World would be worse off without faith...

Ahnimus wrote:

Ok, but with psychosis there is no corroborating evidence to support the associated feelings. I would find it difficult to "believe my eyes" if I saw something others did not.

To me my spiritual experiences are like that for normal life I am living in a mediocre to bad video game. Imagine I am allowed to escape that video game and experience real life beyond the game. The difference between living in a bad video game and living real life would be mind-bogglingly stunning. Now imagine that I am sent back to live the video game once again. There is no way that given what my mind has stretched to understand that I can ever go back to convincing myself the video game experience is real, compared to my excursions to real life.

It's very important to understand that in the midst of the many crippling disorders I had a key issue is that I did not trust my own perceptions on anything. Your girlfriend had OCD. I had OCD. A key part of OCD is that the sufferer does not trust their very own basic perceptions in life. I second guessed myself on everything and anything. I trusted my own self the least of anyone I knew, even untrustworthy people who gravitated towards me and abused me. Then I had these spiritual experiences. They forced me to believe in them because I had no choice--they were more real than anything I've known. It was because of these experiences that I was able to turn my life around and get on track with learning to trust myself no matter what people tell me. And that through the early stages, I did this, even when my mind was very crippled, is a true testament to the reality of these experiences for me.

What these experiences brought me to was my real "Self". A basic psychology idea is that we are all out of touch with our authentic Self, believing our ego, as a tiny portion of us, to be who we are. It's nothing stunning to become real, except for the fact that it's not common in the human experience right now. In terms of it happening, we are always evolving towards that unfoldment, if we don't have too many issues blocking us. Unfortunately most of us do, and with the overwhelming stesses of life, very few people have the energy freed to access deeper levels of their nature.

Ahnimus wrote:

Possibly. I don't honestly know or care much about Buddhism. It's just another doctrine to me, still I'm glad they are determinists.

we all have the potential to become buddhas. even argumentative bastards that think their theory alone is the one. that is the beauty of buddhism. if you lead an unselfish righteous life and give yourself over to something bigger than yourself in order to completely awake from ignorance, then you can attain enlightenment.

even flow? wrote:

Thanks for the lesson.

So we are told that god put it's son here to teach us a lesson and didn't tell the poor boy he was going to be smacked around? A little stretch there I think.

Here is another lesson. We are not told that.

Jesus knew he was going to be "smacked around".

Ahnimus wrote:

Have you been reading Conservapedia?

gue_barium wrote:

I think the word "faith" is being mistreated in the world today. Let's look at the dictionary definition:

1 a : allegiance to duty or a person : LOYALTY b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions
2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust
3 : something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs

Alrighty, I would call that a fairly well-balanced definition, except for this (and this is the part everyone on this thread has chosen to focus on) :

firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2)

Why do I have a problem with this part of the definition? Because both sides are pointing the finger at each other and using a book as their reference. On one side is the Bible, on the other side is Websters. For all of you that choose Websters, you're putting your faith in somebody else's idea of what faith is. Other than Webster, you have no proof of what faith is, being that you've denounced it yourself.

since when did you get religion?

even flow? wrote:

So why didn't he say "dad, why are you letting me down". Somehow I don't know too many people that would know of their death and not want to escape it. Except this one wild story.
.

I thought he did say that 'My God why have you forsaken me'?
(and is supposed to also be God at the same time)

As for the original question - no idea. I do think religious faith has been responsible for a lot of good over the centuries - heaven and hell are after the all the cleverest way ever thought of combining both the carrott and the stick.

I think we'd all be better off concentrating on improving the republic of Earth than thinking about the Kingdom of heaven though.

hippiemom wrote:

The purpose of language is to facilitate communication. In order to do that, there needs to be common agreement on what a word means. That is the function of dictionaries. I commonly use Webster's definitions not because I have some sort of faith in Webster, but because they are the most easily accessible definitions ... they facilitate communication by being readily available to everyone here, it's an easy reference point so that we can be sure we are talking about the same thing.

If I am trying to express an idea that doesn't fit with Webster's definition, it is up to me to find another word, or a combination of words, that make it clear what I'm talking about. It isn't up to Webster to make up a new definition that suits my purposes.

It doesn't mean they don't fuck up.

"firm belief in something for which there is no proof " could very well fall under the heading of psychology, something that we all use. i do think there is a gaffe there in webster's on this one. it matches the gaffe in american thinking in a big way, i think. On this subject, in these "debates".

Collin wrote:

World would be worse off without faith in something greater than ourselves.

Religion has always creates a great discrepancy, which has resulted in several conflicts, some more violent than the other. And nothing has a more violent history than religion, especially Christianity and Islam.

Take away religion and you will take away that discrepancy that exists. Once the discrepancy is gone there would be less reason for conflict.

But faith in something greater than ourselves is something entirely different. Islam, Christianity, Hinduism... all believe in something greater, in that way they're exactly the same, no conflict. But they tried/try to define it and come up with different definitions, conflict.

You ask what would stop us if no one believed in something greater. What stops atheists today? I seriously hope you don't mean Christians only do good because God is watching them and they might loose their ticket to Heaven if they do bad.

Bob Dylan is much, much greater than me. I'll put my faith in him.

But if the choice were between faith and lawyers. Then how nice would the world be?