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Keep in mind true believers often learn to live with a massive cognitive dissonance This is quite true. Taking away just the moral teachings is not true belief

• foxygen 1y ago
  What is so special about reality?
  • ivape 1y ago
    Purpose. That there was a purpose for all of this. If we believe there was no purpose for all of this, then what a hopeless thing. I just look at the erasure of Gaza and have become more and more religious, because my god what a hopeless end if this all isn’t saved at the very end. I feel that way about many of today’s ills. Purpose and hope, even if the answer is utterly magical.
    • nlavezzo 1y ago
      If you're interested in some of the classic intellectual / philosophical arguments for faith (albeit from a Christian perspective) you should check out "Reasonable Faith" by William Lane Craig.
      • freedomben 1y ago
        I'm a non-believer, but I do think that is one of the best apologetic books that are out there. It's a bit of a tome and does get a bit slow at points, but I appreciate his attempt at depth and breadth and one can't do that without writing a pretty damn big book. I think everyone should read it (along with books from the other side as well, especially Richard Dawkins (for biology and some philosophy), Bart Ehrman (for Biblical scholarship and some philosophy), Robert Sapolsky (for Neurology/Neuroscience), Lawrence Krauss (Physics), and Robert Wright). I do wish Craig had reframed from the personal shots he takes at various atheist/agnostic writers (which clearly cross into ad hominem at many points) but he is by far the most interesting defender of faith out there (IMHO). In his defense I think he was playing along with the at times very incendiary approach taken by Dawkin's and many other "new atheists" so it's not like he started the brawl :-). I think he's way too confident in Anselm's Ontological argument, but he has clearly studied it a whole lot more than me so I don't hold a strong conviction there.
    • Tijdreiziger 1y ago
      Why should there be a purpose? It’s certainly possible that there is a purpose, but I think it’s more likely that we simply happened to evolve the way we did. In a vacuum, wars are meaningless. It’s simply humans fighting other humans (and the ones on the front lines might not even want to be there).
    • freejazz 1y ago
      > If we believe there was no purpose for all of this, then what a hopeless thing. That's a huge leap that speaks to your own perspective. It's not some sort of objective fact. That there is no purpose and we are still here is in fact quite beautiful and amazing.
      • ivape 1y ago
        Oh, I know it doesn't prove anything. It is a veritable leap of faith. No one said faith was easy.
        • freejazz 1y ago
          You're missing the point. Your conjecture is false. Sure, you never said it proved anything. But that's a different point. Your entire premise is just completely made up. You're not even expressing a leap of faith. It's a leap of cynicism that speaks to your world view, not your faith. Faith is not predicated upon a belief that there is no purpose to which otherwise faith supplies. You're just basically playing word salad at this point. And I don't mean that to suggest religious beliefs or faith is word salad. Just what you have offered here in this brief conversation.
    • ridgeguy 1y ago
      Opposite to my view. If there's no pre-ordained purpose, we're free to invent our own. I find that very freeing and hopeful. And a lifetime project.
      • mrguyorama 1y ago
        This is my take. The universe itself only cares that energy is as evenly distributed as possible. We are just a temporary ripple in that slide down entropy. There is no objective morality, because morality is a human invention. It's important for that exact reason that we make it very good then. Love strangers. Eradicate poverty. Encourage personal growth. Build society up. Reduce suffering. Stop bullies. Understand.
    • freedomben 1y ago
      I can very much relate to this, but I do think it's worth pointing out that this is not at all an argument for the existence of God, merely a motivation for wanting there to be a God. I actually find a lot of comfort in the Mark Twain quote after he was asked by a reporter whether he fears death given his lack of belief in God: > “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” --Mark Twain
  • santoshalper 1y ago
    Whenever people say things like this "the universe is too weird not to have been created", I always ask "Weird compared to what? To other realities you have witnessed?" The safest assumption to make, if you absolutely have to make an assumption at all, is that this reality is pretty average. With no knowledge whatsoever, it's certainly safer than betting it is somehow exotic.
    • freedomben 1y ago
      Indeed, this is a variation on the "Watchmaker Analogy." It presupposes that there isn't an alternative explanation to design that can describe how things could be so intricate and complex (Darwinian Evolution provides that alternative explanation). I highly recommend Richard Dawkin's book "The Blind Watchmaker" for anyone wishing to dive deeper on the subject.
• fragmede 1y ago
  The popular stories/proverbs aren't too unbelievable, but Ezekiel 10 discusses the four wheels besides the cherubim. These wheels are celestial beings that see all. Diablo (the video game) draws from this. This is not a comment on your mental status, but that some of the stuff in the Christian Bible are further out there than magic tricks by Jesus that Penn and Teller could replicate.
• em-bee 1y ago
  depends how you define a true believer. i am not christian, but i would claim that the people you describe aren't true believers because they haven't really understood the bible.
  • victorbjorklund 1y ago
    "they haven't really understood the bible." Pretty much every religious person believes that THEIR understanding is the correct one. You cant objectively say that "this is the correct understanding" from a religous perspective (you can however do it from a for example a historical or textual analysis perspective). You cant objectively prove that only mormons or bapists have "understood" the bible correct and everyone else are false believers.
