Faith Healing

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kwlyon
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by kwlyon »

Interject "hope" for faith and i would agree with you. As it stands, I firmly maintain that faith has been consistently detrimental to our progress. But alas...everyone to their own I suppose:)
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by Dardedar »

graybear13 wrote: It must be very hard to be a scientist or someone who cannot acknowledge anything that cannot be proven.
DAR
Wrong. I acknowledge lots of things that cannot be proven. They go in the gray area. There is nothing wrong with saying we don't know or don't understand something. That takes wisdom and humility. Where we get screwed up, as shown in this thread, is when we use faith as a substitute for evidence or knowledge and use it as an excuse to believe in palpable absurdities, idiotic falsehoods and the plainly untrue. In other words, your bread and butter.
Sav says I am stupid because I have faith in knowledge that I cannot prove;
DAR
No, stupid is pretending faith is a reason to believe something. It isn't. Stupid is appealing to faith to support things not only that cannot be proven but which are demonstrably false. This is the primary use of faith in our society today.
Your profanity
DAR
Spare me your feigned concern that I used the word shit.
and intellectual dishonesty concerning your particular viewpoint of unending finite reality is offensive to me
DAR
If you are going to charge me with intellectual dishonesty do at least make an attempt to back it up. Saying you believe it by faith wouldn't work now would it? Probably you can even realize that saying you believe this by faith, wouldn't be very persuasive. This is because believing things by faith never is and never will be a good reason to believe something. Perhaps you would like to take a crack at making sense of (or supporting) your phrase:

"unending finite reality"

Perhaps you were being poetic? In poetry contradictions can be quite nice.
The point I was trying to make was, like it or not, faith has played a big role in the evolution of mankind up to this point...
DAR
Right. And contrary to your claim of "let them believe what they want to... They ain't hurtin' nobody but themselves" we gave you an extensive resource of examples showing how faith has (and continues to have) an immense role in harming mankind. You could have shown some maturity and acknowledged this point but instead chose to hide behind a silly unaccredited pinch from Urantia and the old post modern "we can't know anything ultimately" so no belief is better than any other.
I dare say that science, philosophy, and your narrow little, profane, view would not have had a chance to develop had it not been for faith.
DAR
What a load. So now we get the equivocation. Who could have seen that one coming? Now you want to use faith in another sense such as "anything believed." Yes, we humans need to believe in things, in our selves, in our children, in our abilities etc. That's very useful but that is to use a very different sense of the word faith. Don't confuse the definition for the purpose of avoiding the subject. We are speaking about faith in the religious sense, the sense in which you have used it and continue to used it. To believe in things regarding objective reality, science, metaphysical realms specifically without good reason. That's just dumb but it is the foundation of nearly all religious faith claims.
Faith is what tamed the beast and allowed science and philosophy to thrive...civilization to survive.
DAR
Bullshit. Faith gave us the Dark Ages. When we grew tired of the black plague and blood letting of that abomination, reason "saved us" and gave us the enlightenment. Entrenched religious power, based upon the same anti-humanist crap you are trying to sell today (centuries after the enlightenment) delayed the benefits of science and the enlightenment perhaps two millennia. This war between faith and reason is an old war and one you religious nuts are losing and will continue to lose and the longer we delay it the more humans will suffer (see above).
It seems like a fools mission to attempt to destroy faith and release the "Kraken" that will destroy civilization and sink mankind into anarchy.
DAR
No, pointing out that not having good reasons to believe something is never a good reason to believe something should be so axiomatic that it shouldn't need to be taught to mentally mature adults. It's a disgraceful failure and it wouldn't be necessary to teach this to adults if some people didn't choose to brainwash themselves with piles of religious lies and nonsense hidden behind the bankrupt faculty called faith.
I think you would be surprised at the number o people out there that don't know the difference between "bullshit"and "goatshit"
DAR
I wouldn't be surprised at all because I have been roasting nonsense like yours for nigh 30 years. It is precisely your inability to discern between shit and nonshit (as shown again in this thread) that is the problem. Anyone who thinks an appeal to faith is ever a method of discovering truth or reality, a useful method of separating and identifying the shit from the nonshit, is like you, wrong. Faith is precisely the exact the opposite of a tool useful in discerning the difference between true and not true.

