How many GODS do you have?

[Unbeliever]

The proposed outcome of the experiment is not that one will receive what one asks for every time, but evidence for the existence of God.  Every prayer will be answered, but not necessarily in the expected way.

How convenient...

So anything at all that happens after prayer can be seen as an answer to the prayer? Here's what Peter O'Toole had to say about it: "When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself."

Isn't talking to yourself a sign of mental illness?

Feeling good is not the objective of practicing religion, as many including religious people often assume.

Then what is the objective?

Religion is focused on that which is within the heart.

So, religion is focused on blood? That's what is in everyone's heart.

[Baruch]

Seriously?

We measured the speed of light in 1976 in an entry level electronic engineering course my first year of college, using a laser, a mirror, and an oscilloscope. We got within only a couple of percentage points of the most accurate measurements. And we only had about the mirror about 30 feet away.

All advanced scientific measurements are based on circular reasoning.  Not based on metrology from first principles, but from secondary relationships.  All empirical equations are semi-empirical ... they are based on unknown first principles (unified field theory).  Since we don't have a valid unified field theory, all we have are temporary approximations that are good enough, for whatever particular purpose you set.

Ohm's Law => V=I*R ... not a law, not even correct, but used pragmatically every day.  This is a pre-Maxwell, pre-Einstein, pre-Quantum semi-empirical equation.  It is good enough for most engineering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohm%27s_law

The speed of light, used to be measured using two independent standards.  Today it is not, it is DEFINED to be constant (since 1983), with a conventional value.  This conventional value is used in metrology to derive the definition of the meter from the standard second (which is taken from experiment).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light

[Baruch]

@Absolute_Agent

People's spiritual history summarized:

1. Former Christian, now anti-Christian
2. Religious tourist, retired from spiritual tourism
3. Never been religious, even as a child
4. Jewish theist - but I don't count

There aren't many posting here, and only as drive-by, who would count as former Muslim, currently Hindu etc.

@Absolute_Agent
i am the exception.  I consider reality to be based on psychology, not theology nor physical science.  I can change my mind.  Posting here for 4 years (knife meets hone) has improved my theism.

Human psychology, which we operate within and thru for all human things, is inescapable, and the elephant in the room, with any human discussion.  I see no alternative, after many years of thinking and living.

I dismiss all religions and scriptures mentally, but heart-value all of them, as great cultural and social expressions of our shared humanity.  Religion is a branch of anthropology, which has to be based ... on psychology.  Society is nothing without individuals.  Individuals are nothing without society.

[Mike Cl]

You don't understand as much as you imagine.

Said as you look in a mirror.  You are simply bereft of any ability to think critically.  Or simply think.

[Absolute_Agent]

Examples of people's spiritual journeys?  Not the kind of thing I can sum up in a post and expect to do it justice.

Suffice it to say that the starting point was usually something non-mainstream (pantheism, paganism, deism, or some vague feeling of spirituality) and increasing exposure to both scientific skepticism and various secular perspectives tends to make an impression over time.  They may keep some sense of spirituality, but our views on organized religion steadily come into agreement.

Btw, they avoid you god bots like the plague, and I can figure out why.  Eventually, there might even be an "I used to be like that??!" reaction, which isn't really fair.  They usually weren't that bad off lol.

In other words, once someone believes in God, it's generally impossible to go back to atheism with any conviction, giving the impression that it is something like an incurable virus, in your perspective-- which is why the uninitiated are repulsed? Yeah, makes sense.  Lol... We don't talk about God because we need anyone to believe us, we do it for love of God and are convinced He is real, even more real than ourselves--the sincere believers that is. 

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[Absolute_Agent]

@Absolute_Agent
i am the exception.  I consider reality to be based on psychology, not theology nor physical science.  I can change my mind.  Posting here for 4 years (knife meets hone) has improved my theism.

Human psychology, which we operate within and thru for all human things, is inescapable, and the elephant in the room, with any human discussion.  I see no alternative, after many years of thinking and living.

I dismiss all religions and scriptures mentally, but heart-value all of them, as great cultural and social expressions of our shared humanity.  Religion is a branch of anthropology, which has to be based ... on psychology.  Society is nothing without individuals.  Individuals are nothing without society.

You are the most sensible in the bunch.  Consciousness IS reality, there is no objective reality, being as it is inherently subjective in substance. Your Jewish theism is like a cloak you wear purely for the pleasure of it, a memento of your former self you keep around for a sense of continuity and to appease your human need to identify as "something".

Is this accurate?

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[Absolute_Agent]

How convenient...

So anything at all that happens after prayer can be seen as an answer to the prayer? Here's what Peter O'Toole had to say about it: "When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself."

Isn't talking to yourself a sign of mental illness?


Then what is the objective?


