What would you do if you found out God existed

[Cyberman]

It's disgrace for the human species, we are just falling.

So I've noticed.

[Edwardo Piet]

I am not a flippin' flippin' heathen!

I'm a flippin' flippant heathen!

Faith means just that You understand that there are bits of information that cannot be comprehended at once.

No it doesn't. I suggest you invest in a dictionary.

[Captain_Nemo]

Faith means just that You understand that there are bits of information that cannot be comprehended at once.

Compare it to downloading lots of files that have been divided and packed in winrar. Unless You download all files of a given set, then extract it, then install it - and then the program can be run. Faith is the believe that if You follow certain instructions the end effect will be as promised.

Ahh, another definition of "faith".

Confidence in what we know exists and confidence in in similar outcomes from prior observations is not faith.  It in no way is related to belief without evidence.

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You have to remember that the greatest gift of existence is the possibility of love. Try to imagine what happens if You force somebody to love something or somebody else. Does that work? Free will is so important because of that reason. The value of love is so great that even allowing billions of idiots to exist is worth it (God gave people the potential for wisdom, and still they chose ignorance - but if it were to be forced upon them, love could not occur, since it can only exist under the conditions of free will). Love cannot be bought and requires lots of time to learn, but brings great reward to those who care to find out what it is.

Yada yada yada.  Please, tell us more about this thing called "love"...

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It's as if there was a branch of knowledge like mathematics and You do not want to use numbers as they have been used for centuries, because You call arabic number faries, insisting that only Your system of numeration, that is in no way better is the only right one.
It does not matter if You say x=2 or z=2 if a function is expressed as y=ax+b or y=az+b and x=z.

Or if somebody where to express an idea in German You would not dare say that the idea is wrong just because it was expressed in a different language.
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It's disgrace for the human species, we are just falling.

We are failing, partly because people equate mythology with facts, emotional reactions with truth and choosing feeling good over critical thinking.  That, and greed.

But You would not call greeks idiots because they were using myths.
Most people are not able to read Plato or Aristotle.

The myth about Prometheus is still valid today. Look at something like the Prometheus society - why are people whose IQ oscillates around 200 using a mythological figure. Isn't it obvious that when ideas are expressed one should try to grasp the meaning anew each time a sentence is decoded and not just create a stereotype that all ideas that are expressed with a given word do not make sense.


This is basic about any language. 
The problem is that anything given in reality should be used with a benefit. Destroying something just because we do not like it is unproductive and leaves a vacuum where worse things usually take the place of the previous entity. So its not about wheather religion is bad or good, but how to interact with it to make the intercation beneficial to the user. The user himself has to teach himself to make this interaction work in this way. 

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What is common today is the thought, that any idea that is expressed in a sentence contaning the word God in it is rubbish.

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But if You look at this kind of behaviour from the view point of informatinal warfare it makes perfect sense. Just teach the younger generation to use different vocabulary, convince them that the old vocabulary is stupid no matter how it is being used and You create a generational gap. If You take into account that divide and conquer is the simplest idea of empowerment of one's own faction one can understand why it is so common, with multicultural societies dominating.

What is really scary, is how difficult it is to explain to anybody what is really happening. People think that existence is a safe place although we never really abandoned the law of the jungle. The most dangerous things are not the things that can kill You, but those that can hack Your mind and reprogramm it at will.

Even if Satan were not real (although I think he is) it's still better to be careful about what kind of thoughts are getting into one's mind and from what sources.
It does not matter if a person or spiritual entity wants to make a slave out of me. The necessary defense mechanism is exactly the same.

[Edwardo Piet]

If you want to talk about love..fine, let;s talk about love.  If you want to talk about free will, fine, let;s talk about free will.  If you want to talk about an objective reality, fine..lets talk about an objective reality.

However, if you want to talk about fairies and ghosts and torture chambers......then what do fairies and ghosts and torture chambers have to do with any of the above?

Well, at least some of them can be conceived of hypothetically despite being magical bullshit. I can imagine a fairy or ghost . . . and so can you . . . Unlike free will. Which is magical bullshit that can't even be conceived of hypothetically. Unless we're talking about the silly redefinition which is basically "We have free will because our normal sense of will is now what I shall call free will!". Which is as bad as the pantheist saying "God exists because the universe is God now!".

[The Grand Nudger]

Ever heard of a simile, comparison and such? 

Let's say there is a person who is dumb as a donkey, nobody knows how dumb a donkey really is or if the dumbness of all donkeys is equal and still You would not discourage anybody from using expressions of this kind. If I were to say that You are dumb as a donkey, You would not argue that using a comparison is like talking about faries. If You are unable to grasp a point of a figure of speech, You shouldn't try to convince people that You know what the given is trying to accomplish. Have You ever seen a person who would be ready to give their life just to talk about faries? Isn't it obvious that the point must be lying in something completely different?

