just an observation

[transmaven]

actually adam was a female to male ts and eve was a male to female ts so nothing is "forbidden" about this site

Yeah but *the fruit* is the still the cause of much controversy. :P

[JHANIAH L0VE]

too funny

[transmaven]

you wanna fight? :P

[transmaven]

i'll lick your ass in a fight

don't forget that!!

[JHANIAH L0VE]

oh cool

[giovanni_hotel]

Trish, religion is not the same as spirituality. Too many people get this concept twisted.

Believing in an 'otherness' to human existence, an existence/reality that exists beyond the known, natural world - the supernatural - is not the same as believing in the existence of Blessed dildos, booglie wooglie men, etc.


And why is it that atheists are the same as fundamentalists in their take on holy scripture as a literal translation of the Word of God?

To learn anything meaningful from the Bible, Koran, or Torah, these books must be read metaphorically, like a Buddhist koan, and from meditation on the underlying meaning of these scriptures, 'spiritual' enlightenment can be attained.

MacShreach, to me it appears you're being loose with your defintions to avoid being pigeon-holed.

You're right, HA is not the place for this discussion, and I'm not trying to convert anyone.

But your counterpoints in many cases are dependent on how you define your terms.

Most agnostics come from a religious tradition, and by the very nature of their deciding they are agnostic, they have come to doubt the concept of 'a prior' knowledge; knowledge that is knowable independent of experience - i.e., belief in God.

You keep implying that one can be both a 'good' atheist and a skeptic. I don't see how this is possible, since atheists generally have no skepticism about the existence God, or their belief that there is no God.

Maybe the mistake I made was injecting the term science into this discussion,
That way, 'scientific thought and rigour' and 'atheism' would not overlap.

One can still be an honest scientist, and be either an atheist or someone who believes in a Higher Power.

Lastly, theoretical physics, (worm holes, stacked alternate universes, time travel, string theory), on its furthest fringes, is pure Star Trek.

[JHANIAH L0VE]

oh my!

[trish]

Please do not misunderstand the profundity of the Blessed Dildo. The Blessed Dildo has an "otherness" that even the most spiritual cannot fully comprehend. It stands as metaphor for our most physical yearnings and at the same time of the tragic sacrifice of the generations of ones loins for the eternal life of the loins themselves. It points toward the religion of sex and death, yet it points beyond religion. All this. And beyond all this. Yet its very history as a story tells us the Blessed Dildo does not exist.

[giovanni_hotel]

Oh ye unholy blasphemer!!!

Beware all false prophets, and dildo cultists!!

[MacShreach]

MacShreach, to me it appears you're being loose with your defintions to avoid being pigeon-holed.

No, I'm just not about to let you traduce me and get away with it. The fact that I do not fit into your neat, faith-based formulae is not my problem, but yours. I am not being loose with my definitions at all; the only problem is that they are not what you would like them to be. Tough.

.



Most agnostics come from a religious tradition, and by the very nature of their deciding they are agnostic, they have come to doubt the concept of 'a prior' knowledge; knowledge that is knowable independent of experience - i.e., belief in God.

I can't think why you imagine this is relevant; are you an agnostic? I'm certainly not.

You keep implying that one can be both a 'good' atheist and a skeptic.

No I do not. I have not once used the term "good atheist" nor have I implied it. If you are reading that into what I have written, then you need to reread. I have no difficulty whatsoever being sceptical, open-minded and atheist, and I am certainly not alone. It's not even slightly unusual.

[ I don't see how this is possible, since atheists generally have no skepticism about of the existence God, or their belief that there is no God.

Well, I don't know who these "general" atheists you are referring to are; I don't know any. I suspect you are either making this up or reciting verbatim something someone told you. Scepticism is an essential part (for the nth time) of a scientific mindset, as is open-mindedness. However, open-mindedness does not extend to a blind, unquestioning, a priori belief in unproven concepts.

The problem that the proponents of a faith-based viewpoint have is that while it is extremely difficult to prove a negative, the overwhelming weight of evidence from all around us, on every hand, means that we can effectively discount the existence of a higher power, or booglie-wooglie men.


We are constrained at the same time to allow that, if a suitably robust scientific proof of the existence of such things were to be found we would, after suitably testing the proposition and the proof, have to accept it, whether we liked it or not. This has nothing to do with agnosticism, however, which accepts the premise without proof or rigour whatsoever; it is simply the application of the science-based view.

Maybe the mistake I made was injecting the term science into this discussion,
That way, 'scientific thought and rigour' and 'atheism' would not overlap.

One can still be an honest scientist, and be either an atheist or someone who believes in a Higher Power.

No, you can't. If you have an a priori belief in an unproven higher power, you are no longer thinking from a scientific point of view, but a faith-based one. In the absence of any conclusive proof of the existence of something, an honest scientist looks at the body of evidence and asks whether there is supporting evidence that a phenomenon does occur, and if such evidence exists, proceeds to try to understand the phenomenon and prove or disprove its existence scientifically. However, when there is no proof whatsoever that a phenomenon occurs, and the vast, overwhelming weight of evidence strongly suggests that it does not occur, then we can reasonably conclude that there are better things to do than wasting our time in the contemplation of the absurd. I think Voltaire had something to say about that.

Lastly, theoretical physics, (worm holes, stacked alternate universes, time travel, string theory), on its furthest fringes, is pure Star Trek.

So what? 120 years ago, manned flight was science fiction, as was travel to the moon. None of this has any bearing whatsoever on the existence or otherwise of a "higher being," which is actually, in any case, a manifestation of a human psychological tendency, rather than an independent phenomenon. The same tendency leads weak-minded people tp believe in conspiracy theories, chemtrails, UFOs, and barrowloads of similar twaddle, all totally spurious and with no foundation in fact. Which is, I believe, where I came in.

If god exists at all, he only exists in the minds of those who believe in him. Or her.