“There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if only you begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.” --Arthur Schopenauer

D.
--------------------
"Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight, and wish to know nothing but the word of God." -- Martin Luther quoted in Walter Kaufmann's Critique of Religion and Philosophy
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by Dardedar »

kwlyon wrote:Interject "hope" for faith and i would agree with you.
DAR
Of course. He is equivocating and hoping it isn't noticed. Perhaps he's just being sloppy and is unaware of this.

It's amazing to see how much human nonsense is supported by a simple dishonest use of, or basic ignorance of, language. Perhaps all of it.

D.
------------------------
"But what, after all, is faith? It is a state of mind that leads people to believe something - it doesn't matter what - in the total absence of supporting evidence. If there were good supporting evidence then faith would be superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to believe it anyway. It is this that makes the often-parroted claim that "evolution itself is a matter of faith" so silly. People believe in evolution not because they arbitrarily want to believe it but because of overwhelming, publicly available evidence." [Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene]
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by Doug »

graybear13 wrote: It must be very hard to be a scientist or someone who cannot acknowledge anything that cannot be proven.
Scientists "acknowledge" unproven things all the time. What they don't do, professionally, is try to pass off unproven beliefs as knowledge.
graybear13 wrote:Sav says I am stupid because I have faith in knowledge that I cannot prove...
If you can't provide evidence to support a belief, it should not count as knowledge in the first place even if you are right.

Thought experiment:
Person A tells persons B and C that she is going to write down a number between 1 and 10. Person A writes this number on a legal-size pad of paper.

Person B is sitting right next to A and sees the pad clearly, and he sees that A has just written a "4." So B has the belief that A wrote a "4."

Person C can't see the pad of paper at all, but C rolls a 10-sided die that coincidentally happens to come up as a 4. Person C then believes, for no discernible reason, that the number on the die is the same as the one A has written down. So C has the belief that A wrote a "4." And he's right.

So, both B and C believe that A wrote a "4." Person B has good evidence. Person C just happens to be right by coincidence.

In philosophy, the term knowledge is reserved for something along the lines of what B has, but not that of C. B can explain his evidence (visual, etc.) and can appeal to a reliable means as having led to his belief that A wrote a "4." C can do no such thing, and it is likely that if the experiment were repeated, B would be right once again and C would probably be wrong if they followed the same procedures that they did on the first occasion.

So in other words, saying that you have "knowledge that you cannot prove" is tantamount to saying that you have a sound that you cannot hear or a color that you cannot see. A belief that is unsupported by any reliably-produced evidence may by chance turn out to be correct, but it is not knowledge.

Another way of saying it: what you are calling knowledge is indistiguishable from a guess. And guesses, even lucky ones, are not knowledge.
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by Savonarola »

graybear13 wrote:Sav says I am stupid because I have faith in knowledge that I cannot prove;
Actually, I said that your beliefs are stupid. Of course, that doesn't exactly bode well for you in terms of your intellectual prowess.
graybear13 wrote:It must be very hard to be a scientist or someone who cannot acknowledge anything that cannot be proven.
I wouldn't know. I'm not such a person. Darrel has already elaborated on this, but I'll take the opportunity to point out the black-or-white thinking that you so diligently exhibit. There are gray areas, and it would behoove you to understand not only that gray areas exist but also when you've delved into them.
graybear13 wrote:Maybe stupid is not the right word but I am certainly less up tight .
If by "less up tight [sic]" you mean "intellectually lazy to a fault," then, yes, you certainly are.
graybear13 wrote:Your profanity and intellectual dishonesty concerning your particular viewpoint of unending finite reality is offensive to me but I don't really give a shit...
Are you offended, or do you not give a shit? You can't have it both ways, which tells us that you're just blowing smoke. Oh, I guess that's not really an epiphany here.
graybear13 wrote:The point I was trying to make was, like it or not, faith has played a big role in the evolution of mankind up to this point...
Sure. That doesn't necessarily make it good, or rational, or accurate.
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by Dardedar »

My favorite cologne and I don't even know what it smells like:

Image

D.
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"It was the schoolboy who said, 'Faith is believing what you know ain't so.'" [Mark Twain]
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by graybear13 »

Profane adj.
1. Showing contempt or irreverence toward God or sacared things; blasphemous.

