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AnAtheist
Guest
You believe something different, fine.
You try to tell me, what I should believe, fine.
But don’t tell me, what I do believe. That I know better than anybody else.
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You try to tell me, what I should believe, fine.
But don’t tell me, what I do believe. That I know better than anybody else.
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oriel36
Guest
You already said in another posting that you were an epicurean which ,as William James* commented,denotes a particular type of belief that excludes any belief in pain or evil.You believe something different, fine.
You try to tell me, what I should believe, fine.
But don’t tell me, what I do believe. That I know better than anybody else.
"The Epicurean said: “Seek not to be happy, but rather to escape unhappiness; strong happiness is always linked with pain; therefore hug the safe shore, and do not tempt the deeper raptures. Avoid disappointment by expecting little, and by aiming low; and above all do not fret.”
ccel.org/ccel/james/varieties.viii.html
It seems that you achieved your pupose in finding no purpose in life.There is always the Christian Way when you are done with empirical superficialities.
- Like many of his Protestant counterparts,William James wrote beautifully on Christ and Christianity and adored the Catholic balances at a time before the emergence of the early 20th century phychobabble and spacetime nonsense when men decided that they no longer needed God.
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vern_humphrey
Guest
Then why are you here, on this forum? What is it you are looking for?
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AnAtheist
Guest
Ok, seems I have a different definition of an Epicurean than William James.
It’s more like this old song, but don’t take it too seriously:
Alte clamat Epicurus:
“venter satur est securus.
venter deus meus erit.
talem deum gula querit,
cuius templum est coquina,
in qua redolent divina.”
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Paris_Blues
Guest
Yeah, my pychology teacher told us - and I don’t know if he’s a believer or not - : “Creationism makes good religion but not science” and I was thinking, whatever!
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oriel36
Guest
Again,your empirical religion gives you as much room to define anything in whatever way you choose.You have the luxury of complete free will hence you have no purpose in life and see none.
Christianity is where the Divine Will encompasses the individual will - “It is the Spirit that gives life while the flesh is of no avail” .Your experience of natural desires is all you have and can indeed constitute a belief of sorts but it looks like consumerism to me.
I guess the mall is your cathedral.
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Philthy
Guest
Hi friend-
How do we define a good life? Since you have proposed that life is purposeless have you defined a good life as a life that does not try to create purpose where none exists? If not, your contention that you do not live a lousy life is entirely relativistic and can hardly constitute evidence.
Also, didn’t you tell me that life has no essence? It would be very odd to characterize an entity without essence as good or bad - that’s just plain odd.
My thoughts only…
Phil
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AnAtheist
Guest
Good question. As long as I am feeling content I guess I live a good life. As a friend of mine once said (and please, take the money metaphorical now), “I have enough money, if I can choose from the left half of the menu.”
See above. And, with “purposeless” I meant, life has no purpose besides living. No “higher” purpose.
Absolutely. It is relativistic and merely anecdotal.
Also, didn’t you tell me that life has no essence? It would be very odd to characterize an entity without essence as good or bad - that’s just plain odd.
That is a different question. Life exists, but on a different level than the matter it is made from. You won’t find any material, or natural, essence that characterises life. Guess we agree on that. I go a step further and say, there is no supernatural essence either.
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AnAtheist
Guest
Yes, I do.
Ok.
It may look like that way to you, but I guess you will never understand what exactly drives me. I don’t blame you for that, you judge my statements by your worldview, which is completely different from mine, therefore you naturally derive different conclusions from the same circumstances.
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oriel36
Guest
The Christian experience of purposelessness is often so personal that it cannot rightly be discussed in an open forum other than to say it is necessary and it passes.Why squander a remarkable experience and lounge around in resignation when a Christian passes through it rather than consigns himself to a wretched condition ?.
I liked Tolstoy’s experience of it . -
“This is no fable, but the literal incontestable truth which every one may understand. What will be the outcome of what I do to-day? Of what I shall do to-morrow? What will be the outcome of all my life? Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death which awaits me does not undo and destroy?
“These questions are the simplest in the world. From the stupid child to the wisest old man, they are in the soul of every human being. Without an answer to them, it is impossible, as I experienced, for life to go on.
“‘But perhaps,’ I often said to myself, ‘there may be something I have failed to notice or to comprehend. It is not possible that the condition of despair should be natural to mankind.’ And I sought for an explanation in all the branches of knowledge acquired by men. I questioned painfully and protractedly and with no idle curiosity. I sought, not with indolence, but laboriously and obstinately for days and nights together. I sought like a man who is lost and seeks to save himself,—and I found nothing. I became convinced, moreover, that all those who before me had sought for an answer in the sciences have also found nothing. And not only this, but that they have recognized that the very thing which was leading me to despair—the meaningless absurdity of life—is the only incontestable knowledge accessible to man.”
