Religious experience anyone?

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Condescending tone? Really?

Are you feeling threatened or something?



You really don't know what "address" means, do you?



What arguments of mine have nothing to do with the thread topic? By the same argument, your question has nothing to do with the main topic which is about one's religious experiences, not about whether unbelievers accept the possibility of God's existence.

So how about you stop spamming then?



And as a member of this forum, I ask you not to abuse your powers as moderator and try to guilt-trip me into doing as you say because you don't like that I'm challenging your beliefs.



Or because you don't really care enough about the other side's position that you only expect him to fall into the trap by just coming up with a one-word answer to your question.



Oh, please, I've only thrown one alternate theory to your own to balance out the equation, so to speak. I'm more than happy to stick with this one alternate theory of mine.

And if I'm not allowed to even mention it, then there's no way in hell that this is going to be a fair discussion. You can't expect me to answer your question without proposing an alternate theory, do you?



Dude, I consider the possibility. I just don't have the evidence needed to accept God's existence as true. And it's not the most parsimonious explanation.

As I've been saying all this time, I have a simpler explanation that explains the existence of this universe better than God. So why should I, rationally speaking, accept God's existence to be truth?

Consider the male prostate gland and the lumbar region of the human spine. Clearly there was little or no intelligence behind those. If there was the the Intelligent Designer deserves a D-

ruveyn

Possible? Yes.

Probable? Remotely so.

Evidential? No.

Apocryphal? Yes.

Factual? Unknown.

However, if there is no valid empirical evidence to sustain the claim of an intelligent creator behind the universe, then it is safe to say that there is none ... unless there really is a creator just waiting behind the scenes to smite those who deny the existence of a creator, in which case anyone who says that there is no creator is asking to be obliterated.

And that could ruin your whole day.

Yeah, DUDE....

really.



No.



My mistake, the word should have been "responded" which is the term you used yourself.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5077473.html#5077473

When you said you were responding to the question I posed. You did not respond to the question until your fifth post. Before that, all you did was post evasive arguments rather than directly answer the question, which is what you are continuing to do now.





Remember the OP's questions at the beginning of the thread? The vast majority of your posts are irrelevant to his questions, and the entire point of the thread.



You are derailing the thread as this rant has nothing whatever to do with the OP's clear purpose for it. That request has nothing whatsoever to do with any feelings I may or may not have about you challenging my beliefs.



Oh, so it's a trap is it? Ah. So i guess I'm just being "crafty," and you're not falling for it. Okay. I thought I was the one feeling threatened.



Which is a separate discussion, not related to this one. Bringing it into this discussion would cloud and confuse the issue at hand, and I'm sure you wouldn't want that to happen now would you? (Yeah, that most definitely is very heavy sarcasm)



Then why are you still here exacerbating this? Go be perfectly happy. Nobody's stopping you.



No. It's perfectly fair.

First of all, you stepped into the middle of a conversation I was having with a different user, and interjected yourself.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5077152.html#5077152

In doing so, the FIRST thing you did was insist that if I did not accept YOUR proposition, you would not accept mine. Your proposition is off topic for this thread.

I've already told you I'm not going there so why are you still here ranting on about it?



Yes I can. And I do. Unless you don't want to bother discussing it. One topic at a time. It's logical and it's fair.



Why are you asking me? You seem to have answered the question for yourself.

MCalavera, you have contradicted yourself so many times in this thread it's gotten ridiculous. One moment your saying you can consider the possibility, and in the next breath you argue why you shouldn't. It's very clear you're never actually going to discuss the question itself in any rational manner, but simply continue posting long rants about why the way I'm choosing to discuss the matter isn't fair to you.

So fine. It's not fair. Too bad. Go play in another sandbox. You're acting like a bully barging into a discussion and insisting I play by your rules. What you want to play though, is a different game. You know it, and I know it. I'm not playing and you don't seem to like that. Well tough. Get used to it. Bullies don't always get there own way. Some of us aren't just going to go home crying to our mothers.

EDIT: You (and some other members here) need to remember that PPR stand for Politics, Philosophy, and Religion. I've been watching this forum area for over two years now, and have seen consistent patterns of bullying in here whenever religion is even remotely hinted at as a serious topic. This either needs to stop, or we may as well drop the R from the forum name. The latter ain't gonna happen. The former needs to stop.

