haha yes we are still in the same household, you might have missed out the part where they let me back into the house. 3 decades on, my Dad has long passed on, and my Mum is still holding on to the Taoist beliefs but are no longer that against my Protestant belief but would rather I am not so we are happily living together even with different religious beliefs.
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But what if that god tells them to do terrible things? Surely thatâs a very bad thing?
âWith or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.â
Steven Weinberg
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I guess we got to really differentiate between religion - the institution - and the people who believe in the fundamentals of the religion itself. Even as a staunch protestant, I realized there are plenty wrongs with the church today, but there is definitely nothing wrong with God. To me, the basic fundamentals of Godâs teachings are relevant throughout all times but the Church is always trying to play catch up with âthe timesâ and in the process, twisting the fundamentals for its purpose.
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I get that, and thats where it gets a bit convolutedâŚ
Behaving well for me is doing ok by people and generally not doing bad.
Behaving well for someone in a fundamentalist situation could be torturing gay people.
God, if he or she exists isnt deciding on which is right, because the persons version of God has very opposing messages.
Your earlier view on morality is in my view correct. Its a quandry as to how we interpret our own morality or ethical code.
So a question I once asked my mum. Whatâs more important, being a protestant (catholic for her) or being a christian? I know a few catholics who donât consider themselves to be christian.
Personally I like John Wesleyâs rules (Methodism)
Do All the Good You Can,
By All the Means You Can,
In All the Ways You Can,
In All the Places You Can,
At All the Times You Can,
To All the People You Can,
As long as Ever âŚ
⌠You Can!
Doesnât require god which I always find ironic.
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I guess that comes down to defining terrible?
As for the Weinberg quote - yep - religion is not the reason, itâs a reason for people to do things they do
I donât see it as an issue. Base it on objective wellbeing.
Immoral then as per my definition.
Actually the very reason why I became a Protestant Christian is the very fact that God loves me no matter what little piece of shit I am and therefore I can find the strength to go out there and do something good, instead of I have to go do something good and then maybe God will love me. At 16, I came to believe that no matter how much good I do, I could never outdo the bad I would have done in my whole lifetime, if were all measured by the strictest of âholinessâ. No lies, no bad thoughts, etc⌠as my Mum always told me, do good things so that the Gods would not send me to hell and I would get reincarnated as human again. But I always thought shit man, for every old person I helped across the road, I just fucking lied to my teacher about my homework, so the very thought how on earth can I gain enough credit by the end of my life to get on the good side of God is just so tiring. And that is why the idea of unmerited salvation appeals to me and made sense to me. But anyone who claims to be saved by God and continues to do evil never probably understood what that salvation meant. And that is the reason why God gets all the bad press because too many simply do evil in the name of God, whatever that âGodâ is.
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aids or increases human wellbeing - still clear as mud reallyâŚ
Please explain as it seems very simple to me. An act either no effect, or some effect on human wellbeing.
I remember praying one night that my dad would fix the car that he was working on under my bedroom window. After a few hours he got it running, I thought my prayers had been answered. God had performed a miracle. I actually and honestly believed that.
Looking back, that was a massive insult to my dadâs ability to fix a car. I didnât see that heâd done it through hard work, talent and experience, I ascribed it to god. So I see the same now with people doing great things. When a footballer says that his great performance is down to god, I feel almost sorry for him as the truth (as I see it) is that itâs down to his talent, his hard work, his endeavour and his commitment over many years.
Somebody once dropped off a tidy sum of money for the charity next-door to my works. âGod will provideâ she said. I thanked her on their behalf (and they got every penny) but deep down I knew that it was the people providing, not the almighty.
Because an act in one persons view can be for the wellbeing of human kind, but someone else may view that same action as the complete opposite?
So itâs clear - when I stated that If someone has faith in god, and that gives them guidance/direction in their life, then thatâs good for them. I was thinking along the lines of inner peace, comfort that thereâs a purpose etc. Youâve read it broader than that (which is fair - thatâs how its written). I am very much against violence etc.
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Haha I get what you said. My Mum always mocked me in the past when I said grace thanking God for the food. She says did God drop these foods from the heavens? I said no, I thank God that I had money to buy the food. I thank God for those people who prepared my food. I thank God that conditions in Singapore is good that food is not in short supply. I am more pragmatic, I always tell people, donât thank God as a matter of convenience. Thank God because you truly are. Because in life, many things can go wrong. Hell, I have been out of a job since November last year and I still thank God, not because I am a deluded religious fanatic but because things could be worse. In fact, like I shared before, I might have lost my job, might have lost my source of income, but I lost 46KG, I gained my health, I still have food to eat, still has enough savings to last me thus far, and therefore I thank God not because it sounds right to say it, but because I truly am thankful. To me perspective is very important to me and this pandemic has changed that alot for me. I always remember the 17th century bible commentator Matthew Henry who said this when he was robbed "Let me be thankful, first, because I was never robbed before; second, because, although the thieves took my all, it was not much; and third, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.â
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@rupzzz I think we can both absolutely agree that this is a very good example of a person getting the best (from a personal point of view) from their faith. @gasband I might disagree with the entire god principle but my word I respect your gentle and optimistic outlook on life.