I've seen plenty of people give their life to fairies.  Next.

With religious images their implications are greater and can benefit more people.
Let's make an assumption just for the need of this forum, since its so atheistic. Let's assume there is no heaven and no hell.
Even in such a case the value of a soul, mind, conciousness is so great (potentialy if treated correctly) that there is no better way then to use exactly the same image to show a person how they should treat their own inner cosmos.

That shows an impressive failure of imagination on your part, and nothing more.

There are two motivators one is fear and the other is love, just use both to the maximum and You can be sure that You cannot squeeze out more out of Yourself.
As said in previous posts, most people just want to justify their lazyness and never use anything like a spiritual GYM. They build images about genetically transmited traits that would allow them to accept their dumbness. Things like inteligence are inherited genetically to such people. At the same time philosophers like John Locke who would investigate the difference between trained inteligence and inherited traits have to leave their country, because they are touching a sensitive topic.

Only two.  Not three, four being too many, and five being right out?  

It's like a chemical aparatus that connects many different parts to put out a chemical at the end which is beneficial. Humanity has been building this aparatus for centuries. It is not just that easy to build a newer better one. Look at the amount of people on antidepressants and the amount of people with sleeping disorders who take sleeping pills. The amount of people who are obese and suffer from depression. The amount of divorces.

Perhaps the prevailing religious paradigms have something to do with all that misery?  I know...I know, crazy talk.  

If making a step back from religious world views is so beneficial why don't You show evidence on the level of society that prooves that unmotivated, depressed people are better building stones for a happy society.

Do your thoughts generally taper off and fail to maintain coherence before a sentence is finished?  

So of course I want to talk about all the above, the only difference is that I am ready to use any idiolect, any kind of words as long as I am able to express a point in a precise way, You on the other hand are not ready to use anything else besides the words that have a positive connotation in Your active vocabulary. 

Feel free to express some point, any point, in a precise way........I'll wait.   If I ask you, for example, about "spiritual gyms" are you going to be able to show me the spirit muscles? To show me how spirit exercises increase spirit muscle mass? To demonstrate some effective and demonstrable use of your spirit muscle? No, no..and no. All you'll show me is that this is a meaningless deepity.

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It's as if there was a branch of knowledge like mathematics and You do not want to use numbers as they have been used for centuries, because You call arabic numbers faries, insisting that only Your system of numeration, that is in no way better is the only right one.
It does not matter if You say x=2 or z=2 if a function is expressed as y=ax+b or y=az+b and x=z.

Or if somebody where to express an idea in German You would not dare say that the idea is wrong just because it was expressed in a different language.
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A fairy is a fairy in any language.

It's a disgrace for the human species, we are just falling.

Perhaps you should limit your condemnation to yourself?  The human species seems to be doing just dandy, it might just be you.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I am not a flippin' flippin' heathen!

I'm a flippin' flippant heathen!

Faith means just that You understand that there are bits of information that cannot be comprehended at once.

No, it means you can believe any damn thing you want to and whinge when people ask you to justify that. 

[Cyberman]

Lol @ "informational warfare"


What you mean is "how dare you point out when I'm talking bollocks!"

[Captain_Nemo]

Faith means just that You understand that there are bits of information that cannot be comprehended at once.

No, it means you can believe any damn thing you want to and whinge when people ask you to justify that. 

There is another word for that: gullibility


And usually applies for those whose do not have the determination to inverstigate any topic thoroughly.

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http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/have%20faith%20in

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Example:
If I hadn't had faith in my math teacher I would not have allowed him to teach me pythagoras theorem.
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So if I have faith in the church I allow a certain group of people to teach me about theories that are connected to existential problems.
I do not have to accept any theory or believe anything I am not sure of. If I do not know something I just say so. Faith is the thing required to walk the distance between supposition and knowledge.

[Cyberman]

Faith = reasonable expectation is not equivalent to faith = blind hope. Especially where such hope is completely without justification.

[Captain_Nemo]

Faith = reasonable expectation is not equivalent to faith = blind hope. Especially where such hope is completely without justification.

So there is a kind of faith that is reasonable and how do You determine if a user of a religious system is using the word in the right way?

Is it not like making the assumption that You can read my mind when You imply that I am using the word faith in the "blind hope" meaning? This is a presupposition too - in my opinion its much more absurd to believe that You know that I believe in fairies than for me to use a word (GOD) in my active vocabulary in a way that makes sense according to the rules of logic. 


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Now we have a milestone.
It turns out, that You could potentially build senteces with the word God in it that are perfectly fine if it comes to logic and making sense.

Agree?