I once, on this forum, called myself a heritic. I still believe that to be true but I try not to be profane.

I think it is dishonest and rude to tear apart and twist peoples words with your multi-quote responses...you quote a line hear, part of a line there,and then skip a couple of lines so you can spin it the way you want to. This is what produced the equivocation that was talked about, who could see that one comin' :) . I may be very sloppy but I do not mean to equivocate.

I'll try to explain what I mean by unending finite reality. It is not meant to be poetic and I do not believe it conflicts itself.
.....The universe is "unending".

The part of the universe that we can be aware of and observe with all of the sciences and faith (without all of the crap that presently comes along with that of course), is "finite reality". Faith has to be included in my view.

I agree with you that the church in general, faith healing, public prayer, the church becoming envolved in politics, which is one of the scariest ones becauses it causes war, just sucks and needs to go away. All of those things are like a rotten crust surrounding faith. No matter how hard you try you cannot get rid of it from the outside in; you might chip away at it but it's to strong at that level, however, I do believe that it is vulnerable from the inside out.

Gray
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Re: Faith Healing

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graybear13 wrote:Profane adj.
1. Showing contempt or irreverence toward God or sacared things; blasphemous.
DAR
To the extent that reverence toward a God or sacred things results in human suffering through purposeful ignorance and stupidity, I celebrate being profane and blasphemous as a step in the right direction. From a secular or humanist point of view one could turn this around and define profane as that which insults and degrades human wisdom, reasoning, understanding, knowledge etc. I don't consider those things "sacred" but from that perspective, this is precisely what your excerpt from the Urantia book represents.
I once, on this forum, called myself a heritic. I still believe that to be true but I try not to be profane.
DAR
Well you failed. I don't worry about being profane towards gods because I don't believe they exist. When one denigrates human wisdom, reasoning, understanding, knowledge etc., and elevates faith as an alternative or competing method as you have done, you are denigrating something that can actually be shown to exist and rather unarguably can be shown to have been of immeasurable benefit to human kind. Believing things without good reason, is stupid. Faith is believing things without good reason.
I think it is dishonest and rude to tear apart and twist peoples words with your multi-quote responses...
DAR
I respond to your points directly and I respond directly to questions. I don't twist words (but feel free to show this). You might try this method yourself. It prevents sloppiness.
you quote a line hear, part of a line there,and then skip a couple of lines so you can spin it the way you want to.
DAR
Actually I don't. I will gladly quote and respond to every single word, as I am doing this post. Nothing omitted, zero spin. Your claim of "spin" means nothing without an attempt to back it up. If you think I have purposefully left out a good point, then simply point it out.
This is what produced the equivocation that was talked about, who could see that one comin' :)
DAR
Actually it wasn't. The equivocation was caused by you sliding between different definitions of faith for the purpose running from the most pernicious one you began with ("unquestioning belief that does not require proof or evidence").
I may be very sloppy but I do not mean to equivocate.
DAR
I don't know your intention.
I'll try to explain what I mean by unending finite reality. It is not meant to be poetic and I do not believe it conflicts itself.
DAR
Here's why it does. Unending means infinite. Infinite is obviously in direct opposite to finite. So your "unending finite reality" is the same as saying: "infinite finite reality" or "unending ending reality." You use two exactly contradictory words to refer to the word "reality." It doesn't get more contradictory than that. These sorts of comments are very common in religious literature and poetry. In poetry it can be embraced as artful expression. In religion it is usually used to obfuscate incoherent and stupid doctrines.
.....The universe is "unending".
DAR
We have no way of knowing that. This is perhaps poetry?
The part of the universe that we can be aware of and observe with all of the sciences and faith (without all of the crap that presently comes along with that of course), is "finite reality".
DAR
Why would we in any sense need "faith" as we are "aware of" and "observe with all of the sciences" the universe? This makes no sense. I think it's time to discard this nostalgic and dreamy notion of faith. Faith, in the religious sense, is believing things, usually absurd things, without good reasons. Rather than accomplishing good it results in planes being flown into buildings and parents ignorantly praying over their dying and suffering children instead of giving them scientific medical attention. Want to see faith in action? Here is faith in action:

