Ronin

Still no fairy sky king in sight.

BTW ~ I'm a humanist, just so you can get a better grasp on an positive object for future condescending comments.

Kassiana

If you decide to treat me with respect, I will give you the same. If you decide to act like an asshole to me, you deserve no respect.

Rusting Car Bumper

Why are you so concerned what other people think?

If it helps them live their lives then let them be. Its not any of your business. It only becomes your business when it extends past the end of their nose.

DC

babelfish

Human beings are extremely complex creatures. We have these pesky little things called "feelings." Even the best educated, most seemingly rational amongst us put great store in these things (also called emotions).

We would like to "feel good" or "feel peaceful" or "feel joyful" as often as possible, and for as long as possible. We dislike bad emotions like fear, anger, hatred, loneliness, and look for ways to alleviate them.

If believing in an all-powerful, all-knowing person who is watching over our every need makes us feel at peace or joyful, we will have faith, because it makes us feel good. Intelligence level may be completely irrelevant.

That's how it all seems to me, anyway. And I'm really okay with it, as long as someone doesn't try to convince me that there is no way I could truly feel joyful or peaceful unless I believe as they do.

Rusting Car Bumper

Kassina,

You might want to lose that chip on your shoulder.

DC

AbbyNormal

I'm not so much concerned as curious. I'm curious as to how people arrive at the conclusions they do. My brain doesn't compartmentalize, I try to apply reason to all aspects of my life. In my mind, I can not reconcile religon and reality. If another person can, well more power to them.
I'm just instatiably curious about people (among other things) and how we "work". That does have a tendancy to get me in trouble sometimes, though.
Listening to the feedback of others in addition to some thinking of my own, I really think it comes down to a "comfort zone". A psychological response in dealing with an often strange and seemingly unfair world.
Humans are not rational creatures. I suppose that's what frustrates me often...a little rational thought applied to a situation can make so much difference than just reacting. But, there you have it: we're human, and a little strange.
Thanks again for the feedback, everyone (and for not being too harsh to a newbie ).

babelfish

Boy is this ever true! We would so very much like to believe in some sort of magic.

Living Dead Chipmunk

Proud Atheist said:
Considering they both contain numerous adherents who say "My way is the only way", I think there's a perfectly valid comparison.

But there's a religious solution that will?

Note: You implied that religion is a mild form of mental illness. Therefore, an atheistic solution favors the "healthy" people over the "weak". The "weak" are left with no support, and when they break down they must be institutionalized.

And considering that, worldwide, there are apparently many more weak people than "healthy"...

But when it comes to religion, only your veiws are legitimate. Tell me again how that differs from the Christian perspective of religion? Why should I believe you any more than I believe them?

So do political parties.

So are political parties.

While I'd love to be flippant and repeat my above statement yet again (because there are times that it's true), I have a more pressing issue with this statement.

You're basically saying that *every* religion can be completely discounted based on the few anti-science sects of a few particular belief systems. I make this interpretation because only a few systems make claims that actively violate observable, testable laws rather than simply making claims that haven't bern verified. The concept of a soul in no way violates any currently accepted law or theory. You could try for 2nd Thermo, but you'd be really stretching (IMHO, anyway), and that'd end up as a totally separate topic altogether because, at best, that claim would be arguable.

So are political parties. In fact, so are humans in general, but my comparison was to politics.

How do you know they're ignoring scientific laws? Does the alleged existance of a higher power violate scientific laws? Or is someone here making the highly dualistic, us-versus-them assumption that the biggest scientific invalid of a Southern Baptist is exactly the same as a Buddist, who is exactly the same as a Hindu, who is exactly the same as an Asatru, etc?

Is it logical to say all religions make claims that violate scientific laws because one or two sects make such claims?

I know it seems like I'm nitpicking, but Protestantism doesn't have the copyright on religion or God. If we're simply arguing the relative lack of scientific merit of specific Christian sects, I wish it'd been more clearly stated in the OP and subsequent posts, rather than have the words "Christian" and "Theist" used interchangably, as well as the words "Christianity" and "religion".

So there's something wrong with them... but they're not a "nutcase"? Does this mean they're only minorly ill? Like a clinical depressive?

It's a dangerous thing when any group starts believing that the membership of groups opposing it are all mentally ill.

~
AbbyNormal said:
Then why not ask them? In spite of what many people here may or may not claim, none of us knows the mind of another specific human. At least not anymore than Jerry Falwell knows the mind of God.

The only person who can answer a question beginning with "Why do you...?" is the subject of said question. Or maybe his/her shrink.

~
DC said:
In Kassina's defense, it's hard not to develop a chip on one's shoulder when one's opponents are so condescending. Being declared mentally ill by someone without a medical lisence has a nasty tendency to do that to people.

[ November 06, 2002: Message edited by: Living Dead Chipmunk ]</p>

galiel

I am not surprised but still puzzled by the opening few responses that somehow equate being an engineer, particularly a computer engineering specialist, with being a rational or critical thinker. Ironically, the Alpha Christian recruitment folks use technical folk for many testimonials; an article in my local paper quoted a "software engineer" and a "programmer", as if that has anything to do with understanding of critical thinking or politics or theology.

If anything, my two decades of experience interacting with engineers leads me to the opposite conclusion. Engineers tend to be (obviously a generalization, but I am talking about tendencies, not absolutes) attracted to their technical fields because of their comaparative discomfort with fields dependent upon human interaction and the uncertain "fuzziness" of many fields. Most people I have met and worked with in these fields are attracted to the certainty and lack of ambiguity in computer science: things either work or they do not, they either produce the precise correct answer or they do not, no gray areas. Most often, I have found technical computer folk to suffer from what I call "binary thinking" a tendency to simplify all situations into absolute polarities, either-or, yes-no choices. This kind of refusal to acknowledge both complexity and the incomplete nature of our current understanding of the world actually makes technical people more inclined to be attracted to simplistic, us-vs-them dogmas, whether they are theistic religions or dogmatic secular ones like libertarianism or anarchism, neither of which tend to depend on historical precedent or current reality, but rather on theoretical invariant doctrines based on unquestioned assumptions.

In short, being an engineer has absolutely nothing to do with having a scientifically inclined mind or understanding or practicing critical thinking.

In my experience, which is quite varied and extensive in this case. YMMV.

Living Dead Chipmunk

galiel: Good point. I like the connection between engineering's "works or doesn't work" with binary thinking, especially. I hadn't quite thought of that before.