Do you believe, and more discussion.

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UffDa said:
I assume that you are referring to Lazarus. I know the story.

Let me answer this way. You believe that the bible is the absolute truth. I do not. Simple.
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Lazarus was resuscitated, to die again. I was referring to Jesus Christ, God incarnate, who was resurrected. I understand and respect your position. But if you have not read the New Testament, I recommend it. I mean, you could read it as literature. What harm can it do?;)
 
Prester John said:
Lazarus was resuscitated, to die again. I was referring to Jesus Christ, God incarnate, who was resurrected. I understand and respect your position. But if you have not read the New Testament, I recommend it. I mean, you could read it as literature. What harm can it do?;)
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It would do no harm, but I have no interest it. Just like I have no interest in the Koran or the Book of Mormon. I have looked through both in hotels. :D (Not the Koran)
 
I myself have faith in Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

I struggled with this for a long time. I still do. But I have landed on Christianity and have made a conscious decision to give myself up and place my faith in Him.

I have no interest in debating about it. It’s a personal choice and I find that Christianity and it’s values line up with how I hope my family chooses to live.

I choose love and faith, with the understanding I’m not required to know all the answers.

My faith helps me sleep at night and also to calm my inner fears for my wife, children, and other loved ones.

This is good for me. It may not be for you.
 
timberweasel said:
This is obvious. But do you think most people choose to believe in things that are patently false? Does one simply flip a coin? I think not.

UffDa, I like your style, hombre...
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Well You have two problems here, the first is you assume some level of free will exists in that you mentioned choosing to believe. The second is that you seemed to assume all beliefs are known to be either true or false.
 
Insipid Moniker said:
That's an interesting claim. Can you give an example.
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There are a few ways to demonstrate this, the simplest would be to start with any false premise and follow it with consistent and correct logic to a logically correct but false conclusion.

This is why math is not enough for describing the natural world and scientists need more than pure correct math. String theory is mathematically perfect with perfect logic but nobody can claim it is true in terms of reality.
 
Houlahound said:
Well You have two problems here, the first is you assume some level of free will exists in that you mentioned choosing to believe. The second is that you seemed to assume all beliefs are known to be either true or false.
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Read my post again. The only assertion I made was that your statement "(b)eliefs do not have to be proven to be true or false to be believed" is obvious.

The concept of 'free will' is indeed a slippery slope and I wasn't trying to make a statement about it one way or the other. Would it have been more consistent if I had said 'people are moved' rather than 'people choose'? Re-worded, the question I meant to pose is: do you think people can still honestly believe in things they know to be false? I don't think it likely.

Admittedly, I too believe that there are still some things in life that are better described by poetry, by art, than science. I get it. But should circumstance arise and given a choice (there's that word again) I'd rather risk my life to a qualified surgeon than a witch doctor.
 
I also believe in Jesus Christ, the trinity, and that God created the world in 6 days.

I believe that He is in control of the events of the world, and that He died on the cross for us and our sins, and that he rose again the third day.
I believe that if we put our faith in Him, we can go to Heaven.

We are on this world to obey, honor, and glorify God, and to bring others to Him.

I know that the Bible is a absolute truth.

My dad is actually a pastor, so It’s something that is in my heart and mind.
 
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UffDa said:
No one has ever died and returned to tell us what happened
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Btw most, if not all of the book of Revelation is John’s account of what he saw when God brought him to Heaven. Though he didn’t technically die to get there.
 
I believe in a God although I don't think it's anything we'd recognize if we were to see him. I also believe that God has used aliens that may have more knowledge of God to attempt to shape humanity into something that isn't a complete mess, or maybe the aliens just took it upon themselves out of being compassionate and advanced. A lot of old miracles could be explained using tech we have now. Hover in some clouds with a lot of lights, use the PA system on the alien ship= instant miracle in antiquity all the way up to about 1920 or so. Guy gets born, abducted, taught through whatever method, placed back, he runs around teaching peace, kindness and love, is promptly killed by the powers that be at the time for heresy, body is abducted, cloned, shows back up alive for a short period before vanishing forever. Final outcome? Humanity is given the gift of being able to live guilt-free lives just by asking somebody they've never seen to forgive them for the crap they know they did wrong- and they DO know, otherwise how do they know to ask for forgiveness for it? The Catholics especially have you list the exact stuff you did, and they aren't into you wasting time with the good stuff, they don't wanna hear about you volunteering or adopting a shelter dog, only the juicy, sin type stuff. The Bible was written by people who hadn't even invented toilet paper yet. I consider myself a Christian, there's really no label for what i am I guess, it's not Christian Scientist, I checked. I'm glad to be guilt free and glad a child of God took it upon himself to die so I can enjoy a guilt-free life. I have a suspicious there's no fiery lake, just a crummy void of nothing where the truly negative people wind up and that heaven is likely more a rejoining of positive energy with the larger pool that spawned it, perhaps like our lives are positive energy on loan. I read somewhere that science has managed to weigh the soul and it's electrical, so that sorta backs what i suspect.
 
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timberweasel said:
Read my post again. The only assertion I made was that your statement "(b)eliefs do not have to be proven to be true or false to be believed" is obvious.