Image

This is a woman on the cover of the latest TIME magazine, age 18, who had her nose and ears cut off by the Taliban for faith based reasons. You think your waxing on about faith doesn't have consequences but does. In areas where people still take their faith seriously and act upon it believing by faith has very serious consequences. And this is for reasons that are very well understood. Reasons that in fact were well understood, in some circles, 2000 years ago. It's time to get with the program and speak plainly about this crap left over from the dark ages. Believing things by faith is believing without good reason and leads to this kind of suffering and stupidity.
Faith has to be included in my view.
DAR
You're wrong. Faith is believing things without good reason. That's stupid. It's better to have good reasons for believing in things. This should be so axiomatic that the notion that this would even need to be stated in this day and age, is startling.
I agree with you that the church in general, faith healing, public prayer, the church becoming envolved in politics, which is one of the scariest ones becauses it causes war, just sucks and needs to go away.
DAR
Then you have come to acknowledge the harm that faith based believing causes. Now perhaps you can show the benefits of believing things without good reason and then I'll list the reasons why there is no need for such a method.
All of those things are like a rotten crust surrounding faith.
DAR
Of what use or utility is believing things without good reasons? I am speaking of the first and foremost definition of faith which is, straight from my dictionary: "unquestioning belief that does not require proof or evidence."
No matter how hard you try you cannot get rid of it from the outside in; you might chip away at it but it's to strong at that level, however, I do believe that it is vulnerable from the inside out.
[/quote]

DAR
Your Urantia book quotes do not point to a person who is in any sense trying to get rid of faith but rather the opposite.

D.
------------------------
"Tell a devout Christian man that by eating frozen yogurt, he can become invisible - he requires evidence as much as anyone else" - but tell him that a certain book he keeps by his bed is written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for an eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he requires no evidence whatsoever."
--Sam Harris, "The End of Faith"
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by kwlyon »

graybear13 wrote:Showing contempt or irreverence toward God or sacared things; blasphemous.
I have never enjoyed life more than I do today. The last five years or so have been an incredible adventure--scary at times, but wonderful. The twenty five before that, however, were not so enjoyable. Religion and dogmatic programming are in no small part responsible for robbing me of so much time. I HOPE that there is a life after this one. I find the concept rather dubious to say the least, but I hope. It would be nice to be afforded the opportunity to make up some lost time. I am not going to waist any time that I know I have sulking over that which was lost and hoping for the unlikely.

I am often rather irreverent towards "god"--god being the name my programmers have allocated to their favored dilution. The idea of something being sacred, or beyond criticism, is the great evil imparted by religion. No I don't walk into peoples living rooms or places of worship and piss on their business...that would be rude. But if they bring up the subject, though I will still try to be kind, I will be brutally honest.
greybear13 wrote:I agree with you that the church in general, faith healing, public prayer, the church becoming envolved in politics, which is one of the scariest ones becauses it causes war, just sucks and needs to go away
Yes, this was a point we tended to agree on. I actually don't mind faith if it would just stay the hell out of my business. But it doesn't does it. And you recognize this I think. Faith, that is the process of non-thinking, has a way of bringing great comfort...but comfort built upon shaky foundations. And when those foundations are threatened, people get nasty. The problem is that it is far to easily, and often inadvertently, threatened. When a muslim or atheist moves in next door to you and you discover they are decent people...but how can you both hold the correct views? They are, after all, quite mutually exclusive. This is a recipe for intolerance and, given enough time and the correct social/political/economic environment, hatred and violence. And faith naturally finds its way into the government doesn't it. This is due to the ease at which one can vote through faith. No thinking is required. As the lady said so eloquently, "I don't really know that much about politics but I'll vote for president Bush because of his faith." Scares the hell out of me...and it should scare the religious as well (see Darrel's pretty girl on the time magazine above).
greybear13 wrote:All of those things are like a rotten crust surrounding faith.
From my perspective, these are the fruits of faith. Again, if by faith you mean religion, then things get a little more complicated. However the word "faith" generally refers to a single aspect of religion--that being the process of non thinking or belief contrary to overwhelming evidence. Really I think I understand what you are saying here and I am not sure I am not in at least partial agreement with you. I think you are misusing the word faith.
greybear13 wrote:I do believe that it is vulnerable from the inside out.
I think, like the walls of Jericho, it will require agents on both sides:)
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by Savonarola »