To prove this point, Tolstoy quotes the Buddha, Solomon, and Schopenhauer. And he finds only four ways in which men of his own class and society are accustomed to meet the situation. Either mere animal blindness, sucking the honey without seeing the dragon or the mice,—“and from such a way,” he says, “I can learn nothing, after what I now know;” or reflective epicureanism, snatching what it can while the day lasts,—which is only a more deliberate sort of stupefaction than the first; or manly suicide; or seeing the mice and dragon and yet weakly and plaintively clinging to the bush of life.
Suicide was naturally the consistent course dictated by the logical intellect.
“Yet,” says Tolstoy, “whilst my intellect was working, something else in me was working too, and kept me from the deed—a consciousness of life, as I may call it, which was like a force that obliged my mind to fix itself in another direction and draw me out of my situation of despair. . . . During the whole course of this year, when I almost unceasingly kept asking myself how to end the business, whether by the rope or by the bullet, during all that time, alongside of all those movements of my ideas and observations, my heart kept languishing with another pining emotion. I can call this by no other name than that of a thirst for God. This craving for God had nothing to do with the movement of my ideas,—in fact, it was the direct contrary of that movement,—but it came from my heart. It was like a feeling of dread that made me seem like an orphan and isolated in the midst of all these things that were so foreign. And this feeling of dread was mitigated by the hope of finding the assistance of some one.”80
Of the process, intellectual as well as emotional, which, starting from this idea of God, led to Tolstoy’s recovery…
ccel.org/ccel/james/varieties.viii.html
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4_marks
Guest
If there is a “reason” or a “purpose” it must be a divine one, that is, “reason” and “purpose” cannot be divorced from intelligence. If you are a true Athiest, and not an Agnostic, you would preclude that there is no intrinsic reason or purpose to anything. Human beings put reason and purpose upon things. We order them…impersonal forces do not.
Of course, such logic is intellectually dishonest and fault ridden since it does that which it vehemently condemns others (like Christians) for doing, that is, it assumes a certain truth and works out of a set of self-imposed constrictions.
A Christian believes that one cannot attain the truth about the identity of God by reason alone, that is, apart from revelation. Athiests and agnostics cannot accept this. Christians understand this because they recognize that athiests and agnostics are unable to come to the fullness of revealed Truth by purely natural means. They are, however, able to study and observe, and their observations can serve to raise questions which can pre-dispose them to the reception of this revealed truth if and when it comes knocking on their door. (Revelation Chapter 3, verse 20)
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AnAtheist
Guest
4 marks:
Simply accepting a truth without reasoning or examination (leap of faith) works for any religion. That method you propose arbitrarily leads to any truth, dpending on one’s cultural environment and who’s influencing the person accepting that truth.
And what if a different relvealed truth than the Christian one knocks at one’s door? The Islamic, Hindu, Shinto, Wiccan, whatever truth? How can you tell one revealed truth from another, if not by objective examination?
Simply accepting a truth without reasoning or examination (leap of faith) works for any religion. That method you propose arbitrarily leads to any truth, dpending on one’s cultural environment and who’s influencing the person accepting that truth.
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4_marks
Guest
There is only one truth, not multiple truths. The post-modernist philosophy of diversity sensitivity has misled many into believing that truth is relative…there is your truth, my truth, someone else’s truth, etc. There cannot be “multiple truths.”
If you are truly seeking the Truth for the sake the Truth alone, you will be led to the Truth and will embrace the Truth. Accepting Christ as Lord and Savior does not require a “leap of faith” as Pascal or Kirkegaard might suggest. It does require that God has drawn you by grace (predestined you) to receive the Truth.
You cannot become a Christian no matter how hard you try by practicing religious acts or good works. God must be the prime mover. All you need to do is yield to His Holy Spirit, and He will take care of the rest, which will all fall into place for those who are His own.
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AnAtheist
Guest
4 marks:
So make a statement, then we can talk about the truth in that statement.
Actually there is no such thing as The Truth. The very term “true” makes only sense when applied to a statement. So when you say “the truth”, you actually mean “what I say is true”.
So make a statement, then we can talk about the truth in that statement.
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4_marks
Guest
This will help spell out the Catholic position on predestination for those who are seeking.
To rule out Pelagianism, the Church requires one to reject these propositions:
Adam’s fall only encourages us to sin by way of a bad example and not by depriving us of grace and transmitting to us a fallen nature.
Man can avoid sin, be justified, and attain eternal life without God’s grace.
God’s grace is only given to us externally, as through the Mosaic Law, the Gospel, and the example of Christ.
Grace is only given to man so that he may more easily do things which he could otherwise do.
To rule out Semi-Pelagianism, the Church requires one to reject these propositions:
Man can desire salvation without divine grace.
Man can reach out to God without divine grace.
Man does not require divine grace to persevere until the end.
To rule out the Calvinism, the Church requires one to reject these propositions:
Divine grace is intrinsically irresistible.
All people who are ever justified are predestined to persevere in justification.
God creates some people for the purposes of damning them.
Christ’s death only paid for the sins of the elect.
Everything we do is a sin in at least some measure.
Man’s will is only free from external compulsion but not internal necessity.
