Re: The Bigger, Badder, Even More Serious Thread [3]

[Mrs Figg]

so religion then.

[Lancebloke]

Do you believe in some kind of god figgy?

[Pettytyrant101]

By making a business pay women an equal amount, or charging them tax you are forcing them. Thats what laws are for. They force things, hopefully for the common good, decided upon by the elected members of the governemnt, representing the democratic will of the people.
Religion wants an exemption from the law. From being forced to adhere like everyone else.
And I dont see why it warrants it.

[Pettytyrant101]

'The Church of Scotland's ruling General Assembly has voted to allow actively gay men and women to become ministers.
The vote to allow gay ministers in civil partnerships follows a report by the church's theological commission, which set out arguments on both sides.'- BBc Scotland

[Amarië]

Progress!! I like!

[Pettytyrant101]

70 dead and more than 200 injured in Iraq today in car bombings and market place bombings.
I hope Blair and Bush cant sleep tonight.

[Mrs Figg]

Do you believe in some kind of god figgy?

hmm not sure really, i think I believe in some kind of karma and that the Earth is a living organism on a vast scale, I believe theres some weird stuff floating about that could be ghosts, I think there is a possibility in parallel universes, and that the universe is so damn strange god could actually exist, but I dont think its a man in a long White garment with a long White beard and I dont think he or it can really care about everyone, but sometimes I feel protected by something, but I dont know what it is. I would like to believe in god as totally as some religious people do and feel their faith, but I cant, and I wonder why, is it because I am too impure cynical, selfish and sullied or is it because I am not wired up like religious people to the ethersphere. some people are 100% sure and I envy their certainty, but I think really after Death theres absolute nothing, and we have been taken for the biggest fools ever, and then I look at men like the current Pope and see the goodness, humility and joy in his eyes and feel ashamed for being so craven, so thats it really, I would like to feel spiritual things but I am just too damn ironic.

[Pettytyrant101]

You know what you sound like to me Mrs Figg?
Human.

[halfwise]

Yep, I think we have this strange unexplained yearning for religious stuff (I think it's comforting to feel protected, but that doesn't explain the mysticism), and it's fun to dally in it, but too much thought makes it untenable to sustain.

Speaking of which, Petty - I normally agree with your logic, but you seem to be arguing very illogically against points Lance and I have both brought up. Your chain of logic just seems to have gaps everywhere in this case.

In the case of marriage, the argument that the law forces churches to perform certain types of marriage is simply untrue. The law means the government must accept certain types of marriage, but doesn't regulate people's personal opinions on the matter.

It's perfectly permissible to be racist. You can choose your own friends according to race. You can choose to sell or not sell personal items according to race. But there are public acts you cannot perform: if a proprietor of a store that sells to the public, you cannot discriminate according to race.

So where do churches fall in the public/private spectrum? To me there's a government test: must the churches be licensed to do what they do? A merchant must be licensed, so falls under government regulation. A church does not. It is a private institution. Nothing a church does is legally recognized by the government, except as previously noted its non-profit status (this may be a purely US term).

If the church claimed its marriage must be recognized by the government, then it must bow to government regulation. Moreover as Lance said, the reason the church's services are not recognized by the government is because everything it does is voluntary. Not a single person needs to get married in a church.

Your arguments about genital mutilation etc are valid in there own sphere, but don't affect the arguments about marriage between two adults. In this case the church's actions are simply irrelevant to the government, so should be allowed to function unsupervised by the government.

[Mrs Figg]

You know what you sound like to me Mrs Figg?
Human.

did you ever doubt it?

[Lancebloke]

I like to think I am open minded about things... however I also like to think I am quite logical too. I remember having an arguement with a girl in india about why I didnt believe in a god and her arguement was simply 'but something MUST have created it all... but when questioned why this god didn't also have to have been created... well, because it was god, obviously.

People talk about having faith. I can't put faith in something I consider a ridiculous concept. I put faith in people. I put faith in the aeroplane I go on holiday in and that its not they day it breaks. I put faith in myself when I set out to do things. But not in something that has nothing to base that faith on other than what pretty much amounts to word of mouth from 2000 odd years ago.

[halfwise]

Though I am beginning to see the other side of the church marriage issue.

