|
Post by ForeverKuroi on Mar 13, 2021 17:30:10 GMT -5
Hello, so I'd like to mention two different things about religion that really drive me bonkers and I'd like thoughts on it. First off and this may be the biggest issue, is that (for most religions), you have up until your time of death to choose. First off, you have to believe in God and in most of the religions, you have to choose right. Mongo's probably the most religious man on the board that I'm aware of, and he's probably damned in dozens of religions, but he fights so strongly for Christianity because that's the right one to him. But the issue that it stems from, to me, is faith. Faith isn't scientific evidence. Faith isn't a convincing argument guided by verifiable proof. Faith is a simple, "Trust me on this, bro." It seems to me that the faith aspect is either dressed up by painting a pretty picture of what happens if you have faith, painting a scary picture if you don't, or both. I feel that it inherently pulls on the heartstrings of some types of people and not so much on others. I'll elaborate a bit. So let's say I'm a different kind of person. I'm right-brained, decent and never even made a Viper promo before. I read the bible and something about the way it was written gave me this feeling that somehow, I'm reading not just truth, but the truth. Now then there's me. Someone who's so technically minded that if there's nothing to back it up, I don't believe it. I don't believe in the QAnon BS. I don't believe Area 51 houses zombies (in the supernatural sense). I don't believe in the Illuminati. I don't believe in the McRib. I don't even believe the hottest new rumor that Reck usurped from Mongo the XHF Network by threatening him with cancel culture based off how it was ran fifteen years ago. So asking me to believe this and mold my life around this is a big ask. My question is, if the whole idea is if we don't buy in, we're damned for all eternity, then does this is damnation is meant more for the skeptics and the scientific-based people? Are they not worthy of divine happiness? And is this test something that's biased to those who are better moved by artistic people who can pick up the poetry that the bible may exude? And how do we reconcile with this faith component?
Now, my next point - which is far less involved, is that of confirmation bias. For those that don't know, confirmation bias is the logical fallacy where you ignore the objectivity of new evidence and fit it to support your opinion. Mongo's famous for this for how he views Viper promos, using anything he sees as ridiculous arguments of evidence that my Viper promos are trash. I've asked this to friends years back and never got a response to this that I felt was satisfactory, but I see this all the time with religion as well. People use the following instances to praise God or use as evidence that he exists. - A near death experience. Maybe just missing a car when crossing the street when the driver didn't see you. - Making it through surgery. - Surviving a plane trip. - Hitting every green light to work and not being late after you missed the alarm clock. - Meeting Hyperion. - Seeing a picture of Jesus in your slice of toast. - Some really obscure coincidence, such as a double rainbow or I flipped town in Mafia. How can we reconcile something like this? How do you know if what just happened is a miracle or not? If we are to assume everything that is unlikely to occur is a miracle then miracles, by definition, are outliers, since as I understand it, everything happens through God. Outliers include things like: - Yao Ming's height, Copycat's weight, and child-sized coffins. Religious people, how can you recognize miracles and ignore confirmation bias?
|
|
|
Post by Mongo the Destroyer on Mar 13, 2021 20:08:27 GMT -5
Ok so you bring up some interesting points but also start with a incorrect assumption.
There's a whole bunch of people in every walk of life (including science) that are religious. I would consider myself naturally skeptical and when I came into my relationship with Jesus I did so under the terms of "You're gonna have to prove yourself or I'm not buying in." There's a whole sub-branch of Christianity called apologetics in which people are looking at the scientific evidence and seeing how it lines up with the Bible- because nobody wants to waste our time with something that isn't real. Even Paul in the Bible wrote, "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men" (1 Corinthians 15:19). And I repeat that point to my blog readers too, blind faith is stupid. These weren't stupid blind people who had nothing better to do than promote some dead dude even under the threat of horrible murder (which is how almost all of the apostles supposedly died). These were normal folks from different backgrounds (Paul was getting hotshotted into being a top Jewish religious leader when he met Jesus)
From my perspective, God continues to show up for me. I feel my prayers are answered (not all the way I want but still) and I do have a weird incredible luck to get by on a minimal amount of effort and almost no panic (aside from when it's show day and there's like 3 matches out still). But right away I was asking questions. Question 1: Dinosaurs. Duh. That very week a (I think public access) show from Canada about creation science somehow ended up on Korea TV and the episode was based entirely around how dinosaurs work within the Biblical frame.
