Elephant dude is cool. I also like monkey dude, crocodile head dude, that dude with the hammer and of course...the dude.
Anyway, getting back to Kframe's OP... Kframe, just because inspiration might not come from a divine source, that is no reason not to be spurred into action by it. If you felt that your experience could inspire you, even if just in a small way, to question your life and think of how you might improve it, then don't look a gift horse in the mouth
No-one has ridiculed Kframe's beliefs, and two of us who aren't even Christian gave suggestions as to alternative Christian churches that he might want to check out.
If we take that level of proof to be certain, can we be certain of anything? Id say its practically proven once it passes the engineering test. For example would you be happy to fly in a plane designed via the theory, or have your cancer prevented via genetically engineered vaccine, etc etc
Whats your definition of fundamental truth? And why wouldnt the scientific method be able to uncover them?
I didn't point out that anyone did ridicule him personally. What I said is to be 'prepared' to be flamed. Religious individuals tend to be attacked here for some reason. I've been here for 12-13 years, seen it dozens and dozens of times...
I am curious though why non-religious individuals want to constantly disprove the concept of religion even though most of the time it doesn't affect them.
Its partially the hans Christian anderson reason, - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes
A fundamental truth would be immutable, eternal, identical under any circumstances. Even pure mathematics and logic have seemingly insurmountable paradoxes that call into question their objective validity in certain circumstances. In building theories via experimentation we are, for any foreseeable future, unable to fully explain the universe we seem to find ourselves in for the simple fact that you cannot objectively test a system from within. So until we find a way to exist outside of the universe, we are doomed to never truly know it. You then have the inescapable fact that perception is subjective. This equally applies to devices and machines we create to measure phenomena, because they only perceive what we create them to perceive, as it does to the scientists taking readings from them. "We therefore need to ask whether the results of scientific measurements and experiments can be aperspectival. In an important debate in the 1980s and 1990s some commentators answered that question with a resounding “no”, which was then rebutted by others. The debate concerns the so-called “experimenter's regress” (Collins 1985). Collins, a prominent sociologist of science, claims that in order to know whether an experimental result is correct, one first needs to know whether the apparatus producing the result is reliable. But one doesn't know whether the apparatus is reliable unless one knows that it produces correct results in the first place and so on and so on ad infinitum. Collins' main case concerns attempts to detect gravitational waves, which were very controversially discussed among physicists in the 1970s. Collins argues that the circle is eventually broken not by the “facts” themselves but rather by factors having to do with the scientist's career, the social and cognitive interests of his community, and the expected fruitfulness for future work. It is important to note that in Collins's view these factors do not necessarily make scientific results arbitrary. But what he does argue is that the experimental results do not represent the world according to the absolute conception. Rather, they are produced jointly by the world, scientific apparatuses, and the psychological and sociological factors mentioned above. The facts and phenomena of science are therefore necessarily perspectival." - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-objectivity/ Even after millennia of discussion, we are still no closer to coming to an understanding of what meaning, if any, the concept of "truth" has. The same goes for the notion of objective reality. All we have is inference.
Because often it does - even a casual look at issues like homosexual relationships and marriage shows how religion is not a personal preference but an overt and unwelcome assertion upon everyday life
Been reading this discussion so far, keeping out of it, as I have nothing good to offer. I Yea, so far I have not noticed anything I would consider offensive to anyone of belief. Mostly just people espousing why they don't believe. I choose to stay out of that argument. I do appreciate all the help and advice guys. I know one thing, . Regardless of what system of belief, if any, I wind up in, I have a decided to make positive change in my life. I am not fulfilled, and aim to make it so. A gift horse, as he calls it. If religion leads me to fulfillment then so be it, if not, oh well. I still will look for a place to hang my spiritual hat, but that wont stop me from making the changes I need to make. As David said, my experience 5 years ago, that I foolishly sat on and ignored, has inspired me to make a positive change in my life. Were ever the source of it, I wont turn it away. I lift weights 4 days a week now, with out fail.(Almost said religiously lol) Going to be adding in a day of cardio, with the goal of filling two of my three non weights days with cardio. Then someday, get back into the MA gym. I know that my parents and religion has played a major part in my disapproval of LGBT marriage. However the more I look at it, the more I just don't care. Their getting married does not impact my life. We as a people found and fought over a word. Who gives a crap about a word? They, the LGBT community should have, from the beginning been given the tax privileges, and legal rights(hospitals and other things I am forgetting) from the beginning. Beyond that, I just don't care. Now they can be as miserable in marriage as everyone else. So I will admit my anti LGBT beliefs did stem from my upbringing. Hard not to, when the OT says stone them. I cant remember, but I don't think the NT says anything quite that harsh. It's almost as if the OT and NT are two different Gods and two different books. One is a massacring frightening deity, the other far more benevolent and worthy of looking up to.
O,I dunno. A lot of people do really stupid things under the influence-of either. Mark twain said the NT was God after he "got religion".
So religion should be banned in your opinion? So if something that you believed in offended then I have the right to request it be banned? What is the criteria you used to determine such?
Never said that - what I AM saying is that if you believe in something that DIRECTLY effects the life of someone else who does NOT believe in it then I have a MASSIVE issue All religions are not viewed equally, nor treated equally - some places still have blasphemy laws for goodness sake....and just look at the silly cow at the DMV who would not grant gay marriage licenses What you believe is of no consequence or concern to me...until they start to intrude - then you get both barrels back
I have a Libertarian bias so that's my go-to attitude also, but sometimes it's actually not that simple. There's a difference between just one person doing something, and a whole bunch of people spread across the entire society doing the same thing. Even if I'm not living next door to the person doing whatever-whatever (so that we can say that I'm not affected by that one person's behavior), if it's a societal thing then I am affected by it, and so are my family members. So, ya, sometimes issues are easy and clean, and sometimes they're squishy and messy.