I said they are private affairs because the government doesn't license them for operation. But does a theater group have a right to discriminate among it's audience? They are unlicensed. I have to admit to some thorniness creeping in.

But not everything can be reduced to black and white. I think society has a say in certain issues, and on the issue of marriage in churches, society would say "hands off". Not a matter of logic but of personal feelings.

In America a theater group that only said "white audiences only" would be in court before the end of the day, but if they said "black audiences only" they may be seen as offensive but it's unlikely someone would bring suit.

[David H]

People talk about having faith. I can't put faith in something I consider a ridiculous concept. I put faith in people. I put faith in the aeroplane I go on holiday in and that its not they day it breaks.

My father would have considered both of those ridiculous concepts.

He believed that everybody was fallible. that you needed to assume they would fail at the worst possible moment and be prepared for it. Teaching me to drive, he taught that the driver of every oncoming car should be expected to drop his coffee and swerve across the center line into your lane, that every driveway or blind corner concealed an idiot who was going to drive in front of you while arguing with the passenger.

Having worked in a shipyard in his youth, he saw every airplane as a collection of metal and rivets assembled by many shifts of people of varying skills with other things on their minds, serviced and maintained by workers of varying skills at all hours of the day and night, on tight timelines, with too little sleep. He would much rather take a week and drive 3000 miles in his own car than trust all those strangers by flying on their airplane. The few times my mom actually talked him into flying he went grim and silent like he was marching to the front lines again. Compared to that, I think he would have told you that faith in God was comparatively easy.

I figure to each his own. Faith is a trick we all have that allows us to believe things will work without actually understanding why. It's the only thing that makes life manageable. I don't need to take my computer apart or get a degree in telecommunications to send you all this post because I have faith it's going to work. Otherwise I'd never post.

Many people have faith in the food they buy without understanding the first thing about it or where it came from. As a farmer I think that's way nuttier than believing in a creator.

[Mrs Figg]

there may be a Creator, but I find myself thinking of me standing on the Earth just a tiny thing on a vast planet, and then I think of the mind numbing vastness of space and that our planet is just a grain of sand in an ocean of planets and stars that may go on for infinity. so how a Creator can do a mega Google Earth and zoom in on the hopes and fears of a creature so tiny it can never be quantified, is beyond my comprehension its so beyond my ability to fathom. and if there is a God he or it would probably be that powerful, unless there are Gods for each Galaxy. the thought of some intelligence that could even in a billion billion billion billion years even notice me, why would he or it care what this dot of molecules thinks?

[Lancebloke]

David - I guess I see it as more tangible and rational. The people building the plane want to sell it... broken planes dont sell. The people that maintain it dont want to be thrown in jail for causing a crash. The pilots dont want to die. The people that train them want a business etc. It is something you can relate to and see and feel something for.

I dont understand, if there was a god, what could possibly motivate any of its actions. I cannot relate and cannot see or feel. Therefore I do not have any faith as I have both no logical reason or no 'gut' reason to do so.

figgs - there are a few things which just blow the and the vastness of existence is one. Comprehending time I think is also another since ours is so brief. Those are things I try not to think about as I know I will never get it, yet somehow they are the things that are some of the most intriguing.

[azriel]

Everything youve been saying,Figgy, is exactly how I feel about the Earth, God, the endless endlessness of it all, I cant seem to grasp....that how come there is no end to space ?..how can it just go on & on & on ?!..Sometimes the enormaty & thinking of it makes me feel sick ?!

[David H]

David - I guess I see it as more tangible and rational. The people building the plane want to sell it... broken planes dont sell. The people that maintain it dont want to be thrown in jail for causing a crash. The pilots dont want to die. The people that train them want a business etc. It is something you can relate to and see and feel something for.

OK, but can't you also relate to the greed that might lead to substandard materials or shortcuts in maintenance? Or is it just that your faith arises like most people's when there are things you'd rather not dwell on, like falling out of the sky?

One thing I've noticed over and over is that people's faith tends to be in things they're forced to accept. People who live in cities tend to have faith in buildings, public transportation, electricity, water, sewer, garbage pickup and such. It's an artificial bubble but people seem to feel betrayed when the system breaks down exactly like Job when God tested him.