I've had a few other of these sort of encounters when I get real pushy about some area of the religion that doesn't jive with me. Another that sticks out in my mind was a pretty uh.....gruff pastor was talking about how God justifies people who don't even know about him going to hell. I don't like this aspect of the faith so I rejected it as this pastor being sort of a douche....the next day one of my favorite pastors went over the exact same lesson with the exact same message. So for me I feel I'm in a continuous conversation.
"But wait," you argue, "that's confirmation bias!" And your perspective isn't? You are walking into the room essentially saying "God doesn't exist and everything religious people believe is a coincidence." So basically any evidence I could offer could be brushed off by you as something else. Heck, even a lot of the plagues of Egypt in the Bible could be seen from naturalistic ways. The water turning to blood? Red tide or some issue with the clay in the foundation. The plague of frogs? Uh, yeah, frogs probably don't like gross water so they came onto the land. The plagues of flies/gnats? Oh I don't know, maybe all those dead frogs started to decompose? And on and on.
So it is with different perspectives on current science. The two issues I'm seeing a lot in the news these days are new discoveries about Neanderthals and the age of the universe.
Neanderthals are in the news a lot these days and the stories usually read essentially the same: Neanderthals were basically humans. But the secular news spins it with evolution to say "Neanderthals evolved right along with normal humans." But so far almost all the evidence says that Neanderthals were humans. They interbred, intercommunicated, and as more and more evidence is presented that they lived right next to each other. So why do news writers and some scientists persist on inserting evolution and the insistence that despite interbreeding and communicating that the two groups were NOT both human. That's some confirmation bias from people who WANT them to be separate. But for me it reads like some old school Darwinistic racism. They's people, yo. But if they are different, then an anti-theist can say that the Adam and Eve story can't work since why are there humans and not-exactly-humans chilling out?
Another is the age of the universe. Cards on the table guys- the Biblical timeframe does not have an explanation how stars billions of light years away can shine in our skies. But interestingly enough...neither does the rest of science? They keep trying to adjust the year of the big bang, but there's always reasons why it can't work or messes up the model more. I'm not saying that "God did it" is the best answer, but you're looking at an event that would be a physical impossibility vs a supernatural occurrence. I was won over by a shock through my system while reading Acts 9 and then learning dinosaurs can fit in the timeline- so I don't really give a crap about how the universe started because none of us have a time machine to prove it, lol.
Almost everyone approaches things with some sort of bias. You are coming in the guise of being open-minded but your first couple paragraphs slammed every religion and then followed-up by ignoring your own bias in scientific interpretation. I think a great example of this these days is CNN and FOX. Everyone who's honest knows that CNN slants left and FOX right; and arguably both indoctrinate their viewers. If your sources are anti-theist then you better believe your worldview is gonna follow that. To think you're immune to what you absorb is arrogance. Likewise, if your source is purely religious, your worldview will be shaped in that direction. Almost every fact is filtered through some sort of bias. At least I'm upfront about mine, lol.
The note I'd make on miracles is that it's up to interpretation, absolutely. But I've had enough times where I've prayed on something and I've gotten a response to it where I'm gonna lean in that direction. Is it confirmation bias? Arguably. But from a neutral standpoint, how many answered prayers would it take to get you to decided "Ok, this isn't a coincidence anymore"? If the answer is that your stance won't change then you may as well not ask, lol.