So, religion is focused on blood? That's what is in everyone's heart.

Not the heart of the body, but the heart of the psychological essence indwelling it.  God, the Source, dwells within the self--this is where religion focuses. O'Toole wasn't far from the truth, yet perhaps the proposal seemed too outlandish, or made for a good joke. Harmonizing the outer with inner is the objective.  It's rewarding, but not always fun or easy.

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[Hydra009]

In other words, once someone believes in God, it's generally impossible to go back to atheism with any conviction

In other words is the operative part, because you know I never said anything like that.  The "back to atheism" part is particularly baffling.  Do you have some sort of learning disability that impairs your ability to read?  Or do you just mentally replace words you don't like with words you do?  Either would explain a lot.

giving the impression that it is something like an incurable virus, in your perspective

I actually made the opposite point, lol.

We don't talk about God because we need anyone to believe us, we do it for love of God and are convinced He is real, even more real than ourselves--the sincere believers that is.

Really?  Because it comes across as extremely insecure.  In any case, being turned off by preachy people is a frequent theme in deconversion stories, so perhaps you're doing more good than you think.

[trdsf]

In doing so you denied the reality of your inner senses in favor of the reality presented by your physical sense organs.

And you have just completely destroyed whatever point you thought you had.

One: It is not in any way possible for my religious experience and any you might have had to both be valid.  You cannot both have multiple gods and goddesses as I was led to believe by my experience, or the one judeo-christo-islamic monotheistic god you believe in.  If you want to maintain your belief in your god, you are required to deny any reality to my experience.  If you accept my experience as real, then you are required to surrender your belief in your god: if what I experienced was real, then there are multiple gods, both male and female, not one single male deity.  It is not possible to accept them both.

It is, on the other hand, possible to reject them both.  In fact, given that no two "religious" experiences are anything more than only broadly comparable, that's evidence that they come from within, not from withoutâ€"that no supernatural cause is at work, but the workings of a complex but completely natural brain.

Two: The world as revealed by our physical senses is the only world upon which we not only can, but must agree.  You can pick and choose what you want to believe in, but you don't get to pick and choose what parts of physical reality apply to you.  You want to convince me otherwise?  Levitate at will.  Walk through a solid wall at will.  Show me a circle in Euclidean space that has a circumference to diameter ratio of phi rather than pi.  Show me half a quark.

Meanwhile, your inner senses lie to you constantly.  I frequently wake up and see a very real-looking spider walking away from my face, on the pillow.  And then as I wake up further, it simply vanishes.  It has no reality.  I can't show it to you or anyone else.  I can't trap it in a Mason jar and try to figure out what kind of species it is.

When you look up at a cloud and see a face or an animal or something, that's not because there's a face or an animal in the sky, that's because the human brain has evolved into such a spectacular pattern-matching machine that it can often "find" patterns where none exist.

Or, to paraphrase René Magritte, ceci n'est pas un requin:

[trdsf]

Ok--so give me an example, I'm interested how that looks to you.

I can tell you how it looked to me.  When I was a practicing Wiccan, I carefully examined any event that I thought might have a supernatural or paranormal element to it, because I didn't want to assume, I wanted to know.  I was far more a critical thinker as a Wiccan than I had been as a Catholic.

I eventually noticed that I never had an unequivocally paranormal experience; there was a plausible rational explanation for everything.  And thus does superstition and magical thinking die.

Not really germane to this particular question, but I also noticed that the nature of my prayers changed when I transitioned from Catholic to Wiccan.  As a Christian, I prayed for things to happen the way I wanted them to happen.  As a Wiccan, I prayed for understanding as to why things happened the way they did.

I got the same number of answers either way: zero.

[Baruch]

You are the most sensible in the bunch.  Consciousness IS reality, there is no objective reality, being as it is inherently subjective in substance. Your Jewish theism is like a cloak you wear purely for the pleasure of it, a memento of your former self you keep around for a sense of continuity and to appease your human need to identify as "something".

Is this accurate?

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Partly correct.  Do I value tradition more than you?  I do consider consciousness more akin to mind/spirit, like Arik, perhaps a broader definition than yours perhaps?  Yes, a problem with modernity, is that without some religion, you only have the civic "religion" to identify with.  This is strong in America ... and most Americans, unlike Europeans, are theists.  There are problems being solely identified with ideology/politics (see modern secular totalitarianism).  Americans are strongly patriotic, again, unlike Europeans.

Identifying with a religion (I identify as Jewish by religious choice, not by ethnicity) is broader and deeper.  Like many Americans, I have trouble identifying thru ethnicity, because my ancestry is many ethnicities, though all NW European.  This is unlike a person born into a monoethnic, monoreligious society of modern or traditional type.  For them, being anything else than a member of the predefined group is nearly unthinkable.