graybear13 wrote:I think it is dishonest and rude to tear apart and twist peoples words with your multi-quote responses...you quote a line hear, part of a line there,and then skip a couple of lines so you can spin it the way you want to.
If you think that I have framed your words incorrectly, please identify which words and how I have misinterpreted them. Don't accuse people of doing something without identifying where the problem took place.
graybear13 wrote:The part of the universe that we can be aware of and observe with all of the sciences and faith (without all of the crap that presently comes along with that of course), is "finite reality". Faith has to be included in my view.
I don't see why faith should be considered "reality." By definition, faith is evidence-less belief. If I had the belief that the sky is orange, why should that be considered reality of any type, let alone "finite reality"?
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by graybear13 »

Darrel wrote:
graybear13 wrote:Profane adj.
1. Showing contempt or irreverence toward God or sacared things; blasphemous.
DAR
To the extent that reverence toward a God or sacred things results in human suffering through purposeful ignorance and stupidity, I celebrate being profane and blasphemous as a step in the right direction. From a secular or humanist point of view one could turn this around and define profane as that which insults and degrades human wisdom, reasoning, understanding, knowledge etc. I don't consider those things "sacred" but from that perspective, this is precisely what your excerpt from the Urantia book represents.
I once, on this forum, called myself a heritic. I still believe that to be true but I try not to be profane.
DAR
Well you failed. I don't worry about being profane towards gods because I don't believe they exist. When one denigrates human wisdom, reasoning, understanding, knowledge etc., and elevates faith as an alternative or competing method as you have done, you are denigrating something that can actually be shown to exist and rather unarguably can be shown to have been of immeasurable benefit to human kind. Believing things without good reason, is stupid. Faith is believing things without good reason.
I think it is dishonest and rude to tear apart and twist peoples words with your multi-quote responses...
DAR
I respond to your points directly and I respond directly to questions. I don't twist words (but feel free to show this). You might try this method yourself. It prevents sloppiness.
you quote a line hear, part of a line there,and then skip a couple of lines so you can spin it the way you want to.
DAR
Actually I don't. I will gladly quote and respond to every single word, as I am doing this post. Nothing omitted, zero spin. Your claim of "spin" means nothing without an attempt to back it up. If you think I have purposefully left out a good point, then simply point it out.
With all due respect Darrel, here is an example of a "twist" to the meaning of my words. You actually come right out and define the word profane to support your belief that I mean to denigrate human wisdom, reasoning, understanding, knowledge etc. ,and elevate faith as an alternative....If I have given that impression through my own sloppiness, lazyness or stupidity I am truly sorry, it was not my intention.

I may not have been clear in my definition of faith because it is a deep ponder for me, a gray area, a belief in possibilities. Faith has very little to do with religious dogma and failed churches in my view.

Unending finite reality or infinite finite reality if you prefer, is a situation I find myself trying to understand. Maybe that is what you want to call delusional but I'm just wandering and pondering in the gray areas. I think I understand it but I find it difficult to explain. IMHO it cannot be infinite and finite in 3D time. The limit of our understanding of time (no denigration intended) defines the finite reality in 3D time only and leaves on the doorstep of infinity, which can only be understood, in my view, in 4D time. It seems that 3D time is only part of 4D time. What is the connection? There has to be a connection. A small leap of faith or an extended journey into the gray areas will be required to understand the 4th dimension and see what energy actually is in infinite time. To understand the interactions between dark energy, dark matter and matter we have to think in 4D.