(Huh. It just occurred to me. I wonder where everybody that thinks I'm a left-wing liberal are right now. )

Last edited by MrXxx on 08 Dec 2012, 11:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Enough with the accusations of bullying and such. I did no bullying whatsoever here in this thread, and I feel like you're doing quite some projection yourself. Also, you're the only one who seems to have a personal issue with what I've been arguing here. Nobody else is complaining.

Anyway, I'm going to keep this concise so as to avoid all the useless junk that's been spouted and that has nothing to do with the existence of God.

I accept the possibility of God's existence, but his existence is not the simplest explanation for the existence of the universe. So I prefer a simpler one which is the existence of a non-sentient "force" that has many of the same properties as God but without some extraneous "unembodied mind".

So now that I mentioned the above, does it still matter that I accept the possibility of God's existence? And is it still logical to accept his existence as truth regardless of a simpler explanation?

You tell me why it should still matter.

In other words, what is it about God's existence that makes it a more powerful explanation for the existence of this universe than the non-sentient force explanation?

Fair enough. Perhaps you don't see some of what you do as bullying. I do, but that's a different discussion, and I'm willing to drop that now. It's not really that big a deal for me personally anyway.



More than likely, nobody wants to get involved. Who could blame them?



Thank you. That's all I've been asking for.

Before going forward, I do want to add that my intentions here were never to convince anyone of anything. It's not about that. It's about how to hold a civil discussion about this topic without ending up in all the same tired old circular arguments, inevitable conclusions, and everyone walking away shaking their heads grumbling, "what an idiot."

There is a way to do that that works quite well, and usually ends with both parties peaceably agreeing to disagree at some point, and walking away, but on rare occasions, the unthinkable happens. If it's taken through a careful progression we can find that place where we both walk away far more quickly, with much less wasted time and aggravation, but also I hope, with at least a little added mutual respect.



A start. Good. Thank you.



I would disagree, but i think that's a matter of what you mean by simple, and what I mean by simple, but I could be wrong. This ties in with points I'll get into another time, hinted at just before the digression below.



This is where the discussion would normally begin to degrade. It probably will anyway, but with a shrug, not an explosion that could end up with one or both of us banned (yes it can happen to moderators too!).

You see, I already have a problem with the fact that you prefer this explanation. Not that it bothers me. But that it's a blocker to further reasoning. Not necessarily in that you are being unreasonable, but in that because you already prefer this explanation, it appears that you may already adhere to it, which, if this is true, may mean that where I would take the conversation next would not seem reasonable to you. Let's just put this whole paragraph aside for the moment, and pick it up later if necessary. (IOW, let's assume you don't adhere to this explanation)



Yes, it does, if only for the purposes of discussion, unless you actually do adhere to your simpler explanation, in which case I would pick up what I said in the above paragraph that I just set aside, and calmly ask if it's really worth discussing any further. IOW, if you adhere to your simpler explanation as being more reasonable than the possible existence of a god, there's not a lot of reason to continue the discussion, because we're both going to end up walking away with unchanged minds anyway, so we may as well do it now.

But if you're still willing to postulate the possibility, continue on.



It's far too early in this discussion for accepting what I say as truth. You've jumped from postulating an alternate "simpler" explanation and considering mine, before I know whether you actually adhere to your own, straight into accepting my explanation as truth. I'm not asking you to do that yet, so let's set this aside for a long time, and maybe get back to it later. I doubt we will though.



That lies in the simplicity of:

...his existence explaining a great deal of things that are otherwise inexplicable. IF he exists, all sorts of things make sense that otherwise don't.

I won't list examples right now, because it's midnight now, and I should have been in bed hours ago.

****************************************
DIGRESSION:

The following is also "jumping ahead of the game" but it's worth mentioning briefly because it's an ever present inevitable question that always comes up soon after the point I just made, but didn't get into detail about yet.

As for the inevitable "how did he do it?" well, that's as easily dismissed as a non useful question as many find the question "Is there a god?" Yes, at some point asking questions does become rather useless. When that is differs from person to person. To Steven Hawking, "Is there a god?" is not a useful question for science. To me, it is. But if he, and you, both agree that isn't a useful question, it shouldn't be hard, if considering it anyway, to say that asking how god did this or that, is not a useful question either. I don't know how. I'm not him. He's the only one who knows and he's not told any of us yet.

But it doesn't matter that I don't know how he did it, because if he really does exist, everything about life, the universe, and everything in it now, by proxy, has a purpose. If he's real, and he thinks, he had a reason for doing it. So the relavent question now becomes, not how he did it, but "Why did he do it?"

