Rational BAC

I know that the atheists on this forum sometimes do like to intimate that theists really should get out of here. But-----I think it is a little phony. You would miss us terribly.

I think you would lose most of your atheist members very quickly if all the theists left. Nothing is more boring than a mutual admiration society. Nothing is more stimulating than having to justify your position against opposing points of view.

PS---Emotional--

You are correct. This forum can be awfully addictive. I have the same problem. It is something you should fight. There really is a whole other world out there.

Ojuice5001

From emotional:

You've just given the reasons why I too am still here. I have been stricken with the very wide gap between my assumptions and those of the skeptics. And I no longer have any real confidence in the dream of mass conversion to Religio Romana in my lifetime. It would make more sense to seek out contact with a board where I'm not quite so far off the map (even a Christian board would be better), but I can only make steps in that direction. (And believe me, the atheists seem as strange to me as I do to them. Well, almost as strange.) But at this point, I can't break the addiction and it might not be best if I could. It looks like the infidels and I are stuck with each other.

Oooh. I'm jealous. I mean, what, does WinAce think I'm not as big a fundie as you are? I didn't mind when it was just Christians, but I feel left out, and now I can't blame it on my heathen status.

And I wouldn't say you made it "with flying colors." All you were trying to say was that it's okay to believe for non-rational reasons, a belief that is not contradicted by rational knowledge. But I would suggest that you need to abandon the Enlightenment idea that faith and reason are essentially opposed, in favor of the idea that they are merely about different aspects or parts of reality--the latter model shows a better understanding of what faith is. I can't tell which view you actually believe, but the posts in question certainly sound like you believe the first.

emotional

RBAC, Ojuice, thank you for the support

I suppose my situation will change for the better come October. Then I begin college as a student of Arabic and Islam. Ooh, there are many girls there too, so as to make for social life.

I don't know if faith and science/reason/evidence can be reconciled. The trouble with science is, it has such a consistent track record of pleasing atheists only. Apart from near-death experiences (which atheists interpret as a brain trick anyway) and the Big Bang (which has been given a naturalistic explanation too, though I don't accept it), there has never been any scientific finding supporting older (read: theistic, supernatural) beliefs. It's all very depressing. But who knows, maybe further research into sub-atomic particles will yield evidence of hidden worlds ("astral planes") in the future. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Miss Piggy

Have you tried www.beliefnet.com? It is a real spiritual smorgasbord, there is a discussion board for almost every faith, for example Deism.

emotional

Thank you, Miss Piggy. I've signed up there and it looks fine.

wildernesse

Actually, anyone who posts here will have his/her beliefs severely questioned. Even atheists--as it should be. Just because someone doesn't believe in a god doesn't make them rational about everything--just like being an atheist doesn't raise your IQ.

--tibac

Nowhere357

Having little knowledge of Brett's views, but a lot of experience with yguy's views and debate techniques, I consider this to be a glowing endorsement of Brett's character.

emotional

I don't know about Brett's overall character, but I resent being told by him, over and over again, to give up my "silly beliefs". I resent being told that I "don't know jack sh*t about God". I have a right to believe in some things, including about God, even if a sound basis for them is lacking.

Jinto

Excuse me, I didn't see your post the first time. Responding now:

Wrong. I first collect all the items I can from this dungeon before proceeding to the next, since I know I won't be returning. Haven't you ever played any RPG's?

What this has to do with death, though, is quite beyond me, since in the case of death I cease to exist. Perhaps a more accurate analogy is you find a FORMAT C: command in an old dos manual but don't know what it does. Through testing on various systems we learn that it reformats your hard drive, destroying all data on it in the process. Various users who were unfortunate enough to use that command make up stories about where their data has gone - some of them believe that it gets uploaded to some great OS in the sky, whereas some other people think that maybe it gets scattered to various other hard drives, or various other stories. These stories are fueled by various errors in data that has been recovered from aborted format operations. Meanwhile, the programming community, who has observed what happens to the hard drive, keeps insisting that the data is simply destroyed from simple observations, yet the users keep insisting that they don't really know what happens to the data. The programmers are insisting that the FORMAT C: command can actually be useful (such as when clearing out a copy of Winodws ME), and is nothing to fear, and then yguy shows up and asks if the FORMAT command is nothing to be afraid of, then why don't we execute it - since after all, while noone knows what happens to the data, surely being the adventurous type we would want to find out, right?

THAT is an accurate analogy.

yguy

While you may find this idea as comforting as Christians find the idea of an eternity playing a harp on a cloud, there is no more evidence for the first than there is for the second. Thus, your analogy is worthless, based as it is on a thoroughly unsubstantiated premise.

And you know this, which is why you won't answer my question directly.