    • em-bee 1y ago
      that's my point. everyone has a different idea/interpretation, and thus there is no objective definition of a true believer. GP says that true believers come off as insane. that doesn't sound like a sensible definition for a true believer. iaw. whatever a true believer is, i don't think it's that. what if jesus already returned? then the true believers would only be those that have recognized his return. there are people who did make that claim. that's who i would investigate.
      • victorbjorklund 1y ago
        Aha. Sorry missunderstood you. I thought you argued they are not true believers. I see what you mean now.
• wat10000 1y ago
  There’s “science doesn’t adequately explain the origins of the universe,” and then there’s “this particular middle eastern tribe had the right answers thousands of years ago.” I can see the former but the latter makes no sense.
  • zchrykng 1y ago
    Unless God actually exists and revealed himself to them. Obviously, you are free to not believe that, but believing that goes along with believing what you are dismissing.
    • SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
      He revealed himself to them and only them, ignoring the rest of humanity all over the globe. In all the universe he chose just earth for his people, and over all of earth, he just chose a tiny section to reveal himself to. Omniscient and omnipotent but a very human scale for his messaging.
      • sroussey 1y ago
        Also at a time those humans also believed the Earth was flat.
      • kjkjadksj 1y ago
        You are reading too hard into the specifics. The general themes are remarkably conserved across faiths. Even between monotheistic and polytheistic faiths, we see what is a pantheon of gods in the latter become just different forms of the monotheistic god in the former. The same myths when they are distilled. Zeus is Yahweh is Ahura Mazda is Indra is Thor is Itzamna is Baiame, fundamentally all the creator sky god. Of course the most ardent supporters of each faith might be blind to this parallelism, but it is obvious from an outsiders perspective.
        • SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
          Sure, if you squint enough everything looks the same, but then you can't see. For instance, in your example Thor is not a creator sky god, and he's limited. He's not even the leader of his pantheon. Zeus, another famous sky god, is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Yahweh, especially the later Christian incarnation of him, is pretty unique if you compare him to polytheistic religions.
• texuf 1y ago
  Do you think it's weird that ethnic groups separated by thousands of years of evolution came up with completely different gods and forms of worship? If there was an omniscient being don't you think it would make itself known in a little more universal fashion? And isn't it strange that the institutions built around our current iteration of God are soft power structures that wield huge amounts of influence both financially and politically?
  • ivape 1y ago
    I don’t think anything is weird anymore. The ultimate reality of free will is that you will always have the option to do right and wrong. If you don’t have faith, this privilege will be difficult. The human left to their own devices will always have a shifting sense of morality (turning a ship by 1 degree at a time). Faith was a gift to help. In terms of Christ, let me put it this way. Imagine your high school, and one day the President of the US visits. You may not directly see him, but the whole school would know about it, even if he was just there for 5 minutes. It’s a matter of faith, and it’s the little bit you need to help with the gift of free will. The very first story (well second story) in the main monotheistic books was the Eden Story. That story is all about how vulnerable we are with the choice of free will. Empirically, we have seen the failure of it over and over throughout human history (systemically you can easily see it). So, yes, I fully believe in the fallen nature of man, not because we are evil, but because what a gift and responsibility free will actually is.
    • Tijdreiziger 1y ago
      > I don’t think anything is weird anymore. The ultimate reality of free will is that you will always have the option to do right and wrong. If you don’t have faith, this privilege will be difficult. The human left to their own devices will always have a shifting sense of morality (turning a ship by 1 degree at a time). I think this hypothesis is flawed. I think most people in society strive to do right, and therefore most of us are able to live in relative peace and with relative trust in our fellow members of society. There are some people who do wrong, but we’ve set up our society to strive to detect this and punish those (albeit using imperfect systems and knowledge, leading to false positives and negatives). Therefore, I think religions are an encoding of human morality, not the other way around.
• lipbetfox 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • ivape 1y ago
    They struggle with reality testing. How could the magical stuff be real? Let me just believe the moral stuff, etc. It’s not always easy.
• michaelmrose 1y ago
  If you think quantum = supernatural you just didn't understand the topic. It ought to be telling that all the woo woo comes from people who don't know anything.
• 1-more 1y ago
  > The closest science has gotten was to actually corroborate that, yes, this was all not infinite and had a starting point (big bang), literally corroborated let there be light. Georges Lemaître, one of the original articulators of the Big Bang was a Catholic priest. He did not appreciate Pope Pius XII characterizing his research as confirming "let there be light." There are many references to criticism he received for publishing a theory that meshed well with "let there be light," however I am not able to find any primary sources for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre#Views_on_relation_between_science_and_faith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre#Views_on...
  • matthewdgreen 1y ago
    It is, however, pretty wonderful for the Big-Bang-is-creation view that light comes into existence on the first day, and God doesn't get around to making the sun until day four.