Before you ask it I'll answer the "Is there something that'd cause you to lose your faith?" And there is. Aliens- like living people in space who we previously didn't know about. The Bible says that Adam and Even screwed all creation by their decision to eat forbidden fruit. Currently there's only one brand of humanity and that's on earth- so ok I can accept that. But if like suddenly some bros from space show up? Well that's a pretty weird stretch that we also screwed them, isn't it? So far space is has yet to be proven as more than a lifeless, giant area for us to explore and to learn from (I'm pro-science). That's not confirmation bias, that's just a fact. Building blocks of life? Sure. Possible bacteria? Maybe? But some sentient....anything? Not yet guys, keep looking.
Getting back to an above point about "my" religion vs other religions/atheism/anti-theism. I told you that God wouldn't let me write off a pastor I didn't like's message so he presented it with a pastor I liked (actually both of them have switched in my preferences since then, lol). It's a bitter pill but the Bible says
For those of you who don't speak Bible (lol), Paul was essentially covering two points. The first is that people are generally inclined to believe in some sort of deity. It's hard to look at the wonders of nature, space, heck our biology, and say "Welp, all that complexity, interconnection, and beauty happened naturally." The problem is that people either 1. Do that or 2. Make some statue and say "this is god now." Because we'd rather have a God that we can control- be it ourselves (non-religion religions) or some idol(s) (pagan/cults).
Is the Jesus cult of the Abrahamic God line the right way? Obviously I'm biased, lol. But I will say that the New Testament helps the Old Testament to make a lot more sense, and vice versa. And the New Testament is about Jesus. I've written somewhere around 500 articles on my blog about the Bible. For the last couple years it's been me literally testing the Holy Spirit by just going 5 verses at a time and saying "Teach me something I can write about." And sure enough, every time I read the verses and grab my pen, my mind lights up with a message and connecting Bible passages. Is that me using confirmation bias on an incredibly logical mind that has read the Bible around 10ish times and can put the pieces together- or is that God teaching me something every time I sit down to write? Again, I'm biased, lol.
|
|
|
Post by ForeverKuroi on Mar 13, 2021 22:03:01 GMT -5
FYI, this post may be kind of messy because this is big and blocky and I'm going to respond and then adjust this post as it's being made. Agreed, but blind faith is essentially the only requisite into heaven by Christianity's benchmark, right? I could make every mistake in the world but as long as I consider myself an earnest heaven who does my best because I believe in Christ so much, that's enough? Or am I misunderstanding that? So question - Is the dinosaurs that you're going to mention an example of God answering your prayers or is this a separate topic? I'd say the scientific response would be to form a hypothesis that could be causing it and test it. That is the scientific method. Could the rivers be blood or could some sort of algae be introduced which leaves a red pigment? (I realize this could be a stupid example. I'm not a biologist. I just know that there are many reasons something could happen and the diagnostics process generally works from most likely scenarios to least likely.) I'm going to jump the gun and mention that I'm not saying that there's ZERO evidence of God or that it's ZERO percent likely that God (or a God) exists. In my work so far with statistics, I've found that there are very few things which are exactly 0% or exactly 100% likely. With that said, it's far below my bar for acceptance. Technically, you could consider me agnostic. I don't take that label, but Robbie hears that there's a cream for that. ...Technically true, but that doesn't mean that the majority of science accepts these beliefs. Find the right fringe scientists and you'll find people telling you climate change is nonsense, vaccines cause autism and that essential oils do better against COVID than masks. I don't want to nitpick, but humans in this context can be misleading. When you say human, do you mean homo sapien? Because as far as I'm aware, we tend to treat humans as a being with a state of personhood, with all the legal rights afforded in the same way we are. Gotcha. So species has a very specific definition to it. As to why Neanderthals are not considered homo-sapiens, there's an article on this. www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-neandertal-brethren/Now just because something looks similar and you can interbreed with it doesn't mean it's the same species. We kind of spoke about this in the radio chat last night. Chimpanzees are generally thought of as one of human's closest ancestors - that are still living, that is. Also, in order to breed with another species, the two species need to have the same amount of chromosomal pairs. Chimpanzees and humans both have 23 pairs. We could do it, and Ref just might. I kind of just did a Wiki search on this, but there's too much to parse through right now. Also, I feel weird doing this on a work computer and seeing a picture of George W. Bush was kind of the last straw for me there, lol. But back to the article. A lot of scientists may actually consider it to be a subspecies, because there are very small differences. There are ways to test it but at some point if the DNA from two different members of the same species are different enough, maybe they aren't part of the same species. My Jewish brother actually said the same thing to me too. "Who said there WEREN'T dinosaurs on Noah's ark?" Everyone does have biases, including me, but I wasn't trying to really slam religion as much as I'm trying to openly share my understandings of them. I'm honestly trying to learn. Very true, although I doubt I could be religious, even if I tried. This brings to mind that I'm not so sure if you answered my first question about specific people being more likely to get into heaven or not. You said it was because it was based on a false premise but again, if I believe in God, that's all a prerequisite, right? A righteous atheist cannot go into heaven, right? I feel like I have asked you questions like this before, but to be honest, I'd probably rather you remain religious your life if I had it my way. I feel like if there was 100% proof that God was not real, a whole lot of people [who accepted the truth] would go into incredible depression, and I don't want that.
