Are all AS religious?

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I didn't have a faith until i joined a UCC church in 1988. the church treats the bible like a set of stories. the god it believes in does not discriminate, so we have a mix of gay and straight people in our population. although i haven't read the bible, it is my church's belief that we can question our minister's beliefs. I still participate in a few church activities, like the feeding the homeless. If this is practicing christianity, then i'm doing a good job.

Faith means believing in something while knowing you could be wrong. Faith means to surrender the possibility of knowledge. If it were possible to know & have facts, faith would not be faith. If one has ultimate knowledge of everything, faith would be the one concept forever out of reach.

I was born Catholic, and now attend a fairly liberal Baptist church that de-emphasizes the importance of demoninations. I consider myself a Christian with Catholic roots, a former Buddhist who realizes Truth is Truth. Buddhist philosophy and Christian philosophy are compatible and can exist in harmony. But boundaries must be kept. If you're Christian, be a Christian. If you're a Buddhist, be a Buddhist. Don't delude yourself into thinking you can somehow be both at the same time. If try and chase two dogs, you will lose them both. I now still admire Buddha, whose words are not invalidated. But now I have Jesus Christ as my only Lord and Saviour, whose Gospel is universal and transcend all boundaries.

i'm afraid you sound like you're confusing regular faith with bling faith. Regular faith involves having some of the answers, and trusting in God to bring you the rest of the way. Blind faith does not.

The bible calls for it's followers to have faith, but it does not ever have to be a blind one. I think the less blind it is, the better.

I have not seen this attitude in the Asperger's community before.

Faith is merely the position that "I believe X, regardless of any arguments or evidence that anyone might present to me." If one is willing to be swayed by argument and evidence, then one lacks faith.

Of course, I think that such a thing is absurd and extremely dangerous. Even if your particular matters of faith appear to be benign, you are still effectively signing away your intellectual honesty in favour of an ideology.

Am I being rude? Yes. That doesn't mean that I am wrong.

Or they can just consider the argument. A person does not have to be closed minded to have faith.

To ag or agnost topic

Point taken. By god, the definition rests. I am an agnostic atheist. I am surprised. I hope I am wrong, and can have a good long talk with the Almighty once I have dearly departed.
Orthogonal is a new word. I just looked it up. I see these two words are orthogonal, but not synonymous.

You have a very rational and logical way of arguing. Are these words orthogonal?

I was born at Toronto, and I call my city Toronto.

It is utterly impossible for synonyms to be orthogonal.


It is utterly impossible for near-synonyms to be orthogonal.


Curious... is this particular use of the preposition "at" supposed to have some obscure meaning? A word, in isolation, is trivially synonymous with itself. If, in your sentence, the word "Toronto" had an alternative meaning - say "tea-time", then the use of "at", along with "Toronto" could be seen to form the phrasal meaning "at about 4pm in the afternoon". The juxtaposition of "city" with the (ungrammatically unquoted) word "Toronto" would tie that use of the word to the geographical location. Under these circumstances, the two meanings evoked from the word "Toronto" would be orthogonal.

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Anyway, the misinterpretation of the terms (a)gnostic and (a)theistic is pretty standard stuff. As both attitudes require "belief", I prefer not to label myself with any of the various combination terms.

The whole discussion of god(s) seems fluff to me. I find it odd that the concept of a god or gods is still current. At least phlogiston rates "Now hist." in the OED. Roll on the day when the whole litany of words "god", "religion", "ecumenical", and so on, gets likewise described.

Are you joking?

Dear Lau

Point taken for orthogonal and synonymous usage. I could not find any connection with those words, so I stated the words were not synonymous.

I used the preposition "at" but it is no longer customary to use this. It is now approriate to use "in".

In his signature Doc_Daneeka pronounced the word Toronto "Tarana." I am from Toronto, and I have never used that alternative pronunciation.

As for faith in gods, bunnies, hell, devils, and teacups, I can believe/have faith in what I want. Bertrand Russell believed in himself.

Thanks for your post, Lau. Always intelligent and informative.

I'd address the 'orthogonal' question, but lau was kind enough to do that already. As for Toronto, it's true that many don't pronounce it as Tarana or Chronno. I found an audio clip that demonstrates the most common pronounciation, in my experience. The second T disappears, and the initial T is often pronounced similar to 'ch'. Sure you'd admit that this clip is indeed representative of the way Torontonians actually speak?

Heheh! I couldn't resist this....

I didn't realise Toronto was in California.

Accent on Toronto topic

Thank you for the link. I hope my CAPD did not get in the way. I heard the voice tell me "Toronto, Toronto, I'm going to Toronto." I did not hear Chorono, or tarana, I am fairly certain I heard Torono, as you stated in your post. fascinating. I was never aware of this before.

I have read at some point there used to be a Toronto accented English. Could the "Torono" pronunciation be part of this accent?

Are you a linguist, or do you have an interest in this field related to your educational discipline?

Thank you for your post.

There's an Ontario in California, so why not? Hehe.

I can't help but feel that your responses to my posts are meant as sarcasm. I could be wrong.

At any rate, accents are a particular interest of mine, though not relating in any way to my education. I do pay a lot of attention to the accent of any person that I should happen to hear. I should note that the clip I linked to comes from a linguist at York university. The page is at http://www.yorku.ca/twainweb/troberts/ling/papers.html

I'm not religious, I believe in God but I'm not oriented to any religion.