    • imchillyb 1y ago
      You are conflating a localized source of photonic emission with light. Light is an electromagnetic field that permeates everything in and through. Without the field first there are no photons, there is no physics, no gravity. God claimed to be this force. In all. Through all. Nothing could exist without it. How would a primitive people know this, understand this? They could not. We certainly can.
• joshstrange 1y ago
  > In fact, if you are true believer, you almost need to keep it hidden because it’s going to come off as mentally ill. Even agreeing on what a "True Believer" is would be impossible but, from what I have read of the bible and know from 18+ years in the church I agree. As I child I got in trouble a few times for suggesting we take the concepts in the bible to their logical end. Things like: - If we really believe all these people will burn in hell then why aren't we all becoming missionaries? Then when I learned about "age of accountability" [0] I had 2 questions: - If there is no age set on the age of accountability (to account for people living in remote areas who never heard the word of god) then isn't being a missionary and going to those places damning some percentage of them to hell if they don't accept jesus as their lord and savior? Aren't you making it worse? Even if you are able to "save" 60% you've damned the other 40% when before you visiting 100% would never have met the "age of accountability" due to never hearing about jesus? and the much more horrifying question (note: I was 6 or 7 at the time) - If the the age of accountability is real, and if our time on earth is truly inconsequential compared to eternity in heaven then (AGAIN: I was a child, I want just following logical chains), isn't the best option to kill everyone before that age so they will live for eternity in heaven? Needless to say none of these questions were appreciated and all of them resulted in anger from the adults I mentioned it to. It taught me from a very young age how to lie or obscure what I thought/believed since voicing it or even asking innocent questions got me in trouble for reasons I could not understand. Perhaps there are logical flaws in my questions that a biblical scholar could point out but all I got was the fury of people too invested in a myth to question it. [0] Concept that if you are younger than it and you die without being "saved" then you will still go to heaven because, essentially, you didn't know any better. There is no age defined since people reach that state at different ages and, IIRC, it even accounts for people who never hear the word of god and thus don't have an opportunity to be saved.
  • Boogie_Man 1y ago
    A good faith attempt to provide insight into good faith questions you shouldn't have been punished for asking: "If we really believe all these people will burn in hell then why aren't we all becoming missionaries?" Every Christian should seek to "become a missionary" in the sense that they should be a positive example and "practice what they preach" while being ready to share honestly about the Christian faith if appropriate/if asked. This is a standard we should hold ourselves to with the help of God. Early Christians did employ this level of urgency for evangelization, and (according to tradition) the original 12 themselves went as far as Spain and India (without the aid of modern transportation methods, of course). Christian churches spread as far as China, but later suffered persecution and much of the rest of the known world had to wait until the colonial era before Christian missionaries arrived in significant numbers again. Outside of specific uncontacted tribes (and I think a guy just got killed trying to evangelize one of them), I do not know if there are currently populations to which the gospel has not been preached. Translation of Christian writing and good works are the correct method of evangelization at this point, and this work should be supported materially and with prayer. As for the question of "the fate of the unlearned", there have been a variety of answers (or, more accurately, methods of approaching this question) which have included "they're screwed", "God judges them according to their heart", "God sends them the gospel via miraculous means", "Those who live according to the Logos are Christians but not aware of it", to the more modern "they may receive salvation through Christ through their faith in God as they know him" (other religions). It is important to note that from the perspective of Christian cosmology, (falling in Eden), God would be wholly justified in smiting us down into hell, and has no obligation to have done any of the things he has for us. "Then when I learned about "age of accountability" [0] I had 2 questions" You were right to consider the difficulties with this position as it (as expressed in your footnote) is not a historic Christian belief, but a retroactive justification for groups who deny infant baptism. If we adjust the question to "why don't we kill all infants after they're baptized if they will just go to heaven", the answer is because it is expressly forbidden by God in his prohibition on murder. On a similar note, suicide is expressly forbidden because it is a rejection of the role on earth you have been called to play, whereas giving up your life for the sake of another, or for the sake of the Gospel, is an ideal because it is in the service of others, which is the fundamental role Christians are ordered to fill. I hope this helps. May God bless you and reveal his truth in your life.
• leptons 1y ago
  I like Feynman's take that "I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose which is the way it really is as far as I can tell" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1RqTP5Unr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1RqTP5Unr4 The true believers in Christianity have to know, their world view is hinged on knowing that there is a god, that the world was created in 7 days, and that the earth is only 6,000 years old, among many other questionable religious beliefs. They're wrong about all of it (IMHO as someone who grew up Catholic), but at least in their own minds, they know. And that's good enough for them, they don't have to ask any more questions because a book written by kings told them so.
  • regus 1y ago
    The Catholic Church does not hold Young Earth Creationism as dogma nor does it hold that the seven days in Genesis were literal days.
    • leptons 1y ago
      [flagged]
• tengwar2 1y ago
  Revelations is problematic if you attempt to take it literally rather than understanding that it makes heavy use of symbolism and other literary devices. That literalism is largely specific to American society - and I don't just mean American Christians here. It's not particularly easy to understand the way that ancient literature works, but even if you don't want to put in the time, it's important to understand that the writers were often quite sophisticated, and worked in different ways from what you are used to.