Having been raised mostly secular, and without strong ethnic reinforcement, I was pretty much a secular technocrat with a passing interest in religion, as a young adult.  But I have always been interested in and mostly tolerant of, how people of all kinds live.  Marriage changed all that.  It became necessary to commit to a religion, and develop the seed that had been planted.  In this case Protestant Christianity.

The other regulars consider me insensible ;-)  But my hide is thick and my bitter-sweet interest in people is un-phased.  I have the least negative view of Islam, on this board (seeing people who happen to be Muslim, not as soldiers in a cause).  I am in favor of success and happiness, I choose to have no real enemies.  In that frame, I consider Islam to be a highly important expression of human culture, language and society.

[Unbeliever]

The other regulars consider me insensible ;-)

Well, not so much "insensible" as just often non-sensical.

[Baruch]

Well, not so much "insensible" as just often non-sensical.

All Greek to y'all ... Η απόδειξη είναι σÏ,,ο ποÏ...Ï,,ίγκα.

[Absolute_Agent]

And you have just completely destroyed whatever point you thought you had.

One: It is not in any way possible for my religious experience and any you might have had to both be valid.  You cannot both have multiple gods and goddesses as I was led to believe by my experience, or the one judeo-christo-islamic monotheistic god you believe in.  If you want to maintain your belief in your god, you are required to deny any reality to my experience.  If you accept my experience as real, then you are required to surrender your belief in your god: if what I experienced was real, then there are multiple gods, both male and female, not one single male deity.  It is not possible to accept them both.

It is, on the other hand, possible to reject them both.  In fact, given that no two "religious" experiences are anything more than only broadly comparable, that's evidence that they come from within, not from withoutâ€"that no supernatural cause is at work, but the workings of a complex but completely natural brain.

Two: The world as revealed by our physical senses is the only world upon which we not only can, but must agree.  You can pick and choose what you want to believe in, but you don't get to pick and choose what parts of physical reality apply to you.  You want to convince me otherwise?  Levitate at will.  Walk through a solid wall at will.  Show me a circle in Euclidean space that has a circumference to diameter ratio of phi rather than pi.  Show me half a quark.

Meanwhile, your inner senses lie to you constantly.  I frequently wake up and see a very real-looking spider walking away from my face, on the pillow.  And then as I wake up further, it simply vanishes.  It has no reality.  I can't show it to you or anyone else.  I can't trap it in a Mason jar and try to figure out what kind of species it is.

When you look up at a cloud and see a face or an animal or something, that's not because there's a face or an animal in the sky, that's because the human brain has evolved into such a spectacular pattern-matching machine that it can often "find" patterns where none exist.

Or, to paraphrase René Magritte, ceci n'est pas un requin:

Everything in physical reality is not uniform either.  People interpret the same historical events very differently.  Yet you don't question that reality.  If your measure of reality is the degree of consensus then there is much up for dispute here in the physical. There are people who can levitate, people who can move material with their minds.  But even this is only by an advanced understanding of natural laws, not "paranormal".  That can't prove the supernatural either.  Nothing can.  The only way to see it is first belief, and then the awareness enters the mind.  You had experienced this, then found a way to explain it away. 

Since everything experienced from higher realms must be filtered through the physical brain it is no surprise that people interpret things differently.  Your mind can't perceive pure energy so it translates that into dreams and hallucinations that best symbolize the nature of that energy.  The fact that I don't see the same spider you do is no bother--because each brain will translate non-material reality into its own unique set of symbols.  Furthermore each individual is a world into themselves energetically speaking.  No two fingerprints are the same and no two energy signatures are the same.  Same goes for religions; each religion was tailored to the cultural norms into which it was revealed.  But if you dig down, you find that for the most part all religions are pointing to the same goal.  I have personally done this.

Also, pi and anything in Euclidean space are purely mental abstractions.  I can guarantee you've never seen a Euclidean circle, or any other geometrical form because they don't exist in the physical world.  Funny you had to resort to the immaterial to drive home your claim that only the material exists.

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[Absolute_Agent]

I can tell you how it looked to me.  When I was a practicing Wiccan, I carefully examined any event that I thought might have a supernatural or paranormal element to it, because I didn't want to assume, I wanted to know.  I was far more a critical thinker as a Wiccan than I had been as a Catholic.

I eventually noticed that I never had an unequivocally paranormal experience; there was a plausible rational explanation for everything.  And thus does superstition and magical thinking die.

Not really germane to this particular question, but I also noticed that the nature of my prayers changed when I transitioned from Catholic to Wiccan.  As a Christian, I prayed for things to happen the way I wanted them to happen.  As a Wiccan, I prayed for understanding as to why things happened the way they did.

I got the same number of answers either way: zero.

Does that mean you still don't understand why things happen the way they do?

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