blueshuttle

Great post Kaiser, and great post to Tangiellis as well.

I love IIDB cause every time I visit, I learn something or find a new way to think about something.

And the responses and thought that everyone has contributed to this thread I started is great. Time for me to go visit Tangiellis' new thread

pachomius2000

Thanks, Hyndis, for your response or reaction to my post.

I confess that one of life's simple pleasure for me is to be able to exchange views with others. I guess that's why a lot of us are into the exercise of discussion forums. Of course, we get to learn a lot of useful things from each other.

How does that work with me, being a Christian and an atheist at the same time?

Modesty aside, I do have a lot of bonding with God, and Jesus, and if Buddha were around or if I was brought up a Buddhist, I would also have a lot of relationship with him and the deities he represents -- if any (for with Western enthusiasts of Buddhism there is no god, or I really can't make out what modern Western Buddhist enthusiasts are genuinely after in Buddhism, except maybe for the meditation and calmness systems).

You see, I have mentioned time and again the philosophy which I think is very valid, namely what I call 'scriptism'. See my posts in that thread on whether God is moral, immoral, or amoral.

God and religion and Peter Pan -- no irreverence intended to God and Jesus and Buddha of course, are entities in a script which can be compromised with, or even disregarded without harm to life and limbs. But a script such as the lethal ingestion of cyanide is a script that cannot be compromised without harm to life and limbs.

Then accordingly one of my recurring ideas of my present religious or irreligious or a-religious development is that religion should be for people with working intelligence like cuisine and hairdo and couture and the kind of colors and designs in wallpapers to paste on one's walls.

I am I must confess a bit worried also that God if He does exist might be somewhat dismayed with me. But knowing that God is God, I guess He should be intelligent enough to understand and make the necessary allowances for me, in my seemingly holding religious teachings and observances in a kind of abeyance, but for the inherited and traditional practices of the society and the background I was born into and I have grown up with, for example Santa Claus, Christmas, Thankstgiving, and even sorrow for 'sins'.

I hope this answers your quandary about how I can be a Christian and an atheist or secularist or agnostic all at the same time. But remember when it comes to cyanide I am like most intelligent people: very deferential to in my attitude and behavior.

Pachomius2000

sourdough

if I believed in souls Id say it gets reincarnated.

Yahzi

This notion that one can believe, truly and completely, with your entire heart, that the person living next door to you deserves to be tortured for all eternity as the worst, most vile filth ever to draw breath - and yet, never in any way allow that belief to cause harm to your neighbor - is just naive.

Try reading history. It turns out that sooner or later people act on what they believe. That's what beliefs are for, after all: to guide our actions.

sourdough

so we would know it exists

sourdough

if it has than thats the way he created us

sourdough

dont know,we dont talk

trendkill

Hmm, I disagree with this completely. It seems obvious that knowledge cannot come by any avenue other than experience. That which is not in any way part of experience, one is oblivious to by definition. If there is knowledge, there is an experiential connection.

Kaiser_Soze

Spooky - wasn't there a record with the lyrics "it's so funny, how we don't talk anymore"? A divine recording? I always thought of it as a crass record, nothing more, nothing less. And now I realise this!

trendkill

That seems explainable under my previous account of the attraction of mystery--maybe you find it unsatisfying to choose a single word because that would reduce the complexity and beauty.