"Well, if the lord is your shepherd, then what does that make you? BA-A-A!"

-Timothy Leary

made me laugh is all.

Watch this amazing interview:

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=I0igcpDynvU[/youtube]

agnostic for me
when i entered my teens, i made it a duty to profess my belonging to atheism, but as i grew up i realized i didnt know if god existed, or not, and that at the end of the day it has little meaning in my life.

i like spirituality, but the concept of a god creature does kinda weird me out

Agostic here aswell. People really shouldn't put their hopes and beliefs in anything or anyone else than themselves, and not base their lives on rules or dogmas of some others who see their way the right way to live.

Isn't agnosticism the claim that you can't know really much of anything, and therefore a claim to knowledge itself FROM ignorance? It seems self refuting to me which is why I no longer call myself agnostic. It's almost like saying there are no universal truths, while that in itself would be a claim to some kind of universal truth. Atheism seems to have mixed definitions and I can't seem to adhere myself to any of them either. Some atheists say that god DEFINITELY doesnt exist while some say God PROBABLY doesn't exist.

I feel personally that I just don't know (which is what i used to think agnosticism meant; however agnosticism i think is more of a claim that ignorance is truth, not that ignorance is just ignorance). I know some things like that I exist, that I am stuck in a finite present, and I have had a past and will have a future.

I believe in some kind of objective truth, whether that truth is God or not I just don't know. I also believe in subjective truth. But subjective reality CANNOT exist without objectivity. For example, let's say a man is married to a wife that is cheating on him, unbeknownst to him.. In the man's subjective reality, he thinks that he IS married to a wife that is completely "loyal" to him; and for him that is his own TRUTH. But the objective truth is obviously different. The man may find out and the man may not find out that particular objective truth.

Just by seeing this example, you can logically conclude that there is some kind of "truth" out there (pardon the x files cliche). Some people say ALL religions are truth. But just by using my example, that is obviously false.

I also believe in faith...Nobody can refute that we use faith in an everyday basis, even a so called empiricist. We trust our memories to go on in the future. We trust past discoveries in order to make new ones. Trust connotes faith. Without faith, we would be living a VERY simple life, which no one can ahdere to as a human...living ONLY what we experience in the finite present and first person experience. That means no memory, no past, no future, no outside world. Hard to imagine life like that isn't it? Saying "prove it" isn't the best argument for proving a negative anymore. You must put faith in something.

Some quotes I like are

"I believe so that I may understand" - St. Augustine

and

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth" - Pope John Paul II



Both are christian quotes which shows my christian "bias" (i was raised catholic). I'm a faithful person even tho i don't currently adhere to any religious belief, although I would certainly like to believe in one. I'm still on that "quest for truth" that I think more people should be a part of.

[Octillus]

Culturally raised Jewish, but I'm agnostic slanting towards atheist.


I've heard of agnosticism referring towards the lack of belief in organized religion, not necessarily that they don't believe in God. I'm somewhere in between despising organized religion and simply believing god does not exist, but I'm not militant about it, and I believe anyone can believe what they want to as long as it does not infringe upon others.

Interesting. Appears more of a meditation style than Bikram. I hope you two enjoy it. I've said it before and I'll say it again, yoga will change your life. Mentally, physically, spiritually...everything.

(Hatha) yoga stems from re-flexing the physical body after meditation, after exercising MIND (Raja yoga). From Ancient Egypt, probably even earlier. Mind Body SPIRIT. Yep, I gotta get back into yoga. Good way to honor/respect thyself, and LEARN and BE.

As far as a religious philosophy tag, I like the term Pantheism. Sort of connotative of the secretive wisdom of druids a bit. Pan.

Gnosticism is cool, agnostic's are ignorant fucktard's

I'm an atheist, although agnostic atheist is probably the most accurate term. (I belive that whether or not god exists is unknown, and most likely unknowable. I do not believe god exists)

I was raised catholic, but when I got old enough to think for myself, I found I could not maintain a belief in my religion. I could probably fill a book with reasons, but the jist of it is that the evidence for the existence of a god is massively lacking. A fact attested to by the fact that massively flawed arguments such as Pascal's wager, St Thomas Aquinas's proofs, and the ontological argument are still trotted out as evidence of God's existence today. There are exceptions, but it's been my experience that religious people in general are not particularly stringent regarding their standards for what constitutes reliable evidence. If an argument agrees with them, then that's enough, regardless of whether or not it's full of holes.

