are truly lost....the ones whose "faith" is nothing more than a facade for their fears.

You're right, but.....

Religions that attempt to legislate morality NEED to be attacked.

In discussion of course, not in the streets.

It's moral to not brutalize people and kill them...so should that not be legislated?

It's moral to not steal...should we refrain from making laws that protect people from theft and burglary?

We legislate morality all the time.

 

[AllieBaba]

Still, in the end someone will be right and someone will be wrong.

There may not be a God in Buddhism, in fact, I know there's not.

That doesn't mean there's no God, however.

Why?

Just because we disagree doesn't mean I won't defend your right to be wrong. Especially with regards to unprovable matters that must be taken on faith.

I defend the right of people to be wrong, too.

And your "why" is nonsensical.

 

[AVG-JOE]

To be honest I dont like organized religion because its too restrictive, the Muslims want you to give up *****, pork and beer, Catholics want you to be married to **** a girl, jeez, can't I just drink my 40s and have pre-marital sex in peace?

In some places, Brother.

Thank (insert your preferred Deity here) that in some places you can.

 

[syrenn]

I read somewhere that the percentage of people who join cults and who were raised in a religious home is much higher than those who join cults and were not raised in a religious home or were raised in a nominally religious home.

I agree, and that is because of the indoctrination of when they were little. They feel the "need" of "something"