Fictional Universe/Religion chat
"Unsure; mewling on my options. --il'Dictator Mikal 20:26, 18 February 2012 (UTC)" Hint: choose atheism -- we get to feast on the flesh of all those who oppose us. Plus, Richard Dawkins makes for a pretty good leader/prophet/god.
Im probably not going to go with atheism haha... as for the title; space opera is fun to write; although i tend to not do to many of them
So where are you going to land up? Catholicism?
That would be interesting, given my parents converted from Catholicism somewherie between the birth of my brother and me (Only one of my family not baptized a catholic). I've been to the services of my grandparents a few times though and... i found it boring as hell. besides getting to walk with some palm branches, that was fun.
What do you call an 'interesting' church service then?
And what does that entail?
standard fundamentalist protestant message. although the former started to get more and more liberal.
Doesn't sound that interesting. Are you sure you're not just a statist?
Good at what, exactly?
And that's 'interesting'? You, my friend, are clearly deprived of entertainment.
I consider long wordy history books to be pleasure reading; my idea of entertainment is a bit skewed yes :P. but, building on what i said in the saloon bar; ultimately the reason im going this far in my faith questioning (ive been doing this for a few years now) is simply... i dont feel happy, i feel judged, constantly, and just cant stand it; my own skepticism in the standard ideas of BL/YEC is just secondary.
Judged by who? Us?
myself. as in when i compare myself to Christians i know, how im "supposed" to be, ect. i feel myself coming up short; and i judge myself on that.
What do they do that you don't?
not so much what they do but how they are, what they believe. They always seem to "be in it" more then me. They don't seem so conflicted, so... questioning.They seem to feel god/something is there, i dont, not as much. And being the beliefs i do, i feel terrible for that. Case in point is prayer; i stopped believing prayer did much good a long time ago; and the last time i did pray the exact opposite of why i prayed happened.
I would say, then, that the religion for you is...$cientology!
but im not rich and insane
The Mayan religion looks good. Most of their supposed undesirable beliefs are really confusion with the Aztecs.
Wait, are you one or the other?
because 1) i dont wanna be maratrean 2.0, and 2) i know for a fact it isnt real. | im self described as insane, but thats me being weird
How do you know that it isn't real? Divine revelation works in mysterious ways!
because i know it isnt :P. Personally my own religious Beliefs, if im not a christian, is something like Ietsisme.
That's quite a way from BL, I must say.
not everybody feels so sure there isn't something else Fallacy, you should learn to accept that concept.
What if I said Nihilism was stupid?
And I'd ask you why you nevertheless cared about gender neutrality and all that.
Because I've been raised to dislike prejudice, and I view sexism and gender as perpetrators of prejudice.
But similarly, if you were 'raised to be a YEC'...
Clearly, you think it matters, is the point I'm trying to make.
So is actually thinking certain parts of the bible arent Literal; or thinking prayer is worthless. Or a number of things I believe
"So is actually thinking certain parts of the bible arent Literal" In talk, yes. In practice? No -- to be a functioning human being there are a number of things you have to ignore in the Bible.
Heresy!
What's wrong with Deism?
As far as I can tell, letsism is an even more watered down version of deism.
Yes, yes - but this 'higher force' may or may not have turned said water into wine.
Can one of you hairless geeks please shorten the title of this thread so it's not such a drag to look at recent changes on my phone? Thanks.
I hate to break it to you, Nutty, but nothing's happening on RC right now. Or likely will for some time.
Also, you can use the drop down to exclude the 'thread' namespace from the list. But I see Mikalos has changed the thread.
Your title made up most of it
But I'm a nihilist, so you can't claim I had responsibility for that. Or something.
That would be a determanist. And are you?
More of a pessimistic incompatibilist, but the general idea's the same.
I don't give a squirt of piss what you pathetic shitheels yammer about on Saturday nIght or whether there's some button I don't know about I can push to exclude a namespace. Give me a button to ignore YOU so I can look at rc and see if you cunts are defaming anyone. You make looking at this site on a celly drunk in the back of a cab that's trying to murder me a vomitous experience and I already loathed you.
Mikalos, here are some ideas for you:
- Some variety of Paganism (I follow Lesbian Dianic Wicca, probably not your cup of tea)
- Mormonism crossed with Scientology (19th century science fiction meets 20th century science fiction)
- Start your own religion (like that Mara dude...)
- Favorite fictional religion... Jedi is a bit too mainstream (and George Lucas is overrated), how about Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker?
The possibilities are endless!
If you've given up intellectual integrity, why not believe you are god? I mean, that's what atheists already do anyways.
Yes -- I don't even know how you could deny that at all -- you've practically literally admitted it.
I'm pretty sure you've said that you believe in YEC and a 'higher power' because of some vague feeling you have.
the former is well.. former... and the second has fuck all to do with "intellectual integrity"
To me, once you've given up needing evidence to believe in things as big as 'higher powers', yeah, your intellectual integrity is pretty badly stained, if not fatally soiled.
That's just a lazy cause-and-effect assumption; it's like thinking that there must be a god that makes it rain, and the same type of thought processes govern both.
rain is simple, rais is easy. i can make it rain with a garden hose.
the universe is more, the universe is complex, the universe is chaotic, the universe is... beautiful and amazing.
...Which exactly proves what I just said. If you lived 10,000 years ago, you'd probably be saying the same thing about rain that you're saying about the universe. It's sort of a strange, pseudo-reversal god-of-the-gaps thought process -- as we learn more about the world around us, god (or a 'higher power', whatever the fuck that means) retreats to bigger and bigger things, things we don't understand.
And seriously, how does you seeing the universe as complex, chaotic, beautiful and amazing prove anything? If you thought it was ugly and horrifying, what would you think then?
Do i say you have to believe me? Do i say "its 6k years old?" do i say "evolution isnt true, the big bang isnt true, X or y isnt true?" No. I haven't. Atleast not in this discussion. The fuck does it matter to you what nearly atheistic belief i might or might not have?
It's an interesting point, but postulating the existence of the universe as proof that the universe has a cause is not the same as proving that Specific Belief X is true. You move your hypothesis out of the realm by which supporting evidence for it is meaningful and so can never express confidence in it, indeed your confidence is only non-zero because of the probability quirk you can't really have absolutely zero confidence (for the same reason you can't have 100%, or infinite, confidence, it's an odds ratio thing). Even if you take the most broad and inclusive idea into account, you're almost certainly going to be wrong.
Though there is a more fundamental problem with this; are you balancing both sides of your deductions properly? If you assert that "something beyond" (doesn't matter what it is, unicorns, Yahway, goblins or sub-atomic particles of strange matter) created the universe then you are saying that this thing is causally connected to the universe. But what do we call something that is causally connected to the universe: well, the universe. This "something beyond" would necessitate "something beyond" that too. You need to seriously unpack what you mean by "the universe" before you can really start talking about this. Is it matter than you can see right now? In that case "the universe" is just what is inside your light cone at any one point and so "beyond" that is merely parts of the universe you haven't yet observed or interacted with - yet you wouldn't really consider such things to be truly "beyond" because they still posses physical and causal connections. We can continue linking things together to our own sensory experience like this until we hit the edge, or not. Anything "beyond" that simply doesn't exist by any meaningful way you care to define the term "exist" - it has no causal connection to us.
Anyway, sorry to make a longer thread longer.