To rule out Pelagianism, the Church requires one to reject these propositions:
Adam’s fall only encourages us to sin by way of a bad example and not by depriving us of grace and transmitting to us a fallen nature.
Man can avoid sin, be justified, and attain eternal life without God’s grace.
God’s grace is only given to us externally, as through the Mosaic Law, the Gospel, and the example of Christ.
Grace is only given to man so that he may more easily do things which he could otherwise do.
To rule out Semi-Pelagianism, the Church requires one to reject these propositions:
Man can desire salvation without divine grace.
Man can reach out to God without divine grace.
Man does not require divine grace to persevere until the end.
To rule out the Calvinism, the Church requires one to reject these propositions:
Divine grace is intrinsically irresistible.
All people who are ever justified are predestined to persevere in justification.
God creates some people for the purposes of damning them.
Christ’s death only paid for the sins of the elect.
Everything we do is a sin in at least some measure.
Man’s will is only free from external compulsion but not internal necessity.
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4_marks
Guest
Correct!
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4_marks
Guest
So you believe that all Truth is subjective. Therefore, there is no objective truth? Does the kool-aid taste good? Tell me, what flavor is it?
Consider the wisdom expressed in these words from freelance columnist, Dennis Campbell:
"Particularly alarming is America’s ever-increasing rejection of objective truth (or moral absolutes) in favor of subjective truth (or moral relativism). One says we can discern right from wrong, and typically is based on Judeo Christian principles or natural law. The other says each is free to make up his or her own mind about matters of morality.
But America was not founded on moral relativism, nor did it lead us to greatness. The Founders believed in “unalienable rights” from our Creator — an immutable, holy and righteous God. To them, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was objectively true.
Now, as we rush toward becoming a society in which I am right and you are right and nobody is wrong, have we thought through the implications? Recently, a woman who works with students newly arrived to college expressed dismay at their unwillingness, or inability, to say that anything is objectively wrong. Are we prepared for future leaders unable to condemn even the worst of villainies?
Are we prepared for those who believe that right and wrong merely are matters of strength and power, and if you have what they want, they have the right to take it from you? And when moral relativists say, “No, do whatever you want as long as it does not hurt another,” what is their basis for saying harming another is wrong, if there is no objective truth?
Clearly, moral relativism is fine until the guy with the gun shows up for the car. However, if everything is relative, what right do we have to say he is wrong? If he is convinced the strong have the right to take from the weak, are we not obliged to acknowledge that, and hand over the keys?
Perhaps a greater problem is that right and wrong become the province of whoever happens to be in power. If they decree that pedophilia is legal, or that we are free to kill others of a certain race, or that “hate speech” can be prohibited, then those things become law or become acceptable, as in Hitler’s Germany.
Moral relativists say that we cannot legislate morality, but this is nonsense, since all our laws against wrong behavior are based on moral imperatives: We know that having sex with children is wrong, that committing murder is wrong, that prohibiting free speech is wrong.
Recently, a writer for liberal magazine The New Republic expressed discomfort with President Bush’s “God talk.” She did not deny his sincerity, but said that while she envies him his moral certitude, it is that certitude which frightens her.
I am not frightened by his moral certitude. I fear those unable to discern right from wrong, by a person who cannot distinguish good from evil unless it involves his own safety or self interests, by someone unwilling to take a moral stand.
The person who bases his actions and beliefs on America’s traditional moral absolutes does not frighten me as much as the person who cannot distinguish between the President and der Fuhrer, as it seems so many today are unable to do.
The logical end of moral relativism is social chaos. The solution to social chaos is tyranny. If things in America continue to go as they are, unchecked by a firm belief in objective morality, it may be that one day we will get a firsthand understanding of the difference between the President and der Fuhrer."
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Lillith
Guest
Hello AnAthiest! I was once an athiest too! Until I took Anatomy and Physiology in college, and I realized that there is an Afterlife…scientifically proven, what form is debatable…but there is an afterlife
Atoms live forever.
atoms gather to form molecules
Molecules gather to form cells
cells gather to form systems
systems gather to form life
The initial energy is the atom, which will never cease. Why those atoms joined specifically to form you is affinity. Those atoms were drawn together and the word used is affinity (looked up in the dictionary literally means, related by marriage, kinship, attraction, force between substances or particles that causes them to enter into and remain in combination), and I was taught in anatomy and physiology that these atoms will never die and their affinity (the actual word used in text books) will never cease this affinity remains forever…
This was the major shift in my thinking…
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AnAtheist
Guest
:nope: There are loads of atoms in our bodies that are continously exchanged. That’s called “metabolism”, the German term “Stoffwechel” (lit. exchange of matter) fits even better. Atoms have no other “affinity” than the physical forces binding them together, and those forces don’t care whether a carbon atom belongs to you, to me or a piece of coal.
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Lillith
Guest
AnAtheist said:
This is still an after-life…and the fact that something has proven to exist eternally was an amazing thought to my athiest end to everything thinking…how do I know my atoms don’t combine to create the energy that is my soul.
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