(January 16, 2015 at 11:32 am)VAN BELLE Jean Marc Wrote: i do NOT believe in a personal God. Very often, i do even not know what i believe in, but that is the essence (essere = to be, cogito ergo sum, non cogito ergo non sum).

PS: i really try to believe you when you say you do not believe in God, but i cannot comprise what you mean then with 'God' (who learned you that word, were it foolish perhaps young people?)

If you do not believe in a personal god and admit you too are not sure what the word "god" is supposed to stand for, how can you object to people professing to have no belief in god?

To believe there is no god is more than is necessary to lack a belief in god. In the absence of a coherent definition -and having failed to find anything in myself that could be called a belief in gods- I answer the belief question in the negative. (Of course I also answer the knowledge question in the negative making agnostic as well.)

Why do you think your response of answering both yes and no to the belief question is better? What does that get you that you would recommend it to others?

(January 16, 2015 at 11:45 am)whateverist Wrote: Why do you think your response of answering both yes and no to the belief question is better? What does that get you that you would recommend it to others?

Wow, whateverist, you touch the heart of the question again.

This is a much tougher question for me to answer, and i have not found the exact answer yet. But i am willing to try:

i am a person who learned that 'and' is better than 'or'. With my three kids i learned them to be an 'and' person, not an 'or'person. Do you want chocolate or icecreame? >>> Can i have both? >>> yes, but then we will play, learn and sport double, okay? >>> yes. [example of such a conversation]

Non believing is 'normal', you grew up, you learn at 18 that everything has a reason, which we call the "causal phase" in philosophy. All things same to be reason or result. 'or' means, you leave the 'natural disorder' or in fact means you 'accept the natural disorder'.

This is ratio, our animal brain is very good in it.

But deeper, we have the 'old brain', the reptile brain part (which concludes our sex attractional system) and combines 'emotions'.

So i prefer people asking them to try the 'and' attitude: Instead of rejecting one or another (theism, atheism), try them both and tell my if that changes first your FEELINGS, and than if changes your thoughts/behaviour later on.

But you're right: i do NOT have any right to force another to change from 'or' to 'and'. Sometimes i get nerveous when they want me to do some in other cases.

I think of this example (or is it french exemple?): monotheism means one God, but then smart people dear to ask me to think of God as multiple gods: I had difficulties with that and a natural 'aversity' to tha, because with monotheism comes monogamy for me = one wife only, and then I learn you can love more than one women and that confuses me in a gigantic way so i have to take care of not 'falling down' with these thoughts.

But they were as right as you are here: so i did. And so i learned that the principle of more gods (boeddhisme is NOT a believe, you can have one or more gods when you are boeddhistic, it is a tolerant lifestyle, not a religion) is also 'human'. Only then i understood what i learned in my psychology history training about brains (21the century sciences): You have in all behaviour a bio side (read: genetic) and an 'environmental' side (read: education, friends, your own selfreprogramming). Only of 'religion' they found that there was 0% genetic in the brains, so religion seemed to be 100% 'menmade' or 'made by education or environment including familiy and friends and school.

You are right, next weekend (i am going to the biggest Belgium grand car salon, see http://autosalon.be/en/salon/visiteur/ i will think about your 'or' opinion.

So i will tray the be one weekend a pure atheist, disregarding all deisme or theism to understand you all a little bit better.

Is religion emotional, or can it be rational? My problem is, after being some 10 years a harddied non believer, I eventually came to the same conclusion as I would have followed the bible with the 10 commandments. Perhaps I have to do this setting once over.

It is indeed this way: after being an atheist and coming to the same results as my childish (emotional? genetical however scientifically impossible?) belief, my belief doubled or hundredfolded after the unbelievable 'phase' (like water gets a very long time 100° celsius when boiling to brake their molecular structure, and only then goes up to spread everywhere freely as a gas molecular structure).

So truly: i do not really know why i want you to become an 'and' person instead of an 'or' person. Perhaps i see this matter wrong and you are more 'and' than i am, and i was at this point more fundamentalistic than you, guys?

i promise to think this over. Please criticize this more, it is relevant!

And do not let you convince of my right, or we can no longer argue about this nor discuss it anymore! I love duality, not being a monotonous mass that looks at it all from the same side as like the grass would only be green under our own feet...

