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RE: Why is belief in a higher power required?
June 20, 2013 at 1:29 am
(June 20, 2013 at 1:20 am)fr0d0 Wrote: How we perceive that reality is all that is different.
Which makes a good point, one I am certain you have failed to realize. After all, there is a famous quote I like to mention: Happiness is ten percent reality and ninety percent perception..
One can perceive that something is real, but the likelihood of it being real is basically nonexistent. We, as humans, love to lie to ourselves for the sake of appearances and comfort.
If you are having a bad day and someone asks you how you are feeling, do you answer that you are feeling horribly? Of course not, because social constructs imply that you lie for their sake rather than your own. That is no way to live.
One should live for one's self first, because if one cannot take care of one's self, one cannot take care of anyone else.
Reality is one thing. One thing only. Perceptions are false, because that is what most people rely upon to survive. Reality insists that a god does not exist, because it is the bleakest form of existence that most people cannot accept as reality. What one cannot accept as reality, one changes so that it becomes acceptable. God is most acceptable because it provides everything reality is not.
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RE: Why is belief in a higher power required?
June 20, 2013 at 1:36 am
(This post was last modified: June 20, 2013 at 1:37 am by fr0d0.)
You can't show that my perception is false maelstrom. Any reality is based upon your perception of it. What influences your state if happiness is your perception of reality and how you deal with it.
Sure, nature doesn't change because of either of our perceptions of it. All that changes is us.
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RE: Why is belief in a higher power required?
June 20, 2013 at 1:39 am
(This post was last modified: June 20, 2013 at 1:40 am by Silver.)
(June 20, 2013 at 1:36 am)fr0d0 Wrote: You can't show that my perception is false maelstrom.
Actually, I can. If you perceive that you are are seeing aliens walking among us, then of course your perception is wrong, especially when no one else around you has perceived what you have. Substitute aliens with god, and it is the same thing.
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RE: Why is belief in a higher power required?
June 20, 2013 at 1:50 am
(June 20, 2013 at 1:39 am)Maelstrom Wrote: (June 20, 2013 at 1:36 am)fr0d0 Wrote: You can't show that my perception is false maelstrom.
Actually, I can. If you perceive that you are are seeing aliens walking among us, then of course your perception is wrong, especially when no one else around you has perceived what you have. Substitute aliens with god, and it is the same thing.
I claim nothing that you can disprove.
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RE: Why is belief in a higher power required?
June 20, 2013 at 1:51 am
(This post was last modified: June 20, 2013 at 1:53 am by Silver.)
(June 20, 2013 at 1:50 am)fr0d0 Wrote: I claim nothing that you can disprove.
I claim that which you cannot prove to exist.
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RE: Why is belief in a higher power required?
June 20, 2013 at 1:59 am
(This post was last modified: June 20, 2013 at 2:01 am by Ryantology.)
(June 20, 2013 at 1:17 am)Godschild Wrote: In the case of God's punishment you choose it and God gives you what you choose, that's one point. There are two sides to justice and punishment is one of them, it must be served.
As that did not even address the question I asked, I will try again: What would you say is the point of punishment?
fr0d0 Wrote:I claim nothing that you can disprove.
You claim nothing you can prove. Any idiot can do that.
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RE: Why is belief in a higher power required?
June 20, 2013 at 2:17 am
(This post was last modified: June 20, 2013 at 2:18 am by fr0d0.)
(June 20, 2013 at 1:51 am)Maelstrom Wrote: (June 20, 2013 at 1:50 am)fr0d0 Wrote: I claim nothing that you can disprove.
I claim that which you cannot prove to exist.
You claim that God exists??
*pulls up a chair and grabs the popcorn* 
(June 20, 2013 at 1:59 am)Ryantology Wrote: You claim nothing you can prove. Any idiot can do that.
lol is that supposed to be ironic?
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RE: Why is belief in a higher power required?
June 20, 2013 at 2:44 am
(June 19, 2013 at 4:19 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Factoring in a creator your outlook becomes reasonably (because you have reasoned it to be so) positive rather than, as you say, neither good nor bad.
Faith gives me the potential to get more out of life than life without it. Fair enough, but based on evidence there is very little to assume there is much "built-in"/"off-the-shelf" purpose to this life at all. As one of my favourite German authors Hermann Hesse wrote:
" Life has exactly as much or as little purpose as we are able to give it ourselves."
I have an enormeous amount of purpose in my life, actually I love life incredibly, without the need to believe in an omnipotent being having purpose for all this beyond what I can fathom. But I guess your mileage may worry (sic) 
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RE: Why is belief in a higher power required?
June 20, 2013 at 3:04 am
(June 20, 2013 at 1:20 am)fr0d0 Wrote: At best Esq, you can say realty is how you see it or how I see it. There is no evidence to tip the balance either way. My reality is no less real than yours. How we perceive that reality is all that is different. Feelings have nothing to do with it. That's a red herring.
Dude, feelings do have nothing to do with it, that was my point. 
You had a kind of weird wording when you were talking about this earlier, saying that you couldn't see why we atheists couldn't see the advantages in a divinely just world. My response was that we could see how it would appeal, but that identifying a world that feels better isn't the same thing as living in that world. Feelings don't impact the truth of the matter.
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RE: Why is belief in a higher power required?
June 20, 2013 at 3:27 am
(June 20, 2013 at 1:20 am)fr0d0 Wrote: At best Esq, you can say realty is how you see it or how I see it. There is no evidence to tip the balance either way. My reality is no less real than yours. How we perceive that reality is all that is different. Feelings have nothing to do with it. That's a red herring.
That is one of the most open things I have ever heard a religious person say. Credit to you for that.
Does beg the question - why are you on an Atheist forum when your reality is different?
Note - I am not suggesting you leave - just curious as to why you are here.
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