In the country we don't have the luxury of relying on any of these things, but we also don't have the need. Instead we're more at the mercy of the wind, the water and the earth. Floods and droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, landslides and earthquakes are beyond our control other than having a strategy to possibly survive them. A year's income for a farmer can be lost in half an hour in a spring freeze or a late summer hail. Where else to trust but in a benign creator? Not asking for any special favors, just the same deal the birds of the air and the lilies of the field get. Somehow everything always seems to sort itself out in the end, and sometimes we die trying. Is it so terrible to feel that it's in some sense how things are supposed to be?

And to Mrs Figg and Azriel, I think I'm mostly in agreement. What's amazing about the scope and scale of the universe is how precisely it all follows the same laws. To even begin to get your mind around the size and complexity of the system it can be useful to believe in a higher intelligence that understands all the rules. From there it's not far to imagining a creator. I used to know cutting edge mathematicians who described their research more than half seriously as "looking for God's fingerprints on the Machine." At the very least it's a useful model that mathematicians and physicists have often used in trying to understand the universe. I honestly don't see why that seems to be such a problem for some.

[halfwise]

Who was it that said "the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it's comprehensible."?

Some theoretical physicist. I think it's a very profound statement.

[Lancebloke]

David - yes... but from experience, the majority of people tend to do the right thing even if that is mainly because it results in the best outcome for them.

With the whole creator thing, I see no reason to link the complexities of the universe to a creator. That makes less sense than just accepting that there has probably always been something and that humans will probably not understand it all for a very long time, if at all.

[Mrs Figg]

just on a side note I watched the film the Green Lantern last night, nothing special about it really, it was just your bog standard Hollywood superhero thing, but something struck me about the villain. It reminded of me of this thread and our discussions. The villain was a massive blob of Fear itself, it fed on fear and fear was its weapon against Humanity. I just realized that about 80% of ME is fear. Everything is about fear, from my earliest memories it has dominated my life from the smallest thing like fear of abandonment of not passing an exam or the big things like fear of Death illness losing a loved one etc. some of it real and some of it imagined or potential fear. So imagine the amount of fear a primitive person must have felt? I bet they were 99% fear. fear of the sun not coming up, fear of starving fear of Saber tooth tigers, fear of no harvest fear of the savage marauders. so man invented an emotional comfort blanket, a comfort in dark days, Hope. whether it was a fertility god or the Pyramids or Stonehenge or the Nazca lines. all times and all peoples have developed ways of coping with fear and of giving hope and courage by means of making sense of the universe through gods. Like a benign parent looking over us, picking us up when we fall and giving much needed love and comfort. its a primeval need to have gods, its hard wired into our psyche. we need God and maybe the irony is he actually exists.

[azriel]

I can go with that Figgy ! I,also am half filled with fears of one sort or another ! had them all my life. For me, I find comfort in a "Guardian Angel". Not the white flappy things, but I feel its someone from our own individual past family. An aunt or grandad ? Their spirit looks after us & "whips" us out in the nick of time if anything really bad happens. I have to say,its not God I hope to, when the shit hits the fan, I cant help but feel that religion leads people up the garden path. It promises things that cant be fullfilled when we "pop off". I sometimes think its the worst weapon humans can wave.

[Norc]

OMG! LONDON! OMG!!! JESUS!!! wtf!

[Lancebloke]

I get people that think I am odd because I didn't seem upset when my granddad died a few years back. People don't seem to get the way I feel about stuff like that.

Was I happy that he died... no, that would be odd. But to me, that is the way life is. My parents will die, people close to me will die. I can't do anything about it and it is just something I accept as being part of he journey. Once it is done, it is done.

I think about times we have had together and how he helped me with all sorts of things, but always look back on those good things. There was never anything in me that needed to mourn or any of that.

I think it's odd as I don't know anyone else that is the same!

[Lancebloke]

And yes Nora - that is all pretty fucked up!

Seen a lot of shit on the internet.... racist kind of crap. Someone else summed it up nicely.

It's not about religion, or gender or race or any of that. There is only one kind of person that can do something like that and they are fucked up in the head. So don't go blaming it on Muslims or black people... there is too much of that going on at the moment.

[chris63]

Be riots there soon.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-23/eyewitnesses-describe-woolwich-attack/4707706