I'm an atheist, and most of the other atheists I know shun or ridicule all things that can't be proven. Ghosts, Bigfoot, god, satan, heaven, hell, angels, demons, a soul, reincarnation, etc.

As an atheist, I do believe in karma, but not as a magical power. I just believe if you do bad things, bad things are more likely to happen to you either out of retaliation, or even because psychologically you do destructive things because you know you deserve them.

I personally feel like going to church is a waste of time and know that you don't need spiritual or religious beliefs to have strong ethics and an accurate sense of what is right and wrong.

Many of my religious friends always act surprised that atheists are some of the most ethical and kind-hearted people they know. I feel that way about most of the Mormon friends I grew up going to Mormon church with. I feel that they are very nice people who try to help others, but they are skewed in a strange way. I feel like yes....I agree with that....yes...that makes sense.....I can see where you're coming from......wtf? Where did that come from?

Yabbut, what do y'all think of Ouija boards? Hmmmmmmmm? :eyebrow:



;)

Fixed that for ya. ;) Some are pricks, as are some religious people.

True enough Bruce, there are screwed up people everywhere.

As I said, easily. I don't shackle my thoughts into any pre-determined conclusions.

I understand that the body of religious writings represent the wisdom of thousands of years of human experience, and I know that human nature never changes--these writings are as relevant as they ever were. I know also, that the laws of physics do not change, although our understanding of them is always incomplete. Our understanding of the physical universe is an ever-changing work-in-progress.

When reading a composite of anctient writings, I consider this context. Is what is important to the aspect describing human nature necessarily directly correlated to the aspect describing the physical universe, i.e. do we have to believe the texts as literal or can we take away their true value without bundling in unnecessary baggage? Do I not have the luxury of using ALL the knowledge at my disposal in fleshing out an idea of what they were writing about?

I'm not saying that my knowledge of the universe is necessarily superior to those in the past, but that neither of us can confirm that knowledge. And, at best, we are all dealing in metaphors for something we are literally unable to understand. Therefore, I do the best I can with all the knowledge I have to form one coherent description of the universe. I recognize that all who came before me were making this same attempt; and I acknowledge their work and build upon it rather than tossing it out without consideration.

Right or wrong, what this means is that I place everything I read into a massive logic chart and calculate the probability of something's liklihood based upon how well it matches the literal or metaphorical descriptions found within other sources. I don't discriminate against a source simply because it is a religious text; however, as soon as someone starts quoting one, exclusive text as the source of all knowledge, their credibility drops to near zero almost instantly.

From what you've described, that sounds about right. What I call God is immanent, but not transcendental.

However. That's not the whole story. I refer to God as an organizational intelligence, because physical objects which are sufficiently organized do begin to exhibit properties which appear to be transcendental to their component qualities. I do not believe that physical objects can be literally transcendental; however, to the degree that we are able to perceive certain of their qualities, they appear that way to us.

I believe that religions describe the apparent transcendental properties of the universe which, while theoretically capable of being scientifically explained, such a description is not likely (or was not likely at the time of a particular writing). In those cases, a vague metaphor is (or was) probably the best approach available. A metaphor can contain more information than can be communicated verbatim, acting as a kind of data compression. However, as the granularity of our knowledge increases, we can begin to take more literal views upon things.

Wow, every time I go away ya'll start the most interesting conversations. I'd weigh in, but ya'll already know my sentiments on this subject. It's been an interesting read.

Thanks for your detail Flint.

Flint, again, that is quite plausible. One term for what you are describing is "emergence". Often a larger scale thing can "emerge" from the simple behaviours of small scale units.
For example, gas molecules behave according to Newtonian physics, and this results in things like pressure and shock waves and the cylindrical shape of tornadoes. Likewise, a riot "emerges" from the behaviour of many individuals in the street, as a recession emerges from the behaviour of people in the economic sphere.

So, to continue classifying Flint (and spelling it properly) I think he is an Emergentist Deist. Come to think of it, I think I am too.

Yeah, emergence. That's what I meant.

Where dyslexics go when their tooth is abcessed...

fixed:
 

:lol: nice work the pair of you!

I'm glad you are happy with it zen, now I won't be forced to make an anagram and show everyone my true colors.

(I underlined, and italicized the above to make it easier for everyone.)

... Coming back to this- I was thinking (before getting engrossed in my other thread for the last couple of days) that maybe there is something already "afoot" in science that will lead to our gaining better understanding of the spiritual realm as indeed being a basic part of the physical realm that we experience with our senses.

Here's a quote to get us started- "The space-time theorem of general relativity establishes not only the Creator's extra time dimension(s) or their equivalent, but also His capacity to operate in all the space dimensions the universe has ever possessed (or their equivalent). What follows, then, from string theory and from all these recent findings in particle physics and astrophysics, is that God must be operating in a minimum of eleven dimensions of space and time (or their practical equivalent)."- from Beyond The Cosmos, by Dr. Hugh Ross, PH.D.

I realize its from a christian perspective, but it still points out what I'm meaning for us relative to this discussion. These concepts are really cool stuff to me, I didn't include here the extra-dimensionality of time(infinite time in an instant of time). But I highly recommend his books for gaining greater understanding of how this universe works, and may work.

So here's my thought- namely that as mankind grows in knowledge we will find that the spiritual realm fits into this same universe's space and time, occupying it as well in additional dimensions that we as yet haven't found means to identify or move into, but they would still be operating under the known laws of nature with additional laws of which we are currently unaware.
It would only be supernatural in the sense that the dimensions exceed the four we live in. (our single dimension of time being the fourth)

I don't think this is a complete thought. Your quote in essence says "Scientists have discovered new stuff. We should then assume that God knows about and is controlling all this newly discovered stuff." This is like someone who believes that the Earth is the shell of a turtle being presented with evidence that the world is a sphere, and concluding that it must of course be a spherical turtle shell. There is no reasoning going on there, it is simply a theist saying "Me too!"

Your thought that I quoted is not a new one. Basically it comes down to "All the evidence points to my viewpoint being wrong, but because we don't know everything there is to know yet it is still possible for my views to be justified. Therefore I will cling to the belief that my viewpoint has merit." Sure, we might discover a new dimension with angels and God, etc. Of course we might discover a dimension where the flying spaghetti monster holds sway, or a dimension of marshmallows. There are an infinite number of things we *might* discover, but believing in random crap with that as a justification is lunacy.