Official delusional religionist thread

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what is that supposed to mean? are you philosophically cheap? philosophically neurotic? do you not eat pork even though you don't really care about there being a god? is this the "cultural jew" thing? if so...i don't really get it; i mean, it just seems like an excuse for people to try and pick and choose which stereotypes they wish to live out rather than really finding their own identity.

That means something like the baptized Roman Catholic who never shows up for mass at all except to get children through the system...

oh okay, so it is just to live up to a stereotype.

Of course! How could I forget slowmutant? Sorry about that oversight.

I never said all roman catholics were like that... I was merely drawing an analogy to how one can be philosophically of a religion but in reality be agnostic...

Any philosophy can become a religion if you can invoke a causal deity.

Denying a causal deity converts any religion to a mere philosophy.

So why spend money, time, and effort on worship, when you can just live the philosophical tenets of a religion?

It is part of the experience. What you are suggesting is sort of like going to Disney land without getting into a fight with one of the mascots. Just a horrible, sick way to do things.

Exacty.
Christans always say "God is everywhere"
If that is the case, why do you need to go to church? Can't you pray, worship, ect. at home?
Organized religion always bothered me, take the catholics, you are excommunicated if you don't obey, or whatever it is you do that is bad. How can you be banished from a belief? Why do you need to be a member of a church to believe in a god? Oh boo woo... I'm no longer a member of a club anymore.

You believe in god and Jesus? Then you are a christan, end of story. No giving your money to organizations or any of that nonsense.

Except for the Unitarian church, in which basically everything is optional. Belief in god / heaven / afterlife? Optional. Contribute to the church monitarily? If you feel you can and you want to. Attend church? We enjoy your company when you feel like it.

They have only 2 basic beliefs. 1) there is no hell and 2) there is no inherent separation between a practical life and a spiritual life. All experiences by their nature of being are inherently spiritual.

And likely even if you chose to believe in hell, you would still be welcome to attend... though you probably would not be interested in attending.

My ex and I went once with a couple of friends from out of town and it happened to be on a day on which the minister was talking about the idea of viewing god as described in the Christian bible as a "literary character" (because the church doesn't believe the bible is entirely literal or in any way infallible -- as would be the obvious conclusion from the previous 2 beliefs). When we got home the husband was so disturbed by the sermon that he felt compelled to crack open his bible and read out loud to us about "the terrible day of judgment" from the book of Revelations. Neither of which held any real water with us. I think the entire thing had gone completely over his head.

sorry i wasn't clear there...i was joking.

Lord, who's Sartre in Heaven...topic

There may well be the Great Cause in the Sky? and I would like to believe. but not in the way the established religions have depicted it.

If there is such a Mod, I have a lot of questions/criticisms after I have departed this world. But I will not hold my breath!

Not all nonbelievers I might say, the term delusional used in this case is actually innacurate, informal and just a personal opinion towards it, formally and more accurately and psychologically speaking, believing in God or being religious does not fall into that at all, unless someone is schyzophrenic or suffering from allucinations or clinical paranoia, but that's another issue.

Last edited by greenblue on 22 Dec 2008, 3:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You need an authority figure to lead you the way, in the OT believe, it gives very importance to assisting in churches, and to respect the authority of them, although at the time people only learned by going, which they had the obligation to, they didn't have a Bible with them, much less any other source of information.


"Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, 'How have we robbed you?' In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need." Malachi 3:8-10

Let me clarify this a bit. When I use the term "delusional" in reference to religion, I am alluding to the following train of reasoning (however flawed it may be):

Delusions are irrational beliefs.

Irrational beliefs lack repeatably verifiable evidence for support.

Faith is the irrational belief in improvable beings, concepts, and ideas.

Religion is the socio-political expression of faith.

:: Religions are delusional.

This may not be your model for How Things Work, but it makes abundant sense to me.

Turn loose the hounds.

If you want to know more about Catholics and Catholicism, all you have to do is ask nicely. Speaking as a lifelong Catholic, I don't appreciate the sass.

Fnord, I think your categories are problematic. For one, "irrational" is a term relating to a person, however, repeated verifiable evidence is an characteristic of a particular fact. There is no necessary relation between the 2 though, such that it would seem that even correct beliefs could be irrational, and incorrect beliefs could be rational, a situation that seems apparent from the history of scientific ideas. Not only that, but verification is also questionable in and of itself, as the issue isn't one of verification, but rather proper verification. Parapsychology does experiments to verify it's beliefs, but these verifications have a questionable methodology. In any case, it is also true that there is a body of knowledge that is not based upon repeat verification, such as with history, math, logic, and philosophy. Your epistemology is only usable for certain scientific notions, and even then arguably not all, as take historical evolution. Historical evolution cannot be repeatably verified, as it is not a statement of what currently is, but rather what was, and thus there is no means of repeatable verification, only in matching evidences to explanations, which is not the same as verification.

As for religions being unprovable, a major issue in this is the validity of apologetic proofs. If one accepts the apologetic proofs as valid then it seems as if a religion has been proven(thus your definition of faith is false), however, to accept your stance, you must accept a priori that all proofs of God *must* fail, and this does not seem to be universally acceptable, as either you are embedding in this structure your personal perspectives on the requirements of an apologetic for success rather than allowing the normal existent flexibility on what a proof is(which then in turn means that irrational beliefs are a disagreement with Fnord), or it means that certain religious beliefs aren't part of religion or faith, or it means that your system breaks down.

In any case, your epistemology is a blind scientism, and easily recognizable as such, and I think even historians and philosophers of science would recognize your own idea as rather unlike science in it's practice has been.