Albert Cipriani

Dear Heather,
You say:


If this is a mistake, it is not a logical one but an axiomatic one. Either I have control over what I choose to hope in or I do not. I say I do. If you say I do not, then it is you who are being illogical in trying to convince me not to choose my theistic hope when according to your own axiomatic premise neither I nor you "have any choices at all."

You say:


Thank you for conceding that point, which is the main point I meant to make in this thread. Stated simply:

1) Knowledge of our impending death is stressful.
2) Any belief that reduces that stress REDUCES THAT STRESS.

You guys are so quick to want to deny the truth of the theistic belief that reduces the stress of our mortality, that you deny in the same stroke the non-inferred fact that the theistic belief DOES reduce the stress of our mortality.

All I wanted was a simple admission of the obvious: wishful theistic thinking, blind Faith, mythology, (whatever you want to call it) that reduces stress, REDUCES STRESS! Thank you for finally, after 60 posts, giving me that admission. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

GunnerJ

Thanks for the big up, Albert. I know when I'm wrong and I'm not afraid to admit it. However, putting a lot of emotional investment in an argument can make it hard to fess up to a loss, so I make an effort to stay cool. I'd liek to comment a bit:

Well, you've admitted to being wrong twice...

I think you've misunderstood me: I asked if this hypothetical Pope's teachings met with God's disaproval. That is, in my situation, if some nut gets lucky and shoots a contravercial Pope, can all the more conservative elements in the Church then say, "See? I told you he was trouble! That was God's will!" It seems that if you concede that God will forcably retire any Pope who mucks up His Church, then they might have a point. Especially given this:

It seems that it might be more conveinient for God to simply preform one of His Holy Abortions, i.e., a miscarraige, on such a Pope before he ever was born. You might say that God wanted to set an example. Besides the sticky free will issues this raises, this comes back to the litmus test question. Will God protect a Pope who does right by his Church? Does this mean that if a Pope is assassinated, we can interpret this as a sign of God's displeasure at this particular Pope's actions? These are questions that must be answered in order for your answer that God is the ultimate police-policing-the-police in the Church to make sense.

Interesting side track- If Adam and Eve's sole mission was to multiply and subdue the Earth, why would God bother making them physically, morally, and spiritually perfect? Especially when the most effective methods of increasing the surplus population and conquering the world include rape, incest, polygamy, war, murder, theft, treason,a dn all other manner of nasty things, all chronicled in the Bible. It seems that God, making Adam and Eve for the sole purpose of breeding and conquest, and yet making them with perfection entirely unnessisary to accomplish this goal (and perhaps detrimental to it), is like a man with a <a href="http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view.php?id=7" target="_blank">suped-up Civic</a>: if you only need a $5,000 car to go from point A to point B, why spend $10,000 upgrading it with superfluous things?

No, God must have given Adam and Eve all that perfection for reason. The standard Christian reason was to love and serve and worship God in Eden. It would follow, then that since the perfections of Adam and Eve didn't stop them from failing, the intellectual perfection of the Church may not work either.

BTW, I hope there will be an answer to my question about the Pope's ability to determine dogma. It's at the bottom of the first post on the thrid page of this thread, if you'd like to respond.

[ January 20, 2002: Message edited by: Rimstalker ]</p>

sandlewood

This really scares me. I don't know how you can just ignore contradictions like that. Let's say that I happen to be falsely accused of murder and I'm on trial. On the first day of the trial, the only witness says that I wore a blue shirt and approached the murder scene from the East. On the second day of the trial, the witness says that says that I wore a red shirt and approached the murder scene from the West. Would you just ignore those contradictions? Don't you think that the witness is unreliable? Or do you just wave it away by saying contradictions don't mean anything? It scares me to think that my life could be in the hands of people who reason this way.

It does explain, though, how you are able to believe in religion. I guess, you simply ignore its contradictions and everything's fine. I don't know what computers have to do with it. Computers are no smarter than a wrench. They do a job that we need them to do. No we can not. Which is why we need to get clarification when someone says two seemingly contradictory things. It is not safe to just assume you know what they meant because you can easily be wrong in your guess. If the witness says I was wearing a red shirt, should I just assume they meant to say that I was wearing a blue shirt? Or that they meant to say purple? Where's the contradiction? Do you mean that the person's hair was parted one way yesterday and a different way today? Well, we know that it's possible for a person to change the part of their hair from one day to the next. So there is no contradiction there. The fact that we can still recognize them has nothing to do with "seeing through" contradictions. First, I don't believe you have any basis in saying that most contradictions are apparent. It's just an assertion. Second, we cannot assume that all contradictions are apparent just because a few are. There are also contradictions that really are contradictions. To figure out which are which we have to investigate them further, not merely hand-wave them away. This is how we gain knowledge, particularly in science. If we find a contradiction, we know something is not right with our initial assumption and we investigate further. To some of us, finding the truth about reality is more important than reducing our stress. We cannot make up stories and then hypnotize ourselves to believe them just to reduce stress. We know that underneath, we really don't believe them.

bonduca

No. What sort of supreme being can sit on a cloud and watch the world torture itself? I could never worship such a creature, even if it could be proved it existed. It does not even deserve my respect. It is like kowtowing to an abusive parent or spouse in the hope that this time they will continue to show their kind face, instead of making one's escape.

Koyaanisqatsi

Albert--

Your murder trial confession is a perfect example of why cult programming is so profoundly dangerous to society that my mind literally boggles.

It evidently conditioned you to ignore your charge as a juror to properly evaluate the evidence and testimony given, superseding the whole purpose of "reasonable doubt" and I guarantee you that if the judge had ever found out that you had simply decided to ignore so many contradictions in a witness' testimony he would have declared a mistrial.