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Evolution is required for complexity to develop, but complexity is not the necessary endpoint of evolution. In many cases, evolution towards simplification is beneficial. In that context it only looks like a plan if you take us humans as the end point and view everything that has happened as a path to us.
An issue raised a couple of times is the idea that there is no evidence for or against a god as a balanced midpoint, and I find that to be a weak position from an epistemological sense. Smarter people than me have commented on this belief and I dont think anyone has expressed the issue clear than Carl Sagan in saying âextraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.â Iâm not saying you need to provide me evidence, but I am saying that my inability to provide you refuting evidence is a failed argument to justify your belief.
Complete tangent on a point no one has touched on, but is anyone able to give the cliff notes version of Hinduism? The Christian bible has a load of stories, but ultimately you can explain the central thesis of christianty to someone with a couple of sentences about God giving his son to mankind to die for their sins. Ive never been able to get that about Hindusim from reading or speaking to any Hindus.
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Well putting aside talking about God, every night when I go to sleep, only 2 things will happen, either I pass on or I get to open my eyes to another new day and if the latter happens, I try to look forward and view each day positively. This is also a perspective I gained in the last 2 years after losing my job and with the pandemic going on.
Because Hinduism wasnât a religion as defined in the narrow Judeo Christian Islamic way. Itâs an umbrella term for many different beliefs.
The key tenets of all Hindu belief are: 1. Belief in Karma 2. Belief in reincarnation 3. Belief in Dharma
There are atheist hindu sects, sects that are almost evangelical, ancestor worshipâŚall sorts.
The best way that Iâve seen Hinduism described isâŚIndonesia had in its history acknowledged the existence of only 4 or 5 religions. You had to belong to one of them. This basically negated the various animalistic beliefs that local tribes had around the islands. So these tribes started to label themselves as Hindu because it was the least likely to interfere with their actual practise. Hence umbrella.
By the way this idea that you can only believe in one god and everything else is a lie is quite alien to Eastern cultures.
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Iâm classified as a Hindu. For me, Hinduism is more of a philosophy rather than the religion that it is being made up now by quite a large number of adherents now. Itâs something which assimilates various folk customs and beliefs. It has changed now but in theory, it can be possible in hinduism to be a non believer.
There are accepted philosophies in Hinduism which have debated against the existence of God.
As for me, Iâm indifferent to religion (especially modern religion). Iâm not sure whether I would classify myself as an atheist or an agnostic. Itâs just something which I feel isnât for me. If I am forced to go to a temple (which sometimes becomes the case especially when family is involved, Iâd prefer to go to a temple with some architectural values about it).
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Not really. There are discussions in Hindu philosophy which argue against all threeâŚFor example the samkhya school of hindu philosophy.
Quoting from wikipedia which probably phrases it better than me
Samkhya gave the following arguments against the idea of an eternal, self-caused, creator God
- If the existence of [karma] is assumed, the proposition of God as a moral governor of the universe is unnecessary. For, if God enforces the consequences of actions then he can do so without karma. If however, he is assumed to be within the law of karma, then karma itself would be the giver of consequences and there would be no need of a God.
- Even if karma is denied, God still cannot be the enforcer of consequences. Because the motives of an enforcer God would be either egoistic or altruistic. Now, Godâs motives cannot be assumed to be altruistic because an altruistic God would not create a world so full of suffering. If his motives are assumed to be egoistic, then God must be thought to have desire, as agency or authority cannot be established in the absence of desire. However, assuming that God has desire would contradict Godâs eternal freedom which necessitates no compulsion in actions. Moreover, desire, according to Samkhya, is an attribute of prakriti (nature)and cannot be thought to grow in God. The testimony of the Vedas, according to Samkhya, also confirms this notion.
- Despite arguments to the contrary, if God is still assumed to contain unfulfilled desires, this would cause him to suffer pain and other similar human experiences. Such a worldly God would be no better than Samkhyaâs notion of higher self.
- Furthermore, there is no proof of the existence of God. He is not the object of perception, there exists no general proposition that can prove him by inference and the testimony of the Vedas speak of prakriti (nature) as the origin of the world, not God.
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