|
|
|
Post by Mongo the Destroyer on Mar 13, 2021 23:01:27 GMT -5
Ehhhhh, yes and no? Your understanding is a bit simplified. While yes, the Bible says "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Hebrews 11:1). God isn't expecting people to just buy into Jesus without anything behind it. I mean, some probably do- but your faith should really be rooted in something. What I'm stuttering around is that it's not about how blind the faith is but about how genuine it is. If you genuinely believe in Jesus as the Son of God (and honestly, God) then yes, that should be your ticket to heaven stamped right there. But the argument is often made "What if it's a serial killer" to which the return argument is that person probably doesn't actually believe OR has been greatly mislead about what his/her faith is. And that sort of designation is probably above my pay grade, lol
The answer to the dinosaur question coming within the week I prayed about it and from a semi obscure source considering I was watching Korean TV was the part I was focusing on. Dinosaurs themselves have lots of evidences for a more modern existence but that's another debate for another day, lol
Haha, funny story, that's literally what Pharaoh did during the plagues. He'd call in his "court magicians" to see if they could reproduce what was happening. They gave up after the plague of gnats (which again I'd argue would be easy to reproduce with a million dead frogs, lol)
As mentioned in my response: Does the bar for acceptance actually exist? Because if you give God a number he might actually hit it. But that's between you and him, lol
I use Reuters and CNN mostly, lol
That's the thing though, we're finding more similarities than anything but folks are insistent on keeping them separate largely based on skeletal differences. But take the skeletons of like a chihuahua, a St. Bernard, a collie and a uhhhh corgi and you'll have some hella different looking animals- all dogs. Different breeds yes but still dogs.
I'm real sensitive to the neanderthal issue because I grew up with a set up 1960's encyclopedias (I think Kennedy was still alive in them). And in them they'd talk about how different races all evolved at the same time in different areas, presumably from different ape ancestors. The problem with that theory was that it implied that every current race was at a different point in evolution (which is obviously racist and incorrect from almost modern any scientific reading). Eventually we scrapped Java man and the pigmy theories and instead found out that genetically speaking it seems everyone links back to the middle east. And yet there's still this caveman lurking around who's supposedly not fully evolved but chilling with homo sapiens and *checks notes* ...teaching them how to use tools and do human things.
A righteous (by nature of works) atheist cannot get into heaven according to the Bible, yes. Somebody who actually believes in Jesus as the son of God can. But to your first point: you'd be surprised how religious you could be, lol. Remember old XHF Mongo and see how different I have become.
Haha, it's hard to say how I'd react. There are elements of my life that have proven good- but there's defo some stuff I'd like to do if I knew that there wasn't a God to piss off
|
|
|
Post by ForeverKuroi on Mar 13, 2021 23:26:48 GMT -5
A lot of good points. I don't have the time to fully respond tonight, but I'll want to think on what you said. In the meanwhile, I'll say they there is absolutely a bar, because I consider myself pantheist in some respects. With that said, I would consider quantifying the totality of evidence to be a difficult task.
|
|