The concept of 'free will' is indeed a slippery slope and I wasn't trying to make a statement about it one way or the other. Would it have been more consistent if I had said 'people are moved' rather than 'people choose'? Re-worded, the question I meant to pose is: do you think people can still honestly believe in things they know to be false? I don't think it likely.

Admittedly, I too believe that there are still some things in life that are better described by poetry, by art, than science. I get it. But should circumstance arise and given a choice (there's that word again) I'd rather risk my life to a qualified surgeon than a witch doctor.
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Your revised question is incoherent to me because nobody has a belief about a fact and nobody has a belief in anything they KNOW is true or false.

If you know it's true or false you DON'T have a belief it's true or false you KNOW it's true or false by some means or another.

Not trying to be a dick but do you see my problem with your new reworked question.

Facts refer to knowledge.
Belief refers to lack of knowledge.
 
Houlahound said:
We are not here to poo poo others beliefs but this is complete horse-hockey.
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I found what I was thinking of. It's this, (link below) and as I read it long ago apparently I was mistaken. You're correct. I still stand by the rest of what I wrote though although I don't have any concrete proof. I've been around long enough to believe what goes around comes around, when you do nice things for others you feel good, when you do crummy things you feel crummy and to do the crummiest things (like killing folks in a war) you need somebody else to tell you it's okay, they were bad, you're good, it's justified, otherwise for normal non-psycho folks it's perhaps more than they can bear. Humans as a whole know this, which is why we hunt down and attempt to rid ourselves of psycho and sociopaths for the most part. It's dangerous to keep wolves among us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_grams_experiment
 
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UffDa said:
It would do no harm, but I have no interest it. Just like I have no interest in the Koran or the Book of Mormon. I have looked through both in hotels. :D (Not the Koran)
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Much or religious text is aimed at building support, armies, a base of worshipers, etc, for a particular sect but some of the texts are obviously rules to live by. I found out the Koran prescribes you cut your nails every so often and gives the reason as cleanliness. Now remember- this was prior to anyone knowing anything about germs or infection but this old book told folks to keep their nails short in what's obviously an attempt to keep them from having feces,(wiping butt) blood, fish guts, dirt, whatever..from under the nails. Why care back then? Surely not because they were afraid of tiny germs. Who came up with that, or taught them that, and why? Surely it was a pain to do, they didn't have nail clippers then. Why not covet or murder? Who decided that was wrong and why? If a more advanced or divine being didn't teach it who did? The geniuses of the day, who obviously weren't the most valuable members of the tribes, being more thinkey and less huntey? "Magical" protected tribe members? (Hey, Little Big Man, I'll be your wife).. In fact, the Spartans would just toss the weaklings off a cliff, and only after some form of religion was used to answer (attempt anyway) unanswerable questions were the smart able to exert some control over the masses.
 
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Same with circumscision. Say you live in the arid, desert type region, yes, it gets rain but access to enough water for drinking much less cleaning oneself isn't always guaranteed. Thfrough whatever means, the leaders or powers that be back then realize "hey, we have men with infections, women getting infected from a lack of cleanliness by male partners, a chances of failed procreation attempts if the semen isn't free to travel the female birth canal because the foreskin is dirty or not fully retracted, etc.." .. That is a LOT of reasons for some dude in 1000 b.c. to be thinking of. They came up with that alone? Just do a lil' snipety snip and there's a bunch of problems out of the way? And men were the leaders. Does chopping, cutting messing around with the ol' wangalang sound like something a bunch of dudes would come up with and immediately brand it a good idea? ;) "Zahir Oldbrahoim: ya know, lets cut on our dicks.." "Everyone else: fantastic plan! I don't think there's a leader ever who had the charisma to pull that off without divine assistance. "They may take our lives, but they'll never take..our freedom! (crowd roars)..and..we're gonna need to cut on everybodys wang.." Crowd: "oh, wow, look at the time, shearing season and all, camels need fed.."
 
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Houlahound said:
There are a few ways to demonstrate this, the simplest would be to start with any false premise and follow it with consistent and correct logic to a logically correct but false conclusion.

This is why math is not enough for describing the natural world and scientists need more than pure correct math. String theory is mathematically perfect with perfect logic but nobody can claim it is true in terms of reality.
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The first part of your claim is a bit questionable, though I understand where you're going with it.

The second is entirely unrelated and unsupported by anything you've said so far. The inability to determine whether or not string theory is accurate in the real world is because there isn't a convincing way to test it and potentially falsify it, both of which would be done with logic and math. The claim that it's mathematically and logically perfect is a bit bizarre as well. If something is logically perfect it's true, by definition, because logic relies on each statement being true if the one before it is true. If there's any question about the veracity of any statement involved, the logic fails.

I don't even really disagree that we need more than math and logic, but that seems like a strange example that doesn't really illustrate what else we need.
 
Houlahound said:
Well You have two problems here, the first is you assume some level of free will exists in that you mentioned choosing to believe. The second is that you seemed to assume all beliefs are known to be either true or false.
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Your opening thread says, respect others beliefs! Free will does exist and many cHose to not believe and many other areas inbete..
 
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