4D time=unending finite reality

gray
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by kwlyon »

Are you aware of Gene Ray's time cube theory? Sorry...but for a minute there you kinda resembled him:) One of the occupational hazards to speaking beyond the horizon of one's understanding is the tendency to babble incoherently. No offense intended...of course I know you are not Gene Ray crazy...just...wow...for a second there....

http://www.timecube.com/
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by Savonarola »

graybear13 wrote:IMHO it cannot be infinite and finite in 3D time. The limit of our understanding of time (no denigration intended) defines the finite reality in 3D time only and leaves on the doorstep of infinity, which can only be understood, in my view, in 4D time. It seems that 3D time is only part of 4D time. What is the connection? There has to be a connection.
You say, "the limit of our understanding of time," but you surely mean "the limit of my (graybear's) understanding of time," and I can be pretty sure of that because time is the fourth dimension. It makes no sense to say "3D time" or "4D time."
The only way I can interpret your wording without leaving me with the impression that you don't know the first thing about dimensions is to attribute to you the idea that there are two temporal dimensions instead of one. This idea gets postulated now and then but is always rejected because not only is there no evidence for it, there's evidence against it.
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by Dardedar »

graybear13 wrote: With all due respect Darrel, here is an example of a "twist" to the meaning of my words. You actually come right out and define the word profane to support your belief that I mean to denigrate human wisdom, reasoning, understanding, knowledge etc. ,and elevate faith as an alternative....
DAR
No, you misunderstand. I specifically said:

"From a secular or humanist point of view one could turn this around and define profane as that which insults and degrades human wisdom, reasoning, understanding, knowledge etc. I don't consider those things "sacred" but from that perspective, this is precisely what your excerpt from the Urantia book represents."

Again, the nine lines of stupidity from that Urantia quote:
Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.
Faith is an effective armor against wrong doing.
Faith is the act by which man earns Gods favor.
Faith is the only requirement for eternal salvation.
All men, high and low, can attain bliss by faith in righteousness and justice.

Reason is the method of science; faith is the method of religion.
Reason is the proof of science, faith the proof of religion.
Though reason can always question faith, faith can always supplement both reason and logic.
Science is sustained by reason, religion by faith. Faith, though not based on reason, is reasonable.
How does that not: "elevate faith as an alternative"? Do you want to defend any of this garbage? Do you understand how ludicrous this stuff is?
I may not have been clear in my definition of faith because it is a deep ponder for me, a gray area, a belief in possibilities.
DAR
It's really not that deep. It's wishful thinking and believing without good reason. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Faith, as a method of discerning reality is unnecessary, foolish and often dangerous. You can sit around reading New Age books (Carlos Castaneda, Urantia etc.,) and assorted quantum quackery and partake in an interesting illusion this provides. It makes you feels as if you are accomplishing something, or learning something, and you think you know things other people don't know. But you don't. It gives you a false sense of superiority but it's just mental masturbation. As Carlin pointed out, at least with real masturbation you have something to show for it at the end.
Unending finite reality or infinite finite reality if you prefer, is a situation I find myself trying to understand.
DAR
It's amazing how much human energy is pissed away pondering nonsensical hypotheticals based upon untenable, vapid imaginings. Rather than wonder how many angels you can get on the head of your imaginary pin, or what you are going to do with all of that lead you plan to turn into gold, you first need to show a reason to believe in a single angel, and then learn the basics of chemistry. The way you go on about physics, throwing around terminology obviously far beyond your ken, is really quite astonishingly arrogant. This is what New Age woo woo books do for a person. They make you think you are special and are on the inside track and don't have to do the basic work of understanding the background material about how the universe works. You act like you are a concert pianist and want to talk about what tuxedo you are going to wear for the great performance and how the piano should be located on the stage but you haven't yet learned to play even a C MAJOR CHORD. It's not clear you even know where middle C is on the instrument. It's absurd. No, it's profoundly absurd. It's farce.
Maybe that is what you want to call delusional but I'm just wandering and pondering in the gray areas.
DAR
No, you are talking in circles. Truth is usually pretty simple. It's bullshit that needs barrels of ink worth of accompanying explanation and spin. Part of the reason you don't improve is you don't respond well to stimulus. You make piles of claims, you don't grasp the most rudimentary contradiction in your own writing, you don't respond to correction, and you don't respond to questions. This has happened over and over. Doug helps you out with some really fundamental philosophical concept regarding knowlege in this thread, you ignore it. Dr. Harter, a person who has lived and breathed quantum mechanics since at least 1966 (when he got his doctorate) asks if you understand some basics of physics going back 300 years, you ignore it (because you don't). Again, as was posted by him May of last year:
In order to conduct an intelligent dialog with Mr. g, it will be necessary for him to know of and understand these definitions and concepts.