The existence of scientific evidence that contradicts the Bible was also a pretty big problem for me. One must either choose to stick their fingers in their ears and pretend the evidence is faulty, arbitrarily decide that the contradicted part of the Bible is just a metaphor, but everything else in there is definitely true, or invent some backstory that justifies the failings of the Bible. It seems to me that if a part of the Bible is easily falsifiable, then it's "just a metaphor". Behaviour that could lead one to question their beliefs , or make the religion easily falsifiable is strongly discouraged (e.g. Thou shalt not put god to the test).

The notion of God as described by the bible is pretty ridiculous anyway, and doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Torturing people for all eternity, for choosing the wrong belief set, from several conflicting belief sets, all of which claim to be the one true religion, but with no evidence to back them up (essentially picking the wrong number in a random number guessing game), is not compatible with being infinitely loving and infinitely good. Creating imperfect beings, holding them up to a perfect standard of judgement, and subjecting them to infinite torture if they fail, is not compatible with being infinitely good. If god is infinitely powerful and infinitely good, it stands to reason that he should be able to make a reality in which free will exists, but in which no one is tortured for all eternity for not passing his standards.

If people wish to believe in religion, I believe they should be free to do so. However, it seems that it's impossible for religion to exist, without religions taking away the freedoms of those who chose not to follow their religious laws.

I am a follower of Jesus Christ and I trust and rely on the Bible to know God, myself, and the world and people around me.

I believe the very ability of humans to reason and using logic were given to us to point us towards the existence of God and therefore feeling a sense of need to know Him. Reason and logic lead to God, not away. Same with science. I embrace most modern science. Science proves God because all that science does is study the work of God Himself. His very character can be known to a degree simply through nature!

Ravi Zacharias is phenomenal philosopher. He is a good place to start for reason and logic to believe in God. And then beyond that, Jesus. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrMSbta2bY0 in this video he already starts dealing with morality, nieche, and dawkins. it is just the first of 6. an AWESOME youtube series

Science proves God because all that science does is study the work of God Himself. His very character can be known to a degree simply through nature!

This is a circular argument. You're arguing that science proves god exists, because god exists, therefore science is the study of god, therefore god exists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

I don't believe "A GOD", or any of the god's are in any way separate from us. Like the father figure in a heaven, I mean that's laughable. It's how creation works, it's how our psyches communicate, it's all of us together. All of 'you's', (any one care to discuss reincarnation?) Religion has for the most part been used as a form of societal mind control The fact we have Science and Religion, (usually on opposing systems) proves this. Our common public knowledge of physics is all fucked up to, to keep us 'in control'.

Science proves God because all that science does is study the work of God Himself. His very character can be known to a degree simply through nature!

This is a circular argument. You're arguing that science proves god exists, because god exists, therefore science is the study of god, therefore god exists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

Yeah, you would probably be right, except it was not meant to be an interconnected argument ultimately proving God's existence. I just made 3 independent points:
1) Science proves the existence of God
2) Science lets us see the mind of God
3) Science lets us see the character of God

1) Science proves the existence of God

remind me what that proof was?

[Keeker]

God knows, I'm no the thing I should be,
Nor am I even the thing I could be,
But twenty times I rather would be
An atheist clean
Than under gospel colours hid be
Just for a screen.

Robert Burns 1785.

Best thing I've found recently connecting science and religion is 'The rodin coil' I made a post about it, and the post about 'black holes' will link you to GOOD physics and knowledge that connects science and religion, guess it's not really the forum for this kind of thing. Pretty sure Dev takes note though.
Any audio freaks should check it out too, may be a whole new speaker system to be invented from it.

Our common public knowledge of physics is all fucked up to, to keep us 'in control'.

More than just physics. The fact that the main form of geometry used around the world is still Euclidean is fucked up all in itself.