Truly appalling, yet you seem to wear it as a badge of honor. 22 contradictions in a witness' testimony and you did not find "reasonable doubt?" Jesus!

Now, on to something else you had posted that gets to the heart of the matter:

I know you're intelligent enough to see the glaring contradiction in that circuitous nonsense, but since you've demonstrated such thinking does not even bother you in a murder trial, I guess I shouldn't be too alarmed that you can't recognize it here.

How can our actions be "religious" to address the fact of our "fallen mortal condition," when our "fallen mortal condition" is not a fact; only a declaration from cult mythology? Your cult declares that you are fallen and then you state, in essence, "We need 'religious action' to save ourselves from are fallen condition?"

They tell you you're fallen and that you need them and then you turn around and justify it by stating "I am fallen, therefore I need them."

Yes, you may substitute "God" for "them" since they are the one who created god. Indeed, your entire screed here is nothing more than an acceptance of cult dogma that you are simply using to uphold cult dogma.

You are the snake eating your own tale my friend.

If the bible had never been compiled or Genesis never written, then you'd have no belief that you are inherently worthless and/or inflicted with Original Sin. It is the cult that told you this and it is the cult that you are affirming.

Unless, of course, you'd like to assert that Yahweh told you personally one night that you were deliberately made inherently worthless and that you must recognize your fallible condition in order to destroy yourself as Yahweh made you in order to then fill yourself with Yahweh?

I guess the question comes down to who created you in his image, man or Yahweh? From everything you've posted so far, the answer is abundantly clear: man.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy, by the way, not a circuitous rationale.

Wrong. There would be no Judeo-Christian cult mythology.

Once again, you are doing nothing more than proclaiming that your interpretation of your particular cult's dogma is true. This has nothing to do with hope; this is a bald-faced assertion that your interpretation of a particular cult's dogma is correct, pure and simple.

If Genesis hadn't been included in the canon (as so many other works were not) then you'd never argue such nonsense. Men formed the canon and it is to these men that you are little more than an obedient slave, IMO.

Again, nothing here points to a hope in an after life; this is all about an affirmation of your own indoctrination based upon a particular cult's canon with absolutely no rationale as to why this canon is the "correct" one.

They tell you it is so. You accept what they tell you. End of indoctrination.

According to the men who wrote your cult's dogma. Original Sin is a construct of the dogma. Hell, it's not even in the goddamned stories.

They tell you it is so. You accept what they tell you. End of indoctrination.

And that's all it will be, pretending. The horrific irony is that you don't even know why you're pretending to follow a particular cult's dogma over some other one, if indeed "hope" in an after life is all you're really concerned with.

The notion of reincarnation and karma is far more positively "hopeful," so why not argue for that? The only answer appears to be indoctrination and little else since there is no possible way for you to know what the truth is.

Again, you pretend to argue for "hope," yet all you're doing is proselytizing for your own interpretation of one particular cult's dogma and providing no reasonable justification for it. You just keep repeating the platitudes you were indoctrinated with as if that's some sort of salient point, when in fact it just betrays your cult programming.

Without Judeo-Christian mythology and the men who created it, you would have no such catch phrase as "Original Sin" to spout and none of this would be an issue in your life (and others). It's odd that you keep demanding that only one variation is the "true" variation of cult dogma, dismissing the others as being somehow "wrong."

Would you care to explain the "somehow" without relying upon cult mythology? I'll bet you can't...

Congratulations, then. You have been programmed perfectly to pay no earthly attention to what you do in your life and are therefore a perfect slave, turning a blind eye to everything that is done to you and your brethren here because you were sold a bill of goods; suffer now and be rewarded after you die by a myth concocted by men to keep you looking toward the heavens while they pick your pockets on earth.

So you've provided at least two concrete reasons why your cult is detrimental to life: the application of your conditioning in a murder trial to just ignore a witnesses many contradictions that should have at the very least established a reasonable doubt and the removal of your intelligence from helping your fellow man better their lives here on earth.

At some horrendous point in your life, you just decided that you are a non-participant, just as they wanted you to do.

In my book, that makes you already dead.

SUTG

<a href="http://www.theonion.com/onion3801/black_gospel_choir.html" target="_blank">http://www.theonion.com/onion3801/black_gospel_choir.html</a>

Panta Pei

Koy:

Damn, that was all good

Creepy thing is that Albert is just one of many and the juror perspective is a double edged sword.

I have seen a jury of southern twelve acquit an estranged husband who broke into his wife's house, sadistically raped and beat her in the child's bedroom, videotaped the event and then told her that she would not see the dawn until she was done feeling the pain she had caused him. When he stopped to use the bathroom she dialed 911, whispered incoherently and put the phone under the bed and we responded.

The Foreman's statement to ADA after trial was that despite all the physical evidence, it was determined that their marriage is a holy Christian union, that they are 'as one' and the State had no business interfering with the husbands relationship with his wife. The ADA then vomited.

I refuse to lose hope

Perseverate et pugna

~ Steve

[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: Panta Pei ]

[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: Panta Pei ]</p>

Koyaanisqatsi

Holy shit!

theophilus

By use of the word BETTER, you betray that you are not really an atheist. The word, better, like all value words, is meaningless from an atheist worldview.
Since atheism cannot escape naturalism, things are neither good or bad, better or worse, true or false, right or wrong, etc. They just ARE.
It is telling that atheists are not content to live this way, but insist on using terms and appealing to concepts that their worldview cannot support.

daemon

You are confusing objective fact with subjective value. Value is meaningful on a subjective level, and is perfectly compatible with metaphysical naturalism.