Could he begin by giving these formulas (or equivalent verbal description) for the ones listed below (in order of their discovery)?
1. (circa 1550) Galileo's mass: (Ratio of momentum to velocity)
2. (circa 1650) Newton's mass: (Ratio of change in momentum to change in velocity)
3. (circa 1905) Einstein's mass: (Constant)

These definitions continue to be useful in modern quantum theory, the currently fundamental physics. Indeed, their exact definitions are key to QT.
This received pure silence from you.
I think I understand it but I find it difficult to explain. IMHO it cannot be infinite and finite in 3D time.
DAR
It's difficult to explain because it's rubbish. The great truth you are avoiding is not pleasant. Your beliefs and claims are based upon premises, stacked upon premises, built out of incoherent, contradictory, baseless, mushy headed woo woo and foo foo.

[Snip...]
4D time=unending finite reality
DAR
Gibberish that shouldn't fool a 7th grader. How long are the tails going to be on that tux you wear for your piano concert? I think you should order the invitations. You can always practice the piano later.

D.
---------------------------
"The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably
not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." --H.L. Menken
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Dardedar
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by Dardedar »

I took this picture today of a billboard on E. Emma Street in Springdale. It epitomizes this blight of human nonsense about faith and since it is rather more honest than most faith based apologetics and spin, it drops the pants and reveals rather starkly how this whole faith charade works.

Image

I think I may give a presentation on this at our next meeting.

D.
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by Dardedar »

More on, "what's the Harm?"

The History of Religion is Riddled with Bodies, Murder, and Death

"So we gather this Sunday to learn that six Christian missionary eye doctors were summarily executed in Afghanistan. They were on a mission to treat poor rural Afghan villagers. They were killed by Islamic radicals who were offended that the group had Bibles with them, figuring they were trying to poaching their Islamic flock.

Meanwhile radical Zionists in Israel continue using Old Testament title reports to justify stealing land from Palestinians, some Muslim, some Christians. And, in return Palestinians, some Muslim, some Christian, kill Jews in retaliation.

Nearby, in the 12th Century Islamic theme park that the Mullahs in Iran are trying to maintain, a woman is about to be stoned to death. For murder? No. For cheating on her husband. Because, you see, the Muslim “holy book” -- a book almost as old as the Christian Bible, and filled with at least as much utter nonsense -- commands that cheating dames be stoned to death. So one half of the sinful pair is gonna get stoned, (and not in the good way.) What about the other half of this “sinning” duo? Where’s he? He skipped town -- in fact he skipped the whole country -- leaving her holding the bag (of stones.)

Here in the US we are not insulated from the “blessings" of ancient superstitions. While Jews and Muslims are relative minority faiths, America is lousy with fundamentalist Christians who are -- to use a British term -- all about being “up everyone else’s nose all the time.” Like fundamentalist Muslims and radical Zionist Jews, born-agains are all about trying to force the rest of us to get with the program -- their program, their god’s program… the program dreamed up by uneducated nomadic farm folk thousands of years ago.

All three major religions insist they are the only real deal, and hundreds of millions have died when they disagreed. And, as you read these very words, people are dying still for the same ignorant nonsense."

Buzzflash
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Faith Healing

Post by ignosticmorgan »

The law must protect children from parents who rely only on faith-healing to help their children. Parents who do that ought to be in prison, and any faith-healer who tells others to forgo medical treatment,ought to be in prison.
See the blog inquiringlynn.posterous.com
God is in a worse shape than the Scarecrow who had a body to which a body could enter whiilst He has neither. He is that married bachelor. No wonder He is ineffab
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