Like I said though, that's further into the discussion.

END DIGRESSION.

****************************************

So I've left off with your last question unanswered so far:



I will try to pick up on this next time around. But I can't promise you how soon that will be.

Until then. Peace.

So, again to keep it short and simple (pun not intended), how important is Occam's razor to you? What is your approach in figuring out what's the reasonable path to take in terms of truth?

To me, it looks like simplicity of explanation is your favored method of approaching truth based on what you said below:

So, according to you, you believe that my proposition, while simpler, is not more parsimonious because it doesn't sufficiently explain what your God proposition explains. That is fine by me for now.

So the next step in this discussion to consider would be: what does my proposition fail to explain that your proposition explains?

It takes time to answer and explain, but it's a fair question to go forth from.

Occum's razor doesn't apply. It cannot be used without measurable evidence, and I think you know as well as I do that god, even the concept of god, cannot be measured.

As far as continuing this discussion, I think I've read enough of your posts now to confidently predict the inevitable outcome.

One can only learn and understand where this conversation would go if it were to continue with an attitude receptive to it. Enough perusing your posts reveals that you've clearly made your mind up already, and that further discussion really isn't worth either of our time.

That said, I have things to do, so I'll not waste your time or mine any longer. Thanks for trying, but I think we both know it's just not worth it.

Last edited by MrXxx on 10 Dec 2012, 8:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

No, it isn't possible. The mocking is not only possible but intentional, but the discussion is not particularly intelligent.

Thanks so much for the clarification. I've been losing an awful lot of sleep wondering.

BTW, if the discussion is so unintelligent, why are you bothering with it? I mean, as super intelligent as you are and all I would think this would be beneath you.

Edited my last post. ^^^

Time to make my exit from this thread. So long and thanks for all the fish!

Oh, I just do it for fun.

What do you mean by religious experience?



Euphoria is one aspect of many that may develop through 'spiritual' practices.

It is perfectly possible to meditate yourself into a state of bliss. I suppose some people also experience spontaneous occurrences of such.

When I'd been meditating in earnest for a while, I began reading Christian mysticism, and it began to dawn on me what Christianity and God was about, and I began to think of myself as a theist of sorts.



No, I think it's a universal phenomenon or set of phenomena that come in many different flavours and colours, with different cultural emphasis and trappings.

I was very interested in Islam before Buddhism took over and became the cultural framework for the 'religious' or 'spiritual' direction my life was heading in.

I suspect that if I was a monk in medieval England performing the 'prayer of quiet', the results would be fairly similar to the ones gleaned through practicing śamatha meditation.

i distrust people who are absolutely against the supernatural as much as i distrust those who take it to the other extreme... i distrust ALL extreme absolutists. they are blind to anything that does not fit their view. i think the multiverse is large enough to contain everything that can be imagined by our puny species. and then some. i think anything is possible. everything that can happen does happen. i think this thread has so far been mostly nothing but pointless bickering between atheist/agnostics and theist/mystics that can be found all over the internet. i think this thread could be much more than that. heres a question for you atheist/agnostics, why the hell are you even in this thread? to troll people over their religious experiences? to proselytize? if you detest this stuff so much, then why are you here? atheist missionaries are the worst... of all people they should know better.
/rant

i do not adhere to any particular faith, but i like elements of most. the one thing i do not like is worship... it seems like slavery to me. you could call me a nay-theist, i believe gods exist but i do not think they deserve adulation and supplication. they are just entities that are a little further along than we are. i would rather learn from them than service them. but such entities tend not to like that... fostering competition and all that. i think the universe is alive but i question whether or not it is a conscious entity. i see us as cells in its vast body. or i could just be a nut.

if it is a part of the natural multiverse then it really isnt supernatural is it?

if gods are only gods because of their advancement will we as people then become gods?

some of these questions carry a philosophical weight and that in turn means that some words like supernatural in relation to philosophy doesnt simply mean godlike figure= supernatural.

i dont think there is any gods as described by any organized religion on earth, nor do i think there are divine beings of any kind.

that said i dont discount the possiblity of beings far beyond us in one way shape or form , i just cant see them as gods, if it exists it's natural and will need to obey the laws of nature, even if they are different from the laws we observe (and how can i discount that possiblity if a multiverse existed?)

Last edited by Oodain on 18 Dec 2012, 3:36 am, edited 1 time in total.