(January 16, 2015 at 11:32 am)VAN BELLE Jean Marc Wrote: i do NOT believe in a personal God. Very often, i do even not know what i believe in, but that is the essence (essere = to be, cogito ergo sum, non cogito ergo non sum).

"Do you know what a god who is not personal is? It's weather. That's all; just weather. "
-- Mordechai, God On Trial

(January 8, 2015 at 1:21 pm)VAN BELLE Jean Marc Wrote: How can anyone believe if he does not loose his religion time by time? How can anyone be atheist if he did not believe 'something' before to reject?

Seriously? One does not have to first believe nonsense to reject it.

(January 16, 2015 at 12:59 pm)VAN BELLE Jean Marc Wrote: So i prefer people asking them to try the 'and' attitude: Instead of rejecting one or another (theism, atheism), try them both and tell my if that changes first your FEELINGS, and than if changes your thoughts/behaviour later on.

I don't really think of it that way, as being and/or. When I say I am an atheist I'm just responding to the question of whether or not I believe a god exists. That isn't something I believe. It isn't that I have the belief that no god does or could exist. I don't know exactly what a god is but I'm quite sure that I don't harbor any belief in anything I recognize as a god.

(January 16, 2015 at 12:59 pm)VAN BELLE Jean Marc Wrote: But you're right: i do NOT have any right to force another to change from 'or' to 'and'. Sometimes i get nerveous when they want me to do some in other cases.

Actually I don't have any preference for what you believe. That's your business. But I don't really understand what it means to you to both believe and not believe in a god.

(January 16, 2015 at 12:59 pm)VAN BELLE Jean Marc Wrote: So truly: i do not really know why i want you to become an 'and' person instead of an 'or' person. Perhaps i see this matter wrong and you are more 'and' than i am, and i was at this point more fundamentalistic than you, guys?

Well I guess I'm an "and" person in so much as I'm willing to share the planet and society with theists. I prefer to treat others as peers and entitled to their opinions. But for me, no gods thank you.

Had another thought about how to interpret your "and" position. One of my big influences was James Hillman, an american journalist who headed up the Jungian Institute for some number of years. He was a proponent of thinking about the archetypes and gods in an "as if" manner. It more or less amounts to carrying on as if a thing were real for the sake of interpreting meaning without literally believing it in the way we would something for which there is evidence. It is one possible stance.

By that light, viewing all religious claims in a literal way would be unproductive for understanding them in context. Of course believing them literally would also be unbalancing and so unhelpful.

Like Hillman I think there is a depth in consciousness below that of which I am aware. There is understanding and meaning to be had in that direction, but it is important not to confuse the world below/within with this one. Holding such things in an as-if manner is key. It is not unlike what we do when we enter the worlds of Tolkien or Martin. We immerse ourselves but we don't lose ourselves there. We don't literally believe that it is the real world and the one we're in now talking to each other is less real or only transitory. That would be a mistake.

I don't even believe that many people who profess to believe in God believe in God. I think they believe in believing. I think they really have no idea what it is they are even meant to be believing in. God is such a stupid, useless word.

(January 17, 2015 at 2:42 pm)robvalue Wrote: I don't even believe that many people who profess to believe in God believe in God. I think they believe in believing. I think they really have no idea what it is they are even meant to be believing in. God is such a stupid, useless word.

I've felt that way about the misuse of "believing". Seems like it should be less effortful. What I believe should be something I just check, not something I choose and then work for. But you know English. Every word gets a half dozen usages at least and so belief can now stand for "fervently wish".

Yeah too true. I mean crumbs... I heard this call in on the AXP recently where this guy was at his wits end, and got down and prayed for God to appears to him. He had a "supernatural experience" (most likely some sort of hallucination/psychotic break/fevered imagination) with no particular details given, and this was enough proof for him to believe in god. And not just any God, the God of the bible. How he connected those dots I don't know. That's it, that one weird experience that could have been anything, and he's convinced for life. What is it he's even believing?

The power of his own ego?

He's special enough that his God came down and helped him. All those people asking for help, and he was the special one who got it.

Who wouldn't get an ego boost from that? When you drill down, that's all faith really is. The power of ego.