07-24-2012, 03:57 PM | #21 | |
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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07-24-2012, 04:07 PM | #22 |
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Topeka, Kansas
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
Whoa.
Ok, now that my question has been answered, I'd like to respectfully ask that we not continue this discussion of actual religion, as this is really starting to cross over into serious flame war. It's not there yet, but I can already see tinder.
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07-24-2012, 04:08 PM | #23 | |
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Location: Europe
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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I'd guess most of the other atheists I know may have started out very slightly religious (often born into very slightly religious families), or agnostic, unlike you and I who were bascally atheists from early chilldhood, but I don't think the "start out quite religious (or stronger) but then abandon religion and become atheist" is at all common here in northern Europe. |
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07-24-2012, 04:17 PM | #24 | |
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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Its also interesting to find how much of what people call "religion" is actually culture. |
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07-24-2012, 04:18 PM | #25 |
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Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
Ok, one last comment before I let the thread die.
I know my experience is limited, but I had never met another born atheist. I guess I made the all too common mistake of assuming that one aspect of my personality was bundled with another related one rather than separate things. Religious belief scares me as I simply cannot see the rationale for believing anything so passionately let alone things that fly in the face of day to day reality.
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07-24-2012, 07:15 PM | #26 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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But "fly in the face" is the wrong wording; there would be no point in talking about THE Virgin Birth if it wasn't generally agreed that spontaneous human reproduction just didn't happen. Such things are assumed to be an introduction of new factors which then follow the laws of nature. Suppose you spit in the air. You decided to spit but the globule will then mindlessly obey the law of gravity. If it is any comfort to you, materialism scares me. I cannot see the rationale for wanting to believe something which necessarily purges everything of meaning and believing it so passionately. And which seems to me to fly in the face of day to day human behavior.
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07-24-2012, 07:42 PM | #27 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
Are you truely interested in starting a reciprocal corpse counting contest? I can't think of a better way to derail a thread, it all depends on who counts as what and it has been done to death anyway pun unintentional.
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07-24-2012, 07:48 PM | #28 | |
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Location: Brooklyn, NY
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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That frees each of us up to define our own meaning (of our lives, the lives of others, the way we wish to conduct our behaviour, of society, reality as a whole, etc), if we choose and make the effort to do so, without feeling pressured to accept an external meaning; I find that to be quite liberating. Even if there was some way to definitively reveal that an external entity (god(s), "reality", etc) had a meaning in mind, I fail to see why that would be relevant to me (or anyone, other than that entity). I'd want to know it, out of curiosity, sure, but if it didn't coincide with my interests and values, it wouldn't really make much difference to me or how I lived my life. Also, there are purely materialist schools of thought that don't reject objective meaning. You're thinking of variations of existentialism or nihilism. Mind you, I'm a skeptic / zetetic. Ask me anything, and I'll say "I know not" or "I suspend my judgement". Most I'll ever mean when I say "I believe [something]" is that it tentatively seems like a good theory at the moment based on matching my memories of its predictive power and general usefulness at retrodiction of what my senses seem to be telling me. But as for the question of meaning, that's for me and me alone to decide for myself - not a "higher being", or society, or anything else.
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07-24-2012, 07:56 PM | #29 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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Be that as it may, that also makes it literally unbelievable to me. All attempts to make motives that have no obvious survivalistic benefit are convoluted and usually end up as myths. Sometimes not all that bad of myths but mythmaking too is not a biological trait. I think I could believe in fair folk before believing in Materialism
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07-24-2012, 08:19 PM | #30 | ||
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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